The Demeaning Death of Deity
I want to mentally immerse you in the sufferings of Christ because only by hard repetition of cruel facts can we humans begin to really see what the Savior endured for us in His hour of Passion. Let’s look once again at the way God chose to save mankind. Actually it was the only way that would conform simultaneously to His strict righteous code and His love and mercy. God was restricted by His own righteousness and justice to one method by which He could save mankind. There was only one path to take: God had to give His own life for the life of His fallen creature. God had to die.*
* Instructor’s Note: Perhaps you are wondering how God could be restricted in any way. you are protesting, “Why? He is God!” This is an interesting puzzle. I have maintained that God is all-powerful and that no one and nothing can successfully oppose Him, yet I am now saying that God had to die. First, remember that the Spirit of God did not die; the fleshly body that He inhabited died. And, secondly, God alone restricted God. His own righteous and just nature demanded death for sin, at which point His own love and mercy devised the means of salvation (a means we have already amply propounded in this work) for all who believe in Jesus Christ.
When the believer in Christ dies he loses only his natural life. There is no change in the most important aspect of existing, which is eternal life. As we step over the Great Divide between natural life and its abrupt cutting off in death, our eternity of being continues separate and serene. There is not the slightest ripple on the surface of our sea of eternity. That is what eternal life is all about. The term connotes more than mere forever existence: sinners will have that, but such existence cannot be called “living.” The “forever existence” for sinners only means existing in a damned state. Eternal life is life glorious and free, attended by joy and peace and praising the God who made such a state possible.
Jesus’ death was not nearly so simple as that of the ordinary righteous man. It was a tragedy and a travesty of justice that the Great Judge who does all things with equity and justice should have died with not the semblance of human justice shown to Him. Jesus’ death was, in fact, the diametric and extreme opposite of justice. How could there be such an egregious wrong committed on the only inherently just Man who ever lived? How could heaven bear with such utter disregard shown by a worm for its Creator?
In the tragedy of the Christ we see not just the death of a royal personage, but one who sacrificed divine majesty and glory for the sake of love. Yet there were no grand funeral rites, no formal obsequies that always attend the death of a monarch or person of renown. This Man was by far the greatest of all men; He was the God of heaven – and men spit on him and reviled Him before He died, and even after, when He hanged a lifeless corpse on the tree of shame, a soldier had the effrontery to thrust a spear into His side. Even in death Jesus was humiliated.
An Unbreakable Bond of Divinity
At this point we want to revisit only briefly the reason that Jesus, who was God Himself, had to die for mankind. We read of Jesus often referring to the Father with whom, He said, He was one. (John 10.30; 17.11, 22) It was true. The Father was always with Jesus just as He is always with us, even when we cannot sense His presence. No doubt, at some time during the forty days of temptation in the desert, Jesus must have experienced that black moment when He couldn't feel the Father’s nearness. But He knew, despite the lack of awareness of the Father’s imminence, that the Father was there.
In the
(The text above is merely a snippet taken from the book, The Life of Christ in Five Phases by Aaron J. Smith. To purchase this unusual book, go to this online address: http://bit.ly/U05x1 )
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