| Author | Message | ||
| Weimarred Registered user Username: Weimarred Post Number: 112 Registered: 1-2005  |
My question stems from debating Luke 23:43 as a kid, where Jesus is on the cross and is addressing the thief who had rebuked the other thief. ìAnd Jesus said unto him, ëVerily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.íî Iíll always remember this as the Great Comma Controversy. SDAs like to argue that the comma should have been placed after ìTo dayî, not after ìtheeî. They see this verse as an affront their theology of soul sleep. For me, it goes deeper than that, and brings up something much more important to ponder. What was the nature of Jesus between His crucifixion and His resurrection? Regardless of your take on the nature of the dead, does it make sense to think that Jesus was in heaven between the crucifixion and the resurrection? For me, this is yet another example of having to re-think everything after leaving the SDA church. -Tom | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 2829 Registered: 12-2003  |
To me it makes sense to think of His spirit being with God. I don't see the idea of a human spirit being with God to mean that the person can roam the universe freely. 2 Cor. 5 says we do not wish to be "unclothed", but we know we will lose our mortal tents. He also says it would be better by far to leave and be with the Lord (Phil 1:22). Being "unclothed" suggests to me that our essense, the part of us that knows God, leaves the body and is in Christ in some way. The Bible tells us that, when we trust in Jesus, our lives are hidden in Christ. Jesus said he would be in us and we would be in Him after His death/resurrection. I believe our spirits--and hence, Jesus' spirit as well--are in Jesus/God after death, and that we continue to know Him. (Read the first 12 verses of 2 Cor. 5). While I don't begin to understand it all, I do see the Bible suggesting that Jesus' spirit did go to be with His Father. He even said, "Into Your hands I commit my spirit" before He died. Peter suggests, in an enigmatic text which doesn't give many details, that Jesus' spirit also went and proclaimed victory to the "spirits in prison" (1 Peter 3:18-21). There is much about which the Bible is not specific, yet there are so many different details that confirm our SDA teaching was just plain "off"! Colleen | ||
| Jackob Registered user Username: Jackob Post Number: 39 Registered: 7-2005 |
What about Jesus saying that He doesn't ascend to the Father, when He met Mary in the garden? How it harmonizes with the idea that Jesus was paradise prior to ressurection? I'm studying the subject of death as sleep, and one of the objection which I myself raised to others was this, John 20:17. Now when I restudy the subject, I must deal with it. | ||
| Pauls Registered user Username: Pauls Post Number: 32 Registered: 9-2005 |
Why should Jesus have ascended to "heaven" if he bore my place in the universe--i deserve hell. Somehow, I have to sense He went to Hell, not heaven.... John 20:17 seems to imply that at His resurrection, Jesus had not yet seen the Father--because he asked Mary not to ("touch") hold onto Him--and thereby detain Him from ascending to His Father to receive His Father's acceptance of His finished work. Apparently it was important to Jesus to go to heaven--one of the first things He did upon resurrecting...so it sesms likely that He was not there previously...(I am assuming that Heaven and the location of the Father are the same place) the other issue to consider is that Jesus (fully God but fully man--an oxymoron if you don't have faith), resurrected Himself by His own power. The Father did not resurrect Him....this implies that He must have had some consciousness...I do not necessarily infer from this that that oonsciousness would be applied to us in death as we are fully human and not fully God....which Jesus was...see John 10:17-18 to understand this idea. It is interesting that He receives this ability by the Word of the Father...man also lives by the Word of the Father (Matt 4:4) but i digress... | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 2835 Registered: 12-2003 |
Where Jesus' spirit went at His death really has nothing to do with His resurrection or His ascension. Jesus did not break the curse of death until He rose from the dead. His death paid the price for sin, as Bob George (author of "Classic Christianity") explains, but His life is our source of eternal life. 1 Corinthians 15: 17-19 says, "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men." 2 Corinthians 5 and Philippians 1:22-23, among other texts, clearly indicate Paul's understanding of what happens when someone falls asleep in Christ. Yet those people would not have eternal life--the resurrection of their bodies and the reuniting of their spirits with their resurrection bodies--unless Jesus had risen from the dead. (1 Thessalonians 4:14--when Jesus comes God will bring "with Jesus" those who have fallen asleep in him. Then the trumpet will sound, and the dead in Christ will rise first...) Jesus said at His death that He commended his spirit to into his Father's hands. He told the thief He would be with Him in paradise that day. He experienced hell on the cross BEFORE death. The Father turned completely away from Him. He removed Himself so far away that the earth became dark in the middle of the day. (Can you imagine what it must have been like for those alive then to experience God removing His presence in that way?) Jesus cried out, asking His Father why He had forsaken Him. Yet this complete separation was what Jesus came to bear. The thing I believe people often confuse when they think about consciousness after death is that the spirit does not equal the whole person. The spirit is the part of the person that knows, loves, and serves God. Yet without a body, that spirit is limited. It cannot roam about or have access to physical life. Our spirits go to God if we are in Christ. If we are not in Christ, God places them somewhere to await their final punishment (2 Peter 2:4-10). Notice that the wicked dead must be resurrected before they receive their final punishment (Revelation 20:11-15). The fact that Jesus' spiritówhich was sinlessówent to His Father when He died has nothing to do with his ascending to His Father after His resurrection. His resurrection is the part of His mission that gives us life; until He rose with His glorified body, He could not ascend to His Father and present Himself with His completed work. Until He ascended in His resrrection body, He could not send the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit could only indwell humans AFTER Jesus completed His entire work. Only after Jesus shed His blood of the eternal covenant into eternity--only after Jesus rose in a glorified body and assured us that we, too, would one day be raised--only after He completely broke the power of death and presented His finished work and perfect obedience to the Father could we be restored to oneness with God. And remember, Jesus broke the power not just of "sleep"--of the body dying but the spirit never being away from the love of God (if one is in Christ) or under God's sustaining control as it awaits final judgment (if one is not in Christ)--but he broke the power of eternal death for us who believe. He experienced that separation from God that we never have to experience. No, Jesus' spirit going to the Father at death had nothing to do with His ascending to the Father. His sacrifice for sin and His breaking its eternal curse on humans was finished at the cross; His gift of life to us was not complete until He rose from the dead. Only after He ascended did God seat Him at His right hand in the place of ultimate authority and place everything under his feet in the present age and in the age to come (Ephesians 1:18-23). Praise God for "the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus"! Colleen |
