The Christadelphian September 1947, John Carter

"Dr Thomas on ‘Sin’ and ‘Sin in the Flesh’"

We have recently been checking up the writings of Dr. Thomas on “Sin” and related matters. The following two paragraphs are from The Herald:

“But if the human nature of Christ were immaculate (excuse the phrase O reader, for since the Fall we know not of an immaculate human nature) then God did not ‘send Jesus in the likeness of sinful flesh’; he did not ‘take hold of the seed of Abraham’, he did not ‘become sin for us’; ‘sin’ was not ‘condemned in the flesh’; and ‘our sins’ were not ‘borne in his body upon the tree’. These things could not have been accomplished in a nature destitute of that physical principle styled ‘sin in the flesh’. Decree the immaculateness of the body prepared for the Spirit, Psa. 40:6, Heb. 10:5, and the ‘Mystery of Christ’ is destroyed, and the gospel of the kingdom ceases to be the power of God for salvation to those that believe it” (1856, page 268).

“To say that a man is purged, purified, or cleansed is the same as to affirm that he is justified, or constituted righteous, and sanctified or made holy. It is sin that makes unclean—unclean by nature, because born of sinful flesh; and unclean by practice because transgressors in the sight of God. The cleansing process is therefore intellectual, moral and physical . . . But the cleansing of the soul needs to be followed by the cleansing of the body to make the purification of man complete. If the spiritual cleansing have been well done (and if the word of truth have done it, it will) the corporeal cleansing will be sure to follow” (1855, page 202).

The following is from Clerical Theology Unscriptural. In dialogue, Dr. Thomas is speaking:

“You do not seem to know what sin is. If I did not know otherwise, I should have concluded that you had been studying tractarianism in the dark and mystic groves of Isis, among the Puseys and the Newmans of its cloistered halls. You ought to know that the primitive sense of the word is ‘the transgression of law’; and the derived sense that of evil in the flesh. Transgression is to this evil as cause to an effect; which effect re-acts in the posterity of the original transgressors as a cause, which, uncontrolled by belief of the truth, evolves transgression in addition to those natural ills, disease, death, and corruption, which are inherent in flesh and blood. Because he transgressed the Eden-law, Adam is said to have sinned. Evil was then evolved in his flesh as the punishment of his sin; and because the evil was the punishment of the sin, it is also styled sin. ‘Flesh and blood’ is naturally and hereditarily full of this evil. It is, therefore, called ‘sinful flesh’, or flesh full of sin. Hence, an apostle saith, ‘in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing’ (Rom. 7:18). The absence of goodness in our physical nature is the reason of flesh and blood being termed ‘sin’. ‘The Word was made flesh’; a saying which Paul synonymizes by the expression, ‘God hath made Jesus sin for us who knew no sin’ (2 Cor. 5:21): and Peter by the words, ‘Who his own self bare our sins in his own body’ (1 Pet. 2:24). ‘God made Jesus sin’, in the sense of ‘making him of a woman’ (Gal. 4:4) or of flesh and blood; so that having the same nature, its evil was condemned in his flesh; and consequently the sins of those who believe the gospel of the Kingdom were then borne away, if they have faith also in the breaking of his body for sin (Rom. 8:3; Luke 22:19)”.