How did Jesus die the 2nd death?

[Robert]

“How could Christ die the second death? He predicted His resurrection, and He actually rose the third day. How could He experience it?”

First of all, the Bible says so. Heb. 2:9: “He tasted death for all men.” It could not be the first death because believers who accept Christ still have to die the first death. Then look at what Paul says in 2 Tim. 1:7-10. He says that Christ, through the cross, has “abolished death.” If He abolished death why do Christians die? Because He abolished only the second death, not the first death. Rev. 20:6 tells us that those who have part in the first resurrection, i.e., the believers, on such the second death has no power. Why? Because there was One who was willing to go through it for us, to taste it.

When Christ became a man in the incarnation He had to give up not His divinity, but His divine prerogatives, in other words, the independent use of His divinity. Even His God-consciousness had to be given up. Jesus discovered He was God only by revelation. He was not God-conscious as a baby. He had to grow up in knowledge. He had to grow up in everything because He had given up the independent use of His divinity and was made in all things like unto us (Heb. 2:17).

Therefore, He was totally God-dependent all through His earthly ministry. John 5:30 says, “I can do nothing of myself.” John 6:57 says, “I live by the Father.” See also John 8:28 and John 14:10. All these texts state very clearly that Christ was totally God-dependent. Then read Rom 6:4; Acts 2:24, 32; Eph. 1:20. All of these texts clearly tell us that it was the Father who raised Christ from the dead. Keep these two things in mind: Christ was God-dependent, and He was dependent on the Father for the resurrection. Don’t ask me what happened to His divine consciousness when He was in the grave. Where was His divine life? I don’t know. It’s a mystery. We will spend eternity studying that, but I do know one thing, it was the Father He was depending on for the resurrection just like everything else.

Do you know what the Father did on the cross? Christ cried out: “Father, Father why have you forsaken me?” What He meant is not “Why are you leaving me for three days?” but, “Why have You abandoned Me?” Do you know what that meant to Christ? It meant that the hope of the resurrection went with that abandonment. When the Father forsook Him in terms of Christ’s feeling, then the hope of the resurrection went with it. Jesus was now “treading the winepress alone.” He could no longer look on the Father with hope and assurance as far as His feelings were concerned. He felt the agony of God-abandonment, exactly what the wicked will feel when mercy no longer pleads with the guilty race.

Here is a key passage from Desire of Ages, by E.G. White, p 753: “He could not see through the portals of the tomb. Hope did not present to Him the coming forth from the grave a conqueror or tell Him of the Father’s acceptance of the sacrifice. He feared that sin was so offensive to God that their separation was to be eternal.” Do you realize what Christ was tempted to do on the cross as He hung there? The Father had forsaken Him. But remember, He was still God. He could have taken hold of His divinity independent of the Father, against the Father’s wishes, and come down from the cross to save Himself.

[Kevin H]

Hi Robert, excellent question and excellent post. May I add to your work? I have placed many posts on this forum looking at the nature of Hell fire. In the Seventh-day Adventist church since at least the 1920s (and there is evidence but not as clear as from Lynn Wood on, and Lynn Wood told Graham Maxwell that he came to this understanding of hell in the 1920s) there have been two views of the distruction of the wicked. The first view is that a physical fire, like what we get when we light a match, falls from the sky burning the lost. The other is that the "Fire" is in the Bible and Mrs. White defined as the litteral, physical, visual, pressence of God no longer hiding in invisability. It is God's glory which is futher explained as God's character, God's love, which litterally shines out. We see it reflected in Moses standing in God's pressence and needing to wear a veil due to the glow, or how the solders fell at the reflected glory from the angel coming to raise Jesus. It flashed out briefly in Jesus when cleaning the temple, causing the money changers to run away from and yet at that same moment causing children and the poor to run TO Jesus.

Mrs. White titles the book about Jesus "The Desire of Ages" it would be useful to spend a thoughtful hour each day contemplating the Title of that book. Jesus is called the Desire of all Nations. Daniel 11 talking about the evil powers at the end of time says that the last king of the North does not reguard the gods of his fathers, nor The Desire of Women (also translated The One Beloved of Women) nor any new gods but worships himself. Notice that this text gives three groupsings of worship: traditional worship of the historical false gods, worshiping the Desire of Women, and new forms of worshiping false gods. The One Beloved of Women is Daniel's representation of the worship of the true God. This is an Old Testament name of Jesus that we often overlook. Then there is the anouncement of the angel at the birth of Jesus "Good news for ALL the people" (not good news for the honest in heart, not good news for the good people, not good news for the righeous, but good news for ALL people). Our deepest desire is to be like and with Jesus it is the most powerful desire with in us. (we are fighting our deepest desire with our sinful nature, a disposition to think we are for ourselves by esteaming our selves more highly than our breathern, or by making less of the outside world. The sinful nature is too often the one we put into a position of authority in our life, but it is not as powerful as our deepest desire to be like and with Jesus.)

The second death is when those who have allowed their sinful nature control their life and developed a character of choosing against their deepest desire, of fighting the pleadings of the Holy Spirit to come to their deepest hearts desire, and try to fill that hole in their lives with different things.

At the end of time when God is pressent in person, we are all attracted to God's beauty. For those of us who have been yealding to the Holy Spirit's pointing out Jesus to us, will like the poor and the children when Jesus cleaned the temple, come to him and find it to be heaven to be in his pressence. We get to see what Moses was not yet able to see, the face of God.

The lost also see the loving face of God. Mrs. White pictures both Peter and Judas seeing the same expression on Jesus' face and how it lead one to repentence and a deeper relationship and that same look caused the other to commit suicide.

As I understand the Bible and Mrs. White. When the lost see Jesus, they want to come, but they have always refused the drawing power of the Holy Spirit, and that refusal has become a habbit for them that they find they are no longer able to give up (the unpardonable sin) they want to come but they wont. They are attracted to Jesus, but they fear that God will get them for their sins (see John 3:20) they refuse to come to the light for fear their deeds will be exposed (as opposed to those in verse 21 who choose to come to the light and instead of finding a condeming God, finds that their lives change.) They want to come but refuse to let go of their pet sins. They see loved ones inside the Holy City who they want to be with, but they also remember how they would use their loved ones, and how part of them would continue to use them, but they know that the one on the throne knows all their hidden motives and they feel highly uncomfortable. God is a God of Love, but it is self sacrificing love, which always encourages the best in us, they have given to the worst in themselves and this bringing out the best in them is highly uncomfortable. They want to come but they wont. This conflect between their deepest desire and their sinful nature is absolutely horrible. They long to be with Jesus more than they ever wanted anything before in their life, but they have destroyed their ability to choose. Their questions and objections are raised and answered, still they refuse to come. The second death is the horror of realizing how much they wanted to be with Jesus, but how they have developed the habbit of refusing to yeald to their deepest desire. This conflect and the intensity of the struggle (which is why some "burn" longer than others) becomes so intence that they finally try to compromise. They bow down proclaiming that Jesus is Lord, but refuse to go any further and the intensity of this struggle quite litterally destroys them, or the Glory of Him that is Love will consume the wicked." The reason why they do not raise from the second death is because they refuse to, they have refused the only sourse of life and choose to be cut off.

When we look at the passion chapters in the Desire of Ages we find that Jesus longed to be with his Father. This this sepperation from His Father by our sins was so horrible that he barely felt the pain of the flogging, beatings, and crucifixition. The entire trinity bore our sins and it killed Jesus in his humanity. Jesus wanted to be with the Father[and Holy Spirit], the Father and the Holy Spirit wanted to be with Jesus. It was Jesus' deepest desire to be with the Father and Spirit. It was the Spirit's and Father's deepest desire to be with Jesus, but despite being together being their deepest desier, they refused. They refused for different reasons than the sinner refuses to come to Jesus at the end of history, they refused out of love for us, knowing that if sin did not sepperate them from each other, that sin would sepperate the created beings from him and thus destroy us. God went through just what the sinners go through. Jesus wanted to go to his father but refused and went through the hell of the choosing sepperation from his deepest desire.

The passion shows us what sin does to us, but the resurection tells us that the second death does not have to be eternal, it is only eternal because the lost have reached a place where they consciously choose death and it is an eternal choice. The resurection of Jesus shows that if we are willing all the sins of the world cannot sepperate us from our loving God. God would gladly raise from the second death if only they would let him, but they wont. But this expirence of Jesus (and the entire trinity) of wanting to be together but refusing is the second death expirence.

I hope this helps

[Pockey]

Thank-you Robert and Kevin for your posts.