The dead in sin – revived.
“After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.” Hosea 6:2. About 750 years before the Messiah, Prophet Hosea predicted what God would accomplish for rebellious humankind in the body of Jesus Christ on the cross at Golgotha. Why did humankind need to be revived and restored? The first man, Adam, disobeyed God. As a result, humankind he represented became a natural sinner, a sinner by birth, condemned by the Objective Moral Law to eternal death. Humankind also lost the right to be children of God. God told humankind he created in Adam that once the first man, Adam, eats the forbidden fruit, he and all of future humankind will die forever (surely die). Genesis 2:17. Yet, in His patience, God left sinful humankind unpunished until the “fullness of time,” when the promised grace would come. Romans 3:25. When and how did sinful humankind die as the wages for sin committed in the garden of Eden? Sinful humankind surely died nearly 780 years after Hosea’s prophecy. How?
“But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” John 12:32. When God created the first man, Adam, He breathed the breath of life into him. The breath of life is “nashama,” in Hebrew, which means, in translation, “pneuma” – spirit, in Greek. Therefore, life—the spirit that sinned—had to die forever. Only God can destroy the human spirit because He gave it to humankind. God placed our sinful spirit, our sin, and our inclination to sin into the body of Jesus Christ on the cross at Golgotha. 2 Corinthians 5:21; Isaiah 53:6. By abandoning Jesus on the cross, God destroyed our sinful spirit and our sin forever. Romans 6:6. Then God, as He promised through the prophet Ezekiel, gave mankind a new spirit. Ezekiel 36:26. The whole of sinful humanity died in the body of Jesus Christ on the cross at Golgotha. “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all; therefore all died.” 2 Corinthians 5:14.
The phrase “on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence” was fulfilled at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We died in him on the cross at Golgotha, and we were raised again in him on the third day. “If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.” Romans 6:5. God did fulfill his promise; He made us alive again. “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,” Ephesians 2:6. Because we died in Christ, we also rose in him as a new humankind, and now we live in him. Romans 6:8.
Snatched from the fire. Read the next blog.