The New Testament was written by those who had entered on a new
life of freedom and dignity, opened to them by the forgiveness of sins,
and who believed that their experience was offered to all human beings
as God's universal answer to the world's universal need. 'God has
consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all' ( Rom.
11: 32); 'All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God' ( Rom.
3: 23); 'The whole world is in the power of the evil one' ( 1 John 5:
19); 'In these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year'
( Heb. 10: 3); 'If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts
to your children . . .' ( Luke 11: 13); 'I wept much that no one was
found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it' ( Rev. 5: 4). The
universality of sin, explicitly stated by these writers, is implied by all:
for the primitive creed, which all shared, was that 'Christ died for our
sins'. ¹ To accept the new life by faith was at the same time to renounce
the old by repentance. The light of glory which illumined the present
and future cast a correspondingly dark shadow over the past from
which they had emerged and the environment from which they were
distinguished by God's grace. To them and to all people God had
spoken His redeeming word, and to deny the need for that redemption
was to call God a liar ( 1 John 1: 10).

This belief in the moral bankruptcy of the human race is expressed
in a rich and varied vocabulary, which frequently we find grouped
together in an admonitory list. ² Such groupings suggest that the

-74-