The Death Incurred by Sin

The Review and Herald December 1, 1863

By R.F. Cottrell

Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God said to the living soul that he had created, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." No occasion would exist for asking what death was intended by this, had not learned theology asserted that it meant a three-fold death; "Death spiritual, death temporal, and death eternal."

The first of these deaths is defined to be a state of sin, the second, a separation of soul and body, and the third, eternal misery. Thus where one death only was threatened, three were intended. The first, there was no necessity of threatening; for if man sinned, of consequence he lost his innocence and became a sinner. The second, threatens death to a part of the man, and promises life to a part. In other words, the threatening was a promise that man should be freed from his gross materiality—a clog of clay—and exist a disencumbered spirit. And the third death threatened is a guaranty of eternal life, though that life is to be one of torment and misery. Oh that the beauties of this self-styled orthodoxy might be seen in their true light! There is no intimation of all this in the Scriptures. One death only was threatened; and far be it from the Judge of all the earth to threaten one, and execute three.

But this absurdity grows out of the necessity of devising some means of harmonizing the scriptures with an assumed theory. It is assumed that the soul is immortal—not subject to death in a literal sense—hence another assumption, that, as death is the wages of sin, and the soul cannot die literally, death must mean eternal misery. Again, as it is said, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," another death must be invented; the spiritual death already noticed; and as it is difficult to leave out entirely the literal death of the man, that also must have a place, though qualified as being a separation of soul and body; and it is very freely admitted that the inferior, useless cumbrous part of man does actually die, and knows nothing when dead, but to the soul, the only part that ever did know anything, "There is no death: what seems such is transition."

Now, if we will permit him to do so, the Lord will tell us just what he meant by the threatening of death, and clear away the objection respecting the day in which it was to be fulfilled. In pronouncing sentence upon man, after he had sinned, the Lawgiver and Judge has clearly defined just what he meant, and all he meant, by the threatened penalty of death. If he speaks of an eternal miserable existence, and of a spiritual death, in the sentence he passes upon man, then these were intended in the threatening. But if he says nothing of these, he meant no such thing. He knew what he meant in the threatening, and has defined it in the sentence. Then let us hear the great expositor of his own law define the penalty.

"And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Gen. 3:17-19.

There is nothing said or intimated, in all this sentence, of spiritual death or eternal misery; hence, these were not meant in the threatening—they are no part of the death penalty. But sorrow and toil are mentioned resulting in literal death; not eternal misery; but the return of man to the dust out of which he was formed. There is no other idea conveyed in this, than that man should return to the same condition he was in before his creation, and "be as though he had not been." This would have been the final and everlasting condition of man, had not a Saviour, who is the resurrection and the life—a second Adam, a life-giving spirit, been provided. Death is a sleep, the Bible true, but not an eternal sleep: hence, the Bible and Atheism differ very widely.

We may talk for or against literal interpretation, but this is certain, that in pronouncing sentence upon man, after he had sinned, Jehovah himself has interpreted the death threatened to be a literal death, neither more nor less—a returning of the dust, which had become a living soul, back to the dust again. The only question respecting it is, whether we will take his interpretation or not.

Immediately after man had sinned, a curse fell upon the earth and he was doomed to a toiling, sweating, dying life, until he was dead. This is the interpretation of the threatening, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die;" or, as the Hebrew literally reads, "dying thou shalt die." It is better to accept of this interpretation like an honest man, than skeptically to quibble around it, because that Adam was not dead on the day of his transgression. The penalty has been faithfully executed from the day of Adam's transgression to the present: and though we are not dead, we feel and know that we are dying men and shall soon be dead unless the Life-giver descends from heaven with a reprieve.

Is this infidelity? or is it faith in the word of the Lord? Infidelity used to mean disbelief of the Scriptures; but now those are called infidels who believe what the Bible most clearly and positively teaches.

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