Christ Our Substitute and Identification (6 of 6)

Christ In The Psalms

So, the question now really remains for us is: To what degree did Christ suffer as we suffered? Either He suffered all that we have suffered both spiritually and physically, or He suffered not for us. Bear with me, there is much more to substantiate all of this concerning Christ suffering a death both spiritually and physically in His entire human nature.

But before venturing down that path, John Stott, again agreeing with all those noted earlier, makes these remarkable statements below in his commentary in light of what he and all of these men actually believed to the contrary: First, Stott states that Christ came, “nor ‘in sinful flesh,’ assuming a fallen nature, for his humanity was sinless, but ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh,’ because his humanity was both real and sinless simultaneously”[1]; and then soon afterward he almost seems to counter all of this with: “God condemned sin in sinful man…, that is, in the flesh or humanity of Jesus, real and sinless, although made sin with our sins.”[2] And he, strangely, quotes 2Cor. 5:21 to prove his point. In all honesty, he sounds just like Hughes who was noted earlier as speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Clearly, to John Stott, being “made sin” in 2Cor. 5:21 does not mean that Christ’s human nature became tainted with sin. But, on the contrary, Christ was indeed made to be sin in His human nature as a sinner "with our sins," not His! It was upon the cross, when Christ actually became cursed, not before! It is just as the Lord Jesus Christ through His Psalmist bemoans of Himself:

I said, “LORD, be merciful to Me: heal My soul; for I have sinned against you….My own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of My bread, has lifted up his heel against Me. But You, O LORD, be merciful to Me, and raise Me up, that I may requite them. By this I know that You favor Me, because My enemy does not triumph over Me. And as for Me, You uphold Me in My integrity, and set Me before Your face for ever” (Psm. 41:4, 9-12, AKJV).

And again in Isaiah,

The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all….By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of My people, to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death, because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering…as He will bear their iniquities (Isa. 53:6b, 8-11, NASB).

Here, in these two examples above, we see Christ actually bearing the sins of others in His own body, “made sin” as it were according to 2Cor. 5:21, and even becoming “sinful flesh” according to Rom. 8:3, to the point of even claiming: “I have sinned,” while at the same time denoting that the Father found “favor” with Him because in all actuality He was a man of “integrity,” and had “done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth.” As Spurgeon notes here of this Psalm about Christ: “This in the day of His trouble….He used as a plea for divine aid. He had been faithful to His God, and now begs the Lord to be faithful to Him. Let every dumb professor, tongue-tied by sinful shame, bethink himself how little he will be able to plead after this fashion in the day of his distress.”[3] In all this Christ would in His spirit, soul and body “bear their iniquities” and be offered as “a guilt offering.” He shall see “the work of His soul and be satisfied” (Isa. 53:11a), in which “soul” entailed His entire human nature. When Christ told His disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, “My soul is very sorrowful, even unto death” (Mk. 14:34), He didn’t just have His body in mind. His “soul” constituted His entire human nature in spirit, soul and body (again, in spirit/soul and body if you are a dichotomist) that was nigh unto death. As Charles Spurgeon notes here again concerning the phrase above from Psalm 41, “I have sinned”: “How low was our Redeemer brought when such petitions could come from His reverend mouth…Heal My soul,”[4] for I have sinned against You. Again, Spurgeon adds here: “Here was the root of [His] sorrow. Sin and suffering [for sin] are inevitable companions….The immaculate Savior could never have used such language as this unless there be here a reference to the sin which He took upon Himself by imputation; and for our part we tremble to apply words so manifestly indicating personal rather than imputed sin.”[5] And Spurgeon again concludes: “The “strained application of every sentence of this Psalm [41] to Christ is not to our liking, and we prefer to call attention to the better spirit of the gospel beyond that of the old dispensation.”[6] I too have “strained” at such words coming from my Savior’s lips. I too have inquisitively asked as the Ethiopian eunuch, “Of whom does the prophet speak? Of himself or of another? But need we really ask any further? He who has the mind of the Spirit knows the deep and hidden things of God. And hindsight is sometimes the best sight. No one in their right mind can take part of this Psalm and apply it to David or to someone else (as some have done), and then just pick and choose pertinent passages that clearly apply to Christ. The Psalm never changes person. Like in Isaiah 49:1-6ff, it is our Savior talking. The heinous thought of our Savior assuming our sins in such a way that He could say, “I have sinned,” are just too unbearable for some of us to even imagine. They stop their ears to think that the Righteous could be deemed unrighteous. And they gnash upon with their teeth those who would even venture to claim such a thing. Like the Pharisees passing by the Publican, they will not avow of such a sinner in their stead. They would rather choose to walk around him than towards him in order to see what benefit they might gain in approaching him. It is just as our Lord in taking on the form as the Son of Man declares through His psalmist, “They that sit in the gate speak against Me; and I was the song of drunkards” (v. 12). Indeed, “the character of the man of Nazareth was so far above the appreciation of the men of strength to mingle strong drink, it was so much out of their way and above their thoughts, that it is no wonder it seemed to them ridiculous, and therefore well adapted to create laughter over their cups….What a wonder of condescension is here that He who is the adoration of angels should stoop to be the song of drunkards!” (Spurgeon, Treasury of David).

In Psalm 40, another Psalm about Christ, the Lord through His psalmist again prophetically states concerning Himself:

He lifted Me out of the slimy pit [lit. “pit of destruction”], out of the mud and mire;….Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but My ears You have pierced;[7] burnt offerings and sin offerings You did not require. Then I said, “Here I am, I have come—it is written about Me in the scroll. I desire to do Your will, O My God; Your law is within My heart.” I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, as you know, O LORD. I do not hide Your righteousness in My heart; I speak of Your faithfulness and salvation. I do not conceal Your love and Your truth from the great assembly. Do not withhold Your mercy from Me, O LORD; may Your love and Your truth always protect Me. For troubles without number surround Me; My sins have overtaken Me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of My head, and My heart fails within Me (40:6-12).

And again,

Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto My soul. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing; I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow Me. I am weary of My crying; My throat is dried; My eyes fail while I wait for My God…O God, thou knowest My foolishness [or sin], and My guiltiness is not hid from thee…do not let those that seek thee be confounded for My sake, O God of Israel. Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame has covered My face…I am become a stranger unto My brethren and an alien unto My mother’s sons. For the zeal of thy house has consumed Me, and the reproaches of those that reproached thee are fallen upon Me….Let not the violent force of the waters overcome Me, neither let the deep swallow Me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon Me…Thou hast known My reproach and My shame and My dishonor; My adversaries are all before thee. Reproach has broken My heart, and I am full of heaviness, and I looked for some to take pity, but there was no one, and for comforters, but I found none. They also gave Me gall for My food; and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink…I am poor and sorrowful; let thy saving health, O God, set Me up on high. I will praise the name of God with a song and will magnify Him with praises. This also shall please the LORD better than the sacrifice of an ox or bullock that struggles with horns and hoofs (Psm. 69:1-3, 5-9, 15, 19-21, 29-31, Jubilee Bible 2000).

Arthur Pink did not shrink back or hesitate to state what our Federal Head and Substitute was saying to us concerning Himself in these two Psalms above:

It is indeed remarkable to find how that Christ actually owned our sins as being His. First, in the 40th Psalm. That this Psalm is a Messianic one we know from its quotation in Hebrews 10. That it contains the very words of Christ, is plainly evident from verses 7-11. He is still the Speaker in verse 12, where He declared "For innumerable evils have compassed me about: Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart fails me." What a proof that the sins of His people had been transferred to Him! Second, in the 69th, another great Messianic Psalm. There too we find Him saying, "O God, You know my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from You" (v. 5). How unmistakably do those words show our sins had been reckoned to Him! Those sins were His not by perpetration, but by imputation. [7a]

He to whom we pray, "Save us, O God," is the selfsame person who cried, "Save Me, O God." In Psalm 40, verse 12, Christ states how, “My sins have overtaken me.” And in the words of John Frame, as quoted by Spurgeon, “They seized Him as the sinner’s substitute, to deal with Him as regards their own penalty, according to the sinner’s desert”[7b] And in the phrase above in Psalm 69:1, “the waters are come in unto My soul,” though Spurgeon hesitates to ascribe the sin and guilt in verse 5 to Christ (but doesn’t in some of the other Psalms noted in this article), he had no problem in ascribing the rest of Psalm 69 to Christ. Spurgeon writes:

Sorrows, deep, abounding, deadly, had penetrated His inner nature. Bodily anguish is not His first complaint; He begins not with the gall which embittered His lips, but with the mighty griefs which broke into His heart. All the sea outside a vessel is less to be feared than that which finds its way into the hold. A wounded spirit who can bear. Our Lord in this verse is seen before us as a Jonah, crying, “The waters compassed me about, even to the soul.” He was doing business for us on the great waters, at His Father's command….“I sink in deep mire.” In water one might swim, but in mud and mire all struggling is hopeless; the mire sucks down its victim... Where there is no standing. Everything gave way under the Sufferer; He could not get a foothold for support—this is a worse fate than drowning…Sin is as mire for its filthiness, and the holy soul of the Savior must have loathed even that connection with it which was necessary for its expiation….The sorrow gathers even greater force; He is as one cast into the sea, the waters go over His head. His sorrows were first within, then around, and now above Him…His were real woes, and though He bore them heroically, yet were they terrible even to Him…His sufferings were unlike all others in degree, the waters were such as soaked into the soul; the mire was the mire of the abyss itself….To us the promise is, “the rivers shall not overflow thee,” but no such word of consolation was vouchsafed to Him.[8]

In Psalm 22, another oft quoted Psalm about Christ, He says: “I am a worm, and not man” (v. 6). And as Spurgeon in quoting Lancelot Andrews writes concerning this verse: “A fisherman, when he casts his angle into the river, doth not throw the hook in bare, naked and uncovered, for then he knows the fish will never bite, and therefore he hides the hook within a worm, or some other bait, and so, the fish, biting at the worm, is caught by the hook. Thus Christ, speaking of himself, saith, ‘Ego vermis et non homo’ [I am a worm and no man], He, coming to perform the great work of our redemption, did cover and hide his Godhead within the worm of his human nature. The grand water serpent, Leviathan, the devil, thinking to swallow the worm of his humanity, was caught upon the hook of his divinity. This hook stuck in his jaws, and tore him very sore. By thinking to destroy Christ, he destroyed his own kingdom, and lost his own power for ever.”[9]

In reading all of these Psalms and Isaiah above, and in noting all that has already been said, it should by now come as no surprise to us that our sins actually became Christ’s sins, to the point where He could actually exclaim: “I have sinned,” “My sins have overtaken Me,” “I am a worm, and not a man” and “Thou knowest My foolishness [or sin], and My guiltiness is not hid from Thee.” As Spurgeon notes on Psalm 40 above, and verse 12: “The transfer of sin to the Savior was real, and produced in Him as man the horror which forbade Him to look into the face of God, bowing Him down with crushing anguish and woe intolerable.”[10] Christ had voluntarily assumed our sins; and He was suffering for them as if they had been His very own. He was treated as if our sins were His own sins—as if He had been the sinner—thus becoming the greatest of all substitutes. “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things...which were written in...the Psalms...?” (Lke. 24:26, 44; KJV). It is even as the Lord has said through Isaiah above of His Christ: “He would render Himself as a guilt offering.” Isn’t all this the same as Him being made in the “likeness” of the “flesh of sin” (or sinful flesh) that He could be rendered as a true and real “guilt” offering for our sins that were placed on Him? Again, He became as us that we might become as Him. As He is, so are we; and as we were, so was He! Again, God made Him who knew no sin, to actually be made sin for us (on our behalf), so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. In other words, He who was not a sinner in any way, shape, manner or form, became, as it were, a sinner in our stead. This is why Paul could say, “For we know that our old man (our old sinful human nature) was crucified with Him (Gk. sunestarothe), so that the body of sin might be done away with…” (Rom. 6:6). How so, unless Christ in His humanity actually became the old man that we use to be, in order to crucify him? If not all of our sin both inwardly and outwardly was in and upon Christ as our Substitute, then not all of our sin was condemned in Him, nor in us. With that being said, then we are all still in our sins, being only absolved from the “guilt” of our sins. Nothing has changed inside the offender whatsoever, except for the fact that we have now been outwardly pardoned. And this is what many actually believe and teach in the Church today. As Charles Hodge's son, Archibald Hodge states: "Yet, notwithstanding that the guilt of all our sins is thus charged to Christ, and [the guilt of those sins] expiated in him, all their blame, shame, pollution and power, as inherent personal habits or principles, remain all the while inalienably ours. These sins are none the less ours, after their imputation to him, than they were before"[10a] Be on notice here that Archibald Hodge and his father do NOT believe our sins are actually imparted or transferred to Christ, but that only the "guilt" or blameworthiness of our sins is imputed (or “reckoned”) to Christ. In other words, our sins are forensically “reckoned to Christ’s account,” while Christ's righteousness is forensically “reckoned to our account.” So, according to such men as these, our sins never became Christ’s sins in His human nature or in His “person,” as Hodge likes to refer it, and, for which he says is: “infamous blasphemy”[10b] to think like this. And while it is true that there is a mutual "reckoning" going on here, there is also in fact a mutual impartation both in Christ and in us; with the former being made sin with the sins of our old man (and being imputed or reckoned for such) for no work of His own, with the latter being made holy with the holiness of the new man (and being imputed or reckoned as such) for no work of our own. So, according to Hodge, our sins remain our sins. They never became Christ's sins to bear and to remove. But Christ could not crucify or put to death in others, what He himself had not personally become. In other words, if Christ didn’t somehow and in some way become us as the old man, how could He then put him to death in Rom. 6:6? How could Christ violently kill him by crucifixion, if he was nowhere to be found in Christ’s human nature (or "person") to begin with, in order to be crucified? Pardon maybe, yes (as Hodge believes); but to perform an actual spiritual change inside the offending party? I think not. I think not unless He who knew no sin as us sinners, was actually made as us sinners in our stead! He assumed our entire human nature with all of its sin—lock, stock and barrel—not just our guilt! And in that regards He was our perfect substitute who could completely identify with us and save us; acquitting us not only judicially and forensically of our sin, but internally and practically as well in order for us to go and sin no more.

Clearly, the reproaches due to us fell on Christ because He actually became sin as a sinner in our stead with our sins placed on Him; not in a vacuum, but actually; not just assuming our guilt, but assuming our sin for that guilt as well. What was due us and in us, was due in Christ, and then crucified in Him in His entire spirit, soul and body. As John Gill again notes here: “[Our] sin was laid on Him by the Father, and He voluntarily took it upon Himself; justice finding it there, charges Him with it, demands satisfaction, and condemns Him for it.”[11] Condemns Him for it as a sinner in our stead, not us! But FOR US nevertheless. Our sinful disposition (or old man) was condemned in Christ, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin but slaves to God and to righteousness. Christ became us, in order to crucify us, so that we might be raised as a new man or new creature in Him. The doctrine of substitution and identification doesn’t get any better than this. We are made righteous because Christ was made sin, thus reversing what we were made in Adam---in order to become like Christ, our Second Adam. He who the Son sets free is truly free indeed! Not just in word, but in deed and in truth.

When Paul says in Rom. 8:3 that Christ condemned sin in the flesh (or, as we came to understand it, “the sinful nature”) it is because it was actually condemned in Him—in His human nature that also became “dead” with our sins and trespasses! Just as Christ's body suffered death because of our sin, so too His human spirit suffered the pangs of spiritual death because of our sin. This is what occurred in Christ—just as it did with Adam when sin entered him—bringing death upon him both spiritually and physically and even upon all of us. Sin was imputed (or better, "attributed") to us through Adam both physically and spiritually, and had to be reversed in the person and work of Christ both physically and spiritually. Christ hanging on that tree, cursed Him with the curses due us, but His perfect walk before all of that vindicated Him. His works justified Him, just as James denotes concerning all of us (Jam. 2:24). Not that works save us, but they give evidence to the fact that one is truly born of God. And who better to exemplify this than Christ Himself. Death could not hold Him in the grave, anymore than it can now hold us in the grave due to what He has done for us both spiritually and physically. Again, not just in our body, but in our spirit as well.

Now all of this begins to make more sense when Paul is understood as saying, “He who was manifested in the flesh, was vindicated in the spirit” (1Tim. 3:16; lit. trans.), or when Peter says, “He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit” (1Pet. 3:18). And, yes, this is suppose to be a little “s” here in both places.[12] The antithesis is between Christ's human flesh and His human spirit. The Greek construction or grammar affirms this, but there is no time for that now, other than to say it is not what took place “through” these mediums of both body and spirit, but what happen to them (or “in” them). It is also not “through” the Holy Spirit that these things occurred for Christ, but “in” His own human flesh and “in” His own human spirit that they occurred; and the same is said of us in Rom. 8:10.[13]

Take note of how the Greek word for “made alive” above, in 1Pet. 3:18, is the same Greek word used for us when Paul said we who were dead in sins and trespasses were “made alive” with Christ (Eph. 2:1, 5). Did you catch that? Do you understand the ramifications of what Paul is saying here? We were “made alive with Christ.” This Greek word doesn’t mean to be energized, but to actually come alive after having been dead. And the death that we are talking about here in this context that we are “made alive” from, is not from physical death but from spiritual death. Spiritually, we are “made alive” with Christ, which naturally presupposes a spiritual death in the both of us. These are the cold, hard facts. And there is no way of getting around this. Christ, as well as us, are spiritually “made alive” after having become spiritually dead in sins and trespasses, with our physical bodies following suit.

So, it is no wonder that Paul could also write concerning us in Rom. 8:10, “But if Christ is in you, the body (Gk. soma) is dead through sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness” (again using the little “s” here). This verse in Romans takes us all back to what Peter had said above in 1Pet. 3:18 concerning Christ. As He was, and is, so are we. As He died to sin in His body through sin’s death knell, so did we also die in our bodies to sin[14]; and as He was “made alive” (Gk., zoopoieo) in His human spirit after having become us (as the old man), we too are given life in our human spirit to no longer rise as the old man but live as an absolutely new man. Hallelujah! Are you seeing this? Christ as our federal head and Second Adam reversed all that the first Adam as our previous federal head had passively subjected us to both spiritually and physically. Thus, we are no longer those with a sinful nature who were sold passively as slaves under sin through Adam, as described for us in Rom. 7:14 of all unregenerate individuals, but we have been bought passively (see 1Cor. 6:20; 7:23) from under the servitude of sin as slaves now to God and to Christ, through Christ. How could Paul and all believers still be "sold as a slave under the sin" in Rom. 7:14 (lit., trans.), when he just got through telling us in Rom. 6:17-18 that we “use to be slaves to the sin” (lit., trans.) and have been “set free from the sin" (lit., trans.) and have become “slaves to the righteousness” (lit., trans.)? And again, “When you were slaves of the sin, you were free from the righteousness….But now that you have been set free from the sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness and the result is eternal life” (vv. 20, 22; lit. trans.). If we as believers believe we are still “sold as a slave under the sin” in Rom. 7:14, then this would be going against what was just earlier stated in Romans 6 concerning the fact that we are no longer “slaves to the sin.” Do you see that? Your theology is wrong that forces you to believe that you are still the man in Romans 7 that Paul said in Romans 6 that you aren’t anymore. It’s a contradiction of terms if you believe otherwise. In essence, you are denying what you were just told by Paul that you no longer are. For a further analysis of all this, please click here too see my article on the multitude of reasons why Romans 7 is not speaking of the believer. But this one argument above says it all. Either we are “slaves to the sin,” or we are not! Christian’s are not slaves or servants to two masters. But I hear Christians talking as if they are all the time. Time and time again you hear Christians talking as if they are still the old man, as well as a new man. How can this be brethren? Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? Does a fig-tree bear olives, or a grapevine figs? Does fresh water produce salt water, or vice-versa? Who has bewitched you? Such a persuasion comes not from above.

Greek expositor Kenneth Wuest, in his Word Studies of the Greek NT, talks about this verb noted above with regards to Christ being “made alive” in 1Pet. 3:18:

The word “quickened”…does not mean to “energize,” but “to make alive.” To make something alive presupposes a condition of death. A living person may be energized, but only a dead person can be made alive. The opposite of death is life. We have therefore a contrast between two things, death and life.

The translation reads, “having in fact been put to death with respect to the flesh, but made alive with respect to the spirit.” That preserves the balance in which the apostle contrasts the physical death of our Lord with the fact that His human spirit was made alive. But how are we to understand this latter?

To make alive Christ’s human spirit presupposes the death of that human spirit. Our Lord on Calvary’s cross cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mat. 27:46). The Greek word translated “forsaken” means “to abandon, desert, leave in straits, leave helpless, leave destitute, leave in a lurch, let one down.” The cry was addressed to the two other members of the Triune Godhead. God the Father had abandoned and deserted Him....Our Lord's prayer was unanswered. This unanswered prayer was predicted in type in Lev. 5:11 where an offerer too poor to bring a blood offering could bring the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour, just enough to bake one day's supply of bread; the giving up of the flour typifying the giving up of life, thus pointing to our Lord's death. But [the offerer] was forbidden to include frankincense with the flour. Frankincense is a type of answered prayer. Flour without frankincense speaks of our Lord's death and His unanswered prayer [for without it the prayers of the saints are not heard, see Rev. 5:8 and 8:3-4].

The question…was also addressed to God the Holy Spirit. The same necessity which caused God the Father to abandon God the Son caused the Holy Spirit to do the same....That human spirit during our Lord’s earthly existence was energized by [and in union with] the Holy Spirit….But now, in the hour of His direst need, the Holy Spirit left Him helpless and in the lurch. He abandoned the Son just as surely as did God the Father. This is [also] predicted in type in Lev. 5:11 where the offerer is forbidden to include oil in the flour. Oil is a type of the Holy Spirit. No oil [mingled] in the flour speaks of the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit’s sustaining presence while our Lord was suffering on the Cross. He ceased keeping alive in divine life the human spirit of our Lord. That human spirit, sinless though it was and continued to be, was dead in that the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit ceased to energize it….But when He prayed that He might be raised from the dead [see the Psalms], the Holy Spirit…returned to make alive again His human spirit…Sin had been paid for. The atonement was looked upon as complete.[15]

What happened to Christ after being forsaken by God was His descent into hell; for what is hell but the state of a spirit with whom God will no longer have anything to do with. It is the final outcome and judgment due to all sinners, and for which Christ our Substitute bore in our stead in order to become the death of death. But “when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death,” He “was heard in that he feared” (Heb. 5:7, KJV).

William G. T. Shedd in his systematic theology also remarks here at this venture:

At the crucifixion, the union between the human soul and the human body was dissolved temporarily, but the union between the Logos [the Son of God] and the human soul and body [of the Son of Man] was not. Christ’s human soul and body were separated from each other during the “three days and three nights,” in which he “lay in the heart of the earth.” This was death. The humanity of Christ was dislocated for a time, and its complete personality was interrupted. For a soul without its body is not a full and entire human person, although it is the root and the base of the person. Between death and the resurrection, when the human soul and body are separated, although there is self-consciousness in the disembodied spirit, and so the most important element in personality, yet there is an incomplete human personality until the resurrection of the body restores the original union between soul and body.

But there was no such interruption and temporary dissolution of the unity of Christ’s theanthropic personality caused by the crucifixion. The divine nature [of the Son of God] was of course unaffected by the bodily dissolution; and although the human soul and body [of the Son of Man] was separated from one another by the crucifixion, they were neither of them separated from the Logos [or the Son of God] by this event. Between Christ’s death and resurrection, both the human soul and the human body were still united with the Logos [the Son of God]…when Christ’s human soul forsook the tabernacle of his body, his deity [as the Son of God] forsook neither [his human] body or [his human] soul. If it had, then could we not truly hold, either that the person [of the Son of God] of Christ was buried, or that the person [of the Son of God] of Christ did raise up Himself from the dead. For the body separated from the Word [the Son of God] can in no true sense be termed the person of Christ; nor is it true to say, that the Son of God in raising up that body did raise up Himself, if the body were not both with Him, and of Him, even during the time it lay in the sepulcher…. The very person of Christ, therefore, forever one and the selfsame was, only touching bodily substance concluded [or ended] within the grave, his [human] soul only from thence severed; but by personal union His deity [as the Son of God] still inseparably joined with both.

…but when the divine nature [of the Son of God] withdrew its support from the human, the latter was as helpless as it is in an ordinary human creature. And when the divine nature [of the Son of God] imparted its power, the human nature [of both soul and body] became “mighty in word and in deed.”….Jesus Christ…had so much power, and only so much, as the divine nature [or the Son of God] in his complex person pleased to exert in him. Sometimes, consequently, he was mighty in his acts, and sometimes he was “a worm, and no man,” Ps. 22:6.…When deity doesn’t work as simple deity untrammeled, but works in “the form of a servant,” it is humbled….The Logos [or the Son of God] constantly existed in Jesus Christ, but did not constantly act through His human soul and body.[16]

Christ’s human nature in spirit, soul and body was given to Him for one sole purpose: to be a sacrifice for His people’s sins in order to redeem them in their spirit, soul and body. That’s it—bar none! So it stands to reason that the human side of Christ would be left “in a lurch,” as Wuest put it, to accomplish what that human side of Him came specifically and purposefully to do. As Shedd said, “The Logos constantly existed in Jesus Christ, but did not constantly act through His human soul and body,” as He could have. He was sometimes abandoned, deserted, left in straits, left helpless, left destitute and left in a lurch. Need we dare say that He was also seemingly “let down”? Yet “it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer”—“it pleased the Lord to bruise Him,”[17] that is, the human side of Christ as the Son of Man. Indeed, of a truth, Christ as the Son of God forsook the human side of Himself! And all for us! As noted earlier in part four, it was His work as the live Scapegoat in Leviticus 16 to carry and and bear away our sin; with the other goat for the Lord being the actual atonement for that sin. Both spoke of Christ with and without our sin. And two goats were of necessity commissioned by God in order to bear forth this truth. But it was "for sin" on Christ as the Scapegoat, that Christ's sinless sacrifice made atonement for that sin. It was Christ's righteous blood that atoned for the sins of the people that were placed on Him as the live Scapegoat. The latter work goes goes hand-in-hand with the former work, in order for Christ's righteous sacrifice to be an atonement (or covering) "for sin."

Now, to my surprise, many respected commentators and theologians are of the opinion, with regards to 1Pet. 3:18 mentioned above, that Christ incurred a death both corporeally and incorporeally; both physically and spiritually. And some even assert this of Him without Him having even necessarily gone into Hell.[18] Many of the reformers such as R. L. Dabney, Francis Turretin, John Calvin and Herman Bavinck all taught and believed in this.

For instance, Herman Bavinck, in his systematic theology entitled Reformed Dogmatics, and Francis Turretin, in his Elenctic Theology, pretty much speak for the rest when they write: “All the Reformed without exception opposed the opinion of Catholics, confessing that Christ bore the wrath of God and tasted the spiritual death of His abandonment also in His soul” (Bavinck),[19] and that, “the orthodox refer Christ’s suffering to the soul as well as the body” (Turretin).[20] And as I stated before, being that these men are dichotomists, when they say “soul” they also mean spirit.

To say as above that Christ incurred a “spiritual death” means that He died spiritually. If not, then words are void of any meaning. Death is the opposite of life or being "made alive." At some point on the cross Christ was no longer alive unto God in His human spirit. Dead means dead; not half-dead or partially dead, but totally dead. Of necessity, Christ had to die both physically and spiritually, in our stead, so that we of necessity could be raised to life both spiritually and physically. He had to first kill us in His person (as a man) in order to make us alive together with Him. We died in order to live, just as a seed that is placed into the ground must die before it too rises to a new, vibrant and different life. We don’t like the idea of dying before we are given life, but in God’s way of doing things that is the order; and we continue to die daily to ourselves and our own way of doing things in order that the life of Christ might be made manifest in and through us. This is where faith which works by love truly demonstrates itself. To get anything in this life and in the life to come, we must first be willing to let it all go, to let it die, which is just the opposite of how the natural man without the Spirit thinks. It is all supernatural beyond measure. This is the example that Jesus left for us in both His walk and in His crucifixion. As the Son of Man, He let it all go by first taking on the “likeness of men” by becoming human flesh at His incarnation; and then ultimately by taking on the “likeness of flesh of sin,” or flesh with sin in it, in order to condemn that sin in our sinful human nature. The Son of Man became, as it were, “a worm, and not a man,” despised and rejected, smitten by God and afflicted. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him. All of our iniquities and all of our sins of the flesh both inwardly and outwardly were laid upon Christ in order for us to be judged by God in His person to the fullest extent of the law both inwardly and outwardly. Christ had to be made like us both spiritually and physically, and then judge us in Himself, in order for us to rise from that dead state and become as He is both spiritually and physically. Christ procured both our condemnation and our justification; our death as well as our life. He is our total substitute and identification; the whole package in spirit, soul and body. Like Calvin had said earlier, if Christ had not suffered in His soul (or spirit), “He would have been a Redeemer of bodies only.” The necessity of spiritual life in us hung on the fact that Christ died spiritually our spiritual death, in order to crucify us (or kill us), and then raise us up spiritually to newness of life.

Turretin goes on to say of Christ suffering in His soul, how that, “the necessity of our salvation required this. For as we had sinned in soul and body, so Christ, the surety, must suffer in both parts in order to pay a sufficient ransom price (lytron) to the divine justice and to redeem the soul and body. It is confirmed by this—that the sufferings denounced against sinners by the law are not only bodily and external, but principally spiritual and internal in a sense of the Divine wrath and curse (Lev. 26; Dt. 27, 28; Gal. 3:10, 13).... The punishment of desertion, suffered by Christ, was not a bodily, but a spiritual and internal suffering. It arose not from any torment (however dreadful) which He could feel in His body...but from a most oppressive sense of God's wrath resting upon Him on account of our sins.”[21] Turretin continues: “Christ was made a curse for us (Gal. 3:13)….This assuredly does not respect only the body, but especially the soul, which can be affected by such a sense.”[22] And then Turretin also adds: “God suspending for a little while the favorable presence of grace [in forsaking Christ on the cross]…that He might be able to suffer all the punishment due to us.”[23]

Reformed expositor, R. L. Dabney, in his systematic theology notes how that Calvin understood the Apostles’ Creed of Christ dying, being buried, and descending into hell to mean: “by Christ’s descending into hell, the torments of spiritual death, which He suffered in dying, not after [or in hell]. His idea is, that the Creed meant simply to asseverate, by the words, ‘descended into hell,’ the fact that Christ actually tasted the pangs of spiritual death, in addition to bodily, and in this sense endured hell-torments for sinners, so far as they can be felt without [He himself having personal] sin.”[24]

Sadly, all of these men mentioned above, believe the old man was never crucified in practice but only in theory; only metaphorically speaking but not actually. And they have come to this conclusion based upon a faulty understanding of Romans 7. For you see, they believe Paul is talking about the sinful human nature in Romans 7 (and rightly so). And if Paul is talking about his life as a believer, then it stands to reason that the believer still has the sinful nature (or the old man). This is where all of this teaching with regards to us still being the old man with a still prevalent sinful nature comes from. It is the basis for this belief in the face of all the clear teaching in Scripture to the contrary, that the old man has been definitively once-and-for-all crucified in the past in Rom. 6:6 in the death of Christ; and thus they ignore the clear and plain teachings of Scripture for the more obscure texts and harder sayings of Paul, such as in Romans 7, and then wrestle all of these other Scriptures only to their own destruction, bringing no edification to themselves or to others whatsoever—but only further condemnation. They all stumble over the personal pronoun “I” with the present active indicative verb “am” (or the phrase: “I am”) in Rom. 7:14ff, not accepting or, in some cases, not even realizing that this wording was commonly used among the ancient Greeks (as well as in almost all languages) in what is commonly known among all Greek grammarians as: a historic present tense in the first person, singular, present active indicative. Paul had just used it earlier in Rom. 3:7, when he said, “For if the truth of God has more abounded through my lie to His glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?”[25] with “am I also judged” (Gk. kago krinomai) being in the first person, singular, present passive indicative.[26] As anyone can readily see, Paul was using himself as an example and placing himself in every unregenerate Jew’s position who believed and talked like this, in defiance to what Paul was teaching on God's purpose and will concerning all of this. Paul wasn’t saying that he was still being judged as a sinner, but just making it more vivid and real to his readers as if he were the one personally arguing that way as such. And pretty much all commentators are in agreement with Paul speaking in this manner in Rom. 3:7. For example, Matthew Poole writes: “The apostle does plainly personate in this place a wicked objector, or he speaks in the name and person of such a one. This way of speaking and writing is very frequent among all authors.”[27] This is a remarkable assertion by Poole, considering the fact that he believes of Romans 7 that Paul is there talking about his post-conversion experience. Poole could see Paul using the first person historic present tense here in chapter 3, but not in chapter 7. Charles Hodge is likewise pretty much on the same page with those who state that “the apostle here personates a heathen,”[28] though Hodge thinks this should include the Jew as well: “the I, therefore, stands for anyone” [29] (ibid). John Stott similarly agrees how that Paul, “impersonates the objector by using the first person singular.”[30] And Kenneth Wuest and A. T. Robertson, in quoting a citation from someone in A. T. Robertson’s work, both assert that Paul “‘uses the first person from motives of delicacy’ (Sanday and Headlam) in this supposable case for argument’s sake as in 1Cor. 4:6. So here he [Paul] ‘translates by fiction’ (Field) to himself the objection.”[31]

So, rather than most of these individuals above accepting the fact that the old man (or sinful nature) has been definitively once-and-for-all crucified in the past, they reinterpret this to mean that the old man or sinful nature is still in a process of being crucified, using also such mistranslations of Eph. 4:22-24 which mistakenly allude to the idea that the old man as still having to be put off, when the truth of the Greek text, in tandem with Rom. 6:6 and Col. 3:9-10, actually says that he has already been put off in the past in our baptism into death with Christ when we first believed. The Kenneth Wuest translation bears this out more accurately, by stating of this passage in Ephesians: “...you have put off [aorist middle infinitive] once for all with reference to your former manner of life the old man which is being corrupted according to the passionate desires of deceit; moreover that you are being constantly renewed with reference to the spirit of your mind; and that you have put on [aorist middle infinitive] once for all the new man which after God was created in righteousness and holiness of truth.” See also the Holman Christian Standard Bible and the Darby Bible Translation for similar translations. See also my article Created In God’s Image, Not Adam’s for a more comprehensive study on all of this.

What many of these men above erroneously believe concerning the old man (or the sinful nature), reformed commentator Philip Ryken flippantly demonstrates in no uncertain terms, when he writes:

The trouble is that our sinful nature has a way of trying to climb back down from that cross. When it does, it is able to make a remarkably speedy recovery, partly because we have a way of helping it. We are sometimes tempted to remove the nails, help our old sinful nature down from the cross, and nurse it back to health.

This has to stop....Mortify your sinful nature. Put it to death! From time to time, whenever it shows signs of life, say, “Oh no you don’t! Don’t try to climb down from there. Get back up on that cross where you belong!” Then pound the nails in a little deeper. If you belong to Christ, you have crucified your sinful nature, with all its selfish desire. Do not resuscitate it. Do not give it CPR. Do not keep it on life support. Just leave it on the cross and let it die.

There are two sides to sanctification in the Christian life. One is mortification, the putting to death of the sinful nature. The other is vivification, the coming to life of the regenerate nature.”[32]

Is he serious!?! I am absolutely flabbergasted by these statements of his. I can’t even believe what my eyes are reading. But this is how these men think and believe, as well as many others who have been greatly influenced (and deceived) by their teaching. No longer are we to mortify our sinful nature or “put it to death.” It’s been laid to rest! The only thing Paul tells us to now mortify are the misdeeds of our physical fleshly bodies (Rom. 8:13; 13:14; Col. 3:5), not a sinful nature. We continue to put off the misdeeds of the body, due to the fact that we have already in the past put off the old man and put on the new man. Again, this is what Paul tells us in Rom. 6:6, “our old man was crucified with Him that the body of sin may be rendered powerless.” Unlike the Pharisees, we are able to clean the outside of our cup because the inside of our cup has been cleansed. Christ took our sinful nature and executed that nature on the cross so that we actually become delivered from our sins. In Christ’s death, all of our sins which that nature produced, also begin to die. When you cut down a fruit tree, the fruit of that tree likewise dies. Christ’s death both spiritually and physically is really our death. His burial is our burial. His life is our life. We now have a new history in Christ, a new identity, and a new position in our relation to sin and the world. Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world.

John Murray, whom I referred to earlier above, counters such incorrect and obtuse thinking of Philip Ryken and the like, by stating:

To suppose that the old man has been crucified and still lives or has been raised again from this death is to contradict the obvious force of the import of crucifixion. And to interject the idea that crucifixion is a slow death and therefore to be conceived of as a process by which the old man is progressively mortified until he is finally put to death is to go flatly counter to Paul’s terms. He says “our old man has been crucified” [Rom. 6:6], and not “our old man is in the process of being crucified.”[33]

When Christ died to sin on the cross in our stead, WE DIED! Our old man “was CRUCIFIED” (Rom. 6:6). A dead man can no longer tells any more tales, let alone come down from the cross and reassert his influence and ways over our lives―HE’S DEAD! John MacArthur notes here that, “To argue that believers have both an old self and new self is to argue in effect that the believer’s soul is half regenerate and half unregenerate. There is no support for such a spiritual half-breed in Scripture.”[34] Not that Murray and MacArthur are the last words on all of this―the Bible has been saying all along the very same things! The old man that we received in Adam, died in Christ; and a new man has been re-created in his place in Christ Jesus after God’s very own image and likeness according to Eph. 4:24.

Once again, Murray writes here under Romans 6:

...the pivot of the refutation is: “we died to sin.” What does Paul mean?

He is using the language of that phenomenon with which all are familiar, the event of death. When a person dies he is no longer active in the sphere or realm or relation in reference to which he has died. His connection with that realm has been dissolved; he has no further communications with those who still live in that realm, nor do they have with him....

In accord with this analogy, the person who lives in sin, or to sin, lives and acts in the realm of sin―it is the sphere of his life and activity. And the person who died to sin no longer lives in that sphere. His tie with it has been broken, and he has been translated into another realm....This is the decisive cleavage that the apostle has in view; it is the foundation upon which rests his whole conception of a believer’s life, and it is a cleavage, a breach, a translation as really and decisively true in the sphere of moral and religious relationship as in the ordinary experience of death. There is a once-for-all definitive and irreversible breach with the realm in which sin reigns in and unto death.[35]

In conclusion, since it was man that had sinned, it was necessary that the penalty of this sin be borne by a man. And the paying of that penalty involved man suffering in his spirit, soul and body as such that only a man is capable of bearing. That man, by necessity, is Jesus Christ. The spirit, soul and body of man was affected by sin, and it is in the same that the punishment had to be borne. It was absolutely necessary that the Son of God should assume a human spirit, soul and body with all of its infirmities procured after the fall; and thus descend to the depths of the degradation to which man had fallen. At the same time, the Son of God in His human state had to be sinless, for a man who was himself a sinner could not atone for sins. Only Christ as the Son of Man could fulfill both roles in appeasing the wrath of God and atoning for men's sins. He did it by (1) living a sinless life and, (2) by becoming a curse for us and taking our sin upon Himself as our blessed Scapegoat.

The human nature of Christ was not deity (or deified). Christ was not the man-God, but the God-man. He was both fully God and fully man where never the twain shall meet. His divine side or nature was deity; His human side or nature was, and still is, human. Since the cross, Christ will always remain theanthropic. Even before the cross no such union of the two natures existed. Don’t get me wrong, there was a union, but each remained separate and distinct as far as their individual natures were concerned. In other words, Christ was always the Son of God; but He was not, as yet before the cross, the absolute Son of Man in all of its entirety. It was on the cross that Christ fully became the Son of Man to the full extent of that personification, emptying Himself of all deity. In all of the systematic theologies that I have read, this is the general consensus. As Shedd has also remarked, “The incarnation of the Son of God consists merely in the union of two natures, which union does add perfection to the weaker [the human side of Christ], to the nobler [the Divine side] no alteration at all….The wild olive is grafted into the good olive, and partakes of its root and fatness,”[36] so much as it was allowed to. In essence, this is what has also occurred with us, as even Paul articulates for us in Rom. 11:17 where we share in the nourishing sap of the olive root, which is Christ, with both Jews and Gentiles being the branches. While the Divine Logos is omniscient, on earth He might have allowed the human side of Himself to not know something at all. As Shedd said before, while here on earth “the Logos constantly existed in Jesus Christ, but did not constantly act as He could have through His human soul and body.”[37] Limitations were set in place on what He could or could not do; on what He should or should not do. And it was the human side of Christ as the Son of Man that was permitted to be “made sin” as mankind’s perfect substitute in every way, shape, manner and form—to redeem mankind from their wretched state and to make the atonement and propitiation for sin necessary before God to appease His wrath against sinners. On the cross, the Divine side of Christ made no manifestation of His power to His human side, in order that He could become all things to all men---not only positively, but negatively as well. The humanity of Jesus Christ only knew and acted as much as the Divine side of the Son of God in Him had permitted.

Again, all of this is graphically portrayed for us in Leviticus 16 where “two male goats” (v. 5) were presented before the Lord at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, literally, “for sin” (ibid), with the goat for the Lord making “atonement” for the sins of the people (vv. 15-16). The goat for the Lord (which depicts the sinless human side of Christ) was slaughtered "for sin" without the actual sins of the people placed on it, its blood then taken into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled on the Mercy Seat. It visibly set forth the means of reconciliation, which is Christ’s sinlessness. The other live Scapegoat (which depicts the sin-bearing human side of Christ) was not slaughtered, but offered "for sin" nevertheless (cp. v. 5); its blood was not brought into the Holy of Holies to be sprinkled on the Mercy Seat, but had the sins of the people placed “on its head” in order to be carried off to a “desert” place “in the care of another man,” visibly setting forth the effects of Christ’s atoning sacrifice in the complete removal of our sins. The KJV says “a fit man” carried off the live goat, but literally the Hebrew reads, “a man of readiness.” How befitting was this also of Christ who was always “ready” to do the Father's will, whether for good or bad; not an angel, not the Devil, but “a man.” And who knew the Devil’s terrain better than Christ, who met him in his own turf?

Tradition says this scapegoat[38] was eventually pushed off the edge of a steep crevasse or precipice and plunged to its death. Could this other man standing “ready” to lead this sin-bearing goat have been the sinless side of Christ that accompanied His sin-bearing side into the netherworld? To a place so hot and arid that the rich man in hell would cry out for Lazarus on the other side of the chasm to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue? Your guess is as good as mine. But the question, and the state of the matter as it is told to us, almost begs the answer. What else could all of this be typically referring to? At any rate, the perfect and “sinless” human side of Christ is seen as presenting His blood before God, while His “sin-bearing” side is seen as carrying off our sins into hell and leaving them there. As St. John states, He was the Lamb of God who “takes away” the sin of the world (Jhn. 1:29). The Psalmist likewise declared, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us” (103:3). And again, “You will tread all our sins underfoot, and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Mic. 7:19).

Andrew Bonar also notes here on Leviticus 16:

The removal of sin quite out of sight forever is to be set before us. One has said, “the first goat had most to do with the glory of God; the second, or scapegoat, with the conscience of the sinner”…Wrath against these confessed sins will now alight in the desert, not upon them.

Follow the scapegoat and see its doom. Is there not here a criminal led along? There is something that speaks of the Man of Sorrows, made sin for us. Is there not here a criminal led away to unknown woe? There is something that speaks of “one made a curse for us.” Why is he left alone, defenseless, trembling amid a wilderness? There is enough to remind us of Jesus left to suffer without sympathy. “He looked on His right hand, and there was none; refuge failed Him; no man cared for His soul” [cf. Psm. 142:4]. The scapegoats solitary cry is re-echoed by the barren rocks, and the howling of beasts of prey terrifies it on all sides; the gloom of night settles down upon it and shrouds it in deep terror….Wounded by beasts of prey, from whom it has scarcely escaped, it is now stretched on the ground by a stroke,…its eyes glaring with convulsive fear, and its piteous cries echoing through the dismal wilderness.[39]

On completely the opposite side of the spectrum to all of this in the sinless (or innocent) goat being slaughtered, the sinless side of Christ’s humanity was vindicated and thus “made alive” in order to return to the Holy of Holies in heaven and make atonement for His people’s sins before God with His own righteous blood. Our sins were left dead in the grave, while the righteous life and blood of Christ made us righteous in God’s sight both positionally and practically; first in our spirit, then in our soul, and finally in our body in order for us to now walk even as Christ walked (cf. 1Jhn. 2:6). Our fleshly body became dead to sin through sin, while our spirit became life with a quickening zoe life (Jhn. 5:21b, 24, 26, 29, 40; 10:28; 11:25-26; Rom. 11:15; 1Jhn. 3:14) through Christ's righteousness; just as Christ's fleshly body also became dead to sin through sin, and His spirit likewise was made alive because of His righteousness. And it is in the light of all of this that we can indeed now reckon ourselves dead unto sin and alive unto God.

Oh, how marvelous, Oh, how wonderful is my Savior’s love for me. Who saved such a wretched sinner as I use to be. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen and amen!

“You are worthy…because You were slain

and have purchased us for God with Your blood,

men from every kindred and tongue and tribe and nation.

You have made them to be a kingdom of priests to our God,

and they reign on the earth”

(Rev. 5:9, 10; lit. trans.)

He who has ever been made to sit together with Christ, and once to enjoy the real preciousness of a transfer of Christ’s righteousness to him, and his sin to Christ—that man has eaten the bread of heaven and will never renounce it for husks! We cannot by any means turn aside from this glorious stability of faith and for this good reason—there is nothing for us in the doctrine which these other men teach! It may suit intellectual gentlemen, I dare say it does; but it will not suit us. I have often thought the best answer for all these new ideas is that the true gospel was always preached to the poor—“The poor have the gospel preached to them.” I am sure that the poor will never learn the gospel of these supposed intellectual divines, for they cannot make heads or tails of it, nor the rich, either. After you have read through one of their volumes, you have not the least idea of what the book is about, until you have read it through eight or nine times. And then, you begin to think you are a very stupid being for ever having read such inflated heresy, for it sours your temper and makes you feel angry to see the precious truths of God trod under foot! Some of us must stand out against these attacks on the truth of God, although we do not love controversy. We rejoice in the liberty of our fellow men, and would have them proclaim their convictions; but if they touch these precious things, they touch the apple of our eye. We can allow a thousand opinions in the world, but that which infringes upon the precious doctrine of our covenantal salvation, of our sin being imparted and imputed to Christ our Head, and His righteousness being imputed and imparted to us His body, along with Him reversing all that Adam had done in and to us—against this we must, and will enter our hearty and solemn protest as long as God spares us. Once take away from us this glorious doctrine, and where are we, brothers and sisters? We may lay down and die, for nothing remains that is worth living for! We have come to the valley of the shadow of death when we find this doctrine to be untrue. If these things which I speak to you today are not the truths of Christ; if they are not true, there is no comfort left for any poor man under God’s sky, and it were better for us never to have been born! Stand up for this truth about Christ! I would not have you be bigoted, but I would have you be decided! Do not give countenance to any of this trash and error which is going abroad, but stand firm! Be not turned away from your steadfastness by any pretense at intellectuality and high philosophy, but earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints, and hold fast the form of sound words which you have heard, and have been taught, even as you have read in the sacred Book, which is the way of freedom from sin unto everlasting life. Thus, beloved, without gathering up my strength for the fray, or attempting to analyze the subtleties of those who would pervert the simple gospel, I speak out my mind and utter the kindling of my heart among you. Little enough will you reckon, over whom the Holy Spirit has given me the oversight, what the grievous wolves may design if you keep within the fold. Break not the sacred bounds wherein God has enclosed His Church. He has encircled us in the arms of a covenantal love; He has united us in indissoluble bonds to the Lord Jesus; He has fortified us with the assurance that the Holy Spirit shall guide us into all truth! God grant that those beyond the pale of visible fellowship with us in this eternal gospel may see their danger and escape from the fowler’s snare!

Obviously, most of these words written above are not my own, but the words of another, spoken for slightly different reasons, under another guise, and under slightly different pretenses. But they were so well said, and are so well fitted, suited, and applicable to this current discussion at hand, that I just could not resist restating them here, along with some of my own thoughts and words interspersed along the way. But, for the most part, they remain none other than the words of the prince of preachers: Charles Haddon Spurgeon. May we all be so bold, at the expense of being rejected by even our own supposed brothers and sisters in Christ, to defend the faith that was once-and-for-all delivered unto the saints. May God grant us boldness to stand up against all the Peter’s in the world who would rather eat and sit with the elite, rather than with the commoner—with those who seemingly seem neither learned nor read, but who have in fact sat under the teachings of Jesus guided by their Holy Paraclete.



Footnotes:

[1] John Stott, Romans (Downers Grove: IVP, 1994), p. 219.
[2] Ibid., p. 220.
[3] Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David online at: http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/treasury-of-david/psalms-40-10.html (public domain).
[4] Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David online at: http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/treasury-of-david/psalms-41-4.html (public domain).
[5] Ibid.
[6] Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David online at: http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/treasury-of-david/psalms-41-10.html (public domain).
[7] Hebrew trans.; the LXX says, “but a body hast thou prepared me.” And it is the LXX that is used by the author of Hebrews when he quotes these verses concerning Christ in Heb. 10:5f.
[7a] The Satisfaction of Christ, p. 51.
[7b] The Treasury of David, vol. 1, p. 250).
[8] Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David online at: http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/treasury-of-david/psalms-69-1.html, and 69-2.html (public domain).
[9] Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David online at: http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/treasury-of-david/psalms-22-6.html (public domain).
[10] Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David online at: http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/treasury-of-david/psalms-40-12.html (public domain).
[10a] The Atonement, p. 174.
[10b] Ibid, p. 175.
[11] Accessed online at: biblehub.com.
[12] See also ASV, DRB, ERV, WEB, YLT for 1Tim. 3:16 and the ESV, NASB, GWT, JUBILEE BIBLE, ASV, DRB, ERV, Weymouth’s, WEB, YLT for 1Pet. 3:18.
[13] See older 1984 NIV, NASB, ISV, GWT, ASV, DRB, ERV, Weymouth’s, WEB.
[14] All of this going on here concerning our body and spirit is a result of Christ being in us, as the verse denotes. Paul is not talking about our physical bodies dying in the future because of sin. That occurs to all of us whether Christ is in us or not.
[15] Word Studies in the Greek NT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1942), vol. 2, pp. 95, 96, 97. Emphasis and words in brackets mine.
[16] William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, reprint), vol. 2, pp. 270, 271, 272, 273, 274.
[17] See Isa. 53:10 in various translations.
[18] To this latter idea of Christ not going into hell I would have to disagree. For such an idea, one way or the other, surrounds itself primarily around the meaning of the Greek word pneuma in 1Pet. 3:18, with it being translated either “spirit” or “Spirit.” Clearly, Christ's human spirit in the latter part of this verse is the antithesis of His fleshly human body in the former part of this verse, and not that of the Holy Spirit. And “flesh” (or sarks) here is not to be understood here in the ethical/moral sense, as some erroneously suppose, and as inclusive of that spiritual side of Christ's human nature or humanity, and with the pneuma here now as a referent to the Holy Spirit. Peter is talking about Christ's physical body and human spirit and, in which, in His disembodied “spirit,” He is also said to have made a proclamation to the spirits in prison (or tartarus). The preposition and relative pronoun, “in which” in verse 19, which is in the neuter form, refers back to Christ's “spirit” which is also in the neuter form. Wuest concurs: “The word 'which' according to the rules of Greek grammar refers back to the word 'spirit'” (Word Studies, vol. 2, p. 96). And, again, not referring to the Holy Spirit but to Christ's human spirit. Otherwise, we come up with the convoluted idea of many here, that Christ preached to the spirits who were alive in their bodies in the days of Noah through the Holy Spirit inspired preaching of Noah, but who are now in Tartarus. In this scenario, Christ wasn't personally doing the preaching at all through His spirit, but the Holy Spirit was doing the preaching through Noah in the days of Noah. And this is all said to discount that Christ descended into hell. As such, Christ suffered for us but not to the extent that we would have to suffer; He experienced God's wrath, but not to the fullest extent that we would have to experience it if we were in the same shoes. But what kind of a substitute is that? Christ died both spiritually and physically in our stead, that we also might be made alive both spiritually and physically. He suffered under the pangs and judgment of death, just as sure as we would have had to suffer under the pangs and judgment of death. If Christ didn't suffer for us in hell, then He didn't suffer for us. But on the contrary, Christ became a total substitute, not just a partial one. He unequivocally and absolutely was made like us, that we might become like Him; that we would all become as one.
[19] Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), vol. 3, p. 417. Emphasis and italics mine.
[20] Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Phillipsburg: P and R Pub., 1994), vol. 2, p. 353. Words in brackets, emphasis and italics mine.
[21] Ibid, p. 354.
[22] Ibid. Words in emphasis and italics mine.
[23] Ibid. Words in brackets mine.
[24] Systematic Theology (St. Louis: P and R Pub., 1878), lecture 45, pp. 546-547. Words in brackets, emphasis and italics mine.
[25] Verse taken from the American King James Version (AKJV).
[26] Whether “passive” or “active” here, it makes no difference. What is of importance here is the “present” tense. It denotes something that is presently and continually going on, which would be the case of the individual without Christ that Paul is identifying with for instructive purposes only. Paul was no longer himself being judged as a sinner, but just placing himself in their shoes and using their own argument to counter them with.
[27] Matthew Poole’s Commentary on the Whole Bible. Peabody: MA, 2008; vol. 3, p. 487.
[28] Romans, p. 74.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Romans, p. 97.
[31] Wuest’s Word Studies, vol. 1, p. 54; and Robertson’s Word Pictures, vol. 4, p. 343. Words in brackets mine.
[32] Reformed Expository Commentary, Galatians (Phillipsburg: P and R Pub., 2005), pp. 238–239.
[33] Principles of Conduct (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Pub., 1957), pp. 212–213.
[34] The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Colossians (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1992), p. 149.
[35] Collected Writings of John Murray; vol. 2, Systematic Theology (Edinburg: Banner of Truth, 1977), p. 279.
[36] William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, reprint), vol. 2, pp. 268, 269.
[37] Ibid., p. 274.
[38] Hebrew noun Azazel, meaning: “goat of removal or departure” Some say it is a proper name for a demon spirit, but in context the act of this animal departing from the camp and being “sent away” (v. 21) into the wilderness or desert is befitting its name. This was often the case with names being used to describe what took place at the moment a name was given to a person, place or thing; thus, “scapegoat,” or escape + goat is so rendered to effectively denote its mission.
[39] Andrew Bonar, Leviticus (Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 1846), p. 312, 313. Words in brackets mine (this is the Psalm and verse he is referring to, though he rewords it to fit Christ’s situation).