In Genesis 2:17, God commanded the man He had created not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and if he did, he would die that very day. Before Adam and Eve sinned, they had enjoyed a joyful and loving friendship with God. God, in human form as the Lord Jesus Christ, had come to walk and talk with them in the cool evenings of every day. In other words, Adam and Eve enjoyed a spiritual relationship with God. When God told Adam that he would die if he disobeyed Him, He meant that that spiritual friendship would end. When Adam and Eve sinned, they knew that that friendship was broken, and so they tried to cover their shame with fig leaves and hide from God. When Christ came to talk with them, He called to them, but they did not come out of hiding. They were too ashamed to talk with Christ anymore face to face. In that very day, Adam and Eve had descended into a state of spiritual death.
In addition to spiritual death, God punished Eve with sorrow in childbirth and Adam with hard labor for life. God cursed the Devil, and He cursed the ground which contains Death and Hell, but God never cursed the good lives of Adam and Eve that He had created. Sin had sullied the lives of Adam and Eve and all future humans, but God determined that He would do all the work necessary to rescue mankind from the curse that had infected their lives and restore their lives to fellowship with Him. Genesis 3:15. The "seed" of the serpent was this eternal curse which had infected and sullied the lives of Adam and Eve but had not destroyed them. The "seed" of the woman was not only the Lord Jesus Christ who would save mankind but all of mankind itself. Genesis 3:20. Only God possesses the knowledge and power necessary to get rid of this curse within the good lives that He has created for all humans. God cannot lose anything He has ever created, certainly not to the Devil. Numbers 23:19; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Romans 11:29; Luke 20:38.
During Jesus' ministry on earth, He sometimes taught about Hell, Death. and the Sea. This account relates His teachings about life and death. Revelation 20:13.
In Matthew 16:28; Mark 9:1; and Luke 9:27, Jesus informed Peter, James, and John that they would not "taste of death" until they had experienced the Kingdom of God. Six days later they experienced the Kingdom of God with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus used the curious phrase "taste of death" instead of simply telling them they would not die. Taste is a temporary experience. One can taste food but for a few moments and then it passes away. Jesus deliberately used this phrase symbolically to indicate that His believers would always only experience a temporary death. The spiritual deaths of His believers until they become "born again" into His Kingdom amounts to but a temporary death. The physical deaths of His believers until they receive their new, spiritual bodies at the Rapture of the Church also amounts to but a temporary death. In addition, Jesus and the Holy Spirit always referred to the physical deaths of His believers as being merely "asleep." John 11:11; Mark 5:39; I Corinthians 15:51; I Thessalonians 4:13-14. In John 11:4, Jesus affirmed that Lazarus' sickness was "not unto death." But in verse 14, Jesus plainly stated that Lazarus was dead. No contradiction exists. In verse 4, Jesus meant that Lazarus, as a believer, could never be permanently separated from God by spiritual death. In verse 14, Jesus simply informed His disciples that Lazarus had suffered a temporary physical death. Since God is Almighty and has complete power over death, then Hebrews 2:8-9 must mean that Jesus suffered a temporary death in order to cause every man to suffer only a temporary death. Verse 8 can only mean that God will recover and recreate the lives of every human He has ever created to be put back into subjection to His control and rule. Verse 9 relates the means God will use to cause every person He has ever created to suffer but a temporary spiritual and physical death. In the general resurrection when God recreates the heavens and the earth, He will separate the living, who belong to Him, from the dead, who are totally evil, and consign only the dead to the lake of fire forever. John 5:28-29; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 20;15; Revelation 21:1-8; Revelation 22:11-12; Colossians 1:15-20; I Corinthians 15:22-23; Ecclesiastes 3:14.
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