A ten-year-old boy came home from Sunday School and his mother asked
him what he had learned. "Well," he began, "Our teacher told us about when
God sent Moses behind the enemy lines to rescue the Israelites from the
Egyptians. When they came to the Red Sea, Moses called for the engineers to
build a pontoon bridge. After they all crossed over they looked back and saw
the Egyptian tanks coming. Quick as a flash Moses radioed headquarters to
send bombers to blow up the bridge." The mother interrupted, "Now wait a
minute, did you teacher really tell the story that way?" "Not exactly mom,"
said the boy, "But if I told it her way you would never believe it."
Many find it hard to believe in the miracles of the Bible, and in its account
of the beginning of man and his fall. Many are like this little boy, and they try
to make it more acceptable by modernizing it to fit what modern man thinks
should have happened. Sometimes the motive for this is a demonic desire to
destroy the trustworthiness of the Bible, but in other cases the motive is
understandable and good. Men are eager to have the Bible meet with the
approval of the best minds of the day, and so they go to great lengths to show
that the stories of the Bible teach profound truth about man, his nature and
destiny. The danger lies in their zeal to make everything in the Bible
acceptable to the modern mind. This leads them to reject a literal
interpretation because it does not seem to fit with the knowledge of modern
man. If they were only more patient to leave some things in the realm of
mystery for the time being, they would see that history eventually takes care of
the problem and makes the literal interpretation acceptable.
For example, it has been thought by many that no piece of fruit can be
eaten and change the way people see themselves, and Adam and Eve did and
saw themselves naked. Today we know that chemicals could be added to a
piece of fruit that would alter the mind of those who eat it. Time has shown
that the literal interpretation is very modern according to what we know is
possible today. The point is that we can take this event as literal history.
When they ate the fruit their were opened and they knew they were naked.
There was no change in objective reality, but there was a subjective change
within them. It was the dawn of conscience, and man for the first time felt fear
and shame.
The conscience was a faculty, which God had built into man from the
beginning, but as long as men were in perfect fellowship with Him they had no
awareness of it. As soon as they cut themselves off from the perfect guidance
of God then they had need of internal guide. God in His wisdom had made
provision for the fall. God had to allow the possibility of the fall if He was
going to have man as a free being, but He did not have to allow evil to gain a
total victory if man did fall. He so made man that if he did sin the very act of
sinning would produce effects, which would be beneficial. This He did by
making man with a conscience, which would be activated by the eating of the
forbidden fruit.
It would have been infinitely better had they never known shame, but once
having sinned it would have been infinitely worse not to have known shame.
The fact that they felt ashamed proves that they were not totally depraved by
their act of sin. Total depravity would have left them in a state of indifference
to their sin and their nakedness. Man became totally depraved in the sense of
being depraved in every faculty by a process. Adam and Eve began the fall of
man, but it is not sound thinking to consider them the lowest of people. Man
fell a great deal further after them. Their sin only punctured a pinhole in the
dam holding back the waters of evil. Others went on to chop holes in it, and
blast out whole sections of the dam and flood the world with wickedness.
It is not scriptural to think of Adam and Eve as going from perfection to
the bottom in a moment. They were not totally depraved scum of the earth
specimens of humanity. The world is filled with people today far more
depraved then they ever were. Adam and Eve had a sensitive conscience, and
the very fact that they felt shame was proof that their fall was not complete.
God had seen to it that their conscience would work immediately upon
sinning, and thereby bring some good out of the evil. It is almost universally
accepted that a sense of shame is a value. Thomas Fuller said, "He that has no
shame has no conscience." In some parts of the world the people have no
sense of shame at being naked. Their conscience has been seared, and so they
have fallen further from God's ideal for man. Man becomes almost like a
beast when he loses his sense of shame. Plouteus said, "I count him lost who is
lost to shame." As far as we know Satan feels no shame at all for his evil and its
consequences. He fits the concept of one totally depraved, for he is beyond
restoration. This is not true of the lowest of men, however, for all men have a
conscience even though it is often seared and deadened so as to be almost
eliminated. Every man can be made to feel shame under some circumstances,
and it is this possibility that makes him redeemable. If God had not so made
man that his fall would have given birth to a conscience, man would be no
different than Satan, and he would be fallen with no redeeming virtue. But
with his conscience he can feel shame for his evil, and so he can repent and be
restored to fellowship with God.
The point to observe here is the marvelous fact that God built His grace
right into the nature of man. The birth of conscience was also the birth of
hope. The very first effect of sin was to produce a sign of hope, for it made
them feel shame, and as Samuel Johnson said, "Where there is yet shame,
there may be in time virtue." We cannot doubt that Adam and Eve lived their
long life after this sin with many virtues, and it is likely that they will be saved
by God's grace, and we will see them in eternity.
Their conscience made them obey God's internal law, for they
immediately made clothes to hide their nakedness, and verse 10 indicates that
their fear was to be seen by God. What they did was approved of by God, for
He later made them better garments showing that it was right for them to have
covered themselves. They heeded the first voice of conscience and this was
good. We get the paradoxical conclusion then that the first effect of sin was to
produce the good of the dawn of conscience. The first illustration of how God
would outwit the subtle serpent all through history by using evil to bring forth
good. Satan's greatest success of all was the crucifixion, which God used to
bring forth the greatest of all good, which was atonement for sin and salvation
for all who would believe. The greatest proof we have of God's sovereignty in
history is His ability to bring good out of evil.
None can doubt that conscience is one of God's greatest gifts to man. We
must recognize its inadequacies, but we dare not degrade it as worthless. It
has too high a place in New Testament revelation to be treated lightly. We
cannot go so far as Menander the Greek poet who said, "In our own breasts
we have a god-our conscience." We know the conscience is not God, but it is a
gift of God. We would hesitate even to say that the conscience is the voice of
God, but we can confidently say it is an instrument through which God can
speak. Here are some New Testament references to the role of conscience to
the Christian life.
1. In Acts 23:1 Paul says, "...men and brethren, I have lived in all good
conscience before God until this day."
2. In Acts 24:16 Paul says, "And herein do I exercise myself to have always a
conscience void of offense toward God, and toward men."
3. In I Tim. 1:5 Paul says, "Now the end of the commandment is charity out of
pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned."
4. In I Tim. 3:9 Paul says, "Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure
conscience."
These quotes are sufficient to show that the conscience is to be God's voice
for the Christian. It is to be sensitive to sin because we are feeding it with the
knowledge of God's Word. It whispers to us when we digress from God's best
for us, and it makes us feel shame when we disobey God's Word. We ought to
praise and thank God for such a gift, and keep it in the best condition by
training it to be sensitive. It was God's first gift to sinful man, and it is an
experienced symbol of the hope man has for redemption. Thank God for the
dawn of conscience, for with it came also the sun rise of salvation.
