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Why did Jesus die? |
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Why should it make any difference to me? |
A few weeks after the evening of discussion at Dr. Williams', I decided to enroll in a course called "The Bible as Literature." I felt I needed to learn more about the Bible...if only to be able to argue more intelligently with my Christian friends! I was sure I would find plenty of contradictions and discrepancies in the Bible, and I did.
The first week of class we discussed the story of Adam and Eve, found in Genesis. I was one of the first to raise my hand. "As I read this second chapter last night," I began as I looked down at the Harvard Study Bible that was serving as our text, "I noticed that God commanded Adam: 'But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. But when I looked over at Genesis chapter five, I found that Adam lived many years after eating from the forbidden tree and even had several children."[1]
Dr. Martin, our professor, smiled, "That's a good point; what does the rest of the class think?"
A student named Sidney raised his hand, "Yeah, was God just bullying them with idle threats, or did the writer of Genesis make a little mistake and misquote God?"
A lively discussion followed, but I felt that no one came up with a good answer to my question. As the period was ending, I leaned over toward Sidney. "You know, I'm amazed that anyone in their right mind could believe that the Bible is 'God's Word' when it has such a glaring contradiction in the opening chapters."
This discrepancy continued to bother me for several months, but as the
course progressed, I ran across things that baffled me even more. I had often
heard my religious friends say, "Jesus died for our sins" or
"Jesus died to save the world." As
I read the New Testament, I could
see how the good example
of Jesus' actions might possibly influence some men and women to live better
lives. But it was inconceivable to me that anything done by one man nearly 2,000
years ago could have a direct effect on how we live in the 20th century. And I
certainly couldn't see how Jesus' death, no matter how noble or unselfish, could
possibly make up for all the evil in the world.
In my opinion, if God existed, He would either have a loving and forgiving nature, or He would not. If He wasn't inclined to forgive men's shortcomings, I didn't see how Jesus' death could change His mind, and if God was a forgiving sort, I couldn't see why He would need a human sacrifice to prove it.
At the time, I never guessed that the answer to the problem in Genesis held a clue to understanding why Jesus had to die.
Near the end of the semester, my physicist friend, Dr. Williams, encouraged me to attend a seminar given by a best-selling Christian author. During his lecture, he talked about Adam and Eve and said that when God declared that Adam would die the same day, He was not referring to physical death but rather to spiritual death.
The lecturer went on to explain that God had originally created man in three distinct parts or dimensions. "The first," he said, "is the physical body, which contains the five senses. Our body is not who we are. It is just the house we live in."
"The second part of man," he continued, "is the soul. This is the real you and me. It contains the mind (the non-physical source of thoughts which activates the physical brain), the emotions, the will and the conscience or moral reasoning power. The Bible teaches that the soul is non-physical and indestructible (it will exist in some state forever). There is also a third part of man called the spirit."[2]
As I listened I grew more and more fascinated. I had always thought that the terms "soul" and "spirit" were just two names for the same thing, but I now learned that the spirit is a sort of "nonphysical eyesight" with which Adam could experience the non-physical world and personally "see" God and have fellowship with Him. According to this author, Adam could look through his physical eyes at Eve and see and experience her. In the same way, he could "look" through his spirit and directly perceive and experience God. Both were equally real and intimate.
This made a lot of sense to me. As a student of psychology, I had already decided that there must be a non-physical part of man. Even Freud, who was a confirmed atheist, was forced into an explanation of human behavior that involved non-physical elements. (I knew that no one had ever operated on a human brain and found a physical id, ego or superego!) I began to see how Adam's spiritual sense perception could have "died," and yet he could still be alive physically.
As I studied further for my class, I discovered that the biblical concept of "death" did not mean "ceasing to exist," but rather referred to "separation." I saw that in the Bible, physical death means the separation of the soul from the body. With the soul gone, the body ceases to function and begins to decay. But spiritual death is the separation of the spirit from God. With the spirit cut off from God, a man would still be able to function physically, but could no longer directly experience God.
I also began to see that this Hebrew concept of spiritual death described my own life exactly. I had read and heard a great deal about God and had spent many hours thinking about the idea of God, but I certainly had never directly perceived or experienced Him.
At this time I began to see the answer to something else that had bothered me. I had always said: "If God created man and man has an evil side to him, then why should God blame man for acting the way He made him?" (In the long run it seemed as though evil were God's fault, not man's.)
But as I read more of the Bible for my literature class, I saw that God had created man with freedom to respond to God's love and love Him back. For love to be real, a person has to be free to choose to love (and free to choose not to). For example, I desired that my girl friend freely choose to love me, not be forced into it. I saw that if God had told Adam, "Here, do anything you want; there is nothing you can do that would be wrong," then there would have been no way for Adam to express his love and obedience toward God. If nothing was forbidden, then Adam couldn't choose to obey God since there would be no possible way to disobey.
So God gave Adam a choice. He said, "Don't eat from this tree." The moment God said that, the tree became "the tree of knowledge of good and evil." I realized the tree was a neutral object from God's point of view. He could just as easily have said, "Don't touch that stick" or "Don't pick up that rock." Then we would have had the "stick" or the "rock of the knowledge of good and evil." Until this time Adam had never personally chosen good or evil. If Adam had chosen to obey, he would have gained a personal knowledge of good. As it was, he chose to disobey and gained an experience of evil.[3]
I also learned that in choosing to disobey God, Adam died spiritually. In turning away from God's command, Adam's intimate fellowship with God was broken-his "spiritual eyes" went dead, and he could no longer experience God.
I had read in the New Testament that "the wages of sin is death.
I
now realized that "wages" are neither a gift nor a punishment.
They
are simply what we deserve,
the natural result of our work. On payday, it was not my practice to go to my
boss, get down on my knees and say, "Oh, please be kind and generous and
give me my paycheck." I expected to be paid. Payment is the natural
expected result of work.
I now saw that in the same way, spiritual death is not a punishment from God, but rather the natural result of man's free choice to separate himself from God and His will. Adam unplugged himself from God spiritually, and the result was that he was cut off from God permanently. Adam had poked out his own spiritual eyes, and there was nothing he could do to restore them.
It was becoming clear that even God Himself couldn't restore Adam's spirit without nullifying his free will. (That would be like a parent who says, "You're free to choose whether or not you want to go to the party tonight but if you choose to go, I'm going to lock you in your room.") In order for Adam to be free, God had to honor his choice of disobedience and spiritual death.
I also discovered that when Adam disobeyed God, something even more startling happened. Not only was Adam eternally cut off from God, but apparently there also was such a profound change in Adam that he passed on this spiritual death to all of his offspring.
I already knew that in the physical realm some damage (such as radiation) can be so profound that a genetic mutation takes place and every generation after that is affected. Something like "spiritual mutation" took place when Adam sinned, and everyone since that time has been born physically and "soulishly" alive but spiritually dead-cut off from God.
My first thought was, "This seems unfair. That means I have to suffer for something Adam did thousands of years ago." But I soon realized that there were many times when I had consciously chosen to do things that I knew were wrong. If I hadn't inherited spiritual death, I would have cut myself off from God through my own choices. And I saw that God couldn't just forgive or overlook man's sin - to do so would take away his freedom and make him less than human.
But I still didn't see how Jesus' death could be the solution to man's problem of spiritual death. One thing in particular bothered me about Jesus. According to my friend, Dr. Williams, Jesus was supposed to be God's perfect Son. In fact, he had said He was God Himself in human form.
And yet I found two different places where the Bible recorded that on the cross Jesus cried, "My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?"[5] This was the most obvious problem of all. It seemed that Jesus Himself lost faith at the very end. How could I believe Jesus to be the perfect Son of God when He Himself seemed to have denied it with His dying breath?
This proved to be the
key which helped me finally to understand the Christian faith. I learned that
Jesus not only died physically on the cross - He also died spiritually. While
Jesus hung there, God the Father reached back in time and took the spiritual
death that had been generated by Adam and those who came after him and placed it
on Jesus Christ.
Then (because He created time and lives outside of it) God looked forward in time and took all the spiritual death generated by me and everyone else who has lived since then and all the other men and women who will be born until the end of time and put that death on Jesus, too.
Now I could see why Jesus cried, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" He was experiencing to the fullest the spiritual death generated by countless men and women throughout the ages. He literally experienced spiritual hell on the cross as He was cut off from God, even though He committed no sin and was not deserving of death. He actually died spiritually in my place.
One thing continued to puzzle me even as I completed the "Bible as Literature" course. I could see how Jesus, if He lived a perfect life and therefore was never unplugged from God, could die spiritually for one other man's sin (and it seemed logical that He would have to stay dead eternally). But I couldn't understand how Jesus as one man could possibly die and stay dead for only a few days - the Bible says He was resurrected three days later - and still manage to pay off several billion eternities of separation from God.
The answer was provided by a friend who was a math major. I asked him about this problem, and he replied, "You've forgotten that Jesus, though He was in human form, was actually the infinite God. If He had suffered spiritual death for even 10 minutes, He would have generated more than enough death to pay for 100 billion eternities of separation from God. Remember He was giving up infinite life, and infinity multiplied times anything equals infinity." Or as he wrote down for me:
But something still confused me: Why, if Jesus' death paid for all the spiritual death for all the ages, do men still experience separation from God? Then I realized that God cannot violate our choice without making us subhuman. God has gone to great trouble and sacrifice to provide forgiveness for us and to restore us to fellowship with Himself.
Forgiveness and a new spirit are free gifts that He offers us. If we refuse His gift, we will continue to experience spiritual death, and when our physical lives end, we will be cut off eternally from God and His love.
I finally saw that those who accept Christ's death as a payment for their spiritual death are given new "spiritual eyes." They are again complete in body, soul and spirit. For the man who has this new nature within him, physical death is no threat. When the soul sheds the physical body, the man himself continues to grow and have fellowship with God through His spirit.
It was now clear to me that all of my new understanding was powerless to change my life unless I was willing to act upon what I had learned.
So one afternoon I spoke to God in prayer and said, "Thank You for sending Your Son to die on the cross to pay for my separation. Please come into my life and restore my communication with You."
I certainly did not have answers to every difficult spiritual question as I sat praying that afternoon, but I had taken an important step; I had opened up a channel of communication with God Himself.
Endnotes
Alan Scholes has been on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ since 1969 and teaches theology at the . He holds three earned masters degrees and a Ph.D. in Theology and Personality from Claremont School of Theology. He is currently completing his latest book, Enjoying God: Theology for Your Head and Your Heart.
