Wages of sin...

[captamajora]

Somebody stated in another thread, "We are all on the cross right now..." This is similar to the ubiquitous Christian catch-phrase, "this is my cross to bear."

I always wondered, If we all have to bear and carry our own "cross", get up on our cross, and eventually DIE (on our cross)...then are the "wages" of sin being paid for TWICE?

The wages (cost) of sin is death. We say that through Jesus' suffering and death that He COMPLETELY paid for sin. 

If death is the cost of sin, doesn't everyone who dies pay for sin?  Don't be so quick to say "no." 

The wages of sin is death. 

If I should die, then I have paid the wages of sin.

Then we say that it was Jesus' sufferings and death that paid for sin.  So, now suffering is part of the payment for sin.

Guess what...I suffer!  I suffer and I will eventually die like billions of other people. 

Jesus Christ suffered and died and completely paid for sin by suffering and dying while every person on earth has also suffered and died or will suffer and die.

Why does God demand that the penalty of sin be paid for twice? 

We say that God no longer counts our sin against us.  We say that since Jesus (who was faultless) died, we are completely without sin in God's eyes.

If God is no longer counting our sins against us, why does everyone have to pay the wages of sin? Why does God require us to pay the wages of sin when:
a.) sins have already been paid for and...
b.) sins are no longer being ascribed to us?

Some people say that the wages of sin is "eternal" death, i.e.- death without end (no resurrection).  For one thing, the Bible never says anything about the wages of sin being permanent death. No duration is mentioned...just death.

If the wages of sin truly were permanent death, then Jesus did not completely pay for sin because He was not eternally dead.  So, it is clear that the wages of sin is the state of death, duration being of no consequence.  Jesus was dead for three days while others have been dead for 5,000+ years.  You could add another million years to that and it doesn't change the fact that it isn't the duration but rather the "act" of succumbing to death, and therfore, being in the state of death.

If the wages of sin is death and the wages have already been paid for, then we should have NO death.  We should have NO death right now! As we know, this comes later at the consummation, when death is abolished.

So, have our sins been paid for or not?  They have but it hasn't been enacted yet?  If someone wrotes a decree but the decree will only go into effect later, does the decree really exist now?

It the eradication of death validates the existance of this decree, and death has not been eradicated...does the decree exist in the present? Is the decree presently fulfilled?

I love it when people say "ALL is fulfilled!"  Really?  You must not have noticed but we are all still dying.  Each one of us are still paying for sin. I guess they missed that somehow...

So, Jesus pays for our sins now by paying for them later, and after we've all paid the same penalty?

[SeekerSA]

Hi

Check this out

Did Jesus die to appease an angry God?

Blessings

[Molly]

Ephesians 2

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,



2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

[Molly]

"sons of disobedience"


sons ["uihos" SON, CHILD, FOAL] of disobedience ["apeitheia"DISBELIEF, OBSTINATE, REBELLIOUS, DISOBEDIENCE, UNBELIEF]



"uihos apeitheia"

[captamajora]

Thanks for the link,Seeker. Great post!

If Jesus truly was a substitute, then He, by default, would HAVE to experience that which we are being exempted from. If permanent death was what God's Justice neccesitated, the He would have HAD to have been permanently dead in order to truly be our substitution.

You can look at it this way: 

God's Justice requires either death (limited duration), endless death (annihilation), or eternal torment. The entire "subsitution" theory entails the belief that what would have been given to us is given to our substitute.

In order to be a true substitute for our sins, Jesus would have had to been given EXACTLY what we would be given for sins.

Well, we know that Jesus was not annihilated and He certainly is not being tortured right now, so we are left with one- a death of limited duration.

So, since Jesus was not annihilated and is not being eternally tormented, then it is clear that God's Justice requires temporal death ( death of an indefinite but limited duration).

So, if God's Justice requires temporal death and Jesus was a substitute for us, then we should not experience death of any duration. 

Well, obviously we do die.  Jesus' death was not a substitute for our death.  Every time a human being dies, God's Justice is being fulfilled.

[Molly]

Ephesians 5:14

Therefore He says: " Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light."

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: It is not talked about much on here for some reason, but there are 2 resurrections.  One if you literally die and one if incorruption swallows up corruption. If this were not true, there would be no point to pressing in and being an overcomer, if the end result were the same. The "rapture" is the counterfeit of being caught up while still in the body and not seeing death. Most of us here know that is a false doctrine, but not much mention is made of the reality the false doctrine mimics. Hmmm.....it must be a powerful reality in God for such a spirit of delusion and counterfeit to rise up...... :winkgrin: Blessings to you.....

[Molly]

51lo, I tell you a secret; we indeed shall not all sleep, and we all shall be changed;

52in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, in the last trumpet, for it shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we -- we shall be changed:

53for it behoveth this corruptible to put on incorruption, and this mortal to put on immortality;

54and when this corruptible may have put on incorruption, and this mortal may have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the word that hath been written, `The Death was swallowed up -- to victory;

55where, O Death, thy sting? where, O Hades, thy victory?'

--1 Cor 15

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: Amen.....I don't understand why people think we overcome death by dying. We overcome death by NOT dying. If you understand that we too are each "days" of the Lord, then the message to us is, that Enoch the SEVENTH (DAY) from Adam, walked with God and was caught up and did not see death.

Years ago, I asked the Lord what the greater works we were going to do, were. He said, "To bring the soul in union with the Spirit." On down the road, another revelation hit me up side the head. To bring the soul in union with the Spirit, IS the resurrection. And this resurrection does not have to happen without a physical body.

Conversely, the definition of "death" then, is the soul and Spirit not being in union, which death came upon us in the garden and ever since, which is why Jesus told the young man who wanted to go to the funeral, to let the dead bury the dead. Blessings to all.....

[Molly]

57But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

--1 Cor 15

[Molly]

...through our Lord Jesus Christ.



"through"
διά
dia
dee-ah'
A primary preposition denoting the channel of an act; through (in very wide applications, local, causal or occasional).

[Kratos]

The way that I see it is the fall injected a sin nature into mankind through inheritance. We do not die because of Adam's sin like the doctrine of original sin. Instead, we were in Adam when he sinned so partake of a sin nature. We die because of our own sin when this nature conceives and brings forth sin.

Jesus came to inject a godly or righteousness nature into us when we are born again. Now we must take up our cross and die to our sin nature so we are delivered from the power of death. Overcomers will be those whose obedience is fulfilled until they overcome the last enemy which is death. Jesus rose from the dead because He was sinless and death could not hold Him.

This is working out our own salvation with fear and trembling. The life and righteousness which is in us through Christ in our spirit man must work its way out through our soul and into our bodies. When this corruption will have taken on incorruption and this mortal body takes on immortality, then the last enemy of death will have been overcome in us.

John

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: I agree with you Kratos, in the sense that it was not Adam's particular sin that we are dying for, but rather the result of it, ie. that "tree" cannot produce anything but corrupt fruit, every seed bears fruit after it's own kind. They could not reproduce offspring that would do any differently than what they did. If they could, then we would not need Christ. I THINK we are seeing the same thing, just expressing it in our own vocabulary, yes? And I definitely agree with the rest of what you wrote, also.....Blessings to you.......

[Cardinal]

Somebody stated in another thread, "We are all on the cross right now..." This is similar to the ubiquitous Christian catch-phrase, "this is my cross to bear."

I always wondered, If we all have to bear and carry our own "cross", get up on our cross, and eventually DIE (on our cross)...then are the "wages" of sin being paid for TWICE?

:cloud9: To answer this directly, no. But the servant is not greater than the master. What He walked out in the natural, we walk out and fulfill spiritually. We have experienced Passover spiritually, some have fulfilled Pentecost spiritually, and we will/or are fulfilling Tabernacles as well as the other feasts, spiritually. It is already done for us, in the sense He did it as the forerunner of those that go beyond the veil, but we are still required to walk it out in shoe leather. A forerunner means others will follow.

Works without faith is dead, and faith without works is dead. Without works, (ie. if it's all already done for us) what do we need faith for? Blessings to you......

[Kratos]

Card, Blessings to you too.

I do think we are saying the same things. Jesus said that an evil tree cannot produce good fruit. No matter how hard a child may try to be righteous once they come to the age of choice, that sin nature or evil tree will win out eventually and they will partake of death. For some it may be at 10 and others 15 years old. This is where I see free will in the equation balanced with sovereignty. God sovereignly placed us all in Adam and subjected us to futility, but our free will can hold off the inevitable for a while, but not forever. All have eventually have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The good news of the gospel is that God also sovereignly has placed us all in Christ and the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus is stronger than the law of sin and death in Adam. So, the good tree will eventually overcome the evil tree in all of Adam's race. This is sovereignly determined by God and our free will cannot frustrate the grace of God. However, free will comes into play in that some will choose to yield to Christ in them before others will. The overcomers will yield to the Spirit's leading and overcome the power of death while still in this life. On the other end of the curve, there will be some that will not yield to the Christ nature until after the Great White Throne and the Lake of Fire.

John

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: I thought so. :thumbsup: As for free will, I see it in limited operation, but as I said on the original thread, I think that at some point of HIS making, you realize it is an illusion. An illusion, in the sense that since He knows the end from the beginning, He will bring circumstances to bear that will correct your choices ultimately, and line it up with His perfect will.

Personally, I think what is actually being seen is that one (free will) is in the works realm of operation, and the other (sovereignty) is in the faith realm of operation, and just like we have to walk out every aspect of BOTH those realms to have more quickened to us, so it is with this, and like everything else, all of us are in different stages of that processing, and bringing balance.

As for me, my first inkling was revealed to me in a study I did years ago on the names of the people, places and things in the Bible. There is no way by chance free will, those nomadic peoples just "happened" to name their kids names, whose recorded life experiences, would "speak" volumes to those of us that are the heirs of salvation. It brought tremendous comfort to me, and was one of the initial revelations that confirmed to me, a skeptic originally, that the Bible was in fact, divinely inspired. That's my  :2c:.....Blessings........

[Kratos]

I know that neither of us want to start this debate again, but I think it really comes down to semantics. I define free will as having the power to make choices. Plants do not have free will and a man in a coma does not have free will. I fully acknowledge that God and circumstances that are arranged by God influence our choices, but they are still our choices to make. This is the reason that God says so much about faithful and unfaithful servants and differing rewards based on the choices that we make within the parameters that God sets and arranges. So many get hung up on the word "free" when it comes to our choices thinking that it is not free will if anything influences our choices. However, in my semantics, this is omnipotence as only God can make choices free from outside influences.

Either way, I think we agree more than disagree on this. I just resist those who both hold that God sovereignly makes us do whatever we do, and yet, some of these choices He calls evil and worthy of punishment or loss of reward. This seems unrighteous to me and shall not the judge of the whole earth judge righteously? If He is going to reward differently as the scriptures about overcomers indicate in Rev. 2 and 3, then we must have the ability to make choices to some extent and this I call free will. I think this is also how most people except some theologians define the term.

Blessings again....

John

[captamajora]

Hmmmm

You guys have gone off on tangents and have not really addressed the issue.

Do you consider Jesus to our substitute? Yes or no?

If the answer is "yes", than what did He experience in His death that we also will not experience.

Did Jesus really pay the wages of sin for all of mankind?  Yes or No?


On a side note:  What is all of this overcomer talk?  Do you really think that anything that you do qualifies you for something?  Those who have aionian life will because the belief in God was GIVEN to them- it has nothing to do with THEM overcoming.

If you think that YOU are overcoming something, think again.

This may be the wrong forum for the positing of my ideas...

[sparrow]

This may be the wrong forum for the positing of my ideas...

Not at all. I'm interested in your ideas, I just haven't posted anything...
I observe a lot.  :winkgrin:
Please keep posting, captamajora.

:HeartThrob:,
sparrow

[Kratos]

Captamajora,

I hope you do stick around as I always enjoy getting to know family members that I have not met yet.

As far as not addressing the issue as you would like, you will find that not all posters see things the same way here at Tentmaker or as you do. Both Cardinal and I did address the issue as we see it. Please don't get offended and go away just because we did not address it as you see it.

Like I said, Jesus died so that we could receive His righteous nature. In this way, the spirit of life in Christ Jesus can overcome the power of sin and death in us. We had to be in Him when He died and in Him when He rose for this to be possible. God works through process instead of through instantaneous impartation. A sin nature was in us by being all in Adam and the process which began brought forth death in us all. Jesus' righteous nature is in us through faith in Jesus and this begins the process of our overcoming death Him.

Blessings,
John

[giftsimple]

The wages of sin is death.


My understanding of this is very different then the aceptable by most.

Gen. 4:6 Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry, and why is your expression downcast? 4:7 Is it not true that if you do what is right, you will be fine? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. It desires to dominate you, but you must subdue it."

sin is crouching
19tn The Hebrew term translated "crouching" (רֹבֵץ, rovets) is an active participle. Sin is portrayed with animal imagery here as a beast crouching and ready to pounce (a figure of speech known as zoomorphism). An Akkadian cognate refers to a type of demon; in this case perhaps one could translate, "Sin is the demon at the door"

Gen 4:7  If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee [shall be] his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

1Jo 5:18 ¶ We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.

So who is born of God?

Mat 23:9 And call no [man] your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. 

Jhn 10:10  The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have [it] more abundantly.


1Jo 3:8 He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. 


So the wages of sin(demons) comes from a defeated devil.

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: Glad to see you back sharing Giftsimple........

[captamajora]

So the wages of sin(demons) comes from a defeated devil.

The wages of sin is death.  "As in Adam ALL die"  Everybody DIES.  Everybody pays the wages of death.  It's really seems quite simple.

How can somebody be a subsitute for you and have you go through the same thing?

How can this be?  What is it about the state of death that Jesus experienced that you won't?

You're not one that thinks that sin was born in the devil, are you?

Isaiah 45:7 reads "I make peace and create EVIL. I the Lord, do all these things."

Romans 11: 36 "For from Him and through Him and to Him are ALL things."

You give the devil way too much credit.  The devil (and demons) did not come up with anything.  They are merely players on a stage.

Everybody thinks that sin was "found" in the adversary's heart that it means that it came from himself.  Sure it was found there, but does everyone really already forget who placed it there.

The wages of sin is not demons.  The wages of sin is, just as is stated, death. Sin and death all fall under the umbrella of evil, which was created by God.  You can't attribute it to anyone or anything else.  Relatively speaking, death comes from the destroyer, but ultimately, the destroyer comes from God and is used by God.  God created death (or the lack of life) for a purpose.

I am not saying that the death of Christ was not imperative.  Obviously it was.  I by no means completely understand it or have everything right. No one does.  There isn't a person on the face of the planet that understands everything about God. I'm thankful that our restoration does not depend on our knowledge of theology, because EVERYONE has a different take.  That is normal and actually, wonderful. It allows all of us to look at things from a different perspective (even if it may be a little uncomfortable).

I just know when things can't be.  Jesus couldn't have been a substitution. What was He a substitution for?  I know what He did was huge and I don't know how all of it worked and why it worked the way it did, or even why it had to be done in that way. I just know that He didn't die in my place, because if someone shoots me through the heart, I will die.

He is not saving us from annihilation of eternal damnation because neither one of these exist.  If they did, He would have to have been given one of these.  So what did He save us from?  The power of sin in our lives?

What was is about the death of Jesus that all of a sudden made it possible for humans to be saved?  Before then God wouldn't or couldn't do it? If so, why?

Wasn't it the nature of God that saved us from the beginning.  Love without end.  Wasn't love that saved us and would have saved us no matter what?

Hypothetically speaking, If Jesus didn't come and die, we would not be able to be saved?

God's hands would be tied behind His back and that would be it?

We are saved because we are loved and we have always been loved the same (because God is unwavering) and therefore we were always saved (and I'm not talking about foreknowledge here).

[Mickiel]

Hmmmm

You guys have gone off on tangents and have not really addressed the issue.





On a side note:  What is all of this overcomer talk?  Do you really think that anything that you do qualifies you for something?  Those who have aionian life will because the belief in God was GIVEN to them- it has nothing to do with THEM overcoming.

If you think that YOU are overcoming something, think again.

This may be the wrong forum for the positing of my ideas...

I am curious, since you seem to believe that believers do not need to do their best to surmount the temptations and obstacles that sin places in our path, which is what overcomming is, if a sin or several sins are getting the best of you, what would you suggest is occuring? God is not doing his Job?  And do you consider the human effort to fight sin and not let it get the best of you, as somethingelse other than Overcomming? What would you call it, since its not Overcomming? Or what would you say is happening to me, if I have a lot of sin in my life? Would you say God is not with me?

Peace

[captamajora]

You are answering my question by asking more questions, but you never answered mine. I will ask again.

Do you think that anything you do qualifies you for something?  Can you do something that makes you more worthy of something (a particular reward) than another person?

If you say "yes" then you think that works are rewarded. This means that YOU can take credit for your reward.  Do you believe that you will be able to take credit for overcoming?

It will be to your credit that you overcame, and someone else's fault when they don't? Wouldn't it then follow that you should get the glory if it was you who mustered up enough willpower to "overcome"?

"And do you consider the human effort to fight sin and not let it get the best of you, as something else other than Overcomming?"

The term "slave to sin" is very nuanced. People automatically assume that it means that you are a slave to your selfish desires.  Yes, you can be a slave to sin in this manner.

You can also be a slave to sin by constantly focusing on sin and battling it. If you are constantly preoccupied with "overcoming" sin, then you are a slave to sin.  You are a slave to the concept of sin.  You are a slave to battling sin.  You are supposed to be dead to sin.  Sin should be of no consequence to you anymore because you know the truth- that nothing you do can separate you from God or make him love and accept you any more or any less. This doesn't give you license to sin, as God never condones sin, but it allows you to REST from worry over sin.  You now don't have to concern yourself with sin.  When you don't concern yourself with sin, you are dead to sin. If you are constantly battling sin and trying desparately to overcome it, then you are a slave to sin.

Martin Zender has a great audio series on what it means to be an overcomer. Hint: it's not what you think. 

Check it out if you want- www.martinzender.com/ZenderTalk/i_used_to_be_an_overcomer/overcomerfr.htm