It took Jesus about three days from His suffering in the garden of Gethsemane through His crucifixion, death, and resurrection to accomplish His task of rescuing man from permanent separation from God, some by His grace and the rest by His recovery of His goodness in man and His recreation of man. This victory means God accomplished an eternal task in a finite amount of time. How God did this is a mystery, but God is all-powerful and can do anything. Luke 1:37.
In His death, burial, and resurrection Jesus provided three methods God uses for the salvation of mankind. Jesus shed His blood on the cross to cleanse believers from sin, separate them from sin, and empower the Holy Spirit to recreate their souls and spirits by giving them the righteousness of Christ and everlasting life with God in heaven. These are the believers who are saved by grace while still alive on the earth. I John 1:7; Revelation 1:5. But the blood of Jesus does not save the bodies of believers. The sinful nature of believers adheres to their flesh after they obtain salvation by grace. But Jesus shed water from His side on the cross to cleanse the fleshly sins of believers as they daily repent. John 13:1-17; I John 5:6-8. The shed water from Jesus' side symbolizes the power of the Holy Spirit to cleanse the fleshly sins of believers, but it also symbolizes the power of the Holy Spirit to cleanse the Church thoroughly from all unrepentant sins so that the Church can be presented as a chaste Bride for Christ at the Rapture of the Church. Ephesians 5:25-27; John 15:3. But just as God recreates the souls and spirits of believers, God must also recreate the bodies of believers as spiritual bodies like that of Christ Himself. This recreation means that God must use the water of His Word to separate the old, sinful bodies of believers from His new, recreated bodies of believers at the Rapture of the Church. Believers will leave their old, sinful bodies behind and will receive their new, spiritual bodies at the Rapture of the Church. Philippians 3:20-21; II Corinthians 5:1-5; I Corinthians 15:42-50; I John 3:2-3.
God possesses yet a third method that He uses to save the rest of humanity for recreation to live on His recreated, righteous earth. When Jesus died on the cross, His Spirit descended into hell and left behind all of the sins of humanity. This has to be true because Jesus' body was dead and separated from God because of man's sins. His Spirit was also separated from God in hell because of man's sins. But when He rose from the dead, He was again completely holy and righteous. Christ also possessed the keys of hell and death when He arose which clearly shows that He came to earth to destroy all the works of the Devil including the separation of all of mankind from God. The possession of keys means the power to liberate. Revelation 1:18. I John 3:8 clearly teaches that Jesus came to "destroy the works of the devil." One of the main works of the Devil consists in his attempt to destroy all mankind in hell, but according to I John 3:8, Jesus had to have destroyed that evil work of the Devil by rescuing all of mankind from hell. God created hell for the Devil and his angels, not for humanity. Matthew 26:41. This fact can only mean that God uses hell as His consuming fire to burn away and separate the sins of humanity not saved by grace from their good works which He recovers in a pool that He uses to recreate a righteous human race to dwell on His recreated earth. Just as the Holy Spirit can wash the believer in the blood of Jesus the moment he believes even though Jesus died on the cross two thousand years ago, so the unbeliever must await the judgment of God's consuming fire to have his good works separated from his sins even though Jesus left the unbeliever's sins behind in hell two thousand years ago. God can do this because He connects every moment of time to eternity. Perhaps this fact also explains how Christ could accomplish an eternal work in a finite amount of time. I Corinthians 3:12-15; Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 21:1-5; Revelation 22:11-12; Hebrews 12:25-29; Hebrews 13:10-14; Romans 11:36; Revelation 4:11.
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