The highest goal in the salvation of God is the dispensing of His life into man. This is God's ultimate desire. Only by partaking of the divine life can we have a divine living. It is impossible to have a God-like living with our human life. The manifestation of our life is nothing but sin. In this respect God dealt with our sins and iniquities in a way that would maintain His righteousness. We have seen that the Son of God was judged for this purpose. Those who are in Him have been forgiven of their sins.
But the salvation of God did not stop with the forgiveness of sins; it went deeper to deal with the source of sin. We have said that man's sins are not caused by his environment. Rather, they originate from the person. The mode of living is merely a natural consequence of the kind of life that is possessed. Since man's life is corrupted, his outward behavior cannot help but be evil.
For example, when I knock on the stand before me with my fingers, a certain sound is produced. You can tell at once that this is a sound produced by wood. If I knock on a piece of metal, it will give a different kind of sound, and you can readily tell the difference between the two. The contrast in sound is caused by the difference in constitution. No matter how I change my manner of knocking, I cannot make a piece of wood sound metallic. Nor can it be done vice versa.
The same is true of the behavior of man. Our environment cannot precipitate something that does not exist within us. A slow person is slow under any kind of circumstance. But a quick disposition is readily detected under the slightest stress in the environment. All outward conduct is a direct result of our inward life. Hence, temptations in the environment are merely catalysts to hasten the exposure of our inner substance. They can never bring forth anything that has not hitherto existed in man.
A friend told me once that the human life is programmed by its environment. A good environment will produce fine personalities, and an unhealthy environment is the cause of all vices. All that one needs to do is control the environment, and proper personalities will automatically follow.
I said, "According to what you have proposed, it would mean that salt-water fish have become what they are because of living in the sea, and fresh-water fish are the direct product of the river water. This is surely not true. The environment can never govern what is not in us. The environment only exposes what lies dormant within us!"
Of what does the human life consist? It consists of all kinds of evil and corruption. Give it a gentle knock, and everything will fall out into the open. Many moralists say that all we need to do is suppress ourselves. Many have tried it. They held themselves tightly by the reins, fearing that their evil nature would break loose once they let go even a little. This kind of person is most miserable. Daily they repress their desires. But we know that they can never succeed for long.