HUMANITY’S PROBLEM AND SOLUTION

The Christian message of the reconciliation and redemption of mankind contains, as its negative presupposition, the doctrine that man, who has been created in the image of God, has set himself in opposition to his origin, and that it is this opposition which determines the contradiction in his nature, the conflict between his true nature and his actual, empirical nature. In the perception of this truth – which is only disclosed to those who believe in God’s Word through Jesus Christ – the Christian doctrine maintains that it is the only realistic doctrine of man, that is, the only one which is in touch with reality, the only one which understands and explains man aright.

The first thing the Bible tells us about Primal Sin is that it is the revolt of the creature against the Creator. Sin is defiance, arrogance, the desire to be equal with God, emancipation, a deliberate severance from the hand of God. This is the explanation of the nature of sin and its origin, not only in the story of the Fall (Genesis 3) but also in the parable of the wicked husbandmen – the stewards who wanted to make themselves masters (Matthew 21:33ff.), and in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11ff.). The Son who lives with the father goes to him with the request: “Father, give me my inheritance!’ He wants to be independent. André Gide extols this will to independence as the birth of human freedom and of man’s responsibility for his own life, he is speaking out of the depths of the modern mind, severed from God, which believes that an independent human existence can only be attained by being free from God. The fact that true freedom is the same as dependence on God, that man is only free when he is united with God, is an idea which lies outside the horizon of the emancipated autonomous reason.

And this is the very origin of sin: the assertion of human independence over against God, the declaration of the rights of man’s freedom as independent of God’s will, the constitution of the autonomous reason, morality and culture, where reason refuses any longer to apprehend, but wants to give and to have, where it no longer reflects upon existing truth, but desires to think things out for itself, to initiate, to create, to produce its own thoughts in its own way, a human self-initiated creation made by man in his own strength.

Man is a rebel against his divine destiny; he is the steward who pretends to be the master of the vineyard and then kills his lord’s messengers. He is the prodigal son who has demanded ‘the portion of the goods that falleth to him’ and now squanders it. Not only has he done all this in the past, but the revolution is still in full swing.

(Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt, 1939)

As I read opinion commentators on the reasons for all the evil in the world and their considered solutions I come back to this insoluble problem that requires humanity to acknowledge our spiritual condition and unconditionally surrender to our Creator and Savior if we want to find peace, hope and love.