A Reader’s Summation

Michael C., one of our community, added this insightful summary of the last few days of discussion about the meaning of the cross.  He put it in a blog comment, but I thought it worthy of the whole community, so here it is:

Ok, I’m still tired but rested somewhat. Here’s my attempt to explain in my own words for my own understanding what these last two TW’s are saying:

Before Gen. 1:1 Elohim existed. All was however it was then. Elohim created the heavens and the earth and man and the rest. All was good, functioning as it should. Adam was the door, the first man to choose something other than God’s way – not good, not functioning as it should as it missed God’s perfect way, i.e. sin. The consequences of the sin was death, which wasn’t so before sin entered through Adam.

Death affected more than just man, death touched everything God created, even heaven in that God’s plan was now touched by death. God’s actions since then have been focused on fixing/restoring the original arrangement when death had no claim over man, earth and heaven. Restoration was the goal.

With sin’s introduction death now was the ultimate and final end for ever. It was irrevocable. Sin entered and man died. It was the rule and consequence of sin’s existence. Where sin is, death resides. Nothing can change that or conquer it apart from some action on God’s part.

God gives life back through his grace as a gift as man is doomed to death on his own standing mired in sin, death being it’s consequence. In order to change this ruling of death over man and its effect on everything else as well, God stepped in as a man and died like a man would die. However, since death only comes as a result of sin, it didn’t come to Yeshua because he had not sinned. Although Yeshua willingly died as man dies per the Father’s request. He experienced the consequences of sin which was death. But death had no hold over Yeshua because there was no sin in him requiring death. No sin, no power from death. Yeshua’s yielding to death was a voluntary offering to show that it could not hold him. Death had no authority over a real, tangible man that had no sin touching him. Yeshua was God incarnate, thus no sin and thus, no death. Had he even once sinned, Yeshua, too, would have been forever captive to death because of sin. Yeshua had no sin so death had absolutely no hold over him except that which Yeshua voluntarily allowed.

The body of Yeshua died, however, since there was no sin in his neshama, his ruach, his nephesh, death had no authority or hold on him and thus he lived, death had no sting to him. Death was now, for the first time, conquered completely and forever. Not singly just for me or just for you but for everything which death touched, that is, all that God created. Enmity, death’s control over everything it touched was now forever and totally conquered. Yeshua, who was anointed to do this feat conquered death by his sinless and death defying living, continued to live beyond the death of his body. Death no longer dominated after Yeshua’s power and ability to be untainted by the cause and pathway for death, that being sin, that is, anything not in total harmony with God’s character and purpose.

Yeshua’s sinless life made death null and void for the first time ever thus canceling out sin’s ability of inflicting death in all of creation. Peace is now present and evident due to Yeshua’s life, death and life beyond death, a feat never before or since done on one’s own power alone. Death’s previously ultimate power to keep separated all it touched from God is now, due to Yeshua’s life alone in conquering death’s ability to hold, is itself, now dead and unable to act as enmity between God and his creation.

Peace is now tangible and forever done because one conquered it as only Yeshua could have done, being without sin.

So, as sin and death entered in to creation through the one man, who happened to be Adam (it could have been you, me or whoever else was in the position of being first), life now through the one man Yeshuaput an end to death forever as power, control and life is restores through Yeshua as it was when God began creating the heavens, the earth and all that followed.

Paradise, where death is dead to us, is now restored.

This isn’t about forgiveness and grace. That was already done before Gen. 1:1, somehow, somewhere by God thus providing righteous standing to Abraham and all the others before Yeshua’s earthy, bodily arrival. This was about solving the death problem that sin brought. It was about one dying, Yeshua, in such a way so as to abolish the power of death that was ultimate since Adam up to Yeshua’s unique and all changing actions on the most hideous symbol of death, the cross, of his earthy time, that of the “all-powerful” Romans. Yeshua showed the cosmos definitively that death “ain’t nothing but a thang!” that was absolutely, totally and completely conquered and now rightly under God’s authority, period! Paradise restored through Yeshua.

Generally speaking, is that the whole enchilada?

Michael C.