Hi Marques and all,
You wrote:
For example, 'Lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, & the pride of life' [1 John 2:16] were always sin whether Eve knew & understood them or not.
I do agree with you on this statement, but I believe you’re missing one very important point. And that is: God is just. Justice demands that sin cannot be reckoned to someone for a certain behavior if no law has been made known that says that that same behavior is forbidden. For example, if God had never told Adam and Eve that they could not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then going ahead and eating from it could not be reckoned as sin against them. There would have been no known law to break. Sin is lawlessness, but where there is no law, sin is not reckoned.
To give a current example, if there was no law saying that one had to stop at a red light, driving through a red light would not be considered a breaking of the law. But once a law is given that specifically says that one must stop at a red light or pay the consequences (i.e. ticket, fines, etc), driving through a red light from that point forward would then be considered a breaking of the law and therefore counted against the one driving. And though the people who drove through the red light before the law was given are technically guilty of breaking that law, their infraction is not counted against them, because the law was not given at the time they drove through the red light. This is not a perfect parallel to God's law, but perhaps it makes the point.
You are right when you say that sin is sin, and has always been sin. God's law has always been known to him. But it has not always been known to us. God has had to reveal it or make it known to mankind in stages for reasons perhaps known only to Him. Therefore if a law has not been revealed or made known at a given point, then sin or the breaking of that law is not reckoned. In fact, sin is dead.
As to Abraham, the writer of Genesis tells us in chapter 26 the following:
Genesis 26:5 Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.So certainly God had revealed some laws in the time of Abraham so that it could be said that by following those laws, it could be counted to him for righteousness. The question then becomes, do the laws spoken of here in Genesis include all those given to Moses and the Israelites at Sinai? My thinking is, to say that they did is just an assumption.
Perhaps you could correct me in my thinking if you see that I am in error, but right now that is the only way I can see that does not pit the Scriptures against each other on this issue of Abraham and Sarah's relationship.
As someone posted earlier in this thread, and I alluded to above:
Romans 5:13 …and sin is not reckoned when there is not law;Romans 7:8 …for apart from law sin is dead.Again, a behavior cannot be reckoned to someone as sin – remember, sin is lawlessness – if there was not a revealed law condemning the behavior at the time the behavior was engaged in. You are right that God does not “allow” sin. But when there is no revealed law, sin is not reckoned, because sin is dead apart from law. The revealing of the law is what causes sin to come alive. If God had not revealed a law outlawing marriage between siblings, then the sin of marrying his half-sister cannot be reckoned against Abram.
This is the idea that is applicable to the people who are speculated to have been created before Adam and Eve. Surely since they would have been made of flesh and blood as Adam was, they were corruptible and probably “sinned” according to God’s law, but that sin is not reckoned against them because no law or commandment had been given to mankind before Adam. All these people, speculatively speaking, that lived before Adam will be resurrected at the GWTJ and given the experience of God’s law which they did not have before.
Come to think of it, this discussion is similiar to the argument that Ray was making to Dr. Kennedy in his paper about whether God would send millions of Africans to an eternal life of punishment and torture simply for never having heard of God. God is not a tyrant; He is just, more just than any of us. Just as God will not consign them to an eternal firehole for all eternity, He will also not reckon a multitude of sins against them when they have never even been given a chance to hear about Him or His law. In other words, how can the people living in the jungles of Africa have sin reckoned against them when God has not in this life made a way for someone to go a teach them about Him and His law?
At the GWTJ, all of these people will be resurrected and exposed to God and His law by Jesus Himself, at which point sin will spring forth in their hearts and they will “die,” just as Adam and Eve did and just like Paul said he did in Romans 7:
Romans 7:9 Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. [Paul did not physically die at this point just as Adam and Eve did not physically die on the day they ate of the tree]
Romans 7:10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.We all must experience this “death.” That’s the purpose of the law: to show us how sinful we are and how much we need God. The good news, as we all believe, is that through the work of our Lord and His elect, through the lake of fire experience, all of these people will eventually “live” again, becoming dead to sin and alive in Christ. That is the process that we all must go through, whether now in this life or in the resurrection.
And one more note: the scriptures, when speaking of Terah [Abraham's natural father] lineage, refer to Sarah as his daughter in law even though Abraham says in Gen 20:12 they have the same father.
I guess I’m not understanding your point by saying this.
Yes, the Scriptures state that Sarai was Terah’s daughter-in-law. But why does that exclude her from also being Abram’s half-sister? It is possible to be both. This is why incest makes relationships confusing. In Abram’s case, is Sarai his sister or his wife? In Terah’s case, is Sarai his daughter or his daughter-in-law? Well, they can be referred to as both. Simply referring to her as Terah’s daughter-in-law does not exclude her from also being Terah’s own daughter. She was born to Terah’s wife thereby make her his daughter, but she is also married to Terah’s son, thereby making her his daughter-in-law. Likewise, referring to Sarai as Abram’s wife does not exclude her from also being his half-sister. She was born of Abram’s father, thereby making her Abram's half-sister, but she is also married to Abram thereby making her his wife.
Another point is that if this particular law had been revealed by God at the time of Abraham, then by that same law, Abraham should have been a cursed man.
Deut 27:22 Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother.However, there is no judgment by God in the Scriptures at that time against their relationship, just as there is no judgment by God in the Scriptures at a later time for the relationship between Amram and Jochebed, the parents of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.
Exo 6:20 And Amram took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses: and the years of the life of Amram were an hundred and thirty and seven years.The law given to Moses says:
Lev 18:12 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's sister: she [is] thy father's near kinswoman.You also point out that Abram was more than likely steeped in the pagan worship of his father, Terah, and that his marriage to Sarai occurred before God called him from Haran to the land of Canaan. This is true.
Jos 24:2 And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.However, if this law had been revealed to Abram at the time of his calling, wouldn’t he have been required to give up that sinful relationship once he began following the Lord? Well, we know from Scripture that he didn’t, so either 1) God “allowed” this sin to continue unchecked against His stated law throughout the life of one of the patriarchs of Israel, or 2) this law had not been made known yet, therefore not making it possible for that sin to be reckoned against him. I hope an argument has been made for the latter.
To answer the question that some may be asking, am I saying that Abram and Sarai and Amram and Jochebed did not sin according to God’s law? No, not at all; they did sin. All I’m saying is that that sin cannot be reckoned against them, because it is apparent, at least to me, that the laws outlawing those specific relationships had not been expressly made known by God before Sinai.
Hope that makes sense,
Eric