[12/19/19]
There is, finally, this to be said about man in his fallen estate. He is a slave. For all his vaunted self-reliance and for all his determined pursuit of self-rule, he is, ever has been, and apart from the grace of God, ever shall be a slave. Our slavery is to the mastery of sin. Indeed, so established is that slavery that the only release from its bonds is found in death, and even then, it’s questionable whether we shall find release. “For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin” (Ro 6:5-7).
We must take care with that statement. We must recognize that it is not the act of physical death that brings release from the bonds of slavery to sin. It is the redemptive act of Christ, His life given us along with that death He died for us, which has purchased us out of our slavery to sin to become instead slaves of righteousness. But death was necessary, is necessary, if we are to be freed. That slavery is not merely because nefarious sin has duped us into selling out to its power, but is in fact the punishment for sin in its earliest stages. The full penalty is death, but like with Adam and Eve in their expulsion from the garden, death comes by stages. The first stage is that ironic justice of God shown in our becoming enslaved to that very thing we thought to pursue against His wishes.
It goes right back to the start, doesn’t it? “If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Ge 4:7). So Abel advised his brother Cain, urging repentance and a return to what is right. But Cain chose the obverse. He allowed that sin would master him. Having been born in sin, we could argue that really, he just failed to break free of sin’s mastery. Either way, he was slave to sin. We shall have to recognize that, given the fact of Abel’s death, and death being the due penalty for sin, Abel likewise failed to break free of sin’s mastery in spite of his more acceptable practices.
Returning to Romans (and again, I am struck by the degree to which Genesis and Romans between them seem to define theology most elegantly), Paul has more to say on the subject. “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?” (Ro 6:16). I should note that the term we are considering here is doulos, which need not suggest involuntary service. Note that Paul speaks of ‘presenting yourselves’ as slaves. There is a willingness involved here. It is voluntary slavery. This is the light in which Jesus so often speaks of us as slaves of God. Yes, there is some sense of a purchase price involved, which we will explore more in the next section. But there is also that voluntary aspect of the matter. He having chosen us, we chose Him. There is sufficient cause to question whether we could possibly have chosen otherwise, the truth of Him once having been made known to us, and His Spirit having indwelt and empowered us to believe, but that doesn’t remove the fact of choosing entirely.
Here, however, my concern remains upon man fallen and, to steal the old advertising line, unable to get up. You remember the ad, I suspect. “Help. I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” Do you know, that is the single most truly spoken line in all of advertising history, for that is the state of every man, woman and child ever born into this life. We have fallen into sin, chosen to sell ourselves into its mastery, and having sold, we have nothing with which to purchase back our liberty.
This same message informs Paul’s rebuke of the church in Galatia. “Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?” (Gal 4:7-9). This is particularly stunning language from Paul, given that he is addressing a tendency toward Judaized legalism in that church. Yes, there is a message in there about their pagan roots, that period before the gospel had come to them, when they served empty idols. But that to which they are returning is not their former idolatry, but rather the rituals of Jewish faith. They were turning from the spiritual core of Christian faith to empty, outward works, to observances and rites which never had and never could provide liberation from sin’s slavery. “You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain” (Gal 4:10-11).
“Tell me, you who want to be under law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman. But the son of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise. This is allegorically speaking, for these women are two covenants: one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother” (Gal 4:21-26). The modern-day fascination with thing Jewish amongst certain corners of Christian faith is no different, really, than this distraction of the Galatians. There is something in us that wants to earn our way to liberty. There is something in us that finds God’s free offer of grace unbelievable. It’s too simple. It can’t be right, can it? But God says it is not only right, it is the only way by which liberty is to be gained. Jesus tells us as much. “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (Jn 8:36).
Slavery to sin is a terrible thing, and yet it is our common experience. We all of us know its power, and even having been bought at so terrible a price by our Savior, we still feel the strong pull of our former master. Jesus has redeemed us from sin’s mastery, but sin has not relinquished its grip willingly. Sadly, we are yet too willing to grip sin tightly ourselves. What, then, has changed? I would submit, with strong backing from Martin Luther, that what has changed is that we now have a choice in the matter.
Adam, in his origins, had a choice. He could obey or he could rebel. Likewise, Eve had a choice. If there had been no choice possible, then there could have been no sin, for the two would have been aware solely of the good option of obedience. They would not, I suppose, even have realized that this was a command. The thought of doing otherwise could not enter their mind. Perhaps this was even the case prior to the serpent’s entry onto the scene. This does seem to capture the state of innocence; that not so much as a thought for lawfulness would arise, because obedience was so natural as to be the only thinkable response. But choice came. Another possibility entered their thinking. They could have still chosen obedience, but they didn’t.
For their progeny, no such choice remained. There was only disobedience available. Righteousness was no longer an option. Having been born in sin, man was born under penalty, already subject to death the moment he was conceived. Get this through your head: That declaration encompasses every man, woman, and child who ever was and who ever shall be, with the sole exception of Jesus, the Son of God. That declaration encompasses Enoch in spite of his being ‘no more’. That declaration encompasses Elijah in spite of his being taken up in a heavenly chariot. In Elijah’s case, there’s not really any question about it, is there? We are witness to his doubts and his hiding away from God’s call for a season. As to Enoch, he is given such passing mention that we really don’t know much of anything about him, which seems a bit odd for one so often held up as a veritable paragon of righteousness.
What do we know of him? We know this: He was father to Methuselah at the age of sixty-five, and had other children thereafter. He lived three hundred years after Methuselah’s birth. “Enoch walked with God; and he was not for God took him” (Ge 5:21-24). If that were the sum of it, I might even question whether there was anything about him not dying. But the author of Hebrews makes it explicit. “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God” (Heb 11:5). At the same time, it strikes me that this must be observed together with the words of Jesus. “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he will never see death” (Jn 8:51). Shall we say, there’s death and then there’s death. I have already addressed this in the matter of the second death.
Did Enoch, then, escape death entirely? I don’t believe we can make that case conclusively and hold faithful to Scripture. We still have the clear message of 1Corinthians 15. I’ll jump to the critical point. “Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1Co 15:50-53). This, again, applies to Enoch along with everybody else. Enoch was no more, he did not taste death in that form which Paul and the early Christians referred to as sleep. But his body was as perishable as any other, even given his longer years. He was born in sin as any other, and that penalty required the payment of Christ’s blood to redeem him, even with his status of being one whom God took.
There is no exception to this sentence of death amongst all humanity. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That same book of Hebrews that points out that Enoch did not taste death observes that it is given to every man once to die, and then comes the judgment. Let me just say that for fallen man, immortality is seriously over-rated. Those who seek to lengthen their days in this life seek a pointless boon, for eternity still awaits, however long you manage to remain on this earth. Even should you manage something like physical immortality, or perhaps some cyber form of permanence, yet there comes that day in which the elements melt with intense heat (2Pe 3:12). Yet there comes a new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells (2Pe 3:13). There shall be no place for unrighteousness there. Every trace and remnant of sin shall have been removed from all who dwell therein.
As to the rest, those who are not of the remnant preserved by Christ? Sadly for them, there remains an eternity, an eternal, second death in the lake of fire, as they experience the full penalty due for sin against an eternal God. This is hardly the sweet surcease of which many a hardened sinner dreams. This is not the void sought by the nihilist, and it certainly isn’t the cruel paradise dreamed of by the Muslims or the infinite recycling program pursued by the Hindu. There really is no redo. There is one chance: Repent and believe on Christ Jesus, taking gladly from Him the payment He has made for your sins, and committing to follow Him all your days. Every other course leaves one in bondage to sin, with nothing ahead but the sure and eternal punishment of same.
