Grace Bible Church
Pastor Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
Sunday, August 10, 2014
We are still noting that The Doctrine of the Substitutionary Spiritual Death of Jesus Christ.
Point 1. dealt with The Categories of Spiritual Death.
Point 2. The Definition of the Substitutionary Spiritual Death of Jesus Christ Based upon the Original Language.
Point 3. The Difference between Real and Substitutionary Spiritual Death.
Point 4. The Mechanics of the Substitutionary Spiritual Death.
For example, someone might ask why did it take just three hours for billions of sins to be judged on the humanity of TLJC?
First of all, we begin with the fact that the omnipotence of God the Father judicially imputed all the sins in human history to the impeccable humanity of Christ.
Then, once the sins were imputed to Christ, the holiness of God the Father, made up of His justice and righteousness, both judged our sins and simultaneously abandoned the humanity of Christ on the cross.
Also the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit sustained the impeccable humanity of Christ through His enabling power in the PPOG.
We know our Lord remained trichotomous, for in His unique physical death His spirit went into the presence of the Father, His soul to Hades with the Holy Spirit, and His body went into the grave.
So, while God the Father used both His omnipotence to impute our sins to Christ and then His justice to judge our sins, it was the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit that sustained our Lord on the cross.
And, in doing so, He provided Him the enabling power to endure His substitutionary spiritual death, those three hours of being judged for our sins, so He might remain the perfect sin offering.
prin-The omnipotence of the Holy Spirit sustaining Christ was a far greater task than is required to sustain us.
Point 5. The Old Testament Analogy to the Efficacious Substitutionary Spiritual Death of Christ on the Cross.
LUK 1:37 “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
John recognized the importance of our Lord’s impeccability both before and during the cross when He said in JOH 1:29“Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
According to EXO 12:5; LEV 9:3; LEV 14:10; LEV 23:12; NUM 6:14, the sin offering had to be a male lamb without spot and without blemish.
For example, in EXO 12:5 “Your lamb shall be a male without spot and without blemish.”
LEV 9:3 “Then to the sons of Israel you shall speak, saying, ‘Take a male goat for a sin offering, and a calf and a lamb, both one year old, without defect, for a burnt offering,
In NUM 6:14 ‘And he shall present his offering to the Lord: one male lamb a year old without defect for a burnt offering and one ewe‑lamb a year old without defect for a sin offering and one ram without defect for a peace offering,
Many passages in the Pentateuch, which are the first five books of the Bible, remind us of this point, representing impeccability and innocence in the animal sacrifices.
NUM 29:2 “And you shall offer a burnt offering as an aroma pleasing to the Lord [propitiation]. It can be a bull, a ram, or seven male lambs one year old without blemish [defect].”
Such as “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” LUK 23:34.
“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” LUK 23:43.
“Woman, this is your son.”Then he said to the disciple: “This is your mother.”; JOH 19:26-27.
Even “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” MAT 27:46.
When Jesus had received the wine, he said,”It is finished;” and he bowed his head and handed over the spirit; JOH 19:29-30.
1PE 2:22 He committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth;
In 1CO 5:7, the analogy is completed by Paul when he said, “For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed as a substitute for us.”
The Old Testament sacrifices under the ritual plan of God were designed to teach both Christology and soteriology regarding the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union.
If a defective or blemished animal was offered, that was blasphemy by analogy, for it did not represent the impeccability and perfection of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.
Think about it with me for a moment, the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit sustained the humanity of Christ in the greatest suffering the world has ever known.
Never was there a greater demonstration of the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit than during those three hours when the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit sustained our Lord in His status of impeccability.
If the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit inside the PPOG could sustain our Lord in this unique suffering, it follows, a fortiori, that the same omnipotence of the Holy Spirit inside the PPOG for your life can sustain you through any suffering in life.
In verse 13, the blood of the bull was used when the high priest went into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement once a year.
The day of atonement is the holiest day of the Jewish year. It provides prophetical insight concerning the second coming of TLJC and the restoration of the nation of Israel. It is a day when the High Priest offers up a sacrifice for the sins of the Jewish Nation.
He would sprinkle blood over the top of the mercy seat. That blood represented his own sins, LEV 16:13.
The priest would bring into the Holy of Holies the blood of a goat and sprinkle it on top of the mercy seat, which represented the sins of the people, LEV 16:15.
Then there would be two cherubs made of wood having their wings cover the mercy seat, one representing the righteousness of God the other representing the justice of God.
So the righteousness of God looks down and is satisfied because that blood represented the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
So also, the justice of God looks down and is satisfied. This is the doctrine of propitiation.
Lord’s salvation work.
In verse 14, dead works are anything you do for salvation, and anything you do after salvation to try to impress God.
In verse 12, “He entered into the Holy of Holies once and for all” describes the strategic victory of great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union.
Entrance into the Holy of Holies is tantamount to His physical death, burial, resurrection, ascension, session, and the award of His third royal title, King of kings, Lord of lords.
And the award of our Lord’s third royal title which was minus a royal family necessitated the extension of the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union into the Church Age.
The great power experiment of the Church Age is designed for the calling out, the election of a royal family to complement our Lord’s third royal title.
The Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle was a type of the third heaven where the humanity of Christ in Hypostatic Union is seated at the right hand of the Father.
The red heifer offering mentioned in verse 13 was the rebound offering. The ashes are mentioned specifically in NUM 19:9.
There are two categories of cleansing: Sin at salvation, and of sin at the point of the use of the rebound technique.
Wisdom belonged to the humanity of Christ which attained spiritual maturity inside the PPOG.
Might refers to Jesus Christ who will rule the world at the Second Advent.
Honor refers to the award of our Lord’s third royal patent after His ascension.
Glory refers to the fact that Jesus Christ is the ruler of all Church Age believers as the body of Christ and royal family of God.
And blessing refers to the election of the royal family to accompany His third royal patent.
Point 6. The Two Judicial Imputations of the Great Power Experiment.
“on our behalf” is the preposition huper plus genitive of advantage which indicates that our Lord’s spiritual death was substitutionary.
The first judicial imputation was that of the sins of the world being imputed to perfect, impeccable Christ on the cross.
The second judicial imputation is that of the perfect righteousness of God, imputed to the believer at the point of his salvation.
In a judicial imputation, something is imputed to someone which is not antecedently their own.
The sins of the human race were not antecedently Christ’s own. The perfect righteousness of God is not antecedently our own.
Point 7. The Function of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit during the Substitutionary Spiritual Death.
The phrase originates in Psalm 22:1, where it was spoken prophetically of the efficacious sacrifice for sin “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
The doubling of the vocative, “My God, My God,” (Eli, Eli) is a Hebrew idiom for intensity.
First, the highest quality of the person being addressed, God the Father.
Secondly, the highest quality of the attributes used by that person.
The repetition of the vocative refers to the two attributes of the Father involved in our salvation: omnipotence, by which all our sins were imputed to Christ on the cross, and justice which judged our sins while the still perfect Christ was bearing them.
In Verse 1, the word why is the interrogative Hebrew adverb lamah which literally means “for what reason.”
For that reason, He uttered this phrase on the cross to tell us what occurred.
The Hebrew phrase “Wa atah qadosh” is translated “because You are holy.”
HAB 1:13 “Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, And You cannot look on wickedness.”
The righteousness of God the Father rejected the sins of the human race.
And then the justice of God the Father judged all the personal sins of the human race as they were imputed to God the Son.
The Father in His righteousness condemns all our personal sins. The Father in His justice judges our personal sins.
The answer to the second half of our Lord’s question, “why have You forsaken Me?” is found in one Hebrew word in verse 6, tolah translated worm.
Tolah refers to a very unusual worm which was harvested, crushed, put into a very large vat. In this manner, its blood was used for the purpose of making a crimson dye used to color king’s robes in the ancient world.
Therefore, He calls Himself a tolah, for the weight of those sins crushed Him as He was being judged for them.
Because our Lord was judged for our sins on the cross, we now wear the royal robes of His imputed righteousness.
Ours is a double righteousness under the principle of the firstborn receiving double blessing, we were imputed with the righteousness of God the Father, and we share the righteousness of Christ through the baptism of the Spirit.
The qal perfect second masculine singular of the Hebrew verb azab means to abandon or to forsake.
And the subject is found in the suffix, a second masculine singular. Only one person abandoned our Lord at the cross, and that
was God the Father.
The reason is because the Father’s omnipotence, which had provided everything for Christ in the incarnation plan, now had to call for the printout of all the sins of the world and impute them all to Christ.
Now, in that very popular verse that we quote from MAT 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
He shouted this question, not because He needed an answer. It was a question to which we needed the answer.
JOH 3:16 “For God [Father] so loved that world that He gave His uniquely born Son . . .”
The aorist tense gathers together the entire three hours of our Lord’s spiritual death, during which time God the Father both imputed and judged all the sins of the world.
(a) The provision of eternal salvation for the entire human race under substitutionary, efficacious, unlimited atonement.
(b) The guarantee of our eternal security because the power of God is greater than human power.
(c) The strategic victory of Jesus Christ in the historical extension of the angelic conflict.
(d) His resurrection, ascension, and session, at which point He received His third royal patent, though He was without a royal family.
(e) The interruption of the dispensation of Israel and the substitution of the Church Age for the calling out of the election of the royal family of God to accompany His third royal warrant.
(f) The perpetuation of the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union into the dispensation of the Church, causing the Church Age to become the unique dispensation of all human history.
(g) The greatest distribution of divine power to every believer in all of human history, causing the Church Age to become the crossroads of human history as an extension of the angelic conflict.