Featured Spiritual Death II

Gentlemen,

I see this subject as not worth arguing over.
There's no reason to accuse each other of being heretical, and no reason to be angry at one another.

I encourage you to hammer things out without getting into a fluff.
Let's all remember James 3:1-18.


It's not worth the damage.

 

I believe that a man is born flesh, soul, spirit. I state those Scriptures because it is evidently clear that Christ's physical death is what brought reconciliation, the forgiveness of sins through His blood.

There is a narrative out there that says Adam spiritually died therefore Christ had to spiritually died. That is false. Christ's blood and physical death and subsequent Resurrection accomplished our salvation.

 

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?" How much clearer do you want it?

 

Hello Jon,
Let me ask you...You post this openly. Do you think Adam was created with a dead spirit? or a spirit that was alive?
If Adam had a spirit that was alive...can you think of any event in scripture that would have left Adam...with a dead spirit?
I think I can, I think all the reformers,and puritans can. Not by myth or fable, but by scripture.

 

Clearer than that.

To me, the whole premise of Christ being forsaken by His Father is based on the implication of the verse above, or at least its isolation from other things that God has said:


" And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him." ( John 8:29 )

" Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again." ( John 10:17 ).

" Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth." ( John 9:31 )

" Then they took away the stone [from the place] where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up [his] eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.
42 And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said [it], that they may believe that thou hast sent me." ( John 11:41-42 )


Since Christ always did the will of His Father, and He always heard Jesus when He prayed, then His Father never left Him or forsook Him.
The verse you listed is, to me, Christ, as a man, expressing the same feelings on the cross, as David did in Psalms 22.


If you can demonstrate, from Scripture, that God the Father stopped loving God the Son, even while He was on the cross, then I'd say you have something. However, if you cannot build a case from God's word that He actually turned His back on His Son, then I have to disagree with you.

" I have been young, and [now] am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." ( Psalms 37:25 )


May God bless you.

 

I am glad to see you inching towards Covenant Theology. However, there is one major difference between the covenant between God and Adam, and the Sinaitic Covenant. The latter had an elaborate system of sacrifices which allowed God to pass over the sins of the Israelites until the one perfect sacrifice of Christ.

However, there was no arrangement to deal with the sin of Adam. '.....for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.' that's it; no arrangement to take away sin. In Genesis 2:25 we read, 'And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.' What does this mean and why does the Holy Spirit bother to tell us? Because we are to understand it theologically. Adam and Eve had no covering. There was no arrangement to cover sin. But that didn't matter because there was no sin. The couple came sinless from the hand of God who made them and pronounced what He had made 'very good.'

But as soon as they fell into sin, Adam and Eve were troubled by their nakedness. They knew that they had no covering, so they tried to make one themselves. But a man-made covering is worthless to hide one's sins (Isaiah 64:6) -- no more than a fig leaf. God saw right through it. The only covering for sin that satisfies the righteousness of God is the righteousness which He provides in Christ (c.f. Isaiah 61:10).

But the point is that Adam and Eve needed no covering before the fall simply because they were sinless. They were also spiritually alive because they were created by Christ (John 1:3) and so they walked with God..

 

There is no 'implication.' It's as clear as daylight. "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?" Either the Father forsook the Son during the three hours of darkness or the Scriptures are false. It's there in black and white. What we have to do is not to deny one set of Scriptures in order to accept another set, but to accept them all and harmonize them.

 

The payment for sin was completed before His physical death (John 19:28-30) and ressurrection (Romans 1:4).

 

We are in full agreement that Christ always did the will of the Father, and He always heard the Lord Jesus when He prayed (but c.f. Mark 14:36 etc.). The will of the Father was that He go to the cross with the sins of all God's elect, and the curse attaching to them, laid upon Him and to make full satisfaction for their sins, and this the Son did willingly (John 10:18). He was made sin, became a curse for us, and God, whose eyes are too pure to look upon sin approvingly, turned away. 'Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice..........' The Father heard the Son at the ninth hour and the sun came out again. Propitiation had been made, with the exception of His fulfillment of Psalm 69:21b and His actual death which followed almost at once (John 19:28-30).

Certainly, but He didn't lie to do it.

The Father never at any time stopped loving the Son. That is what makes our redemption so amazing! God's wrath was not upon Christ -- I've told @JonC this at least a dozen times. His wrath was against sin and Christ became sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21), taking the whole of the punishment that was due to us upon Himself, including separation from God (2 Thessalonians 1:9).

Nor was the righteous forsaken on the cross. He was personally innocent, but judicially guilty, our sins, and the curse attaching to them (Deuteronomy 27:26) having been laid upon Him (Isaiah 53:6; 1 Peter 2:24). He became a curse for us (Galatians 3:13).

And you too, my friend.

 

Since Christ created Adam (John 1:3), why would you think that Adam was 'of the flesh'?
God is certainly immutable; but that immutability has to take into account God's anointing of Saul and His subsequent rejection of him.

 

He didn't take the punishment that was due us as sinners...to do that, He would have had to suffer in Hell, eternally.
He only took our sins upon Him.
For Christ to suffer the wrath of God, would have meant His being consigned to Hell as a sinner and being in torment forever.

We as believers are washed in the blood of His perfect sacrifice...He did not suffer in our place.
I believe this was also dealt with in the other thread.



Steve, I don't believe that you're thinking this all the way through.
With that, I will refrain from replying on this subject further.

 

had He been only a man, He would certainly have had to suffer in hell eternally, but He is God as well as perfect Man, and the Father was satisfied with His propitiation, as proved by His resurrection.

Oh, in umpteen threads! But if people ask the same questions, I can only give them the same answers.

 

" Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: 24 whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it." ( Acts of the Apostles 2:23-24 )

The power of death, which is the fear of death.

" Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;
15 and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." ( Hebrews 2:15 ).

Christ defeated death and the fear of it.

" So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
55 O death, where [is] thy sting? O grave, where [is] thy victory?
56 The sting of death [is] sin; and the strength of sin [is] the law." ( 1 Corinthians 15:54-56 )

He defeated sin, and by it the power of death.