Life Out of Death

by Pastor Mitch Horton | May 2000

"From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed and be raised the third day." (Matthew 16:21) "Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end." (John 13:1) "Then Judas, having received a detachment of troops, and officers from the chief priests, and Pharisees came there with lanterns, torches, and weapons. Jesus therefore, knowing all things that would come upon Him, went forward and said to them, 'Whom are you seeking?'" (John 18:3-4)

Someone has said that the veil that hides our future is woven by the hands of mercy.(1) If we really knew all that would take place in our lives in the future, we may not handle it very well. We would probably spend much of our time thinking about it, how we would respond, and perhaps how we could change some things. But not with Jesus! He knew why He came, where He was going, and what He wanted to accomplish. Jesus knew that He was born to die!

Notice Hebrews 2:14-15, Amplified Bible; "Since, therefore, these His children share in flesh and blood - that is, in the physical nature of human beings - He Himself in a similar manner partook of the same nature, that by going through death He might bring to naught and make of no effect him who had the power of death, that is, the devil. And also that He might deliver and completely set free all those who through haunting fear of death were held in bondage throughout the whole course of their lives."

1 John 3:8b reads,"For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." Williams New Testament of this verse reads, "This is why the Son of God appeared, to undo the devil's work."

The reason Jesus Christ came was to set us free from everything that Adam's fall brought to the earth! We read in 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, "For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.

Galatians 3:13-14 reads, "Christ has 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'), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith."

The curse of the broken law was poverty, sickness, and spiritual death. Jesus came to set us free from all three.

Because a man got us into sin, a man had to also redeem us from sin. 1 Timothy 2:5 reads,"For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus." God created us for fellowship with Him. We were created to bring Him pleasure (Revelation 4:11) God's desire was for those evening walks in the garden of Eden to continue throughout eternity, not only with Adam, but also with all of his sons and daughters!

When Adam sinned, God's great dream of fellowship with man was put on hold, and life for humanity became tangled up in a web of sin, sickness, poverty, defeat, and death.

If God could have, He would have forgiven Adam for his sin instantly. But it was much more complicated than just offering Adam forgiveness. God had given Adam legal authority to oversee the earth and to take care of it (See Genesis 1:26-28; Psalm 8:4-8). When Adam sinned, he actually gave Satan not only lordship over his own life, but he also gave him the authority that God had given him over the earth. Satan actually became "god" of this world for a limited period of time. (See 2 Corinthians 4:4; Luke 4:5-6; John 14:30; Hebrews 2:6-8). Satan's evil empire on this planet will end at the second coming of Christ, when he will be cast into the bottomless pit during the millennial reign of Christ (Revelation 20:2-3). He will then be judged and throw into the lake of fire for all eternity (Revelation 20:10).

Satan's reign is the reason for all of the wars, famine, murders, lies, rebellion, sickness, disease, poverty, selfishness, hatred, jealousy, envy, lust, immorality, and death that plagues man daily.

Because God is just and fair, even to His enemies, He will not unjustly take from Satan what was given to him by default in Adam's sin. Psalm 89:14 reads, "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne"...... Of course, God has the power to end Satan's rule, but He has chosen to live by the laws that He created to govern the universe. To dispossess Satan of his authority without legal right to do it would be unjust. If God did that, He could then be accused of being less than perfect. Rebels would then have a right to challenge His justice, as well as His sovereign Lordship over the universe.

For our redemption to become a reality, and for our restoration from sin and Satan's rule to be thorough and eternal, God had to find a way for our debt of sin to be legally and legitimately paid for us by a man. Because a man go us into this mess, a man had to redeem us from it all.

God had no man that was able to legally pay the price for the sins of the human race. Every man born since Adam's sin has been born into sin himself, and born under Satan's control (See Ephesians 2:1-3; Romans 5:12). God couldn't just create another man from the dust of the ground, because it was ruled over by Satan and tainted by the curse! All men born of two earthly parents are born in sin, out of fellowship with God, under Satan's control, and under the dominion of death.

Man's only hope of redemption was for God Himself to assume the liability of man's sin. That is, God must come and live inside a human body, face all the temptations that men face, and then die in man's place, and then pay the legal penalty for man's awful sin. God as a man had to face man's enemy in legal combat and defeat him.

The incarnation of Jesus Christ was God's plan from the beginning of time to redeem us from sin and all it's penalties. Jesus preexisted His birth in the manger of Bethlehem. He is God, and has been the second member of the trinity from eternity past. The angel Gabriel appeared to the virgin girl Mary (Luke 1:26-35) and informed her that she would become pregnant with a child conceived by the Holy Spirit. A supernatural being would walk among men! The Creator Himself would indwell a body like that of His creation and face every problem that daily life brings them! He would offer Himself to die as their substitute for sin, and in their place He would be legally judged for their sin and rebellion.

Jesus, the perfect, sinless Son of God assumed or sinfulness. When Jesus cried out in Matthew 27:46, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me," He actually became the sin of the entire human race! "For Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Corinthians 5:21)

While Jesus hung on the cross, He became every sin committed by you and me. Our lies, murder, lust, greed, envy, hatred, selfishness, immorality, and every sin we've ever committed in thought, word, or action, was placed upon the sinless spirit of the Son of God! He didn't die for Himself, for He had never sinned. He died in our place! He took our spiritual death, our separation from God, upon Himself.

Jesus went to hell in our place when he died. "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and nights in the heart of the earth." (Matthew 12:40) According to Jesus, Hell is in the center of the earth. The following passages give reference to Jesus "doing time" in hell to pay the penalty for our sin: Acts 2:22-36; Romans 10:6-7; Ephesians 4:8-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; 1 Peter 4:6.

Hell was actually divided into two compartments before Jesus died. One was a place of suffering in fire, and was the place where the unrighteous went at death. The other side of hell was called "Abraham's Bosom" and was also called "paradise" by Jesus. During the old covenant, it was the place where those who trusted in a coming Messiah went when they died. These two compartments were separated by a "great gulf" or chasm. (See Luke 16:19-31)

No one was born again before Jesus died for our sins. The old covenant believers could not go to heaven because they were not yet born again. Instead, they went to the righteous side of hell called paradise or Abraham's Bosom. Jesus said to the thief on the cross,"......today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43)

This man went with Jesus to the paradise side of hell. Psalm 88 gives a description of deity suffering the torments of hell. Jesus must have also spent time in the suffering side of hell, too. He stayed there until God was satisfied that our sin debt was legally paid.

When God was satisfied that our debt of sin was "paid in full", Jesus leaped over into the righteous side of hell. There He preached the gospel of salvation to all the old covenant saints and the patriarchs of old who where there waiting for the Messiah to arrive. They had trusted the blood of animals to atone for their sin, and now Jesus the "lamb slain from the foundation of the world" had come to take them to heaven (See 1 Peter 3:18-19; 4:6).

When Jesus was raised from the dead, they were raised from the dead, too, and appeared to many in the city of Jerusalem. (See Matthew 27:52-53)

Jesus conquered Satan in His resurrection, and took from him the keys (which represent authority) of hell and of death! (See Revelation 1:18)

Having paid for our sin, and having conquered our enemy Satan, Jesus commissioned the church with the authority over the earth that Satan had stolen from Adam! "......All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations......" (Matthew 28:18-19). Jesus already had authority over Satan, but He gained authority over him as a man and then gave it to the church!

God's plan is for us to live the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus, walking in freedom from sin and its effects. Our last enemy to be destroyed is death! (See 1 Corinthians 15:26)

The bottom line is that Jesus' death has brought us life! We are legally freed from the curse of the broken law which is poverty, sickness, and spiritual death. If you have not yet done so, confess Jesus Christ as your Lord today. You will be born again, and will receive LIFE OUT OF HIS DEATH! "That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." (Romans 10:9-10)

Pastor Mitch

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1) Dr. Albert B. Simpson, The Christ in the Bible Commentary, Volume 4, (Camp Hill, PA:Christian Publications, 1993), P.137