TO DIE, DIE, DIE

Jesus, who just asked that those who pick up their crosses and follow Him shall not die. Death, as He explains it, is each denying himself. Essentially whoever loses his life for Jesus shall find life. (Mat 16:24-25). You must first die to be born again.

Some things are not literal, or maybe they are, but they are just not understood. Death must be comprehended. To find the meaning of death, scripture must be examined.

God defined death for the first time with these words, “In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17). There is always a cause and an effect for every process. Death is a process. The duration of dying goes from immediate to eternal.

In the case of Adam’s kind and the man himself, the cause was eating, and the effect was certain death, or as it appears in English, he would “surely die.”

Eating per se was not the cause for the two Adamah were free to eat of any other tree (Gen 2:16). Eating of that one tree — the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil — was the root cause, not to be a pun.

Much later, the root cause is made more explicit, “For the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Tim 6:10). Obviously, there was no money as money is thought of in the Garden of Eden, but it did have its own ‘economy,’ so to speak; everything was permissible but one thing… commerce with another being who offered free things to two beings in exchange for lordship.

Due to commerce with the so-called ‘Serpent,’ Eve became as God, or so she thought. God had created all things, but after sin, Eve made for Adam another existence, Cain (Gen 4:1). She said, it was for the ‘Lord’ but she had become the lord of Paradise, and Adam saw that she was the giver of life.

Now, consider ‘money’ as currency and the root of all evil. “Covetous” is the root adjective for the Greek word “philargyria” (money). It is a yearning to have something that is not your own. Eve yearned for the fruit owned by God and trespassed onto God’s property to obtain it. The currency of the Garden of Eden was grace, but Eve stole the grace when she took what belonged to God against His Law. Breaking one Law was as if breaking them all. She broke the Law against coveting, and because of that, breaking the law dishonors your God (Rom 2:23).

The root cause, therefore, was dishonoring the “Root” of the Tree of Life. “If the Root be holy, so are the branches” (Rom 11:16). Of course, the Root is Jesus, because Jesus is God, but the ‘Root’ became the ‘Vine’ (John 15:1), or specifically the “both of two, both the one and the other” (Strong 2006). Thus, Jesus came from God and was God. That is the ‘Vine’ and the “Tree’ that came from the ‘Root.’  

Father God, Yahweh was the ‘Root,’ or the ‘Word’ (‘dabar’ in the Hebrew) — the First Cause (ibid). It is so much plainer in the Hebrew. The ‘Root Cause,’ or ‘First Cause’ was Yahweh. Adam and Eve violated the First, or Root Cause.

Hence, God was the ‘Root Cause’ and as the Giver and Taker of life, dying, was the ‘Effect’ of violating the Cause.

God breathed Life into the clay and Adam became a living soul, did he not? Therefore, to die is removal of the Spirit of God from the persons of the two Adamah.

The penalty, in English, was to “you shall surely die.” In the Hebrew it was mut, mut, mut; or to die, die, die. Certainly one ‘die’ was the flesh, another the soul, and maybe the third the casting out of the Garden into the world (Gen 3:24). Indeed, the death of the flesh is the first death, “And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death” (Rev 20:14).

Therefore, to die is threefold: (1) the flesh perishing, albeit slowly for Adam, (2) the loss of the Spirit of God upon sinning, and (3) isolation from the Presence of God. Perhaps, using those definitions, all of Adam’s progeny are born dead, and resuscitation (regeneration) is threefold in reverse order: (1) Walking in the Presence of God, (2) Salvation of the Soul upon physical death, and lastly, (3) glorification, or the resurrection of the ‘Last Adam’ (Jesus) in you.

With that said, then death should be understood. It explains very well why Paul thought to die is gain.

The first step in the live, live, live process — the reversal of die, die, die — is that Jesus had to die for us to live. He redeemed us from the penalty of sin, to die, die, die.

I wrote above that you must first die to be born again. Hence, the first recourse is to die to the world to be in the Presence of the Lord. By grace, Jesus, died so that we need not.

When Jesus died, He gave up the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost remains in the world for all who would receive Him. The grace of God is finished (John 19:3) and Jesus will never again die for there is no need of that. Now, it is time for God to rest and for Jesus’s kind to do the work.

“Ouch,” you say, “You just stepped on my Calvinistic toes!” No, but Jesus may have!

(To be continued)