But it will be said, Yes, but the death of Christ has laid a new ground of responsibility. So it has, but by placing man on the ground that man is already lost; and that, when we were yet without strength, Christ died for the ungodly. There is none to will, none to understand, none to answer. We cannot give divine life to ourselves, nor beget ourselves to God. I am not questioning the door being freely open, nor the blood on the mercy-seat; but this is the final proof that man will not come when he can as regards God, and God has proved that no motives suffice to induce him. He must be born again, wholly afresh. The history of scripture is of God's using all means and motives, the result being the rejection of His Son, and judgment.
The case of Adam was somewhat different, because lust and self-will were not yet there. Man was not then a captive to a law of sin in his members. Sin was not there, nor was deliverance required. He was with God in innocence. Clearly God put no restraint on Him to leave Him and disobey. His obedience was tested. It was not a question of coming to God when he was already evil. The prohibition was a pure test of obedience, and the act was innocent if it had not been forbidden. There was as yet no conscience in the sense of knowing the difference of good and evil for oneself. He had only to stay where he was, and not disobey. There was nothing in him, nor of course in God, to hinder him; in this he was free. His fall proved that, not the creature was bad, but if left to himself, he could not stand firm. In this state so far from choice and freedom of choice being what he had to go right, the moment he had choice and will there was sin. Obedience simply was his place; if a question arose whether he should obey, sin was there. Choice is not obedience. The moment he felt free to choose, he had left the place of simple obedience.
Think of a child who takes the ground of being free to choose whether he shall obey, even if he chooses right! I deny that morality depends on freedom of choice. Man was created in a given relationship with God: morality consisted in walking in that relationship. But that relationship was obedience. There he was to continue simple, and happy, not to set himself free from God.
Christ abode in obedience. He took the form of a servant and came to do God's will. Satan in the temptation in the wilderness sought to get Him to leave this, to be free and do His will, only in eating when He was hungry. What harm was there in that? It was freedom and man's own will. But His answer is that man shall live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. There was no movement of His heart but from or by the will of God; and this is perfection. It is not a rule checking self-will which we alas! often need, but God's will the motive of action—of the action of our will. This is what is called in 1 Peter 1:22Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied. (1 Peter 1:2) the obedience of Jesus Christ, to which we are sanctified.
Man has therefore in one sense made himself free, but it is free from God, and thus he is in moral apostasy, and the slave of sin. From this Christ wholly delivers, and sanctifies us to obedience, having borne the penalty of the fruits of our free-will. How came I to have to choose? If I have, I have no good yet, and what is to make me choose it? The exercise of will or choosing was just man's sin, obedience is his place with God. He was created in good, and had not to choose it; now he loves sin, and has to be delivered from it. The principle that responsibility depends on the power of the responsible person is false, save so far as the alleged responsible person is in his nature such as to negative the claim. A stone cannot be responsible, nor even a beast, for moral conduct; because neither is in the relationship to which responsibility can attach. But obligation flows from relationship; and where the relationship exists which constitutes it, the obligation subsists: the power to fulfill it has nothing to do with it. The obligation gives a claim to the person to whom the obliged is responsible. I put the case—a man owes a thousand pounds; he is a spendthrift and has not a penny. He really has not power to pay: have I therefore no claim, and he no responsibility? This will not do. So Romans cut off their thumbs, and could not hold a spear, to avoid military service: were they not held responsible?
Man takes another ground of reasoning against God—that God put him into this place, or he was born in it; and therefore he is not responsible. This raises another point, that moral responsibility attaches to will, and not to power. We do what our own consciences condemn, because we like it. My child refuses to come when I call him to go with me. I am going to punish him because he would not. He pleads that he was tied or could not open the door. But I punish him, because he refused as to his will to yield to the obligation. I had a knife ready to cut what bound him, or a key to open the door. He by his will refused the claim. In a word responsibility flows from the claim on us arising from the relationship in which we stand. There is not a man in the city that would allow that he had no claim on a person who owed him a thousands pounds, because he had no ability to pay it. It has nothing to do with responsibility. Alas! we may lightly treat God so; as Adam said, “The woman that Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” If he pleads his sin as his excuse, God says, “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, Thou shall not eat of it: saying, cursed is the ground for thy sake,” &c. J. N. D.