Death: Yes; Hell: No
By John Gavazzoni
How is it that God's warning, "...for in the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die," has, by strange inference, effectively morphed into "...for in the day you eat thereof you will start down the path toward everlasting damnation?" (As an aside, the more accurately translated Hebrew has the original statement as "...for in the day you eat thereof, dying you shall die.")
How is it that somehow the wages of sin has been supersized from being death to being abandoned to a tortured "Christless eternity?" (Among imbecilic phrases, that's one that's got to rank high, since without Christ, there can be no eternity.) Scripture is clear: Sin's consequence is simply death. Now be careful, reader; it's death, not annihilation, not cessation of existence. Probably the summary go-to Bible-explanation of what death is, is found in Romans eight where Paul explains that creation is suffering from its "bondage to decay," groaning in travail for "the revealing of the sons of God." Creation, as J. B. Phillips paraphrases it, is on "tip toe" awaiting that triggering moment when the children of God "come into their own,", i.e., the liberty of their glory, taking all creation with them.
Words like "Perish(ing);" "lost;" "decay" are three of the descriptions of the effect of death. Yet millions of professing Christians, when they come across those words in their Bibles, rather than reading what's there, they read "hell," eternal damnation and torment. Death, as the consequence of the entrance of sin into the world, causes rot. Death is soul-rot and body-consumption. It burdens our spirits, like a heavy blanket laid over us, with all that is alien to us as God's children. It is the dissolution of our creaturehood. It is the pathetic fraying of the fabric of our humanity. It is malevolence, dis-ease, and distortion of being, in contrast to God's gospel message of goodness, ease, and well-being in Christ, as Jonathan Mitchell has it in his translation of the New Testament.
Read Jesus' own description of His ministry in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. The Spirit anointed Him, and was upon Him, to cure our dis-ease, to deliver us from the captivity of our brokenness, and the blindness of our lostness. There is no other place in the gospels' story where Jesus adds an addendum to that explanation, to declare that He came to save us from "hell."
Saved from "hell" has replaced saved from sin and death. That sin and death combo is THE over-arching vicious cycle. Sin entered the world through one man's disobedience, wherefore death passed on to all mankind, UPON WHICH all men have sinned. The KJV has it that death passed on to all men BECAUSE all have sinned, but the literal Greek conveys "upon which." What else is there for a man or woman to do toward God? Being "dead in trespasses and sins" leaves no other option than to act out the death passed on to us. Paul has a most enlightening insight into life and death.
He wrote, as the NAS has it, of "the death He (Jesus) died, but the life He (Jesus) lives..."(NAS) While it may not be grammatical, He died death, and lives life. Got it? For us, He died death, and lives life. Our union with Him involves dying death, and living life. After all, if life is lived, death logically is died. "The death He died, He died once for all, but the life He lives, He lives unto God." Death and hades (the realm of the dead) has been died, having been cast into the Lake of Fire fueled by the Divine Nature. (Translation by Ed. Browne, emphasizing what was conveyed by "brimstone/Sulphur" in the day John penned His description of God's consuming love). That fire is the same fire that is integral to being baptized in the Holy Spirit and fire.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit imparts to us the life of Christ in the Spirit, with its cleansing power. Being cast into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone (an ancient symbol of divine purification) is of the same genre as being baptized in the Holy Spirit. God, in His grace, accepts us as we are, but does not leave us as we are. He enlivens us with His life, and purifies us by the fiery passion inherent in that life. There's no place for, "well my life may be a mess, but at least I'm saved from hell. I'll just lose some rewards in heaven." The blood of Christ is intended to, and will, in fact, cleanse us from all sin.
