This is one of a number of articles bro John Carter refers to in "Sin, Sins and Sin-Offering" (The Christadelphian March 1938), which he in turn refers to in "The Christadelphian on the Nature of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ" (The Christadelphian May 1939). This was to re-affirm the position of The Christadelphian and the Central ecclesias on the nature of man and the sacrifice of Christ.

The Christadelphian August 1915, W. J. Young

“The Condemnation of Sin”

“God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3).

“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, and the glory of kings to search out a matter” (Prov. 25:1).

“Which things angels desire to look into” (1 Pet. 1:12).

Over sixty-five years ago, Dr. Thomas in the providence of God, revived in Elpis Israel the Truth revealed in Holy Scripture concerning Sin in the Flesh and concerning the Nature of the Lord Jesus. “Man’s defilement,” he says, “was first a matter of conscience, and then corporeal” (p. 150). “Sin made flesh . . . is the Wicked one of the world. . . . Satan’s kingdom is the kingdom of Sin. It is a kingdom in which ‘Sin reigns in the mortal body,’ and thus has dominion over man” (p. 86). “The carnal mind, or thinking of the flesh, unenlightened by the truth, is the serpent in the flesh” (p. 82). “The scripture says that it was not possible for the blood of animals to take away sins. It was impossible because sin was to be condemned in sinful flesh. This required the death of a man, for the animals had not sinned” (p. 145). “The great principle to be encompassed was the condemnation of sin in sinful flesh innocent of actual transgression. This necessitated the manifestation of one who . . . would be Son of God by origination, and Son of Man by descent, or birth of sinful flesh” (p. 145). “The Apostle says, ‘God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin’; and this he explains in another place by saying that ‘He sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh,’ ‘in the offering of his body once.’ Sin could not have been condemned in the body of Jesus if it had not existed there” (p. 116).

Through good and through evil report the Household of faith has remained steadfast to these elements of Divine truth, in opposition to the churches and to all who hold that sin had no place in the flesh of Christ. Since some have tried to make out that Dr. Thomas changed his mind on this matter we subjoin an extract from the Herald of the Kingdom, January, 1860, pp. 10–12, in which we find the same teaching as in Elpis Israel (italics ours):—

“We do not deny ‘the perfect sinlessness of Christ.’ This is another fiction of the Baptistic editorial brain. We believe and teach that he was ‘holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners,’ and that ‘He was in all points tried as we are, yet without sin.’ This was His intellectual and moral status; yet He was not perfect. This He says of Himself, and, therefore, we may safely affirm it of Him. He tells us that He was not perfected until the third day, when He was perfected in recompense for His obedience unto death. That which was imperfect was the nature with which the Logos that came down from heaven to do the Father’s will clothed itself. That nature was flesh of the stock of Abraham, compared in Zech. 3:3 to ‘filthy garments,’ typical of ‘the infirmity with which He was encompassed.’ For this ‘infirmity’ called ‘himself,’ and for all of the same infirmity associated with Him by faith in the covenants made with Abraham and David, and in Him as the Mediator thereof, He poured out His blood as a covering for sin. Upon the principle ‘His own self bare our sins in His own body to the tree’ sins borne in a body prove that body to be imperfect and characterise it as sin’s flesh. Sin’s flesh is imperfect, and well adapted for the condemnation of sin therein. Sin could not have been condemned in the flesh of angels, and, therefore, the Logos did not assume it, but clothed itself with that of the seed of Abraham. Hence ‘the Deity sent His own Son in the identity of sin’s flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.’ This condemnation accomplished, the body slain was made alive again, and perfected, so that it now lives for the Aions of the Aions, as ‘the Lord the Spirit.’”

Since there exists a tendency in certain quarters to use terms in a sense different from that which we believe to be the true sense, it may be well to define clearly what we hold to be the Bible teaching about Sin in the flesh. This we may do as follows:—Sin in the flesh is that principle existing in our fallen human nature which causes the life-processes of the organism to produce thoughts, feelings, and actions out of harmony with the mind of God. Sin became an inhering principle in human nature as a consequence of the first transgression, and has been transmitted by natural descent to all succeeding generations. One would think that this doctrine was the one perhaps the most clearly taught in the Word, but unfortunately there is no teaching of scripture that has not been perverted; this is no exception to the rule, for some people tell us there is no such thing as Sin in the flesh, that our emotions are naturally good, that our flesh is clean as far as sin is concerned. Surely, the universal experience of mankind should be sufficient answer to such a contention.

As brother Roberts puts it in The Blood of Christ, there were three courses open to Divine wisdom when once Sin and death had entered the world; to exterminate the species—a confession of failure, and therefore impossible; the toleration-of-sin method—equally impossible; and to enforce the law against sin, and at the same time leave the door open for mercy to repentant and obedient sinners. The restoration to the original Adamic state was impossible because of the knowledge of good and evil, and of no practical utility even if possible. The only course left was to find some basis on which God might, in harmony with His own righteousness, eliminate Sin from human nature, and elevate human nature itself above the possibility of failure.

But it is one thing to state a problem and quite another to solve it. Sin was enthroned, reigning in death over the whole race, the necessary result of the Divine sentence for the first transgression. How completely human nature had come under the dominion and power of Sin is shown in those crushing passages in Romans which speak of it as “sold under Sin” (7:14); able to will but not to do what God requires (5:18); its mind incapable of being so subject to the law of God as never to transgress (8:7); the whole creation subject to vanity and in the bondage of corruption (vv. 20, 21). Sin’s power is acknowledged in the lives and experience of all mankind, even of the best and holiest of men (Dan. 9:20; Jas. 3:2).

Yet if God’s creation was not to prove vain, if man was ever to be made able to obey God’s will as well as to consent to it as good, some method must be found to dispossess Sin of its kingdom. As it was impossible for man to redeem himself it was needful for God to devise the means; the utmost that man could do would be to co-operate in the Divine plan. And whatever the method, it must necessarily be in harmony with the Divine principles and laws; to render sinless every living sinner by a special act of Divine power would be to make void the Divine sentence; to raise from the dead and perfect every dead sinner would be to annul the curse and make death but an episode, and that the happiest one, in life.

No, the abolition of Sin from the nature of any individual of the human family must be brought about by means which should demonstrate beyond cavil that Sin could no longer, in harmony with Divine justice, dwell in the organisation of that person; Sin must be condemned as having no right or title there.

But this seems practically to make redemption impossible, “for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” What is clearly seen to be impossible is that redemption could be brought by any mere flesh and blood descendant of Adam, for no righteousness that any one of them might show could be such as to nullify Sin’s claim on him. “All are included under Sin,” and in the death of sinners no cause could be shown to convict Sin of having forfeited its claim.

We get the first inkling of the Divine plan in the account given in Gen. 3:15. We here see that Sin was to have dominion, partial and temporary, over a special member of the race styled Seed of the woman, but that the Seed, in spite of, yea, through this temporary injury and apparent defeat (Heb. 2:14), should cause Sin to be destroyed from himself and at last from the rest of mankind.

Further light is derived from the whole account, in Ezra and Zechariah, of the trouble between the rebuilders of the Holy City and their “Adversaries.” It is not for nothing that the narratives of the Old Testament are given to us. In the present instance we see the Jews, whose representative is the high priest, Joshua, restrained from making a fit habitation for their God; restrained, too, by the “Governors beyond the River.” As a result of the Word of God (Divine interference), the adversaries are condemned and told to “be far from thence,” and the work of God proceeds. We are inclined to wonder sometimes why certain prophecies of scripture are couched in their particular form; why, for example, should the prophecy about the Jews and their foes in Zech. 3. be in the guise of a suit at law before God between Satan and Joshua? But if we keep closely in view the fact that many prophecies are of more than one signification and that the secondary or more distal meaning is often of greatest import, we shall rather seek to discover what meaning may lie in any apparently strange or difficult form of expression. In the prophecy before us we can see at once that some ulterior object is to be served, since it is expressly stated that Joshua is a “man of sign,” a type of “The Branch.” We may then, without controversy, make certain deductions from this narrative and prophecy.

The human race, represented by the Temple, which had once been to the glory of God (“very good.”—Gen. 1:31), was now broken down and defiled by the great enemy and adversary, Sin. As Dr. Thomas pithily puts it above, “Man’s defilement was first a matter of conscience and then corporeal.”

God had determined upon the Restoration of mankind; and a restoration not merely to the state, unsatisfactory because unstable, from whence man had fallen, but to a state from which Fall would be impossible. This is indicated in the words of Zech. 3:4: “Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee in rich apparel.”

Yet, in the type, the Divine work was not making progress, despite the favourable decrees of Cyrus at the very beginning of his reign. Though Cyrus made the decree, “it was weak through the flesh,” and the adversaries hindered the work. So in the Antitype no Law, however holy, just and good, could avail to triumph over the adversary who remained “Governor.”

Joshua was the representative man of God’s people. His “filthy garments” represent the native “iniquity” of himself and of his people. Such cannot make of themselves a fit habitation for the Lord. Joshua has his iniquity taken away, and we are told that the work is to be “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord” (Zech. 4:6). So also “the Branch” was to be of our stock, otherwise He would be no branch. He was to be of our Sin and Death-stricken nature, otherwise no “filthy garments.” He was to be Representative Man of mankind, otherwise His life and work would be for Himself alone. He was to withstand the great Adversary and to come out of the contest victorious “through the Eternal Spirit” (Heb. 9:14).

The Adversary had a recognised status. The Governor beyond the River is no extravagant figure for Sin which reigns in death on the nether side of the River of Life. The status is seen in the narrative of Ezra, and is indicated in the prophetic figure by Satan being allowed “in the presence of the Lord.” Sin acts both by weakening man’s power for good—“Who is weak, and I am not weak?” asks Paul—and by direct power for evil; these are shown in the narrative and in the prophecy—“The people of the Land (of the earth, earthy) weakened the hands of the people of Judah,” “and made them to cease by force and power” (Ezra 4:4, 23). It is also evident that Satan’s power against Joshua lies in the “filthy garments’; so in the case of “the Branch” Sin had its hold in His flesh, and therefore could claim His life as a member of the death-stricken race. The talk of “clean flesh” and of “free life” finds no support in scripture.

But the prophecy teaches us more than this. Chapter 4. opens with the familiar figure of the resurrection, thus intimating that the events are to take place after death. So it is after death that the Representative of the human race is to complete the building of the House of the Lord. Both Joshua and Zerubbabel are “men of sign,” types of the Branch in His various functions. It is as a mortal High Priest that he is shown bearing Sin, and as a mortal Zerubbabel laying the foundation of God’s house. He was Himself the foundation, for “other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11), and He laid it by His life and death of perfect obedience. It is after His return, “apart from Sin,” that He is to complete the house. “Whose house are we” (Heb. 3:6); “Him that overcometh I will make him a pillar in the Temple of my God” (Rev. 3:12).

Satan did not finally prevail against Joshua; the Adversary was rebuked by the Lord. This illustrates the Divine principle that “no flesh shall glory in His presence.” It was all of God, that the glory might be to Him. It was God who was in Christ, who spared not His own Son, who raised him from the dead, who condemned Sin in the flesh by making the Son a sin-offering (Rom. 8:3).

Passing over certain other points, interesting and instructive though they be, we may perhaps sum up the matter thus: It was the Divine purpose to provide one member of the fallen human race, as “a brand plucked out of the fire” (Zech. 3:2), who, though afflicted and withstood by the common Adversary of mankind, Sin, should “walk in God’s ways and keep His charge” (5:7); in whom Sin should be condemned, and from whose nature it should be taken away, and to whom the “rich apparel” of Immortality should be given in order that He might “judge God’s house and keep His courts” (5:7), and become the channel of Divine “Grace” (4:7).

Let us next consider that remarkable passage in Gal. 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” Now we know that so far as the rest of the Hebrew nation was concerned, all came under the curse of the Law; it was, as Peter said, a yoke that man was unable to bear. Christ kept the Law and yet was cursed by it in hanging on the cross. The Law, then, having cursed one who was wholly righteous, could no longer be allowed by Divine Justice to have dominion over Him when He had been raised from the dead. As brother Roberts says (The Slain Lamb, p. 11): “When he died, the law obtained the utmost triumph it could claim. When God raised him because of his obedience, it had no further claim. So far as he was concerned, the law ended with his death. Its handwriting was nailed to his cross” (Col. 4:14).

But Christ was not only “born under the Law,” but under the Edenic curse as well, being “born of a woman” (Gal. 4:14), and in common with the rest of mankind suffered affliction and temptation. He was “made in all things like unto His brethren,” was “tempted in all points like ourselves,” and “suffered being tempted.” But just as in regard to the Mosaic Law our Lord differed from all others in that He was cursed being righteous, so also in regard to His nature, Sin cursed Him with affliction and death although He “did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.” Could Sin, therefore, justly claim to hold Him in the grave? Assuredly not, for in dying He had yielded to the full all that Sin could claim from Him, His life. And when, because of His righteousness, God raised Him from the dead, could Sin once again claim to have a place in His nature, to tempt and afflict and slay Him anew? Again, assuredly not, no more than could the Law; “The death that He died, he died unto Sin, once; the life that He liveth, He liveth unto God.” In His death and resurrection Sin, having slain the righteous, was condemned as having no longer any right or title in His flesh, and so, with full satisfaction to the justice of God, it could be taken “far from thence,” and Jesus exalted to the Divine nature. We see, therefore, that in delivering our Lord from Sin in the flesh, and from the dominion of the Mosaic Law there was not only nothing contrary to the justice of God, but even a declaration of God’s righteousness in not permitting His “Holy One to see corruption,” or to come a second time under those things over which He had triumphed through much affliction.

Christ did not die “wholly at ease and quiet,” nor be gathered “like a shock of corn in its full season.” He was cut off and taken away “in the midst of His days” by a shameful death, after enduring unmerited sufferings difficult for us mere earthborns to realise. There was an object in all this: “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, He hath put Him to grief” in order that after “making His life an offering for Sin,” He might “see His Seed,” and “bring many sons into glory.” So perfectly, in imperfect human nature, did our Lord accomplish His mission, and show forth the character and attributes of the Father, that Divine justice could, on the basis of His sacrificial death, “open a door for mercy to repentant and obedient sinners whilst still enforcing the law against sin” (R.R., see above). Sin, condemned in and taken away from the flesh of Christ, was potentially condemned and taken away from the whole Race of which He was Representative. What was impossible for any mere son of man to do had been accomplished by the Son of God, and not only for Himself, but eventually for all mankind, having brought to naught Sin by dying unto it.

Sin being condemned in human nature, and the Law being taken out of the way, “There is now remaining no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:1). The mystery of the efficacy of a sacrifice to take away the sin of the world, the problem of how by one act of righteousness (5:18) to make many righteous, receive their solution in the Gospel, which teaches that sinful men and women who are in faith baptised into Christ become members of His body, and so share in the Redemption which He brought (Heb. 9:12–15); “by one offering He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (10:14). God’s righteousness is declared in that He has enforced the law against Sin and held up sinful human nature to destruction; in that He has not created man in vain, but loved the world, and given His Son to die for the purpose of bringing Sin itself to an end, so freeing the creation from its bondage. God is shown to be just in raising Christ from the dead, just in passing over the sins done aforetime in view of the great sacrifice, just in justifying sinners who believe the Gospel and obey it, just in His method of bringing about the condemnation of Sin in the flesh. As has been noted above, Sin could not be condemned in angels, for their nature is sinless; nor in the flesh of animals, for they sustain no relation to human sin; nor in the flesh of transgressors, for though transgressors themselves be condemned and perish, Sin does them no wrong, the death of sinners is but Sin’s wages. To be condemned in and consequently eliminated from sinful flesh it was needful for Sin to slay a sinless bearer of sinful flesh, one who was wholly righteous as to “his intellectual and moral status.” God provided such a one in the person of His beloved Son, through whom we have our redemption, the remission of our sins, and the hope of final deliverance. To God be the glory.

W. J. Y.