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THE
TWO ASPECTS OF CHRIST’S
FINISHED WORK
We learned in the previous section of this title that
Jesus died twice while on the cross. He died spiritually, and He also died physically.
His spiritual death took place the moment the Father separated from Him.
This spiritual separation of the Father from Jesus
was the judgment or payment for sin(s) for all of humanity of
all time. This spiritual separation of the Father from Christ, viz-a-viz
Christ’s spiritual death, made Christ suffer unimaginable or unthinkable
spiritual agony or pain indescribable by any human terminology or means.
This was the first aspect of His finished work,
which had to do with completing the work of salvation. And it took place
at the cross of Calvary, well before Christ died physically. We are also made
to understand that the Greek word tetelestai translated as FINISHED, is
in the perfect aorist continuous tense; this simply means – something already
accomplished or completed whose result is for all eternity. This implies that the work of salvation was already accomplished (or completed) in the
past with results that will continue for all eternity.
The second aspect of Christ’s finished work was
actualized when He sat down at the Father’s right hand (signifying the highest
place of honor in the whole universe seen and unseen). This second stage was to
ensure that all the arrangements necessary to bring forth the Body of Christ
i.e. the Church – the New Creation had been completed. (Hebrews 7: 25). Based
on this, the Holy Spirit was sent to birth the Church. (John 16: 7; Acts 2: 1 –
4; 1 Corinthians 12: 12 – 14).
Realize that the work of salvation had to be
completed first, so as to pave way for all other divine protocol necessary to
bring forth and guarantee the eternal security of the Body of Christ. All of
these had to be properly and divinely arranged by Jesus Christ upon His
resurrection, after which He then sat down at the right hand of the Father,
having accomplished all things for us.
SIGNIFICANCE
OF THE PHYSICAL
DEATH OF CHRIST
Jesus did not die physically by loss of blood. Nor
did He die physically as a consequence of His spiritual death. Even though we
know that physical death was a result of spiritual death for all fallen
humanity (Hebrews 9: 26), This wasn’t the case with our Lord Jesus Christ.
His physical death was not a result of His spiritual death. This is because
He did not suffer spiritual death as a fallen man but as a perfect sinless
man. What this implies is that unlike other human beings, who were born with
the fallen human nature, Jesus was completely sinless, and as such, as a
sinless, perfect man, He did not deserve spiritual death or separation from
GOD. But He willingly took on the sins of humanity and experienced that
spiritual death or separation from the Father in order to pay the penalty for
sin, and put away sin and in so doing made salvation freely available for all.
In this view, Jesus’ spiritual death was not as a
result of His own sinfulness, but rather an act of sacrificial substitution.
His spiritual death was not due to His own human shortcomings or failings (Hebrews
4: 15; 1 Peter 3: 18; 2: 22; 1 John 3: 5), but rather an expression of His love
and obedience to the Father on behalf of fallen humanity. This explains why his
physical death was not the result of His spiritual death.
As a perfect, sinless man, His spiritual death
carried greater significance and power than if He had been a fallen, sinful
man. By experiencing that spiritual separation, He was able to bridge the gap
between GOD and humanity, making reconciliation and eternal life possible for
anyone who would believe in Him.
Now we are to also realize that even after enduring
spiritual death for humanity, Jesus remained unblemished and spotless in His
spiritual death.
His becoming sin for us on the cross (2 Corinthians
5: 21) doesn’t mean He lost His
sinlessness or became a sinner. “He became SIN,” simply signifies that He took upon
Himself the sin(s) of humanity of all time, into His sinlessness, and His
sinlessness swallowed it all up, and dissolved or destroyed it in Himself
forever.
His sinless perfection before His spiritual death
was not lost, or compromised, but was rather validated and upheld by means of His
willingness to suffer and die spiritually for the sins of humanity. Even in the
depths of His sacrificial suffering or spiritual death, Jesus’ perfect sinless
nature remained intact, and incorruptible, thereby demonstrating the power and
efficacy of His redemptive work.
Therefore, it is obvious that it was the Lord’s
spiritual death that took care of the sins of humanity and completed the work
of salvation – forever settled.
Based on the above understanding from scripture, of what significance then was Jesus’ physical death? As scripture has made it clear, that even without having physically died yet, Jesus was able to accomplish or provide salvation (John 19: 28, 30). Meaning He could have saved us without dying physically. That’s true!
But then He still needed to die physically, even though not for salvation, because the work of salvation as earlier mentioned, was already accomplished by His spiritual death, before His physical death. He still needed to die physically for some other valid reasons and benefits that accompany salvation, according to the Gospel.
We can realize now that Jesus' physical death was neither for sin(s) nor for salvation. I know this may be tough meat for some to chew (Hebrews 5: 13, 14), but then, the whole counsel of GOD – the entire Gospel message must be preached (Acts 20: 27).
Nevertheless, even
though it wasn’t Jesus’ physical death that paid for the sins of humanity, nor accomplished
our salvation, His physical death was still very much necessary and significant
to the Gospel for the following reasons;
∎His physical
death signified the closure of the First Advent and everything related to it.
The Lord died physically because His ministry and work in relation to His First
Advent was completed, so He closed it, by dying physically, so that a new era
would commence at His resurrection from the dead. This is confirmed by the
record given by Matthew, that the curtain to the entrance of the holiest place in the Jewish temple was torn into two from top to bottom, and also that the
Old Testament saints of the First Advent were raised to life after Jesus’
resurrection (Matthew 27: 50 – 53). These events were significant signs marking
the closure of the First Advent, and the beginning of a new era.
∎Jesus' physical
death also marked the shedding off or removal of His incarnate body, and
everything that related to it, to wear a new type of body. During His
First Advent, Jesus was to wear His incarnate body pending when He would
accomplish the work of salvation, after which He was to remove that body and
wear a new body in His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15: 42 – 44). When Paul said
about Jesus “…a body thou hast made me…” (Hebrews 10: 5 – 7), this was
what he was pointing at; that the incarnate body of Jesus was prepared for Him
to be worn for a short while, to be put off at His physical death, for the
glorious body at His resurrection.
∎The Lord's physical
death was essential for His resurrection to take place, which is an
indispensable part of the Gospel (1 Corinthians 15: 4 – 6). And this
resurrection is the proof that physical death has been conquered. Without Jesus
physically dying there would be no resurrection, and without the resurrection our
faith would be meaningless because there would be no guarantee of resurrection
(1 Corinthians 15: 14 – 17). But thank GOD Jesus resurrected from the dead.
∎His physical
death also prepared the way for Him to become the first-fruits of those
raised from the dead (1 Corinthians 15: 20 – 23).
THE
WORK OF SALVATION IS NOT A RITUAL
OF SPILLING PHYSICAL HUMAN BLOOD
The beauty in understanding all these things that I
have shared here is to enable us realize one other truth, that many have failed
to see, which is that the work of salvation that Jesus wrought for us isn’t a
ritual.
Jesus' death on the cross was never a religious
ritual as religion has subtly painted it to be. If it was the physical death of
Jesus that saved us, if salvation came by the literal or physical blood of
Christ, then it’s nothing short of a mere ritual.
Those who believe and teach that we were saved by
the physical death or the shedding of Jesus' physical blood are preaching
nothing more than human ritual. They are indirectly saying that we were saved
by human ritual. By teaching such, they are indirectly accusing GOD of saving
us through human ritual. Yet the Old Testament makes it clear that right from
time, the practice of human sacrifice, including the sacrifice of children were
acts undesirable by GOD (Deuteronomy 12: 31; Psalm 106: 37, 38 Isaiah 57: 5).
Furthermore, the story of Abraham and Isaac gives us
a clear hint at GOD’S attitude towards human ritual or human sacrifices. It indicates
that GOD never desired the shedding of physical human blood or human sacrifice
as a means of appeasing Him or gaining His approbation, let alone saving
humanity. He stopped Abraham from spilling Isaac’s blood as a sacrifice to Him
(Genesis 22: 9 – 14).
All of these passages show that right from time GOD
has had no desire at all for the spilling of human blood as a way of
sacrificing to Him. This was what the pagan nations were doing, spilling or
sacrificing human blood to their false gods. How then could the activities of
the almighty YAHWEH be likened to those false gods of the Old Testament? Surely
His method must be different. He must have a better way to appease Himself and actualize
the work of salvation in a way that had nothing to do with human ritual, which
depended on physical human blood or death. And He did provide a better way. He
worked from the spiritual angle rather than from the physical, to ensure that Jesus' death on the cross was different from those human rituals of the Old Testament
performed by the paganists.
Therefore, having always objected to human rituals, or human sacrifices, how could GOD suddenly flip over to become a bloodthirsty GOD, seeking His own Son’s physical human blood as a means to appease Him. This must be a crazy theology. A theology that for hundreds of decades has presented GOD in the similarity of Brian Stalker’s 20th Century fictional movie figure, Count Dracula. A blood-seeking vampire. This is one of the funny ways religion presents GOD.
How could GOD accomplish the work of salvation by using
the same thing and the same process – physical human blood or physical human sacrifice that He once
always objected to? It’s really odd!
But Paul tells us that without the shedding of blood, there’s no remission of sin (Hebrews 9: 22). Yes this is true, (especially as
it concerned the sacrifices made under the Old Testament. At which time the
people depended on physical blood or physical sacrifices, that involved the slaughtering
of animals). However, in the case of Christ, the term “BLOOD” does not refer to
His physical blood, but is used by scripture as a metonymy to represent the sinless
spiritual life of Christ, which He laid down as a sacrifice in exchange to expiate
sin, and actualize our salvation.
Let us understand that if the blood spoken of by
Paul in Hebrews 9: 22 refers to the physical blood of Christ, then that would
mean that the salvation provided by such physical sacrifice or blood is nothing
but the product of human ritual, and by analogy would imply that our salvation being
the product of such human ritual, would be nothing more than ritualistic. It
would be nothing better than those Old Testament sacrifices which were also
ritualistic. And if our Salvation is the product of a physical human ritual involving
the spilling of Jesus’ physical blood, then it couldn’t be any better than the process
that produced it – a ritualistic process. It would all together remain ritual.
But thank GOD it’s not.
In furtherance, we have to also recognize the grave danger
involved when religionists insist that the work of salvation that Jesus
accomplished for us is the product of His physical blood and death. Holding to such a view is to indirectly and ignorantly assert that the New Birth which is
the product of such a form of ritualistic salvation that is based on the human
ritual of spilling physical human blood, is equally a ritual. This is because the
New Birth cannot be any different from the process through which it is made
available.
However, since the work of salvation is spiritual as
I have plainly pointed out, then it is incumbent that the New Birth which has
become available to humanity as a result of this salvation is also spiritual, with no rituals involved. This is the simple reality.
One major difference between all Old Testament
sacrifices and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ at Calvary is that, while all Old
Testament sacrifices that pointed to the sacrifice of Christ were all rituals,
the sacrifice of Jesus which brought us salvation differs in that it wasn’t a
RITUAL, because it did not come as a result of the shedding or spilling of
Jesus’ physical blood nor His physical death. The work of salvation that Christ
wrought is purely spiritual, and the processes involved also spiritual.
Therefore, since the work of salvation that Christ
wrought for us isn’t a human ritual, then our salvation also is never a ritual
either, nor the product of it. Since the shedding of Jesus' physical Blood nor
His physical death was never what saved us, then we were never saved by a
ritualistic process involving physical substances.
Our salvation was totally non-ritualistic. Not
physical, but purely spiritual. Therefore the New Birth which became possible
as a result of the work of salvation no ritual and has nothing to do with
ritualism. The New Creation is not the by-product of a ritualistic process. And
we have no business with rituals today.
Both the New Covenant and the New Birth, which is its by-product are ritual-free. Hallelujah!
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Wonderful to know that Jesus paid for the Sin of Humanity even before He died physically
Wonderful to know that Jesus paid for the Sin of Humanity even before He died physically
Wonderful to know that Jesus paid for the Sin of Humanity even before He died physically