10月5日 堕落的倾向

这就如罪是从一人入了世界，死又是从罪来的，于是死就临到众人，因为众人都犯了罪。（罗五12）

圣经不是说神因一人的罪，就刑罚所有的人；圣经乃是说人的罪性－－我对自我主权的把持，是由一人进入人类。然而另一个人担负了人类的罪，把罪除掉（来九26），这是何其奥秘的启示哩。罪性并非指错失或道德的败落，而是自我实现的倾向－－我是自己的神。这倾向可以表现得很道德，也可以很不道德，但只有一个根基，就是对自我主权的把持。主耶稣不论碰到罪大恶极的人，还是正人君子，他均不理会前者道德的败落或后者道德的操守；他所注意的，是我们所看不见的－－人的意向。

罪是与生俱来的，是人无能为力的，但神藉着救赎对付了罪。神藉主耶稣的十字架拯救整个人类，使我们可以脱离那因罪而来的咒诅。神从不因人有遗传的罪根而定人的罪。定罪不是由于我生来承袭了罪，乃是因知道主耶稣来救赎我，而我仍拒绝他，那是我就要被定罪了。“光来到世间，世人……不爱光倒爱黑暗，定他们的罪就是在此。”

祈祷◆主啊，愿你今天将圣灵的直觉力和先天的灵感赐给我，让我可以在一切事情上识别你。愿你恩慈的同在和平安，充满这一天。

October 5 The Bias Of Degeneration

“Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Romans 5:12

The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man's sin; but that the disposition of sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put it away (Heb. 9:26) – an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization – I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself. When Our Lord faced men with all the forces of evil in them, and men who were clean living and moral and up right, He did not pay any attention to the moral degradation of the one or to the moral attainment of the other; He looked at something we do not see, viz., the disposition.

Sin is a thing I am born with and I cannot touch it; God touches sin in Redemption. In the Cross of Jesus Christ God redeemed the whole human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a man responsible for having the heredity of sin. The condemnation is not that I am born with a heredity of sin, but if when I realize Jesus Christ came to deliver me from it, I refuse to let Him do so, from that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. “And this is the judgment” (the critical moment), “that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light.”