Q: Could you please clarify this for me? -----Many Christians believe that they are saved by the death of Jesus Christ. But, His death on the cross, while a necessary part of salvation, does not save anybody. I just kinda get lost at this point. I understand what you have written, just this sentence seems like it might be missing something. Thanks for your time.
A: I would be glad to clarify my statement. From my perspective there is such an emphasis on sin within the Body of Christ that a misconception arises about what the real problem is between man and God. Believers and unbelievers alike are told that their sins separate them from God. While that is not necessarily untrue, it is incomplete. The biggest problem that exists between man and God is that we all are born into this world spiritually dead to God, without His life indwelling us. It all started in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 2:7 it reads, "Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." God created man for the purpose of indwelling Him and being his very life. However, just a few verses later we see God give Adam a warning. "The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die (Genesis 2:17)." We know for a fact that Adam disobeyed God and did eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But what kind of death did Adam suffer?
Adam lived to be 930 years old according to scripture. But, God said that Adam would die on the day he ate from that tree. The kind of death Adam died was a spiritual death. The life that God breathed into him, recorded in Genesis 2:7, was removed from Adam when he ate the forbidden fruit. The life of God that made Adam a living being was removed and he died to God. This brings us to another misconception many hold to regarding mankind. That misconception is that all mankind is created in the image of God. Adam was created in the image of God with the life of God indwelling Him. However, Adam and Eve did not have any children prior to Adam eating the forbidden fruit. Therefore, everybody born into this world after that point in time is not in the image of God. Rather, we are born in the image of Adam. As Genesis 5:3 states, "When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth." We are all born into this world spiritually dead to God in our sins, but physically alive to the world. God, in His love desired to restore His life to mankind, but He first had to deal with the sin that caused that life to leave in the first place before He could do so.
Take for example someone who dies of cancer. Now, if you bought that person back to life, but never cured the cancer they would simply die again. Therefore, in order for that person to keep on living after they are brought back to life you would have to cure the cancer first. That is where the death of Jesus Christ comes into the picture. Because Jesus is God, He was the only person ever born that had a life to give that would satisfy God as payment for our sins. "The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29)!" Jesus was the perfect sacrifice that took away our sins because He lived a sinless life, which we could not do, and died in our place, which we deserved for our sins. The death of Christ was, in effect, the cure for the cancer that caused us to spiritually die. Now, that the sin issue no longer stands between man and God, He was able to offer His life to us, that we lost in Adam, as a free gift through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Salvation is the restoration of the life of God through faith in Jesus Christ. The death of Christ was a means to this end, but not an end in and of itself.
1 Corinthians 15:17 says, "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." This is what I mean when I say the death of Christ does not save any of us. If Christ had not been raised we are still spiritually dead to God without His life indwelling us. Mankind has a greater need than the forgiveness of our sins. We need life because we are dead. And once we accept Christ’s offer of salvation we get the life of God restored to us and forgiveness of sins as a part of that life. And because of the eternal consequences of the death of Jesus Christ, there is now no sin that will ever cause the life of God to be removed from us. That is why the life we have is an eternal life. A life that will carry a believer through the rest of their life and on into eternity even after they physically die. This truth is summed up for us in Romans 5. "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life (Romans 5:8-10)!" We are saved by the resurrected life of Christ, not merely His death for our sins. The Good News of the Gospel is that Jesus gave His life for you so that, raised from the dead, He could give His life to you. I hope I was able to clarify why the death of Jesus Christ doesn’t save anybody.
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