How clear and simple is this statement. How strange it is that so many who profess to believe the Bible as the Word of God persist in contradicting this positive statement, and affirm that they believe, and that the Bible teaches, that the wages of sin is everlasting life in torment.

They realize that this is an awful thought, and affects the interests of every human being – because all have sinned and come short. Yet it is what they have been taught from infancy. It is what their church creed still teaches, and they are taught that it is one of the first steps to infidelity and perdition to doubt the eternal torment of all who are not true Christians. They suppose that, since their church creed teaches it, it must be one of the fundamental teachings of Scripture.

A very large majority of Christians (We say it with sorrow and shame) have never searched the Scriptures which are able to make them wise. (2 Tim 3:15). They have merely learned a few texts, which, construed in the light of their church creeds and instructions, tend to convince them that those creeds are in harmony with the Bible, and that eternal agony awaits a large majority of our race, foreseen and foreknown and pre-arranged by our Creator and Father, who, despite this terrible plan, they must call a God of love – who, despite his malevolence, must be worshiped and adored as the benevolent, loving One, the Author of every good and perfect gift. This One they must thus worship and try, or pretend, to love, lest they be of that eternally tormented multitude. No wonder so many draw near to God with their lips, while their hearts are far from him. No wonder that some who come to lose the fear of such torment, become blasphemous infidels, denying all things sacred, and regarding all religion as fraudulent, when they lose their dread of this fundamental teaching of the religion of to-day.

The difficulty is that the traditions of men are given the authority which belongs only to the Word of God. God says that he gave us our existence, and has the power to deprive us of it if we do not use it properly; (Ezek 18:4; Eccl 9:5,10; Psa 145:20; and 146:4,) that the wages which he will pay to sinners will be DEATH – the extinction of life; and the wages he will pay to those who use life in harmony with his will, will be, everlasting life – life unceasingly. “The soul (being) that sins it shall die,” but none other. (Ezek 18:20).

Again, we read, “I have set before you life and death” – blessing and cursing; “therefore choose life.” (Deut 30:19). Choose it by complying with the condition, on which God says we may have it. “I have no pleasure in the death of him that dies, saith the Lord God; wherefore turn ye and live.” (Ezek 18:32).

Nor can anyone find a reasonable objection to death – EXTINCTION of being – as the punishment for sin. Man (as a perfect being when first created) was capable of appreciating good and evil, and of developing a character in harmony with the one he chose. God gave him this free agency, telling him which is His will, and which is best, and what the consequences of his choice will be to himself. He said to Adam regarding a forbidden thing, “In the day thou eat thereof, dying thou shalt DIE (cease to be).” (Gen 2:17, margin.) So, he tells us that the wages of sin is death; that we must shun sin if we would avoid its penalty.

All of God’s plans and laws are the very best, and any other course than obedience is sure to bring some evil consequence. The interests of humanity are so much in common, that evil and its consequences in one member produces more or less evil and distress to others. It is a wise and blessed provision God has made, that none will be allowed to live whose misuse of life would be an injury and source of misery to themselves and others. And who would not admit that God’s dealings with the sinner as thus explained by His Word, are not only Just, but Merciful?

One cause of much of the confusion on this subject, arises from the fact that death happens alike to saint and sinner, hence many conclude – It must be some other kind of death than the death of the individual as we see it all about us, that the Scriptures refer to as the wages of sin. And giving their imaginations full play, they conclude that the DEATH which is the wages of sin, must be a life in torment, or, as some describe it – a death that never dies.

In attempting to explain this, modern theologians fall into grievous errors, and begin to talk mysteriously about a number and variety of deaths. They must find as many beings to die as they find deaths. Hence, they not only tell us that there are many deaths, but that man is a combination of a number of beings.

They explain that what God said to Adam, and what happened to him when he had sinned, was spiritual death; that nine hundred and thirty years after was physical death, and that then he was liable to eternal death – a condition of torture – a death that never dies.

We will first state our objection to this theological division of death into three, and proceed to explain the question under discussion from our standpoint. We object first to the division of a man into three parts – spiritual man, physical man, and something after which survives both of the former. The supposition that man could lose spiritual being arises from a confusion of thought concerning human and spiritual beings. Scripture teaches us that human beings and spiritual beings are different orders of beings, there being far more difference between a man and spiritual beings (angels, etc.), than between a fish and a horse.

Adam, as a human being, was “of the earth, earthy.” (1 Cor 15:47). And this was God’s design in his creation – viz.: to make a different order of beings from angels – spiritual beings, which he had already created – an order of beings adapted to the earth by nature. That God had succeeded in making man different from angels – spiritual beings – is evident from the fact that he called him “very good,” and gave him dominion over earth and all earthly things. (Gen 1:26; Psa 8:6).

If, then, Adam was human and not spiritual by nature, he could not lose spiritual nature or spiritual life; and those who hold that he did lose it, are unable to point to a single Scripture which so declares. We suggest to make it forcible to your minds, that it would be as reasonable and as sensible to talk of a fish dying to a horse’s life or nature, as to say that man died to a nature totally different from his own.

Adam died only as a man. From the time he sinned and was driven from the Garden of Eden, he gradually began to die as a man; he began to lose those grand perfections of mind and body which constituted him the superior and ruler of the lower animals. This dying process continued by reason of his strength and perfection for a long time – 930 years – then the dying process was complete – Adam was dead – lifeless. So far as he knows or feels he is “as though he had not been” created.

Thus, in him was illustrated God’s word – the wages of sin is death.

Continued with next post.