"To Paul, brought up under the rigid Jewish Law, God was pre-eminently the God of Righteousness, i.e. moral perfection. In these days when the majority of people assume God to be a vague easy-going Benevolence it is difficult to appreciate the force of Paul's problem or the wonder of its solution.

If we are prepared the grant the absolute moral perfection of God, eternally aflame with positive goodness, truth and beauty, we can perhaps understand that any form of sin or evil cannot approach God without instant dissolution. This is as inevitable as, for example, the destruction of certain germs by the light of the sun.

How them, asks Paul, can man who has failed and, moreover, sinned deliberately, ever approach God or hope to share in his timeless existence?"

Originally published as part of Letters to Young Churches.