How solemn a spectacle is fallen man if we consider his present state and condition in contrast to what it was in the beginning! What a noble spectacle man was as he came forth from the hand of God! How glorious was the whole creation as brought into existence and formed by God. Even the eye of God could detect no flaw in it, for God looked upon it and He saw that everything was good. Everything answered the purpose for which it was created and every part of creation, animate or inanimate, glorified God. We are told in the Word of God that “the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” Yet more glorious than every other part of creation was man. His creation was unique. God created man in His own image and in His likeness. Though formed of the dust of the earth, yet God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” Such was man in His beginning — a creature, yet so dignified as to have communion in his soul with the living and true God. Man was righteous and holy, for God made man upright. There was no bias in his will whatsoever towards evil but only towards good. How pleasant was his situation in the garden of Eden, living in the favour of God and daily communing with His God. What a glorious prospect lay before him in the hope he entertained of being eternally confirmed in this blessed state. What could he have wished for more than he now possessed? Here was a state in which holiness and happiness were combined. Here was heaven on earth for the living soul.
But what of man as fallen? Where has all his blessedness gone, as we see him lost, fallen and undone? He has been deprived of it all. By one act of wilful transgression of the divine precept he squandered it all. In one moment all that Adam possessed was gone — the one who was rich spiritually and on the way to be confirmed in that condition was now in a state of abject poverty, having lost all he possessed himself and all that he possessed for his posterity. He was now exposed, and all his posterity was exposed, to the wrath and curse of God to all eternity. Surely no more miserable and abject creature could one conceive of than man now was estranged from God.
What a change had taken place! One moment man was a friend of God, in the next moment the enemy of God. One moment man dwelt under the shadow of the wings of the Almighty, in the next moment was shut out from God. As the Catechism teaches us: “All mankind by the fall lost communion with God and are under His wrath and curse and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself and to the pains of hell forever.” Again we are told that the fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.
The condition of man as fallen is lamentable. He is without the knowledge of God. This is because there is darkness in the understanding. Where there was once light, now there is only darkness. As fallen, man is also without any warmth in his affections. Where there was only love to God before there is only hatred and coldness now. So, too, man has no will to do God’s will. The will of fallen man is set against the will of God. There is only rebellion, where formerly there was delight in the will of God. That rebellion is manifested in a life of sin and transgression of the holy law of God. Man has become a law unto himself. Who is God, he says, that I should obey Him?
How hopeless then does the prospect for man appear in the light of his total estrangement from God and his exposure to the divine wrath and curse. So far as man is concerned, with regard to any deliverance that he can afford himself, his case is altogether hopeless. There appears to be nothing for him but the blackness of darkness forever, which his sins so truly merit. Is this then to be the prospect for poor lost sinners? Can they look for nothing else but to be dashed forever with the unending waves of divine wrath? The prospect is gloomy indeed if we look to man himself. He can effect no radical change in himself but must ripen more and more for an eternity where he will be eternally lost and from which he can only cry: Lost! Eternally lost!
Yet all is not lost when, on the other hand, we look to what God can do and what God willed to do. The recovery of sinners out of the lost and fallen and ruined race of Adam must surely be the most stupendous, amazing and glorious work of God. Who can enter into the length and breadth and depth and height of the rescue of souls, lost, ruined and undone from the hell which their sins deserve? Is it any wonder that angels would desire to look into it? What amazing, endless, boundless love is contained in it — an ocean fulness of love, eternally unfathomable, the love of God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, electing love, redeeming love, sanctifying love, eternal love. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.” Such is the love that rescued from the pit of destruction a number whom no man can number of the fallen race of Adam, even the whole election of grace, and saved them with an everlasting salvation to the praise eternally of divine grace and mercy. God the Father will be eternally praised for this salvation of which He is the Author and which He wrought out through His beloved Son and applied to the souls of men by His divine Spirit. What a glorious part. Will not those that are partakers of divine grace be eternally praising God for the giving of His Son and for the sending of His Spirit?
What wisdom lay behind the plan of redemption! What wisdom lay behind the creation of man, but more so behind the salvation of man. The setting up of the Covenant of grace — who could have ever conceived of it? The way of salvation — how glorious! — God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh so that in that nature He would render full satisfaction to divine law and justice in the room and stead of the guilty — God’s well-beloved Son suffering in His sinless humanity the greatest sufferings that shall ever be, sufferings which, in their greatest depth, were commensurate with the hell that the sins of His people deserved. What infinite satisfaction He also gave to the claims of the divine law in that life of perfect obedience to every precept of the divine law. Here was perpetual, undeviating, full-hearted obedience to the holy law — an obedience that man through his fall had failed to render. What are we to say to these things? Has God in the Person of the Son, taken the very nature of man, though a sinless humanity, and in that very nature suffered to the greatest degree that that nature could sustain even united to the Person of the Son of God, sufferings which in their greatest extremity made Him cry out: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” and are we to be unaffected by it? To the children of men He cries out: “Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow?” and are we to give no heed to it. Here before our eyes is the One who “is despised and rejected of man; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, and are we to hide our faces from Him, are we to esteem Him not? If so, what shame belongs to us. The sight of the suffering Lamb of God ought to bring us down in contribution and brokenness of heart before such a revelation of divine mercy and grace, and fill our hearts with love and adoration and praise for Him who wrought out eternal redemption for His folk.
Through the redemption that is in Christ poor fallen sinners have been restored to the favour and fellowship of God, even as many as believe on His Name. Such will be praising God eternally for the redemption that is in Christ, of which they have by grace become partakers. They will join in the song of the redeemed before the Throne of God and of the ten thousand times ten thousands of the angelic host, crying, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.”