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| How We are to Understand the Words, ‘The Devil Sinneth from the Beginning.’
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Chapter 15.—How We are to
Understand the Words, “The Devil Sinneth from the
Beginning.”
As for what John says about the
devil, “The devil sinneth from the beginning”479
they480
who suppose it is meant hereby that
the devil was made with a sinful nature, misunderstand it; for if
sin be natural, it is not sin at all. And how do they answer the
prophetic proofs,—either what Isaiah says when he represents the
devil under the person of the king of Babylon, “How art thou
fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning!”481
or what Ezekiel says, “Thou hast
been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy
covering,”482
where it is
meant that he was some time without sin; for a little after it is
still more explicitly said, “Thou wast perfect in thy ways?”
And if these passages cannot well be otherwise interpreted, we must
understand by this one also, “He abode not in the truth,” that
he was once in the truth, but did not remain in it. And from this
passage, “The devil sinneth from the beginning,” it is not to
be supposed that he sinned from the beginning of his created
existence, but from the beginning of his sin, when by his pride he
had once commenced to sin. There is a passage, too, in the Book
of Job, of which the devil is the subject: “This is the
beginning of the
creation of God, which He made
to be a sport to His angels,”483
which agrees with the psalm, where
it is said, “There is that dragon which Thou hast made to be a
sport therein.”484
But these
passages are not to lead us to suppose that the devil was
originally created to be the sport of the angels, but that he was
doomed to this punishment after his sin. His beginning, then, is
the handiwork of God; for there is no nature, even among the least,
and lowest, and last of the beasts, which was not the work of Him
from whom has proceeded all measure, all form, all order, without
which nothing can be planned or conceived. How much more, then,
is this angelic nature, which surpasses in dignity all else that He
has made, the handiwork of the Most High!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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