How The "Thou Knowest Not" Problem
Began
Deep guilt was created in the human soul
in the Garden of Eden when our first parents fell. It is as true of us
today as it was for Adam, for "in Adam all die" (1 Corinthians
15:22). All of us have repeated Adam’s fall (cf. Romans 5:12).
The first result of this guilt was shame:
"Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God
amongst the trees of the garden" (Genesis 3:8).
The second evidence was fear:
"And … Adam … said, I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was
afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself’ (verses 9,10).
The third consequence was the erection of
a barrier creating an unconscious condition. Adam found himself
unable to realize his guilt and confess it. Thus he repressed it
immediately. He blamed it all on Eve: "And the man said, The woman
whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did
eat" (verse 12). The guilty pair would have died then and there had
they been conscious of the full extent of their guilt, for "the wages
of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). When the lost at last fully grasp the
enormity of their guilt, they will suffer the second death in fulfillment
of the Lord’s warning to Adam and Eve that when they should sin,
"thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). We need to recognize
that the guilt of sin brings its own built-in penalty of eternal death,
and the very fact that our physical life is extended through probationary
time is prima facie evidence of the
existence of an unconscious mechanism of repression which had its origin
in Eden.
This "thou knowest not"
condition was therefore a blessing, for it made continued life possible.
God’s purpose of course was to give man an opportunity to learn
repentance and faith in a Saviour.
The fourth consequence was the
development of an enmity against God: "The woman which Thou
gavest to be with me …" Adam felt that the trouble was really God’s
fault! Eve shared this newly erected unconscious barrier in that she also
could not accept and confess her own guilt any more easily: "The serpent
beguiled me, and I did eat" (Genesis 3:13).
Ever since that first sin in the Garden,
mankind have been repeating the tragic pattern. Unless man has faith in a
divine Saviour who bears the full burden of his guilt, a full realization
of guilt kills him. Seen in this light, it is merciful that we do not
realize our depth of sin and guilt. This condition of "thou knowest
not" could go on forever and ever, except that there must come a
second advent of Christ and there must come an end to sin. Hence the
Laodicean message!
When Adam and Eve "hid themselves
from the presence of the Lord God," they did so because they were
hiding from themselves as well. Their new conviction of guilt was
naturally unwelcome to their knowledge. We cannot overestimate the
traumatic effect of this original sin and guilt upon their human souls.
They just could not face themselves. For some mysterious reason they felt
naked in front of each other and before God. They were different.
"The Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day" had
suddenly become to them an unwelcome interloper. They wished He would
leave them alone. His presence awakened
unpleasant convictions that they would fain forget.
Thus it has been with man ever since.
"And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God
gave them over to a reprobate mind" (Rom. 1:28).
The knowledge of God was repressed
because it awakened the intolerable sense of guilt from which man longed
to escape. Thus it was driven into deep hiding. This function of
repression as consequent on guilt is alluded to by Paul: "We see
divine retribution revealed from heaven and falling upon all the godless
wickedness of men. In their wickedness they are stifling the truth.
For all that may be known of God by men lies plain before their eyes;
indeed God Himself has disclosed it to them … But all their thinking has
ended in futility, and their misguided minds are plunged in darkness"
(Rom. 1:18-21 NEB, emphasis added).
"Yes," someone may say at this
point, "but all this refers to the wicked. They have these problems,
not we. We are born-again Christians and we don’t have any problem with
repressed guilt as they do. TheD blood of Jesus Christ has already
cleansed us from all this!" But our Lord, the "Faithful and True
Witness", says that we too have a problem with unknown sin:
"Thou knowest not" your true condition, He says. Something has
delayed the coming of the Lord and held up the Loud Cry for decades in
spite of the fact that we are such sincere, born-again Christians!
The sinful Adam in the Garden had a
problem with "enmity against God". Could we, nearly six thousand
years away from him, have the root of the same problem and not be aware of
it? "The carnal mind is enmity against God", says Paul (Rom.
8:7). Until the people of God are truly ready for the sealing and the
close of probation, they most certainly do
have a problem. If we keep going into our graves as have countless
generations before us ever since Eden, we are continually taking our
problem with us to the grave. Not until the problem is solved can God’s
people possibly be prepared to "stand in the sight of a holy God
without a mediator" (GC 425). Not until there is "a special work
of purification, of putting away of sin among God’s people upon
earth", can we assume that alienation is really overcome.
Latent "enmity against God" is
the root of the problem. This is what has created a need for a "final
atonement". But we just don’t see it. It is an unconscious sin. We
are like our beloved brother Peter. Years after his baptism and his
ordination to the ministry and after years of schooling under Christ
Himself, Peter did not know or understand his own hidden motivations:
When Peter said he would follow his
Lord to prison and to death, he meant it, every word of it but he did
not know himself. Hidden in his heart were elements of evil that
circumstances would fan into life. Unless he was made conscious of his
danger, these would prove his eternal ruin. The Saviour saw in him a
self-love and assurance that would overbear his Love for Christ. …
Christ’s solemn warning was a call to heart searching. (DA 673).
Could words more plainly say that Peter’s
problem lay in his unknown heart? As our Saviour beholds us now, on the
eve of our last great trial, what does He see hidden in our hearts that
must be "made conscious" to us?
When Peter finally denied his Lord, he
did that which none of us dare repeat in the final test when "the
righteous must live in the sight of a holy God without an intercessor?:
Peter had just declared that he knew
not Jesus, but he now realized with bitter grief how well his Lord knew
him, and how accurately He had read his heart, the falseness of which
was unknown even to himself. (DA 713).
And yet Peter was a truly sincere
"born-again Christian" |
