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Based on Gen. 3:7
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.
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