Herein lies the greatest paradox of the Bible. Jesus was all man and all God at the same time. Therefore, Jesus' dead body was the dead body of God Himself. The Spirit of Christ became separated from the Father, and therefore spiritually dead, when He descended into hell. God the Father turned His face from Jesus on the cross because of His agony and the filth of sin that covered Him there. God, the Father, was separated from His Son. God was separated from Himself. This condition constitutes the very definition of spiritual death. But if Jesus had to die in the sinner's place, He had to be separated from God just as any sinner would be. For the following three days, Nietzsche was right. God was dead. Yet, the world was not destroyed, and God became alive again after three days. Revelation 1:18; John 10:30. This has to be the all time record for paradoxes. This paradox is further complicated by the fact that Jesus said in John 10:17 that He would raise Himself from the dead. Romans 6:4 states that the Father raised Him, and Romans 8:11 reveals that the Spirit raised Him. Humans cannot possibly understand all this, but one revelation remains certain. God's Love is truly all-powerful. Not only this, but it would seem that God's Love is even more powerful when dead than when alive!
Eve was deceived by Satan while she was in a state of innocence. This means her sin was one of weakness. No rational human blames a child for being deceived by a predator. How much more would the infinite compassion of God be extended to Eve. Yet, Eve had to have known that she was fallen. She could feel it. Her cruel sin was that she gave the forbidden fruit to her husband just to bring him down to her level. This act was her deliberate sin against God. Her action demonstrates the difference between sin and evil. Sin can be weak or deliberate, but evil can only be deliberate. God cleanses and forgives all sins of weakness, but God never forgives cruel and deliberate sins. Deliberate sins are allied with Satan and never seek forgiveness. God does cleanse and forgive deliberate sins when one repents of them because faith and repentance quickens the compassion of God for the weakness of man. In the end, God will separate all deliberate evil from mankind and cast it into the lake of fire forever. Luke 23:34; Revelation 20:15; Revelation 21:8.
Adam's deliberate sin was that he knew full well that he was disobeying God when he ate the forbidden fruit. The worst part of his sin was the failure of his faith. He failed to call on God his friend for His help. Adam's sin of weakness was that he did not want to lose physical love with his wife. Adam knew that she was now a sinner and he was not. He was afraid for her and did not desire separation from her. So, in an act of self-sacrificial love he fell to her level in order to be with her to protect and comfort her. His loving action demonstrated that he had not lost that noble image of God that God had put into him and which still remains with every human. Adam's loving act constituted a prophecy in action that someday a loving God would sacrifice Himself to liberate all of humanity from eternal separation from Him. I Timothy 2:14; Romans 5:12-21; I Corinthians 15:45-47; I Corinthians 15:22.
God will cleanse, sanctify, and forgive all sinners who are still in the flesh when they put their faith in the shed blood and water that flowed from Christ on the cross. God will judge the souls and spirits of all unbelievers following their physical deaths and consign each one of them to one of the three regions of the dead which are called the sea, death, or hell. Because Christ left the sins of all mankind behind in hell when He rose from the dead, God will use His consuming fire to separate the sins of all mankind from their lives which He created, burn up their sins of weakness including deliberate sins for which they repented, and cast all their unrepentant evil sins into the lake of fire. God will recover and recreate all of His goodness and life that He put into mankind. The Old Testament burnt offerings symbolized how God would purge His universe of all sin and evil. Deuteronomy 32:22; I Peter 1:18-23; Ephesians 5:25-27; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 20:11-15; Matthew 3:10-12; I Corinthians 15:20-28; I Corinthians 3:11-15; Colossians 1:15-20; Revelation 21:1-5; Revelation 21:8; Revelation 22:11-12.
No comments:
Post a Comment