God and God’s first man enjoyed sweet and intimate communion until they were separated by sin. How could this great, impassable chasm sin had made between God and man be bridged? From the very nature of the case, man could do nothing, even had he wanted to, for sin had closed all possible access to God. Clearly, if anything were to be done, God would have to do it.

But what would God do? Adam’s sin presented a terrific problem: one which affected not only God’s personal relationship with man but His governmental relationship with the whole universe; nay, it even affected His own personal character.

Adam’s sin was spiritual anarchy, resistance to God’s authority, disobedience to God’s command, and rebellion against God’s law. How would God treat sin? Would He punish it and pass judgment upon it? Or would He condone it and pass over it? Suppose God failed to deal righteously with such a flagrant case of disobedience and disloyalty. How could He maintain order through obedience to law in any other part of His universe? God’s governmental administration of the universe was involved in this stupendous difficulty.

But Adam’s rebellion created an even greater problem than this. By it, God’s holiness had been outraged; His righteousness denied; His veracity questioned; His goodness doubted; His Word disbelieved; His command disobeyed, and His love spurned. Surely such treatment deserved drastic action. Why did He not then and there abandon Adam and Eve utterly and leave them and their posterity to the consequences of their sin?

He did not because He could not. “God is love,” and “love never faileth.” God’s love is an everlasting love that nothing can quench, not even sin. Awful and terrible as sin is, it is not powerful enough to defeat God’s purpose in the creation of man. Man was created not only by God but for God. Man was made for fellowship with God, much more, for ultimate sonship. Apart from a living, loving relationship with man, God could never be satisfied. God, who is love, could not cast away the sinner in his sin and still be love. The claims of God’s love must be met.

But “God is light” and “in him is no darkness at all.” As light cannot fellowship with darkness, so holiness cannot commune with sin. A holy God cannot have an intimate relationship with a sinful man. God and sin cannot dwell together. The claims of God’s holiness must be satisfied as truly as the claims of His love.

“We speak of law and love, of truth and grace, of justice and mercy, and so long as sin does not exist, there is no controversy between any of these. If there be no sin, law and love are never out of harmony with each other; truth and grace go ever hand in hand; justice and mercy sing a common anthem. If the law be broken, what is love to do? If truth be violated, how can grace operate? In the presence of crime, how can justice and mercy meet? This is the problem of problems. It is not a problem as between God and man. It is not a problem as between God and angels. It is a problem as between God and Himself” (G. Campbell Morgan, The Bible and the Cross, p. 125).

Let us think deeply into the greatest problems created by Adam’s sin. How would He satisfy the claims of both His love and His holiness? His holiness must condemn sin and command the sinner to depart. His love must open its arms to the sinner and bid him come. A holy God could not tolerate sin, and a loving God could not turn away from the sinner. God could not desert the sinner, but what should He do with the sin? God’s attitude toward sin would reveal His true character quite as much as His attitude toward the sinner.

Would Adam’s sin separate God and man and bring division into God’s own being?

“Sin, whether as anticipated by the Creator, or as become actual in our world, created an antinomy in the very being of God, created a new ethical exigency for God and for the universe, so that for the legitimate expression of either or both of these polarities (holiness and love) in question a new reconciliation was necessary: that is, a reconciliation of opposite moral relationships within God’s being itself. On the one hand, as we must believe, the self-affirmatory character of the divine purity must compel displeasure against sin: and on the other hand, the divine clemency which on God’s part yearns to impart its own holy nature to His creatures would constrain Him to forgive and cleanse from that sin” (H. C. Mabie, The Divine Reason of the Cross, p. 54).

What, then, would God do that both would be consistent with His holiness and conciliatory to His love, which would mercifully and yet righteously bridge that awful chasm between Himself and man? 

Source: “Life on the Highest Plane” by Ruth Paxson

Save us, Lord Jesus. We are ignorant of the consequences of sin!