Human Imperfection, Teboho Kibe [read a book .txt] 📗

rest to mankind from all their troubles. He was anointed with his Father’s spirit. So he rightly took upon his lips the prophecy of Isaiah and applied to himself the commission there stated, “to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the year of Jehovah’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.” (Isa. 61:1, 2, AS) He was opposed, no, not specially by the political rulers Pontius Pilate and King Herod, but by the religious oppressors of the people, namely, the priests and their scribes and the religious sects of the Pharisees and Sadducees, clergymen, who, as Jesus said, “bind up heavy loads and put them upon the shoulders of mankind, but they themselves are not willing to budge them with their finger.”—Matt. 23:1-4, NW.

To prevent the people’s liberation, these religious opposers wanted to kill Jesus, and he said to them: “You are from your father the Devil and you wish to do the desires of your father. That one was a manslayer when he began, and he did not stand fast in the truth, because truth is not in him.”—John 8:44, NW.

On this same occasion Jesus showed in what way they were slaves who could not escape by their own efforts, and how he must loose them from all enslavers. Yes, they were in the power of Satan the Devil, but they were subject besides to something more personal than the Devil. Slaveholders use lies to get the people in their power. Hence Jesus the Son of God said: “If you remain in my word, you are really my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The Jews showed they felt hurt at this hint that they were slaves. And so Jesus exposed the servitude in which they were by saying: “Most truly I say to you, Every doer of sin is a slave of sin. Moreover, the slave does not remain in the household forever; the son remains forever. Therefore if the Son sets you free, you will be actually free.”—John 8:31-36, NW.

These words of the Son of God prove that all mankind are slaves of sin, because all are doers of sin. The Jews to whom Jesus spoke were descendants of the faithful patriarch Abraham and God had given them his law through Moses. Because of being descendants of Abraham by his free woman, his wife Sarah, the Jews thought themselves to be free, and not subject to the power of Satan the Devil. Also they tried to establish their own righteousness by keeping the law of Moses, and they had a priesthood under this law to offer animal sacrifices for their sins against the Law; and so they considered themselves righteous and not the slaves of sin. But that very law of Moses, instead of declaring the Jews to be righteous, condemned them as sinners and as being liable to God for punishment for sins. They were sinners like all the rest of the world and their mouths could not brag of self-righteousness. By that law of Moses and its ten great commandments we get the knowledge that we are, not self-righteous, but sinners unable to help ourselves. “Now we know,” says the apostle Paul, “that all the things the Law says it addresses to those under the Law, so that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become liable to God for punishment. Therefore by works of law no flesh will be declared righteous before him, for by law is the accurate knowledge of sin.”—Rom. 3:19, 20, NW.

How is it, then, that all the world are slaves of sin and in the bondage of corruption? It is not because all the visible, material creation is evil, corrupt, or bad in itself; it is not because the great Creator Jehovah God made man and woman evil at the start. That is an impossibility, for Jehovah God is not the source of sin, imperfection and corruption. Showing us that the fault lies with us and not with Jehovah God, we read: “His work is perfect; for all his ways are justice: a God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and right is he. They have dealt corruptly with him, they are not his children, it is their blemish.” The wise man King Solomon agrees with those words of Moses and says: “Only see this which I have found, that God made mankind upright, but they have sought out many contrivances.” (Deut. 32:4, 5, AS; Eccl. 7:29, AT) The inspired account of man’s creation informs us that God made Adam and Eve absolutely perfect, put them in the paradise of Eden, and commanded them to produce perfect children to fill this earth and to spread out their perfect paradise home to the ends of the earth. But before ever producing any children, Adam and Eve joined Satan the Devil in his rebellion and became sinners against their Creator and Lawgiver.

By this they became the slaves of sin, and were driven out of the paradise of Eden into the uncultivated, unsubdued earth. Themselves now slaves of sin, they could not bring forth perfect, righteous children. Hence all of us their descendants were born as slaves to sin. From our birth we were imperfect and subject to corruption. We were also born into the wicked world of Satan the Devil, “the god of this system of things.” Consequently we were born subject to his power.—Gen. 1:26-28; 2:7, 8.

Together with these circumstances another merciless king has been ruling over us and we have suffered as his subjects and been burdened down with sorrow and mourning. Who is that king who has filled our lives with such grief and heartaches? It is death, and the countless graves are a bitter testimony to his unrelenting rule. How did death become king over all mankind? It is because our first parents sinned against the great Lawgiver and Life-giver before any of us were born. God had warned the first man Adam that if he disobeyed God and sinned he would die. On the other hand, if Adam continued to obey God he would live on the paradise earth forever and would be the father of an earth full of perfect children. But Adam and his wife sold themselves into sin, and God rightfully sentenced them to death. He told the woman Eve that she would bring forth children with great pain and sorrow. Not perfect children, but imperfect, sinful children, condemned to death from their birth. For we read: “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.” (Job 14:4) So we were all subject to the cruel king death from our birth by being born from Adam, and not even the law of Moses proved to be a way of escape from his reign. This explains why everybody is sinful, imperfect, and dies.

Hence we read: “Through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because they had all sinned—. For until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not charged against anyone when there is no law. Nevertheless, death ruled as king from Adam down to Moses, even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of the transgression by Adam.” But, whereas the law of Moses only showed up all mankind, including the Jews, to be sinners, God’s undeserved kindness came to man’s rescue and provided a way for fallen mankind to gain righteousness, the reward of which is everlasting life in a righteous new world. So we read further: “But where sin abounded, undeserved kindness abounded still more. To what end? That, just as sin ruled as king with death, likewise also undeserved kindness might rule as king through righteousness with everlasting life in view through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Everlasting life in a restored world of righteousness is therefore possible only through Jesus Christ the Son of God. In proof of this fact, the foregoing Scriptural argument goes on to say: “The wages sin pays is death, but the gift God gives is everlasting life by Christ Jesus our Lord.”—Rom. 5:12-14, 20, 21; 6:23, NW.

THE COST OF LIBERATION

Now we can appreciate why Jesus Christ the Son of God said: “If the Son sets you free, you will be actually free.” We cannot, and no human government on earth can, free us from the slavery to sin, error, death and Satan the Devil. If the law of Moses failed to do it, then no earthly human government can make us righteous by law and give us a clean standing before God. How, then, can we be freed from the condemnation to death which rests upon us because of being born in sin? Only by what God’s undeserved kindness does for us through his Son Jesus Christ. Only through him can we gain a Jubilee rest from the slavery of sin and death under Satan the Devil. This was foreshadowed by the Jubilee-year arrangement. How?

Mark this important fact about that prophetic law: It was on the tenth day of the seventh Jewish month, that is to say, “on the day of atonement,” that the Jubilee trumpet was to be blown, not before the sacrifice for the atonement of the people’s sin had been offered, but after. Thus the Jubilee year could not begin until first the sins of the entire people of Israel against the law of God had been atoned for by the sacrifices made at God’s temple by his priests. (Lev. 25:9, AT) Those atonement sacrifices on the atonement day all pictured the one sufficient sacrifice which the “man Christ Jesus” as High Priest would offer to God for the sins of all mankind. This sacrifice was not some lower animal like a bull or a sheep or a goat, but was his own human life; and he presented the value of this human sacrifice, not in the temple in Jerusalem on earth, but in heaven itself, in God’s very presence, for Jehovah God does not reside in man-made temples on earth. On this we read: “He entered, no, not with the blood of goats and of young bulls, but with his own blood, once for all time into the holy place and obtained an everlasting release for us. For Christ entered, not into a holy place made with hands which is a copy of the reality, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the person of God for us.”—Heb. 9:12, 24, NW.

Jesus, who had been born perfect by God’s miraculous power, kept his sinlessness, and he died, not because of sinning, but as a sacrifice. He died at the hands of his religious enemies, because he bore witness to the truth and preached the coming kingdom of God to be the only rightful rule of the earth and the only hope of all mankind. In order that Jesus’ human sacrifice might not be taken back but might remain for mankind’s benefit, God raised his Son Jesus Christ from the dead as a glorified spirit Son, clothed upon with immortal life. Because he had died faithful to Jehovah God’s universal sovereignty, God resurrected him from the dead to be the heavenly King of the new world.—1 Pet. 3:18, 22.

From this we can see that the grand Jubilee release for mankind could not really begin until first after the atonement sacrifice that takes away sin had been laid down by God’s High Priest Jesus Christ on earth and had been presented to God in heaven.

It is interesting to note this fact: The Jubilee was the fiftieth year. Correspondingly, fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead came the Jewish feast of weeks or Pentecost. (Pentecost means “fiftieth day”.) It was on this feast day of Pentecost that the faithful disciples had God’s holy spirit poured out upon them, and they began a great work of preaching