11.2 What Is Death?
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it in dying you shall die (Genesis 2:17- modified to the Hebrew). – Through one man sin entered the cosmos, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned (Romans 5:12).
What is death? For starters, death cannot be separation from God, for there is no such thing as separation from God. To be “separated from God” would be to make God finite and limited, confined to His space and banished from ours, something that is totally unreal.
Sustaining Word
Since all things exist only inside of God, and in fact, only inside of the Spirit of God, we can say with all reality that all actions of sin take place inside of the Spirit. And yet, for us to define death, we discover that we have not yet completed our definition of sin.
Sustaining all things by the Word of His power (Hebrews 1:3). Every created element, structure, particle, wave, being, person, entity, is sustained every moment by the good speaking of Christ. There is no such thing as evil by substance; there is no evil “force” or cause.
Evil
We have neither a session nor a lesson answering the question, What Is Evil? Evil is one thing only. Evil is the individual actions of a created being, actions that always come out of a present decision, actions that take away from another created being something belonging to them. Anything called “evil” is evil by appearance only; nothing can be evil by substance, for the substance of all things is the good speaking of Christ. Thus every evil action, every action of stripping away from another what belongs to them, must come out of an immediate personal decision to turn one’s back on Christ.
Man Is the Source of Evil
Demons are not the source of evil; man is. It is humans who are turning their backs on Christ every moment, as Adam did, that they might live by their own self, that is, by a total delusion. For every moment that a human is sinning, that human is being sustained, coming out of, the substance of Christ.
Demons are just servants; that’s why they try to stay quiet, unseen and unknown, inside of their masters. Demons typically do what demons do only at the command of the humans who rule over them.
Every action of perversity takes place only in the presence of the Lamb, of Savior and Salvation, that’s why evil is so evil.
Differing Definitions
Let’s take that a bit further, every action of sin not only takes place in God and in the presence of the Lamb, but every action of sin draws on the real sustenance of Christ in order to energize the members involved in that action. Okay –
Let’s return to death. What is death? Most human words have differing definitions; some words are used to mean very different things. The meaning of the word “death” can be known only from the context. The Greek word thanatos is translated into the English word “death,” but it is clear from the contexts that the word thanatos-death has very different meanings in different verses.
Different Kinds of Death
A quick reading of Ephesians 2:1-5 and Romans 6:5-11 shows us that “death” means some utterly different things. In Ephesians 2, death is living in sin, but in Romans 6:11, dead to sin is the incorruptible nature of God.
Death is something that happens to the fallen human spirit the moment we are born again; in this case, total cessation. Then, death is, of course, what we think of as the death of the physical body, and death is something that happened to the human spirit the very moment Adam’s teeth pierced the wrong covenant. The problem for us is, however, that we cannot really know what death is without knowing how we are constructed.
The Plasma Sheathe
All created things, whether living or non-living, are electrical in nature; that is, they exist by a negative/positive interaction, they emit an electrical frequency, and they interact with electrons flowing in from elsewhere. And all created things, whether living or non-living, possess a defensive wall called a plasma or electromagnetic sheathe. Planets cannot hit each other any more than can opposing magnets; they will bounce off long before any physical contact. Humans, animals, atoms, and each individual cell of the human body has such a protective sheathe. Thus all things exist inside what could be called their own protective bubble.
Levels of Symmorphy
Now, let’s get our understanding of the levels of potential symmorphy clear. We know that Jesus can live as a Person inside of many persons at the same time, and that He can contain inside Himself many persons all at once. We know that angels can live inside of humans and inside of animals (the spirits that entered the swine). That is, personal entities, each one possessing a protective sheathe, enter through the protective sheathe of another personal entity to live inside of that other person’s protective sheathe.
Persons cannot enter into persons without permission.
Permission
God the Father is all here now and Personal everywhere. There is no such thing as permission or not that might finite God. But God, though ALL in ALL, is not known, and God cannot become known without permission. You and I will never know God except we give God permission to be known by us. Neither can angels enter a human without specific permission, otherwise known as sin.
At the present time, I see the omnipresence of Jesus as different from the omnipresence of Father. Jesus is two things in this larger picture: Jesus is the Word sustaining all, and Jesus is the becoming known of Father in every heart where Father is becoming known.
A Process of Creation
Jesus is the continuous source of our existence, His good speaking flowing into and energizing every particle that is us. And Jesus is the entrance of the Father into our knowledge.
Consider Adam. Adam was a process of creation; at the beginning of Genesis 3, Adam was not finished. Paul said, in Romans 1, that Adam KNEW God. That is an extraordinary statement. Adam knew God, yet Adam had not yet eaten of life. That is, Adam had not yet given Jesus permission to enter into him. If Adam had eaten of the tree of life, he would have been sealed forever into the full knowledge of God arising inside of him and flowing out of him. That was God’s pattern.
Adam’s Spirit
We must conclude that, although Adam’s knowledge of God was full and complete in that moment, yet it was temporal. God never violates the integrity of any person; He enters into our knowledge only by our permission.
How did Adam know God? Adam knew God by his spirit; the human spirit was so like God’s Spirit that Adam’s spirit was fully open to God’s Spirit and vice versa. Remember 1 Corinthians 2, that it is the Spirit that knows. But Christ Jesus entering into Adam as Adam’s very life was, then, something entirely different. Adam’s spirit was fully open towards and receptive of the good speaking of Christ in all the knowledge of God, temporarily.
Adam’s Spirit Flipped
Please understand, I am working towards my own understanding of these things.
DEATH! The very moment Adam’s teeth pierced the skin of the fruit of knowing right and wrong, his spirit DIED. What does that mean? Death is not necessarily cessation. Nothing ceased in Adam’s construction. Up until that moment, Adam knew the good speaking of Christ sustaining Him. Adam’s spirit shriveled and flipped, turning abruptly from Christ and onto his own story of self. The good speaking of Christ continued to sustain all that was Adam, but Adam knew that good speaking not at all.
The Death of the Human Spirit
We can now define the death of the human spirit, the first entrance of death into God’s creation. Death did not enter God’s creation when the serpent lied or when Eve ate the fruit. Neither one of those were the source of the rivers of formation meant to shape the creation. Adam was the master of the first creation, and the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.
The death of the human spirit was an instantaneous snap, an immediate flip, cutting off all knowledge of the good speaking of Christ (while being unable to cause that good speaking to cease), and a turning in that same instant towards the creation of a delusional story of self.
An Eye of Light or Darkness
Thus we now see that Jesus defined for us the death of the human spirit. The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Therefore take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness (Luke 11:34-35)
The “eye” refers to the seeing of the human spirit. When we see/hear the good speaking of Christ as our only story – because it is, then life/light fills all that we are. But when our spirit is turned from that good speaking, a willful action every moment, then all that remains is our own story of self, that is, darkness.
The False Story of Self
The moment Adam’s spirit died, all the seeing of the heavens and all the knowledge of God vanished from him. Now all Adam knew was his own story of self, a self-created self that had not existed before his spirit died.
Now we understand the death in Ephesians 2, that we once lived dead in trespasses and sins. The “live” part is the continuation of reality, the Word of His power sustaining us. The “dead” part was the muttering of our own false story of self, born out of accusation. Adam’s spirit in “death” was not so much “fallen” as totally flipped. The dead human spirit, continuing to operate by its own creation of a story of self, is called “THE OLD MAN.”
Adam’s Two Bodies
Repentance, then, is one thing. Turning back around into the good speaking of Christ, acknowledging, speaking, the good things of Christ inside of us. Someone who is not speaking the story of Christ as one’s only self has not repented. But that’s another topic – coming up in What Is Redemption.
Adam had two bodies. Adam’s spirit was his heavenly body, his outward form of communication and interaction with all things in the spirit realms. And Adam’s physical body was his outward form of communication and interaction with all things in the physical realms.
In Dying You Shall Die
We continue to search for a specific definition of death. For as the body without the spirit is dead… (James 2:26a). The human body continues to live BECAUSE the good speaking of Christ, the only human reality (substance) there is, continues to penetrate through the turned-away human spirit in order to continue sustaining the physical body.
BUT – those good words of Christ are distorted by the false story of self that is the only story the human knows. Thus the physical body begins to die, but only as a slow and prolonged process. In dying you shall die. Your false story of self will kill you.
Hades
Death is turning away from the good speaking of Christ as the only story of self. Telling a false story of self in which to live, a story born out of accusation, is called, in the New Testament, Hades. The death of the physical body is the end result of telling one’s self a false and made-up story in ignorance of the Words of Jesus that are always sustaining us.
ALL actions, whether word, thought, or deed, coming out from any false human story to touch or interact with others are actions of sin. Death is the cause of sin; death is the result of sin. Death is our enemy; Christ is our only life.
Death and Hades
There is no vacuum. Humans and angels cannot turn away from the substance of the good speaking of Christ without also turning towards the creation of their own false story. Thus death and Hades are as Siamese twins; you can’t have one without having the other. Hades enters the human experience before physical death and continues after physical death.
Christians who hear accusation against themselves and who speak of themselves by not-Christ ARE living in Hades; they are not putting the Lord Jesus Christ upon themselves. Thus Christians continue to die for one reason only; they continue to speak a false story of self against Christ their life.
Physical Death
Physical death happens when the human spirit has so blocked the good speaking of Christ that its own connection to the physical body is severed. Physical death is the ripping apart of the human spirit and the human body, after which the body disintegrates (corruption) since the life force can no longer maintain the wall against the eating of bugs and worms.
The death of the human spirit cuts the human off from seeing heaven and from knowing God. Yet the human continues on as both a heaven, spirit being and an earth, physical being. The death of the human body marks the final and complete split, the full divorce between heaven and earth.
The Triumph of Evil
The death of the human body is the triumph of evil. The death of the human body is the full result of the false story of self. The death of the human body is assured the moment any human turns their backs on the good speaking of Christ as their only story.
Humans who are not born again, that is, do not possess re-created spirits that are able to know God, simply continue on in their own delusional story of self, inside their bubble, muttering and screaming all their built-up desires, but possessing neither a physical body that would fulfill desire in the earth, nor a spirit capable of fulfilling desire in heaven.
Death Has Three Parts
And that kind of existence certainly can be called “hell,” though the hell is not outside of them but inside. The Bible calls it hades. (Yet Jesus continues to sustain them).
For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. Death has three parts: spirit, soul, and body. The death of the spirit is called the old man; the death of the soul is called both hades and self; the death of the body is called death.
Look at the words: “eat of it.” Then consider carefully these words: You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace (Galatians 5:4).
Death – Sin – Death
The death of the spirit (estranged from Christ) causes instantly the false story of self (eating of knowing right and wrong, justifying self by human performance, relating with a “far-away” God through external word under human control) out from which comes the death of the physical body. Death causes living in sin which causes death.
Christians continue living in accusation, that is living in sin, even though their spirits are born again, capable of knowing Christ. Therefore, because Christians refuse to call themselves by the good speaking of Christ – Christians still DIE.
Our spirits are alive unto God; the only story we tell ourselves about ourselves is Christ our only life. What happens next?
The Proving of Christ
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this? (John 11:25-26). Those who have learned to speak Christ as their only life, though they may physically die before God’s set time of proving all things, yet they live utterly inside of Jesus. They do not know Hades, for Christ is their only story of self.
But the physical death of a Christian is NOT the proving of Christ. The proving of Christ is our victory over all death – spirit, soul, and body.