The Christadelphian November 1874, Robert Roberts

“Questions Concerning Christ”

1.—Do you think that Adam was created mortal?

Answer.—No; he was created neither mortal nor immortal, but capable of becoming either.

2.—Was there any difference in nature between Adam when created and before baptism?

Answer.—Yes. Adam was “very good;” Jesus, who refused the application of the term “good” to himself (Matt. 19:17) was Adam’s nature the worse for a four thousand years’ sin-wear.

3.—Was Jesus born under condemnation?

Answer.—In the scriptural sense of hereditary condemnation, the answer is, yes; but this requires to be fenced against the misunderstanding natural to the terms employed. Condemnation, in its individual application, implies displeasure, which cannot be affirmed of Jesus, who was the beloved of the Father. But no one is born under condemnation in its individual application. That is, no one is condemned as an individual till his actions as an individual call for it. But hereditary condemnation is not a matter of displeasure, but of misfortune. The displeasure or “wrath” arises afterwards, when the men so born, work unrighteousness. This unrighteousness they, doubtless, work “by nature,” and are, therefore, by nature, children of wrath—that is, by nature, they are such as evoke wrath by unrighteousness. It was here that Jesus differed from all men. Though born under the hereditary law of mortality, as his mission required, his relation to the Father, as the Son of God, exempted him from the uncontrolled subjection to unrighteousness.

4.—Jesus, though made under the law, being obedient to the law, was he not uncondemned by the law?

Answer.—Yes, so far as personal innocence was concerned; yet in “hanging on a tree,” he came under its curse.

5.—Did he not die under the sentence, “Thou (the serpent) shall bruise his (the woman’s seed’s) heel,” instead of “Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return?”

Answer.—The statement concerning the bruising of the woman’s seed is not a sentence, but a prophecy. Doubtless it applied to the woman’s seed, but not with the effect of teaching the exemption of the woman’s seed from the woman’s constitutional relation to death, for they are both one in that respect; but rather an intimation that in a special way (outside the death sentence) the serpent-class among Adam’s descendants would temporarily prevail against him who was emphatically the seed of the woman, which came to pass in the crucifixion, which, because of the resurrection, was only comparable to a heel bruise.

6.—Did Jesus die under the penalty of Adam’s transgression?

Answered in the response to Question 3.

7.—What is the difference between death as the wages of sin and death as a sacrifice?

Answer.—“Death as the wages of sin” is a definition used by Paul in contrast with everlasting life as the gift of God. Therefore it means death, under the divine anger, inflicted for the extinction of the sinner. This was not the nature of the death Jesus died, which was “death as a sacrifice,” and the only “death as a sacrifice” that in this sense ever occurred to a human being. This was a death, required in the wisdom of God, for the vindication of His violated supremacy, before He would consent to receive rebellious man into everlasting friendship and life. It was not founded on the principle of substitution (which is an inhuman, and barbarous, and unjust principle); for had it been so, the one to be sacrificed might either have been an angel or a man created direct from the dust or in some other way separate from human kind, instead of being born of a woman of our race. It was founded on the principle of consistency: “to declare his righteousness for the remission of the sins that are past, that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.”—(Rom. 3:25.) In Jesus, who was sent by Him, the law of His righteousness is upheld; and his kindness offered to us without the compromise implied in the idea of substitution. Had Jesus not been born in the channel of human condemnation, the law of righteousness would have been violated instead of magnified in his death, for the righteousness of God would not have been illustrated in the death of the non-mortal. The very thing which Renunciationists deny was the very thing that was necessary, and the very thing that was accomplished in the Lord’s birth of Mary; apart from which no necessity existed for his being born of a human mother at all. It is this very thing that preserves the Lord’s death as the righteousness of God, and protects it from the clouds and darkness raised by the orthodox theory of substitutionary atonement. “Death as a sacrifice” was the death of a righteous, God-begotten, God-sent, God-upheld Bearer of the condemnation of others—a condemnation put upon him first by birth, and secondly by the mode of his death; a death which having been submitted to in obedience, was speedily terminated in resurrection through interposition of the Father’s love, who was ‘well pleased.”

8. Does the apostle teach in 1 Cor. 15:22, that all who die in Adam die to rise no more, as taught concerning some in Isa. 43:17?

Answer.—Paul’s words are, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” a consideration of which will show that the “all” is the same in both cases. The “all” to be made alive are those described in verse 51 as “we all,” that is, accepted believers; they will all be changed, or made alive, at the advent of Christ. Consequently the “all” that die in, by, or through Adam are this same class, who, when the change comes, ask, “Oh death, where is thy victory?” showing that death once had the victory over them, even now, while as yet they are physically in Adam. At that time, death is “swallowed up in victory,” showing that death prevails with them until the change arrives. So far then from the dying in Adam meaning no resurrection, the contexts show that every one of the “all” referred to will rise again; that is, the saints.