How does the Christian know the depth of sin; how does anyone? How does a Christian have knowledge of themselves; how does anyone? According to Scripture we only know the depth of human sin through God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. To think sin, to think humanity even, from any other ground than the ground of God’s Light of Light for the world in Jesus Christ will give us a skewed sense, a perverted perspective on just who we are as fallen humanity. Until we come to the realization and understanding of the depth dimension of our status as fallen creatures, before a Holy God, we will not be able to live life from and in the straight way. We will construct images of God in images of ourselves, and think that we are in fact “good people”; even though Scripture alone tells us, as it attests to Christ, that we are in fact bad people in need of justification before God. The incarnation of God demonstrates, beyond a shadow of doubt, that our personal status as sinners required the Creator of all life to become His creation in the humanity of Christ, and enter into the consequences of what we have brought to pass as sinners—a rupture between the “good life” God had always intended as we lived in “fellowshipped” lives within His triune life. What Christ’s life demonstrates for us, is that what it means to be genuinely human is to be Holy as God is Holy. What Christ’s life does, as He penetrates our lives by His vicarious humanity, is reveal God to, for, in and with us, and through His reconciling work brings us into His capacity to see and know God. And it is from this whence that we as human beings are adopted back into the place God had always already intended for us as counterpoints of His overflowing and superabundant life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love.
Thomas Torrance spells the aforementioned out in the following way:
The human situation as revealed by the breaking in of the kingdom of God in Christ
The vexation and compassion of God in Christ over the distress of humanity
If we are to be true to the witness of the Gospels, the point from which we must begin here is the vexation of the heavenly Father over the condition of his children. God in Christ is burdened with the griefs and pains of men and women. He does not will their hurt or distress or destruction, but on the contrary wills that they shall be made whole, and therefore God allies himself with them against the evil that afflicts them and intervenes as the enemy of all that destroys humanity. That is the primary revelation of man in the light of the kingdom, a revelation that comes from the fact that God the Father looks upon men and women in compassion and vexation as he sees their fears and anxieties, their torments and sorrows and hunger and oppression. That is why the Acts of the Apostles can sum up what it has to say about the ministry of Jesus by the words that he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed with the devil, while the evangelists all show how much Jesus carried upon his spirit the burden of people’s ills and hurts and gave himself to them in healing.
But what vexes and distresses God in Christ is not simply the sickness and pain of humanity but the fact that it is engulfed in an abyss of fearful darkness, too deep for men and women themselves to understand and certainly too deep for them ever to get out of it—a pit of bottomless evil power. Mankind is entangled in sin not wholly of its own making, enmeshed in the toils of a vast evil will quite beyond it; it is chained in terror and is dragged down and down into the poisonous source or pit of evil. It is evil at its ultimate source, evil at its deepest root, in its stronghold, that God has come to attack and destroy.
This revelation of the condition of humanity from the vexation of God is supported and redoubled by the fact that God in Christ acts towards mankind in its helplessness and distress in sheer grace, grace that is utterly free. Nowhere does Jesus accuse the sick of their sins before he stoops to shoulder their weakness (astheneia). The astounding thing is that God does not put responsibility upon them but takes the responsibility on himself. That is the most miraculous thing about the miracles and healings, the fact that God comes among sinners and makes himself responsible for their condition and even takes their sin and culpability upon himself vicariously. But that in turn reveals the ultimate helplessness and hopelessness of man, apart from such a stupendous act of divine grace.[1]
What is most pressing, at least for me, with reference with Torrance’s above writing, is how he emphasizes the role of God’s utterly free grace. That is to say, God doesn’t come as the punisher, but the slain Lamb. He doesn’t condemn the world; He redeems the world in Jesus Christ. This is the Good News: that God in Christ, who, rightly, could in fact condemn us for not being Holy as He is Holy, has entered into our depraved state, and reversed the curse of the whole thing. It is this reversal that the Christian has been redeemed by; and it is this reversal that the Christian, as an ambassador of Christ, has the privilege of declaring to the world that they too have been given freedom in Christ, the very power of God; and that this freedom is grounded in the eternally triune life of the living God.
The above is very different from the juridical gospel being communicated to many in the world; whether that be of the Protestant or Roman flavor. The juridical gospel has Jesus coming to the world as the instrument of an absolute decree, wherein He meets the forensic requirements of salvation for the world so that the elect (out of the world) might finally be loved by God. Do you notice the shift between the latter and the free grace view? God, in the latter view, primarily relates to the world as a brute Creator and Law-giver. Because the Law (Covenant of Works) has been broken God is no longer free to love His good creation; that is, not until the consequences of failing to meet God’s love are paid for. In this account, once God has found a feasible payment plan, He is free to love those he paid the fee for.
Even through this brief sketch of things it ought to be apparent that what is at stake, between these and various other competing theology propers, is the way we think of who God is. It is one thing to understand that without knowledge of God we cannot have knowledge of ourselves (and our sin, so on and so forth). But it is another thing to actually get a doctrine of God right. If we fail at that, we won’t have a real knowledge of ourselves, or the condition of the world around us. These are heavy matters that require prayer and sobriety as we consider them before the living God. Who are you God? If you have seen Me (Jesus), you have seen the Father.
[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: the Person and Life of Christ, edited by Robert T. Walker (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2008), 240-41.