Easter Lesson 3 - Part C Our Lord's Spiritual Death 1

C. His Spiritual Death

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Now, at this point in our narrative, we are going to look at the events that came to be while He was hanging upon that cross.  During this time, our Lord bore our sins on the cross.  While Christ was bearing the imputation and judgment for our sins, God caused a supernatural darkness to fall upon the local area.  The Scripture says this:

ü It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour, because the sun was obscured.  Luke 23:44-45a

“The sun was obscured” looks like this in the Greek: του ἡλιου ἐκλειποντος TOU HELIOU EKLEIPONTOS, literally reads, “the sun was darkened.” “Darkened” is the genitive absolute of the present active participle of εκλειπω EKLEIPO, an old verb that means, “to leave out, omit, pass by, to fail, to die.” The word describes an eclipse of the sun or moon.  These three hours of darkness, however, were miraculous, not an eclipse.  We know this because during the Passover season, the moon always shines fully.  This God-sent darkness shrouded the cross as the Father made the Son of God sin for us. Many documents change this correct text to “the sun was darkened” to head off the false doctrine that this was an eclipse. It was during this three-hour period that He accomplished His saving work by taking the imputation of the sins of the world and bearing the punishment of every sin.  This darkness continued three hours, between noon and 3 PM. No one ever saw the agony of our Lord Jesus Christ while being judged for every sin in human history.  It was as though all nature was sympathizing with the Creator as He suffered and died.  Just as three days of darkness preceded the first Passover in Egypt, three hours of darkness preceded the death of God’s Lamb for the sins of the world (John 1:29). [Wiersbe, W. W. (1996, c1989). The Bible exposition commentary. “An exposition of the New Testament comprising the entire 'BE' series”--Jkt. (Lk 23:44). Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books.]

ü About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken or abandoned Me?” Matthew 27:46

When God the Father imputed our sins to Christ and judged them, both He and God the Holy Spirit had to abandon Him.  This abandonment is the essence of spiritual death, in our Lord’s case, substitutionary spiritual death.  By this scream, yell or cry, He made clear exactly what He was doing on the cross.  He was in a state of separation, of abandonment by God because the Father made Him sin for us:

ü He made Him who knew no sin to be made sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.  2 Corinthians 5:21

This three-hour period is the focal point in human history, the pinnacle of the angelic conflict.  By these words, Jesus led us to discover the fact of His substitutionary spiritual death.  This is a rhetorical question as well as a prayer to the Father.  To us, He was speaking rhetorically, knowing what He was doing, but we, as humans need to be directed to this understanding. 

Why didn’t He just yell out, “I’m bearing the punishment for your sins!!”  The issue always comes down to our volition!  Do you want to know?  Do you want to grow up spiritually?  Is the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, especially how He died for each of us so important to you that you follow His lead?  Is the understanding that your choice to believe in Him, to be delivered from the miserable hell-bound existence into the glories of Heaven eternally, important to you?  This is a test of your volition, for which you answer to God!  So important was His cry that it appears in all three of the Biblical languages.  First, it appears in Psalm 22:1 as one of David’s Messianic prophecies, then in this verse in the Aramaic and Greek.

ü My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.  Psalm 22:1

In the Hebrew, quoted from Psalm 22:1, the interrogative Hebrew adverb LAMAH is translated “why.”  It literally means “for what reason.”  It indicates a rhetorical question.  The doubling of the vocative, “My God, My God,” [ELI, ELI] is usually a Hebrew idiom for intensity. The fact that this was an intense situation is a gross understatement.  We will never understand the intensity of Jesus’ suffering.  He addressed this to God the Father because He was applying His omnipotence in imputing our sins to His beloved Son; because He was applying His justice to judging the sins of the entire world on His Son’s perfect body.  Yes, He spoke these words in great intensity.  However, as we will study, these words refer to much more than the intensity of His suffering.

The Greek word “forsaken” is a composite of three words, “to leave,” “down,” and “in.” The first has the idea of forsaking a person. The second suggests rejection, defeat and helplessness. The third refers to some place or circumstance. The total meaning of the word is that of forsaking someone in a state of defeat or helplessness in the midst of hostile circumstances. The word means, “to abandon, desert, to leave in straits, to leave helpless, to leave destitute, to leave in the lurch, to let one down.” “All these meanings were included in that awful cry that came from the lips of the Son of God as He…” was dying for lost humanity. [Wuest’s Word Studies p. 87]  To expand the concept of abandonment: Our Lord cried out, “My God, My God, why have You left Me helpless, destitute, in the lurch, why have You let Me down.” 

He addressed these words to God the Holy Spirit as well as to the Father. All through our Lord’s life on earth, as the God-Man, He depended upon the empowerment of God the Holy Spirit.  That was part God’s plan for His life.  He was the first human being to be empowered by the filling of the Holy Spirit, as compared to certain Old Testament believers whom the Spirit endued with power.  He was the God-Man, who as a human lived in total dependence upon the Spirit.  That was His normal life on earth. We are to live in total dependence upon the Spirit as well.  The Scripture documents that the Spirit empowered Him:

ü Jesus being full of the Holy Spirit returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.  Luke 4:1

The Holy Spirit’s empowerment characterized our Lord’s entire life. The Spirit energized His every prayer.  He overcame temptation by means of the Word and the power of the Spirit.  He performed most, if not all, of His miracles by the Spirit.  But now, when He needed the help of the Holy Spirit most, in the moment of His direst need, the Holy Spirit left Him helpless and destitute. He left Him in a proverbial lurch. He let Him down in a set of circumstances that were antagonistic, frightfully terrible. Abandoned by both the Father and the Spirit, rejected by the human race, laden with humanity’s sin, all the while, suffering the excruciating anguish of crucifixion, He suffered all alone.  How do we know this?

We need to go back to an Old Testament ritual offering which pointed to our Lord’s then future sacrificial death:

ü But if his means are insufficient for two turtledoves or two young pigeons, then for his offering for that which he has sinned, he shall bring the tenth of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering; he shall not put oil on it or place incense on it, for it is a sin offering. Leviticus 5:11

A person making a sin offering, too poor to afford the required two turtledoves or two pigeons, could bring the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour.  An ephah of flour was just enough to bake one day’s supply of bread. Offering this quantity of bread flour, just enough to stay alive for one day, typified the giving up of life.  This offering pointed directly to our Lord’s sacrificial spiritual death. This offering could include neither frankincense nor oil.  Frankincense is a type of positively answered prayer. Was our Lords prayer, “why have you forsaken Me,” answered positively?  Absolutely not!  Heaven abandoned Him, rejecting His entreaty to be spared the cross.  You see, flour without frankincense speaks of our Lord’s death and His negatively answered prayer for release from the Cross.  Oil was forbidden in this sacrifice because it is a type of the Holy Spirit. Flour without oil speaks of the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit’s sustaining presence at the Cross.  The Holy Spirit left our Lord while He bore our sins and their punishment on the cross.

Now, though we understand that our Lord was abandoned by both the Father and Spirit, we do not yet understand why He was so utterly forsaken.

ü He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

Let us revisit Psalm twenty-two, to the entire Psalm, which our Lord either partially or entirely quoted while He was on the cross detailing what exactly was happening on the cross. Though the Gospels quote Him as saying the first line, some insist that He quoted it in its entirety, with good cause.  In either case, He pointed us to this great Psalm.  It clearly answers the question our Lord asked in His prayer to the Father.  Two factors clearly stand out in the Psalm: one deals with the character of the Father, while the other, deals with the work our Lord accomplished.

Psalm 22:3 provides the answers to our Lord's question, “Why have You forsaken Me?”  The entire Psalm describes His work on the cross.  Though we will not study it beyond two verses, the outline of the entire Psalm looks like this, if you want to look at it on your own time.

Psalm 22:1 - 6 speaks of His abandonment by Deity.

Psalm 22:7 - 13 tells of the ridicule to which He was subjected.

Psalm 22:14 -18 describes His physical sufferings.

Psalm 22:19 - 21 are His prayer for resurrection.

Psalm 22:22 - 32 constitutes His praise for the answer to that prayer even before the prayer for resurrection was actually answered.  [Wuest: Ibid]

Again, these verses, Psalm 22:2-3 answer the question: “Why have you forsaken Me?” from the perspective of the Father’s character: The Hebrew phrase WA ATAH QADOSH is translated, “because You are holy.”  God's holiness, His integrity, consists of His perfect justice and perfect righteousness.  Both the Father and the Spirit abandoned our Lord Jesus during those three hours because He was receiving the imputation and judgment of our sins.  God the Father had to forsake Him because His integrity demanded, and continues to demand that He not come into contact with sin.  He must reject it because of His character.  He not only forsook His Son, but He judged the world’s sin on Him because He is perfectly just.  The Father, because He is righteous, rejected the sins of the human race.  His justice judged all the personal sins of the human race as He imputed them onto His Son.  The Father, because He is righteousness, condemned all our personal sins.  The Father in His justice judged our personal sins.  He previously passed over our personal sins, those of the entire world, withholding their justly deserved judgment until He judged them in His Son’s body on the cross.

ü …whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; Romans 3:25

ü Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us - for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”  Galatians 3:13

The second answer to our Lord's question, “why have You forsaken Me?" revolves around one Hebrew word, TOLAH in Psalm 22:6.  This answer comes from the perspective of Christ, His deity toward His humanity while being made sin for us.

ü But I am a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and despised by the people.  Psalm 22:6

TOLAH refers to the coccus iliacus, a very unusual worm that was harvested, crushed, and then put into a very large vat.  In this manner, artisans manufactured a crimson dye designed to color king's robes.  The robes of royalty were produced from this worm’s blood.  On the cross, the judgment of our sins crushed the perfect and impeccable humanity of Christ.  Therefore, He calls Himself תּוֹלָע TOLAH, for the weight of those sins crushed Him as the Father judged those sins on His body.  It was as if He was turning on Himself; His Deity reflecting on the sins His body was bearing and redeeming.  Jesus Christ, who had lived a perfect life, a sinless life, should at its close be guilty of not just one loathsome deed, but the sins of the entire world?  From the exalted position of His deity, He looks down upon himself, loathes and repudiates the sins He is bearing. Our Lord as the Son of God, holy, spotless, repudiated His own humanity now laden with sin, but not even His own sin.  Hear His words again: [Wuest's word studies from the Greek New Testament : For the English reader (Bypaths in the Greek New Testament: p.88-91). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.]

ü But I am a worm…(a TOLAH).  Psalm 22:6

Also, prophetically from David, looking down the centuries:

ü For evils beyond number have surrounded me; My iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to see; They are more numerous than the hairs of my head, And my heart has failed me. Psalm 40:12

That God the Father was imputing and judging the sins of the world on His body on the cross is analogous to the worm being crushed in a vat, so that its blood can be used for the manufacture of royal robes.  Because our Lord was judged for our sins on the cross, that is, crushed, we now wear the royal robes of His imputed righteousness.  God the Father imputes His own righteousness, and we share the righteousness of Christ through the baptism of the Spirit. [Thieme]

While undergoing substitutionary spiritual death, both the Father and the Holy Spirit had to forsake the Son but He also had to remain perfect while being forsaken.  Paul, in the Hebrews documents this:

ü [He] offered Himself without blemish to God….  Hebrews 9:14

The fact that He did not become corrupt while taking on the sins of the world means that His was a substitutionary spiritual death. He died in our place.  Accepting the imputation of every sin committed in human history did not make Christ a sinner, but the offering for those sins.  Christ was not a sinner by choice, but a sin offering by choice.  He offered Himself to God the Father to atone those sins.  The Father, because He is omnipotent and just, was propitiated or satisfied with His offering.

Our Lord did not have an old sin nature at birth; and He never sinned for thirty-three years because He chose to remain inside the Holy Spirit’s dynasphere, or power sphere, sustained and supported by His omnipotence.  Therefore, when our Lord arrived at the cross, He was perfect, ready to become a sin offering.  He never sinned.  Therefore, since all those sins imputed to Him had no affinity with anything in our Him, His was a substitutionary spiritual death, not a real spiritual death. In our real spiritual death, we are separated from God; there is a barrier between man and God.  We are also dichotomous, having only a body and soul.  But in a substitutionary spiritual death, Jesus Christ is separated from God the Father and the Spirit as a trichotomous person, having body, soul, and human spirit. The imputation of our sins to Christ was a judicial imputation, because there was no real affinity between our sins and the impeccable humanity of Christ inside the prototype divine dynasphere.  The omnipotence of God the Father imputed to the impeccable humanity of Christ what was not antecedently His own. 

That both the Spirit and the Father forsook Him brings up another question: How was He able to apply doctrine if the Spirit was no longer enabling Him to do so?  When we lose the Spirit’s empowerment, we lose the power to apply doctrine.  We do have the ability, however, to apply one category of doctrine.  That category of doctrine is what motivates you to name that sin or sins to the Father returning you to fellowship with Him and the Spirit.  Because we each have an old sin nature, we immediately start to corrupt the doctrines in our soul with scar tissue, rendering it inapplicable.  Not only that, but Satan immediately ensnares us in his system of cosmic power, which distorts our thinking.

Our Lord had no sin nature nor was He ever susceptible to cosmic influence so He was able to apply Bible doctrine without distortion without the Spirit’s power.  Therefore, He relied upon one source of strength to sustain Him while undergoing the crushing weight of our sins:  The Word of God! 

Do you see the importance of doctrine, the importance of the thoughts of Christ circulating through out your soul?  The power of the Word is far greater than we can comprehend, yet God has given this power to us without measure.  The only limitation to applying this power is our volition, which so often is negative!  What is our first clue to His use of this power? His continual prayer of intercession which was one powerful application of virtue love:

ü Father forgive them for they do not know what they do.  Luke 23:34

This fulfills one of Isaiah’s Messianic prophecies:

ü And He made intercessions for the transgressors.  Isaiah 53:12

Now, at this point, I am going to take the time to address a passage that I previously taught as documenting the Spirit’s empowerment of Christ while He was on the cross.  I want to correct my misinterpretation of this passage.  Now, in so doing, I have gained a much better understanding of our Lord’s volitional involvement when He became our substitute.  Had I not seen the error of my ways, I never would have received this lesson.  It is certainly germane to our total understanding of our Lord’s work for us as well. I have talked about the importance of our Lord’s volition before, but always as a general principle but without the direct statement of Scripture.  Not only had I misinterpreted the phrase we are going to look at, but I had missed the blessing derived from correct interpretation! Let us read a couple of verses before the phrase to establish a context for the lesson:

ü But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.  For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Hebrews 9:11-14 NASB

We want to take a closer look at is this phrase in verse 14:

ü Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself…”  Hebrews 9:14

First, we need to correct the translation, make the correct application, then learn the lesson this phrase is teaching.  The first word is CHRISTOU, transliterated as Christ, our Lord’s title, referring to His being the Messiah.  His Messianic title, in this verse and in our phrase is not in the nominative case because I borrowed it from the previous phrase.  “Christ” is the antecedent of the next word so I thought it appropriate to bring His title, which refers to His person, over!  The next word is HOS, a relative pronoun, translated “who,” referring to our Lord. The next word, DIA is the preposition of intermediate instrumentality, which means “through” or more accurately, “by virtue of.”  The word it modifies has to be in the genitive case.  PNEUMATOS, translated, “spirit” follows.  This is an anarthrous noun in the genitive neuter singular. There is no definite article before the word “spirit.” We will discuss this word in more detail in the following discussion.  AIONIOU is the genitive adjective translated, “eternal,” referring to an attribute of the spirit.  HEAUTON is the accusative masculine pronoun, which is translated, “of himself” or “his” So the corrected translation should read this way:

ü Christ, who by virtue of His eternal spirit offered Himself…  Hebrews 9:14

I had previously taught that the reference to “spirit” here referred to the Holy Spirit.  As I was preparing to teach this series, just as I had last year, I detected a problem.  How could God the Holy Spirit sustain our Lord on the cross while being made sin for us yet leave us out of fellowship when we sin?  Perhaps, I reasoned, that under substitutionary spiritual death, the Spirit still empowers.  Still, I thought that I needed to look a bit deeper into the subject.  The first thing I did was to look at the verse that I had used as a source of the erroneous teaching.  The problem, as we have just seen, began with mistranslation, then misinterpretation. 

The problem with the original interpretation, from just a grammatical standpoint, stems from two factors.  First, as your NASB translation indicates by a footnote, the correct translation is “His” and not “the.”  Secondly, the “His” should refer to someone very close syntactically in the passage.  We do not need to look very far to see that from a common sense standpoint, that Jesus Christ is the referent.  “His,” then, refers to something belonging to our Lord!  The Holy Spirit does not even appear in the overall context in this passage.  The overall context of the passage is the sacrificial work of our Lord.  The author is comparing or rather contrasting the ritual animal sacrifices with our Lord’s efficacious sacrifice.

From a context of Scripture point of view, there is also a problem: both this phrase and Leviticus 5:11 could not be true.  One passage had to be mistranslated and or misinterpreted, or both.  Usually mistranslation leads to misinterpretation.  If this phrase referred to the Holy Spirit, then there would have been an obvious contradiction between this phrase and Leviticus 5:11.  I know that there are no contradictions in the Scripture, so by comparing Scripture with Scripture we should be able to get a clue as to which passage is correctly interpreted.  We found out, by exegesis that the English translation of the passage has an apparent weakness! 

The next thing I did was to ask myself to what the “Spirit of Christ” refers.  At this point, I went to my learned colleagues to see if, first, I was alone in seeing a discrepancy here.  I was relieved to find that I was not!  The principles of application I have put together here have resulted from a synthesis of my own doctrinal understanding and the comments of A. T. Roberson, Kenneth Wuest, M. R. Vincent and R. B. Thieme, Jr. 

The first issue deals with the sacrificed animals. The context of this passage is a comparison between the efficacy of the animal blood and of our Lord’s blood that He shed on the cross.  We know that His blood refers to His sacrificial work, which we will detail in a few minutes.

(1) The animals’ sacrifice could cleanse ceremonial defilements, which the Law specified, but our Lord’s sacrifice actually purifies us from sin. 

(2) The animals had no “spirit or will to consent in the act of sacrifice; they were offered according to the Law…”  Our Lord’s spirit, as eternal as He is, includes as an attribute of His person, His will, His volition. is HHis integrity and virtue love under-gird His will. His will, existing from eternity past, is the consenting act of His divine Personality, which from before time acquiesced in, and brought into being the Father’s redemptive purpose.  His eternal Spirit is not the Spirit of the Father dwelling in Christ’s humanity, nor is it the Holy Spirit given without measure to Christ, but it is “the divine Spirit of the Godhead which Christ Himself had and was in His inner Personality.”  His will was completely involved in His sacrifice. 

(3) These animals did not even have an enduring life or intrinsic value on which to base a sacrifice. They were a ritual pointing to our Lord’s actual sacrifice. Only His sacrifice was eternal, and totally unlimited and efficacious. 

Now the question, how does His divine spirit relate to His human spirit?  After all, we each, from the moment of salvation, possess a human spirit.  This is where our application comes in.  Jesus’ human spirit, that is, His human connection with the divine phenomena, or “the higher element of Christ’s being in his human life...was charged with the eternal principle of the divine life.” [Jamison] His humanity took on the will of His divine nature by the same mechanics we have been given.  When we listen to the teaching of the Word while accessing the omnipotence of the Spirit, He takes the doctrine we believe and circulates it through our thinking.  In so doing we become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:3).  In His pre-incarnate life, Jesus concurred with the Father’s will. From eternity past, our Lord’s divine will agreed to follow the Father’s redemptive plan.  He began His sacrificial offering on the alter (to bring the Old Testament ritual in from the context of the passage) of the Cross and completed it with respect to the Angelic Conflict and the Father’s satisfaction when He entered into the Heavenly Holy of Holies.

This is the key to the doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. The awesomeness of His atonement lies in His own perfect integrity, motive and volition which are the foundation of His sacrifice. The offering was from the source of His deepest self; His innermost being and personality, that is, His spirit. This is the core of the Cross.  Yes, we need to understand every aspect of His spiritual sacrifice, but we also need to understand and appreciate His motive.  His spiritual work resulted from this. What did He, Himself, say? These are Jesus’ own words:

ü And I… will draw all men to Myself.  John 12:32

This is the heart, the foundation of His spiritual sacrifice, that is, His satisfaction of the Father’s justice by suffering the legal penalty.  The “Cross is the supreme expression of…[the] divine spirit of love, truth, mercy, brotherhood, faith, ministry, unselfishness, holiness, - a spirit which goes out to …[all people evidenced by unlimited atonement]…with divine intensity of purpose and yearning to draw them into His own [dyna]sphere, and to make them partakers of His own eternal quality [consisting of delegated divine power, the Word, bringing many sons into glory]. This was a fact before the foundation of the world, is a fact today, and will be a fact so long as any [human] life remains unreconciled to God. Atonement is eternal in virtue of the eternal spirit of Christ through which He offered himself to God.” [Vincent, M. R. (2002). Word studies in the New Testament (Vol. 4, Page 483-484). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.]

            [Wuest, K. S. (1997, c1984). Wuest's word studies from the Greek New Testament : For the English reader (Heb 9:14). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.]

             [Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., Fausset, A. R., Brown, D., & Brown, D. (1997). A commentary, critical and explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments. On spine: Critical and explanatory commentary. (Heb 9:14). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.]

            [Robertson, A. (1997). Word Pictures in the New Testament. Vol.V c1932, Vol.VI c1933 by Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. (Heb 9:14). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.]