THE NATURE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST

THE NATURE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST

In what precisely did His death consist?

Question: What is "Death"?

The word "Death", when applied to human beings in the Bible, bears the idea of separation. The word in this sense is applied to two distinct experiences.

• Separation from God - Gen. 2:17; 3:6, 22-24
• Separation of spirit and body - Gen. 35:18-19
• The latter is the result of the former.
• The Death of Christ involved both of these experiences:

Separation from God - Matt. 27:46 "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

There is much of mystery here that no man can fathom. How the Eternal Son, one with the Father, could be forsaken by the Father is beyond our under­standing. But we know this much; He took our place, and bore our sins, and entered into our doom. Hence, He must go into the darkness alone, forsaken of God.

Should guard against error here:

• Not a metaphysical separation of two persons of the Godhead. This is impossible, for God is one essence.
• Not a personal separation of the divine from the human nature of Christ.
• Not a moral separation between the Father and the Son. The Father never loved His Son more than when He died at Calvary. "The Father loveth me, because I lay down my life." John 10:17

Therefore it was a spiritual separation of the Son from the Father, accomplished judicially (2 Cor. 5:21). "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

Separation of spirit and body - Matt. 27:50 "Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost."

The death of Christ was accompanied by the pouring out of His blood:
John 19:33-34 - Demonstrates the certainty of death. "But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water."

Notice the order of these experiences: First, forsaken of God. Then, physical death. The physical death was ultimately the result of His abandonment by the Father. Having voluntarily assumed the burden of human sin, He was forsaken by God, and physical death soon followed.

Whatever may have been the physical cause of Christ's death (ruptured heart, etc.), the spiritual cause was the main factor -----  the awful experience of being forsaken by God the Father, Christ was a sinless man. Therefore, to Him death could not have come from what we call natural causes. Only after God the Father abandoned Him did physical death come.

After death, Jesus entered Hades to announce His victory (1 Peter 3:18), and one who was there to hear the proclamation was Judas, while His body was supernaturally kept from decomposition (Acts 2:31). "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:"
"He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption."