The next scene was marked by the introduction of Law. The effects were, to bring into full consciousness the sin before unmarked, and so make it exceedingly sinful; to set man at variance with himself by giving him discernment, and quickening his longing and his fear, without any new spring of force; and actually to multiply transgressions by enumerating and suggesting them.
Hence, at the close of the period, an utter rotting away of human society, and a confirmed moral incapacity of the widest sweep. The spontaneous law of nature and the written law of Moses being equally set at naught by Gentile and by Jew, any promises God might have given fell through, from human breach of the conditions. This was the moment seized for instituting a new creation; the promised Messiah of the Jews being the vehicle of its accomplishment, and the link of connection between the old and the new.
All the Messianic conditions were fulfilled,—the right tribe, the right family, the right personal marks and characteristics. But they were also transcended. Along with the human infirmities and liabilities was present, in this archetype of a new race, the Spirit in such full measure as to constitute his proper self, or at least win that centre by complete victory over nature and temptation and surrender of all he had and was to a Divine Love. As he had baffled and held off Sin, Death had so far no business with him. Yet what was to be done? for there were conflicting claims upon him. Sinless in himself, he was of a sin-doomed type, the likeness of sinful flesh (ὁμοιωμα σαρκος ἁμαρτιας), and therefore liable to the incidents of such a race. This was at least his property by nature. At the same time, he was internally and essentially of the opposite type; the image of God (εικων του Θεου), and so, foreign to the mortal fate, at once imperishable and life-giving. In the person of this double nature, the contest between the antagonists must come to an issue; and while both gain their due, it is the last triumph of evil, the first opening of eternal good. Sin, recognizing in his suffering and mortal frame its own physical counterpart and shadow, strikes him with death, exerting for that end its own "strength" and instrument, "the Law." But in thus carrying its course upon the guiltless, it overreached and spent itself; and the Law, lending itself to such an act, fell into self-contradiction, and disappeared in suicide. He died, therefore, in virtue of what was really foreign to him, as representative of a Sin which was not his, but which yet involved him, as human, in sorrow and mortality. But no sooner had this happened, than his "Righteousness" vindicated its power. He came out of death, which could not keep one so holy; and now, escaped from nationality, and placed aloft as the ideal of the new humanity, his vivifying spirit penetrates the heart of men below, and, taking them on the side of faith and love instead of will, kindles a divine fire that burns up the dead elements of the "old man," and wraps the "heavenly places" and the earthly in a common blaze. By spiritual affiliation with him, his disciples enter the essence of all holy and immortal natures. And so it comes to pass, that, through the incidence of sorrow and death in the wrong place, an objective power of "righteousness" is set free, that reconciles mankind with God, and restores them to sanctity and life. The past and the future of humanity were concentrated, just at the turning point between them, in one person; the natural element, bearing the burden of the past, perished and fell away; the spiritual and divine principle, containing the germ of the future, asserted its inextinguishable life; and from heaven evinced its self-multiplying power, making him only "the first-born of many brethren."
Thus was the second act initiated, which also presented two successive scenes. During the first, the Christ was still in heaven; and his Spirit on earth, having the community of disciples for its organ or "body," stood in presence still of the opposing powers. In the world, it encroached upon the province of evil continually, and reclaimed a citadel here and there. In the Church, if it infused as yet no perfect grace, it left its "earnest" everywhere;—ecstatic gifts and mystic insights; hearts set free from pride and scorn, and brought to the meekness and gentleness of Christ; the self-seeking will surrendered; the anxious conscience led to trust; the tangles of thought smoothed out by a wisdom not its own; and outward distinctions reduced to naught by faith, and hope, and charity. Nevertheless, Satan disturbed the κοσμος still; and even the children of the Spirit were but prisoners yet, and felt the tent of nature but a poor abode. They had yet to wait for their full adoption; when the tabernacle in which they groaned being dissolved, they should be invested with an unwasting frame.
This was reserved for the final scene, the coming and the reign of Christ. At this culminating crisis, the antagonism which in Adam was as yet unfelt from the ascendency of nature, was to die out and cease on the absolute triumph of the Spirit. Physically, death was to disappear; the departed being finally reinstated in life, and the living "clothed upon" with their new garment ere yet they were stripped of the old. Morally, the remnant of inner strife and temptation, that even the faith of saints might leave unappeased, would pass away, aspiration be harmonized with achieving power, and in conscious presence of the objects of deepest affection and reverence the sighs of separation would cease. As soon as resistance was over, and there was nothing to subdue, the separate function of God's redeeming and sanctifying Spirit would find no work; "the kingdom would be resigned to the Father"; "the Son would be subject"; and "the Trinity would cease."
Whether the Apostle's vision of trust was really of universal success, and included even those who should still be found astray at last, is a question difficult of direct determination; but not very doubtful when tried by the general scope of his doctrine. Mr. Jowett's judgment, given in the following passage, truly seizes, we think, the feeling of St. Paul. The author is commenting on the parallel drawn between Adam and Christ, especially on the words, "As by one man's transgression sin entered into the world, and death by sin," and has shown that they do not teach any imputation of Adam's sin.
"It is hardly necessary to ask the further question, what meaning we can attach to the imputation of sin and guilt which are not our own, and of which we are unconscious. God can never see us other than we really are, or judge us without reference to all our circumstances and antecedents. If we can hardly suppose that he would allow a fiction of mercy to be interposed between ourselves and him, still less can we imagine that he would interpose a fiction of vengeance. If he requires holiness before he will save, much more, may we say in the Apostle's form of speech, will he require sin before he dooms us to perdition. Nor can anything be in spirit more contrary to the living consciousness of sin of which the Apostle everywhere speaks, than the conception of sin as dead, unconscious evil, originating in the act of an individual man, in the world before the flood.
"On the whole, then, we are led to infer that in the Augustinian interpretation of this passage, even if it agree with the letter of the text, too little regard has been paid to the extent to which St. Paul uses figurative language, and to the manner of his age in interpretations of the Old Testament. The difficulty of supposing him to be allegorizing the narrative of Genesis is slight, in comparison with the difficulty of supposing him to countenance a doctrine at variance with our first notions of the moral nature of God.
"But when the figure is dropped, and allowance is made for the manner of the age, the question once more returns upon us,—'What is the Apostle's meaning?' He is arguing, we see, κατ ανθρωπον, and taking his stand on the received opinions of his time. Do we imagine that his object is no other than to set the seal of his authority on these traditional beliefs? The whole analogy, not merely of the writings of St. Paul, but of the entire New Testament, would lead us to suppose that his object was not to reassert them, but to teach, through them, a new and nobler lesson. The Jewish Rabbis would have spoken of the first and second Adam; but which of them would have made the application of the figure to all mankind? A figure of speech it remains still, an allegory after the manner of that age and country, but yet with no uncertain or ambiguous interpretation. It means that 'God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth'; that 'he hath concluded all under sin, that he may have mercy upon all'; that life answers to death, the times before to the times after the revelation of Jesus Christ. It means that we are one in a common sinful nature, which, even if it be not derived from the sin of Adam, exists as really as if it were. It means that we shall be made one in Christ by the grace of God, in a measure here, more fully and perfectly in another world. More than this it also means, and more than language can express, but not the weak and beggarly elements of Rabbinical tradition. We may not encumber St. Paul with the things which he 'destroyed.' What it means further is not to be attained by theological distinctions, but by putting off the old man and putting on the new man."—Vol. II. p. 166.