FALLEN AND ALIENATED

FALLEN AND ALIENATED

The issue of the act of falling prey to a lie about God is revealed in the words "so He drove out the man." (Gen. 3:24) Man by his own decision and deed has separated himself from God. God by the necessity of the being created judicially separates man from Himself. Having violated the covenant man is put outside its benefits. The life of dependence upon God was the life of union and cooperation with God. Man having chosen the position of independence, is now cut off from union and cooperation. To say this, is to declare that by his own act, man has become separated from that fellowship with God which constitutes his holiness of character; and from that cooperation with God, which is the condition of righteousness of conduct. He has passed into a region where the essential powers of his being can find no fitting field of operation. He retains the essential facts of his being, but THEY CANNOT BE PERFECTED, because they have lost their true sphere.  Henceforward his INTELLIGENCE must be bounded by its own limitation, as it is severed from the Infinite Knowledge. So also his EMOTION must become dwarfed as to capacity, because it has lost its perfect object in the loss of God. His WILL, a magnificent ruin, will perpetually attempt to secure master ship and yet will never succeed, because it has lost its own true spring of action, and its own Master. Man distanced from God has not lost the powers of his original creation; he has lost the true sphere of their exercise. HIS INTELLIGENCE IS DARKENED, HIS EMOTION IS DEADENED, AND HIS WILL IS DEGRADED. Darkened intelligence hence forth will see only the things that are near as Peter said. The spaciousness of the spiritual condition has ceased, and man will look at material things in semi-blindness, which is at once tragic and pathetic. Deadened emotion, a heaven-born capacity, will attempt to satisfy itself wholly within the realm of the earth, and love being set wholly upon the things material, will forever be wounded in their loss. Degraded will, ever attempting to be authoritative, masterful, will always be thwarted, beaten, overcome. Out of this dire and desolate ruin, God hears the call for a Deliverer.