Verse 22
22. If There is a supposable case in which they would be without condemnation. If they had no means or power to know, if I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had responsible sin. Their action might have been wrong, but with no means or power to do right instead of wrong, it is not responsible wrong; it could not have incurred just condemnation or penalty. The impossibility in the intellect to know the truth is a cloak, an excuse, for not knowing the truth. The incapacity in the will to do right, arising from a necessary controlling motive force, is a cloak or an excuse for not doing right, and for doing wrong. If that wrong doing be properly called a sin, it is not a responsible sin.
And this is a universal law of a just divine administration. Where there is from the beginning no power for right there can be no guilt for wrong. Were the posterity of Adam born into existence without the means to know the truth, without the volitional power to will the right, or without any personal fault or forfeiture by their own free act, they could not have been held responsible or justly punishable. If Christ had not come, if no sufficient light had been shed, and no sufficient power imparted, there could have been no responsible sin, guilt, or penalty. Hence it was not until a Saviour was promised that Adam was spared and he begat a son. The future Saviour was the previous condition of the continuance of the race. Without that future Saviour there is no proof but that the fulness of the penalty of death would have been suffered in the person of guilty Adam alone, no posterity of his succeeding.
But now Inasmuch as I have come and have spoken the truth, affording them the means of knowing, willing, and doing.
They have no cloak No covering, no justification, no palliation; but a full exposure to the utmost penalty for their excuseless sin. They knew their duty and they did it not.
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