Chapter XXXIII: Section VI: Consequences Of Sin To Adam’s Posterity (3)

(_b_) It cannot be doubted that the penalty denounced in the garden and fallen upon the race is primarily and mainly that death of the soul which consists in its separation from God. In this sense only, death was fully visited upon Adam in the day on which he ate the forbidden fruit (Gen. 2:17). In this sense only, death is escaped by the Christian (John 11:26). For this reason, in the parallel between Adam and Christ (Rom. 5:12-21), the apostle passes from the thought of mere physical death in the early part of the passage to that of both physical and spiritual death at its close (verse 21—“as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”—where “eternal life” is more than endless physical existence, and “death” is more than death of the body).

_Gen. 2:17_—“_in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die_”; _John 11:26_—“_whosoever liveth and believeth on me
shall never die_”; _Rom. 5:14, 18, 21_—“_justification of life ...
eternal life_”; contrast these with “_death reigned ... sin
reigned in death._”

(_c_) Eternal death may be regarded as the culmination and completion of spiritual death, and as essentially consisting in the correspondence of the outward condition with the inward state of the evil soul (Acts 1:25). It would seem to be inaugurated by some peculiar repellent energy of the divine holiness (Mat. 25:41; 2 Thess. 1:9), and to involve positive retribution visited by a personal God upon both the body and the soul of the evil-doer (Mat. 10:28; Heb. 10:31; Rev. 14:11).

_Acts 1:25_—“_Judas fell away, that he might go to his own
place_”; _Mat. 25:41_—“_Depart from me, ye cursed, into the
eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels_”; _2
Thess. 1:9_—“_who shall suffer punishment, even eternal
destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his
might_”; _Mat. 10:28_—“_fear him who is able to destroy both soul
and body in hell_”; _Heb. 10:31_—“_It is a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God_”; _Rev. 14:11_—“_the smoke of
their torment goeth up for ever and ever._”

Kurtz, Religionslehre, 67—“So long as God is holy, he must
maintain the order of the world, and where this is destroyed,
restore it. This however can happen in no other way than this: the
injury by which the sinner has destroyed the order of the world
falls back upon himself,—and this is penalty. Sin is the negation
of the law. Penalty is the negation of that negation, that is, the
reëstablishment of the law. Sin is a thrust of the sinner against
the law. Penalty is the adverse thrust of the elastic because
living law, which encounters the sinner.”

Plato, Gorgias, 472 E; 509 B; 511 A; 515 B—“Impunity is a more
dreadful curse than any punishment, and nothing so good can befall
the criminal as his retribution, the failure of which would make a
double disorder in the universe. The offender himself may spend
his arts in devices of escape and think himself happy if he is not
found out. But all this plotting is but part of the delusion of
his sin; and when he comes to himself and sees his transgression
as it really is, he will yield himself up the prisoner of eternal
justice and know that it is good for him to be afflicted, and so
for the first time to be set at one with truth.”

On the general subject of the penalty of sin, see Julius Müller,
Doct. Sin, 1:245 _sq._; 2:286-397; Baird, Elohim Revealed,
263-279; Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 194-219; Krabbe,
Lehre von der Sünde und vom Tode; Weisse, in Studien und Kritiken,
1836:371; S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 369-384; Bartlett, in New
Englander, Oct. 1871:677, 678.