Two lines of truth run throughout Scripture and are so sharply defined that one is surprised to find even the most superficial reader unacquainted with them. I refer to the line of responsibility, and the line of Divine counsel. On the line of responsibility are the first Adam and all His race, and on the second line are the last Adam and all His race.
I have already attempted to prove that all men admit the idea of accountability. It cannot be questioned that we are on that footing with one another, whether it is admitted with regard to our relationship with God or not. Adam was placed upon this ground, but failed to fulfill his obligations. He was not content with the place which the goodness of his Creator had given him, but grasped at Divinity itself the moment the tempter dangled the bait before his eyes. Thus failure is connected with the first and responsible man from the outset of his history. I do not suppose he stood one day in innocence, he certainly fell at the first assault of the enemy. And it has been so the whole way down the history of the world, and in all the dealings of God and His fallen creature, for this order of man was kept on probation for the first four thousand years.
Failure has marked the man after the flesh in every position of trust in which he has been placed by God. Cain was a murderer, and the flood brought his guilty descendants to an end. Government was laid upon the shoulder of Noah after the deluge. A sword (Gen. 9:5, 6) was put into his hand, but it is immediately necessary to record his drunkenness, which demonstrated his inability to govern himself. The law was given to the nation which God had redeemed out of slavery, and it was broken by them before the two tables of stone upon which it was written came into the camp. Nadab and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron, presented strange fire before the Lord the first day after their consecration, and were consumed for their wickedness (Lev. 10). The carcasses of all those who came out of Egypt, with two exceptions, fell in the wilderness because of their unbelief (Num. 14). Those who were allowed to enter the Promised Land defiled it with their idolatry, persecuted the prophets, slew them who testified of the coming of Christ, and when He came, murdered Him.
However man may exercise his mind he cannot really bottom any of the works of God. He may make a good many discoveries as to the powers which lie concealed in certain elements, and he may be able in a very remarkable degree to use the resources of nature, but to say that he understands anything thoroughly is to say that which everyone knows to be untrue. This is so as to divine and spiritual things. We may not be able to understand how it is that a creature can have responsibility to his Creator, but this is because we are creatures, and therefore limited in our knowledge of everything.
A man may make a machine, but be it good or bad, it is just what he made it, it has no responsibility. If it break down under the test applied to it, it cannot be held accountable. If it exploded into a thousand fragments, and every fragment killed a human being, not it, but its maker, if any one, can be held accountable. Man cannot make anything possessed of independent thought and action, so that it can be held responsible for what it does. God can make such a being, and He has made him, and that being is man. And we all admit this for we hold one another accountable for what we do; and the conscience of man where it has not become benumbed by ill-usage, takes account of God, and confesses itself responsible to Him. People blasphemously say that if man fell under the power of evil when assailed by it, there is no justice in God’s condemnation of him, for He should have made him able to withstand the temptation. This is a vain attempt to get rid of the idea of accountability. I say it is vain, for those who use the argument are inconsistent with it in their dealings with one another.
That God knew man would fall I need hardly affirm. That He secretly connived at it is a wicked aspersion upon His infinite goodness. He knew well what the effect of the attack of the fell fiend upon man would be. No creature can maintain himself in blessing by his own obedience. Every creature set in blessing with God must be maintained there by the power of God, and all have fallen who have stood upon the footing of responsibility. There are fallen angels as well as fallen men, and there are elect angels as well as elect men. It is impossible to imagine a creature as self-supporting. Hence what was in the counsel of God was a universe of blessing in which all intelligent beings would be upheld by the power of God. The fall of man gave occasion for God to bring out the secret thought of His heart, and in all His ways He will in the end be justified even in the eyes of those who shall come under His eternal displeasure.
The self-will of those who rebel against the revelation which He has given of Himself may stoutly affirm that they will never submit to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it is foolish for people to be boasting about what they will or will not do. Today they are groping in darkness and distance from God, and what they will do when His power is manifested and His light shines about them they know not. In that day there will be no fault found with the ways of Him who will be manifested as their Creator, their would-be Redeemer, but, alas, their Judge.
I do not concern myself much with the pretentious reasonings and boastings of men. The most learned philosopher has no more the knowledge of God than has the most illiterate numskull in the land. Men may reason about the things which come before them in nature, but the knowledge of God, as He has come to light in Christ, is as hidden from the reasonings of the most learned as it is from the in subject mind of the most illiterate. As to all that can be said, apart from the Bible, concerning the relationships of men with God, and as to what God is and is not, and what man is and is not, they are only theories evolved from the mind of man, which I utterly distrust, for I believe that behind all the thoughts of the natural mind in these things there is a power of evil bent upon driving the soul to destruction.
The Scriptures set before us all the various ways in which it has pleased God to address Himself to men, and in them we have a record of all His thoughts, counsels, words, and works, as far as He has thought necessary to make them known to us. I see one mind pervading the whole volume, both Old Testament and New, and the writers take the ground of having all their communications given to them from the living God. If this is not true, if they did not receive that which they have put on record, so that there could be no more mistake about it than there could have been had He been pleased to speak the words in the ears of the whole world by audible voice from heaven, then these writers are nothing but a set of wicked impostors; and the man who thinks him to be an honest person who says “Thus saith the Lord,” and “The Lord said,” when the Lord said nothing of the sort, must have strange ideas of morality. According to the law of this land the man who, when under oath, knowingly and willfully utters an untruth, becomes liable to imprisonment, and he certainly would not be likely to be trusted again; and I fail to see how the writers of the Scriptures have any right to different and better treatment, if their offense is found to be the same.
The Old Testament sets before us the first Adam and all his fallen race under probation, and failing in every test which was applied to him. The race is what the head was. Adam became head of a race when in his fallen condition, and God has been pleased for His own wise reasons to put that race under cultivation to demonstrate there was no good in it, before bringing in the Man of His counsels who would fulfill all His will. This trial was largely confined to one people Israel. It was not necessary to apply the test to the whole world, for all were alike, either bad or good. The test was to bring all to light. A farmer might test the quality of a field of grain by subjecting a mere handful from it to the test, and he would be justified in his judgment of all by that one handful.
God singled out Israel from the nations of the earth, and gathered them around Himself, telling them exactly and in few words all that He expected of them. They were simply to fulfill their responsibilities. They were encouraged to obedience by the brightest promises, and they were warned against disobedience by threats of the most terrible nature; but all was seen to be in vain. The flesh would not have God one way or another. The mind of the flesh was seen to be enmity against God, it was not subject to His law, nor could it be brought into subjection (Rom. 8:7). It was a case of “like father like son.” The tree whose seed is in itself brings forth its own kind. Every creature upon earth reproduces itself in its offspring, and man is no exception. The first human sinner has filled the world with sinners, and that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and in the flesh good does not dwell (Rom. 7:18). Violence and corruption characterized it before the flood (Gen. 6:11); the worship of demons marked the descendants of Noah (Josh. 24:2; 1 Cor. 10:20); transgression was stamped on the sons of Israel from Sinai (Dan. 9; Acts 7:53), and irreconcilable hatred of the Father and the Son came out in their treatment of Christ (John 15:24).
There is scarcely any other doctrine of Scripture more clearly proven to us in our dealings with men than is the doctrine of man’s total depravity; and yet we are most slow to believe it. We are continually getting disappointed in those in whom we have placed confidence, and yet there is the tendency to once again confide in that which has failed us, and the reluctance to give up looking for good in the fallen creature.
That man is without any sound moral foundation the history of the world proves beyond question. It is not that men are absolutely without natural affection; were this so the world could not exist, for children at least are dependent upon parents, and all men are largely dependent upon one another. But this does not prove that there is any good in the flesh, for natural affection is found in the heart of the most savage beast. Indeed it is found more strongly marked in the beasts than it is in men. Animals of the same species do not often devour one another, while men seldom do anything else. Men seek to make a stepping-stone, not of their dead selves, but of their living, helpless, writhing neighbor, in order to arrive at what they consider a more exalted and honorable position. Few, if any, despots have not been tyrannical and cruel to a degree, and it is well known that it is almost impossible for an absolute monarch to be a good man. The reason of this is because he has facilities for carrying out the corrupt desires of his evil heart with an impunity not accorded to other men. A certain historian speaks of one of the sovereigns of England as a good king, but a bad man. And a great poet speaks of man dressed in a little brief authority playing such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make angels weep. When man has an opportunity of exhibiting himself the exhibition is, as a rule, fearfully appalling.
Some men, of course, are amiable and some ill-natured, just as dogs are, but viewed in his relationships with God there is no good in him. Man is a great ruin, and as one may see in a castle, fast crumbling into dust, traces of its former greatness and grandeur, so may the primitive splendor of him who was made in the image and likeness of God be still seen in fallen humanity; but just as nothing can be done to repair the ancient fortress, rotten from the foundation to the crown of its roofless walls, so is there not a sound stone in the foundation of fallen humanity on which anything for God can be built.
In some those traces of primitive greatness are more apparent than in others. Saul of Tarsus was a wonderful example of this preservation of outward original grandeur, yet every stone in his moral structure was weather-bitten and friable to the core. No one had more to boast of in the flesh than himself, yet he was the chief of sinners. It was so with the young ruler of whom it is recorded in the gospels that the Lord loved him. The handiwork of God was visible in him beyond many others, but tested by Christ, his utter worthlessness comes to light: he preferred his worldly substance to the Son of God and treasure in heaven.
Man was tested by law in the past dispensation, and proved to be a lawbreaker. The result of that test proved the incorrigible rebelliousness of the flesh. In Psalm 14 the Lord is said to look down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any who did understand and seek God. What He found was that all had gone aside, and that all had become corrupt, and that there was none that did good, no not one. Man who should have been a servant of God was a servant of sin, and he served it with every member of his body. What the law says to them that are under the law is cited for us in Romans 3. We read there: “Their throat is an open sepulcher: with their tongues they have used deceit: the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes.” This is what was true of the Jew, while the nations wallowed in idolatry and fleshly corruption. This is Adam, the responsible man, reproduced in his race, with the power of the Devil behind all, driving the sinner onward in his career of rebellion against God, and in the downward course of his own degradation. How terrible is all this!