Some in the Church of God are promoting the theory and doctrine that both of the goats used on the Day of Atonement were representative of the Messiah. Is this true? If not, can you explain to others why this is not true? Those who promote this doctrine claim that Satan is not the cause of all sin and for this reason one cannot consider the “scapegoat” as a representation of Satan. Let us consider this idea and see if the Scriptures will support it.
Is Satan the cause of <all> sin? Supposedly, we could say that this depends on one’s perspective. A prominent problem with most articles written on nearly all subjects is that usually the writer chooses one perspective as the whole truth at the expense of all other perspectives.
Paul says that sin entered into the world by one man. Of course, that man was Adam! However, why did Adam sin? From the Genesis article, one can understand that God did not allow Satan’s evil spirit to influence Adam and Eve until Satan got them to take of the forbidden fruit.
Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
We know that Satan did not get into the Garden of Eden in spite of God’s will. Was Satan the cause of the original sin? How we can escape the knowledge that he most certainly was the cause.
Let us examine one perspective of the causatives of sin. Moses indicated that Aaron had brought a great sin upon the Israelites because of the golden calf in the wilderness. In other words, Aaron was the direct cause for the people sinning in this way. He was the one to whom they looked as their leader while Moses was away and because he did not stand firm against the people, Moses indicated that he was the cause of their sin.
Exodus 32:21 And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them?
In 1Kings 14:16, we understand that Jeroboam caused Israel to sin. An evil ruler can influence those under him to sin. Therefore, we cannot say that Satan causes all sin from the perspective of the immediate cause. However, from the perspective that Satan originally caused Adam and Eve to sin and thereby sin entered into the world, certainly the blame belongs on him. Had God never allowed his spirit to influence man, the world would not be the sinful place it is today.
1 Kings 14:16 And he shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who did sin, and who made Israel to sin.
We can appreciate that even though Aaron and Jeroboam directly caused the people to sin, Satan was the evil protagonist, at the root level. The spirit of Satan confuses one to believe that what he is doing is right even when it is wrong.
Therefore, sin entered into the world through Adam and the spirit of Satan influenced him, from the moment that he ate the forbidden fruit. Of course, we could say that Eve caused Adam to sin after Satan had caused her to sin. Nevertheless, sin would not have permeated the world without the spirit of Satan. Therefore, Satan is at the root of all sin. God gave Satan license to influence Adam’s mind and all succeeding generations through Adam because of Adam’s disobedience.
Eve sinned because Satan influenced her to do so. However, once Eve sinned, she had to take the blame for she had used her mind to reason that it was acceptable to eat the forbidden fruit. She therefore, had her part in the sin. It was not Satan’s sin! It was Eve’s sin. Although Satan caused the sin, one could not totally blame him for the sin, which Adam and Eve committed. To blame Satan for man’s part in sinning would be to absolve man from all sin. Man could do as he pleases and not be required to take responsibility for his own sin.
Let us return to our example of Aaron and the Israelites concerning the golden calf in the wilderness. God made plain that it was the Israelites sin. He did not call it Aaron’s sin. Aaron was the cause for them sinning with the golden calf because he went along with their scheme and ordered the casting of the golden calf. However, the responsibility for the sin was upon those who did the sinning.
Exodus 32:34 Therefore now go, lead the people unto [the place] of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them.
God told the serpent, “Because you have done this…” In other words, it was the serpent, or Satan, that was the <cause> for Eve’s sin. Therefore, God placed a curse upon the serpent. However, it was Eve’s doing. Therefore, it was Eve’s sin and she could not escape the responsibility for her sin.
Gen 3:13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. 14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
However, the thing that goes unnoticed in the Garden incident is that Satan’s spirit had no influence on Adam and Eve until they ate of the forbidden fruit. It was after eating of the forbidden tree that they realized they were naked – in an evil connotation. Moses did not record that Satan told them they were naked. Rather, it seems to have just “come to them” that they were naked – in an evil sense. This is an indication that after eating the forbidden fruit God allowed Satan to continue to influence Adam and Eve through his evil spirit.
Therefore, the root cause of sin is the evil spirit that Satan broadcasts to every human being in the world. The importance is not <who> causes sin, but rather to whom will we yield ourselves. We can either yield to Satan and sin or we can yield to God and live righteously – providing God has given us the holy spirit.
Romans 6:13 Neither yield ye your members [as] instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members [as] instruments of righteousness unto God.
The converted man has two natures instead of only the one nature of the unconverted man. The carnal mind – the mind received at birth is not subject to the law of God. Satan tainted the physical mind with his evil spirit when Adam ate of the forbidden tree and through Adam sin entered into the world causing all to sin and be laden with a nature, which cannot be subject to the law of God.
Romans 8:7 Because the carnal mind [is] enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
Where character is concerned, when we yield to the carnal mind we build evil character and when we yield to the mind of God we build righteous character. One’s character is recorded in the “spirit in man” or man’s conscious and one’s mind-set determines whether evil or good will triumph at last. When one partakes of baptism, God washes away his past sins: God clears man’s record. One then has a clear conscious before God.
Hebrews 9:14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
However, even though God has cleared our conscious the carnal mind is still with us and we must constantly resist the pull of evil and yield to the mind of God so that our conscious abounds with righteousness. The evil nature in us constantly wars against the nature of God, which we received at baptism. Therefore, we must daily ask God to forgive us of our trespasses – what we do. This constant writing of good and evil on our conscious and the erasure of the evil when we ask forgiveness tends toward a good conscious in the righteous man. In the converted man, there is less of evil, and more of good resulting in a character useable for an immortal life in God’s Kingdom.
Romans 7:23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
Satan has sway over the carnal man – but he has no sway over the mind of God, the new man within. The following verse is rather clear that blindness, and darkness is by the influence and power of Satan. Light is by the influence and power of God. Blindness is the influence of Satan’s evil spirit and light is the influence of God’s holy spirit. If we want to depart from sin, we must yield ourselves to God so that He can rescue us from the power of Satan.
Acts 26:18 To open their eyes, [and] to turn [them] from darkness to light, and [from] the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.
Therefore, how can we escape that Satan is the root cause of sin. This does not mean that our sin is his sin, however. One can blame Satan for causing the sin, but one cannot blame him for our sin, for we are to resist the devil. Satan is the god of this world and he has blinded the minds of those who do not believe. He blinded Eve by his words of confusion. However, after she took of the fruit, he did not even have to speak to her to continue to blind her. It is this automatic blinding of the world that causes people to come to the erroneous idea that Satan is not the root cause of sin.
James 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
2 Corinthians 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Satan did not force Eve to follow his words of deception. He did not take hold of her arm and force her to wrap her hand around the fruit and put it in her mouth! Nevertheless, he did get to her through her mind. We do not have to wonder about that for she did eat of the fruit. He planted an idea in her mind and that alone was cause enough to bring about the evil.
However, this is getting all beside the point! The responsibility lay squarely on Adam and Eve. Satan’s suggestion and encouragement to Eve was the catalyst that got her mind going in the direction that resulted in the eating of the fruit. God allowed Satan in the Garden, so one can suppose some would blame God for Eve’s sin. However, the plan of God was such that Satan was an important tool to give man something to resist against once he had the new-nature option.
If man was to come out of the human experience better than Satan had come out of his experience, then man had to be able, in some way, to resist a wrong way of life. Of course, that way is through the Messiah. Through the Messiah, the power of Satan is broken. Even so, one accomplishes this by degrees while we have opportunity to resist and work our spiritual muscles by doing what is right rather than what is wrong. In this way, we will be able to never sin once God gives us eternal life. We will have a bank of good character traits to draw from and build upon.
