The God
Chapter Eight
DID GOD DIE? PART TWO
DID GOD DIE?
We again come face to face with the question; did God die? Several years ago a book was published on the crucifixion entitled, “The day that God died.” This title is a total misnomer. God is eternal. God cannot die. If Jesus is God as the eternal Father is God, He could not die. Trinitarians acknowledge that God cannot die but believe since Jesus was fully God and fully human, it is the human Jesus who died. This conclusion, however, presents a serious problem for those who believe Jesus was born with the Adamic nature which is believed to be intrinsically sinful. If only the fully human Jesus died, there remains the problem of His presumed inheritance of the Adamic nature which would make Him a sinner from birth and disqualify Him from being the sinless sacrifice demanded by God. Catholics get around this perceived problem by postulating the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Protestants simply see the divine nature of Jesus overriding His Adamic nature and therefore Jesus was sinless.
Jesus could not have died as the eternal God because an eternal God cannot die. Therefore, Jesus had to die as a human. He shed human blood and experienced human pain. And yes, He had human nature, that Adamic nature that Catholic theologians were so concerned about that they developed the doctrine of Immaculate Conception.
The scriptures do not teach the doctrine of Immaculate Conception. While Catholic theologians will refer to some scriptures as supposedly supporting this doctrine, it is basically a humanly created attempt to explain away a perceived Christological problem which sees Jesus being born a sinner. Protestants believe that because Jesus was God in the flesh, He was able to override His inherited sin nature derived through human birth. Therefore, the divine nature of Jesus negated any stain of sin inherited from Mary.
Paul wrote that Jesus had human nature by virtue of being a descendant of David. There is no scriptural reason to believe Jesus went to the cross without His human nature. If having human nature is sinful in and of itself, Jesus would have gone to the cross as a sinner. If this is the case, Jesus could not have been the sinless sacrifice for our sin.
IS THE ADAMIC NATURE SINFUL, IN AND OF ITSELF?
I submit we are not born a sinner. We are born with a nature that gravitates to sin but it is not inherently sinful in and of itself. We are born with a nature driven by temptation to sin. All humans have this nature from birth and so did Jesus. The difference between Jesus and all other humans who have been born is that Jesus never succumbed to the temptation generated by His nature while all other humans have.
It is commonly taught we are sinners because of what Adam did in the Garden. What did Adam do in the Garden? What Adam did in the Garden is succumb to the nature he was created with, a nature we are subsequently all born with. A nature Jesus was born with. Adam succumbed to temptation. Adam succumbing to temptation didn’t create human nature. He already had that. Adam, in surrendering to the temptation generated by His nature, is what produced sinful behavior. Sinful behavior is behavior that runs contrary to the will of God. The Adamic nature is a sinful nature in so much as it gravitates to sin. But it is not sinful in and of itself. Having human nature is not sin. Succumbing to the pulls of human nature is what produces sin.
James 1:14-15: each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
Paul clearly states in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death. Sin and death is a human problem. It is also a God problem because God created man with a nature that gravitates to the sin that causes death. You could further argue that since it is a God problem, God rectified the problem by stepping into human flesh in the person of Jesus and paid the death penalty on behalf of His human creation. This is the argument presented by those who believe Jesus is God.
The problem with this argument is that God cannot die. Dying Gods are seen in pagan religions. You will find nothing in the Biblical scriptures that teaches God could die would die or did die. The idea of the one and only Supreme, Creator God dying or a dimension of Him dying is based on the belief Jesus is a dimension of this one God. Scripture doesn’t teach it was required that God die to save the human race from eternal death. The Scriptures teach God required a human sacrifice for the sins of the world. This human sacrifice was prefigured by the animal sacrifices under the Old Covenant.
Hebrews 2:17-18: For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Jesus wasn’t made like God in every way. He was made like us humans in every way. We humans are not God in the flesh. We humans are mortal Beings having a nature that is driven by temptation to behave contrary to God’s will. Jesus was a mortal Being tempted just as we are tempted. He struggled with His temptations just as we do. He had to cry out to God for the power to resist temptation just as we do. Jesus became perfect by the things He suffered not by being God in the Flesh. If Jesus was God in the flesh, all this talk of He struggling to overcome temptation would be a sham. As God He would have no trouble at all resisting temptation. To conclude all this human activity and behavior ascribed to Jesus pertains to His humanity while He was all the while God in the flesh is not supported by the scriptures.
If Jesus wasn’t capable of sinning He wasn’t made like His brothers in every way. If Jesus was incapable of sin, then He didn’t truly share in our humanity as scripture indicates.
CONCLUSION:
It should be evident from the scriptures we have discussed that human nature is not intrinsically sinful but, in the absence of the power of God’s spirit and the presence of the divine nature, human nature will easily surrender to temptation and sin. Jesus was born with the same nature we all are born with but because of the Spirit of God and presence of the divine nature from birth, He was able to resist temptation and never sin.
Therefore, there is no need to manufacture a doctrine such as the Immaculate Conception to mitigate a sinful birth for Jesus. There is no need to postulate Jesus had to be God in the flesh in order to be the perfect sacrifice for sin. Just the opposite is true. Jesus had to be a total human in the flesh so He could experience what we experience and be tempted like we are tempted. We don’t have a duel nature. Jesus didn’t have a dual nature. Jesus had the same single nature we have. If Jesus had a duel nature, He would not have been made like us in every way. Jesus had to experience what we experience in order to be a merciful and faithful high priest, representing us before His Father God. Jesus even had to experience our sin. He did that when He took our sin upon Himself on the cross.
Sin is all about yielding to temptation. Jesus never yielded to temptation, not because He was literally God in the flesh but because God resided in Him through His Spirit which provided Him the power to overcome temptation. When we allow the scriptures to define Jesus, we see a totally human man having the same nature we all have with the exception of being fully imbibed with the Spirit of His Father and participating in the divine nature from birth. While this gave Jesus the power to remain sinless, His remaining sinless came with the struggle to resist temptation. As I already said, when we see Jesus in this light, it makes what He did a truly extraordinary event. When we understand that Jesus was totally human and struggled to overcome temptation so He could be the sinless sacrifice for our sins, it should elevate our love for Jesus to new heights.
THE TWO
The scriptures compare Jesus with the first Adam. The first Adam was directly created by God, placed in the Garden of Eden and given authority over the physical creation. This first Adam was created with human nature which succumbed to temptation. All humans have followed in the footsteps of the first Adam except one. As the second Adam, Jesus did not cave in to temptation but lived a sinless life and was thus able to be the perfect sacrifice for the sin that began with the first Adam. The scriptures clearly show that as sin came about as a result of the actions of the man Adam, salvation from the consequences of sin came about as the result of the actions of the man Jesus.
Paul speaks of the first Adam being a pattern of the one that was to come (Romans 5:14). The first Adam was born without sin and given opportunity to reign over creation. The first Adam had the ability to sin. This Adam yielded to temptation and consequently was banished from the garden and assigned to death. Like the first Adam, Jesus, the second Adam, was born without sin, but unlike the first Adam was able to resist temptation and never sin and was subsequently granted eternal life and rule over all creation and became the vehicle through whom death is replaced with life for all of mankind. Because of sin, the first Adam was limited to being a living human Being subject to eternal death. The last Adam, by not sinning, could not be held by death and was resurrected to life and became a life giving Spirit.
1 Corinthians 15:45: The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.
Romans 5:15-19: For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
It was through the disobedience of the man Adam that sin and death came about. It was through the obedience of the man Jesus (the second or last Adam) that sin and death is eliminated. Since God cannot be tempted or die, it should be plain that Jesus is not the eternal God. Jesus was tempted. Jesus died. Jesus was made to be like all other humans. There is not a hint in any of this that while Jesus was experiencing all this humanity He was also God incarnate. The first Adam was directly created by God. Jesus, as the second Adam, was directly created by God in the womb of Mary. In order for Jesus to be like Adam He had to be totally human. He had to be able to sin like Adam did and die like Adam died. Adam was not both human and divine. Adam was totally human and so was Jesus.
It has been said that you can’t really know how someone else feels until you walk in their shoes. Jesus walked in our shoes. The shoes we walk in are 100% human shoes. For Jesus to truly experience humanity He needed to be totally human, not totally human and totally divine. To postulate that Jesus had a dual nature of humanity and Divinity is to virtually devalue what Jesus accomplished.
In Acts chapter one, Peter identifies Jesus as God’s servant (verse 13 & 26), as God’s Christ (verse 18) and as the offspring of Abraham (verse 25). A careful reading of the scriptures will show they do not teach the Messiah was to be God in the flesh. The OT indicates the promised Messiah would be a ruler in the mold of Moses and David. This is what the Jews have always believed and believe unto this day.
Moses and David did not exist prior to their human birth. The Jews have never concluded from the Old Testament Scriptures that the Messiah would be a pre-existent Being. There great failure was that they did not recognize fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies in the first century and most Jews fail to recognize such fulfillment to this very day.
Because of what Jesus accomplished as the human Son of God and because of His elevation to being the most powerful Being in the universe next to God, Jesus is worthy of the highest level of reverence next to God Himself. While Jesus is not in anyway co-equal, co-eternal or consubstantial with the One and Only Most High God, He is above all powers extant under the One and Only Most High God and is to be worshiped accordingly.