Sold Under Sin

The apostle also calls this law spiritual, saying: “But we know that the law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold under sin.” For this law is spiritual, which bids us eat in the sweat of our brow that “true bread which comes down from heaven”; but that sale under sin makes us fleshly. What sin is that, I ask, and whose? Adam’s, without doubt. By his fall and, if I may say so, his ruinous deal and fraudulent bargain, we were sold. For when he was led astray by the persuasion of the serpent, he brought all his descendants under the yoke of perpetual bondage, since they were made over to another by the taking of the forbidden food. [a]

For this is the custom generally kept between buyer and seller: a person who wants to hand himself over to the power of another receives from his buyer a price for the loss of his liberty and for being given over to perpetual slavery. And we can see very plainly that this took place between Adam and the serpent. For by eating of the forbidden tree he received from the serpent the price of his liberty. He gave up his natural freedom and chose to give himself up to perpetual slavery to the one from whom he had taken the deadly price of the forbidden fruit. From then on he was bound by this condition, and not without reason he made all the offspring of his descendants subject to perpetual service to the one whose slave he had become. For what can any marriage in slavery produce but slaves?

What then? Did that cunning and crafty buyer take away the rights of ownership from the true and lawful Lord? Not at all. He did not, by the craft of a single act of deception, so overcome all God’s property that the true Lord lost his rights of ownership; for the Lord, though the buyer himself was a rebel and a runaway, still held him under the yoke of slavery. But because the Creator had given all reasoning creatures free will, he would not restore to their natural liberty, against their will, those who had sold themselves, against what was right, by the sin of greedy craving. For anything contrary to goodness and fairness is abhorrent to him who is the Author of justice and devoted love. It would have been wrong for him to take back the blessing of freedom he had granted. It would have been unfair for him to crush by his power a man who was free, and by taking him captive not to allow him to use the privilege of the freedom he had received. For he was keeping man’s salvation in reserve for future ages, so that in due season the fullness of the appointed time might be fulfilled. For it was right that man’s offspring should remain under the ancient conditions for so long a time, until the grace of the Lord, by the price of his own blood, redeemed them from their original chains and set them free in the first state of liberty. He was able to save them even then, but he would not, because fairness forbade him to break the terms of his own decree.

Would you know the reason why you were sold? Hear your Redeemer himself proclaiming it openly through the prophet Isaiah: “What is this certificate of your mother’s divorce, with which I sent her away? Or who is my creditor, to whom I sold you? Look, you were sold for your iniquities, and for your wicked deeds I sent your mother away.” Would you also see plainly why, when you had been handed over to the yoke of slavery, he would not redeem you by the might of his own power? Hear what he added to the passage just quoted, and how he charges these same servants of sin with the reason for their own voluntary sale: “Is my hand shortened and grown small, so that I cannot redeem? Or is there no strength in me to deliver?” And what it is that always stands in the way of his most powerful pity, the same prophet shows when he says: “Look, the hand of the Lord is not shortened, so that it cannot save, nor is his ear heavy, so that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a division between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he does not hear.”