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Paul’s Testimony to the Doctrine of Sin
handed down by Adam to his posterity. “But where sin abounded, grace abounded more exceedingly, that as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteous ness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord . This is the apostle’s psean of triumph as he draws the last pen stroke in describing the blessedness of the justified man. The first historic conquest of sin in Christ was His con ception without sin; though born of a sinful woman, her sinful nature was not handed down to Him. Then followed victory after victory—in those thirty silent years in which He never yielded to a single sinful impulse; in the wilderness struggle when in that supreme moment He said, Get thee hence, Satan; on Calvary when He meekly submitted to the sufferings of human sin, in which submission He showed Himself above sin; in the resurrection when death was de feated and driven from his own battle field, the grave, while He as the Son of God arose in triumph and in forty days afterward sat down on the right hand of the Father, to send to men the Spirit to apply and enforce His mediatorial work. Then this conquest of sin is personalized in each believer. At regeneration the sin principle is subdued by the Spirit in Christ and the Divine nature so implanted as to guarantee the complete conquest of sin. In the life of consecration and service the sin principle goes down in defeat step by step, until in death whose sting is sin, the believer triumphs in Christ on the last field; he feels no sting and knows the strife with the sin monster is forever passed, and in exul tation he receives “an abundant entrance” to the kingdom of glory, as Paul triumphantly received it. (Phil. 1:21, 23; 2 Tim. 4:6-8.)
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