DEATH IS A COMMON PHENOMENON FOR PLANET EARTH. Everyday Billions Of Deaths Take Place, Or Should That Be Trillions Ranging From Insects To Humans. 151,000 deaths a day may not mean anything to many people, but there is one death that will mean everything to everyone.

Why did Jesus have to die physically so man could attain salvation? What significance does physical death have with spiritual life?

Harry Riches Answers

Distinguishing between the physical and the spiritual can be difficult for those who have not grasped the idea that humans are spirit beings in physical bodies. The reason people exist in biological form is the same reason they live in physical form. This is a different realm to the spiritual realm, which is the realm of our thoughts, the realm where we come to understand who we are in relation to the world in which we exist and not just what we are.

The Bible narrative is quite simple. The Creator decided to create Earth and populate it with what we call biological life forms. A couple of these life forms were a man and woman who were created in the image of the Invisible, Immortal, Infinite God.

Why did the Creator decide to create biological life forms?

The only answer from the Bible is He did, and there is no specific reason given. God is infinite and capable of an infinite number of creative ideas. Evidently, creating Earth and placing a finite biological man and woman on it to reflect the image of the Infinite One was part of a master plan to create many sons and daughters who would then be exalted in status above the individuals already created. Except, there was an entity who decided that losing out on his own status as the most perfect being created was too much to bear, so he took his chances and ruptured the relationship he possessed with his Immortal, Almighty, Creator.

From the Bible we learn that man was created a little lower than the angels.

• What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet. (Psalm 8:4-6 KJV)

The man and woman were created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Angels were not created in the image of God. Once this is understood, we can grasp why a personage who holds the highest honor of created beings and possesses freewill may fear losing his position in Creation as top dog.

The Son of Man was to become the One Whom the Son of God was to enter at birth.
When the fetus of the boy to be named Jesus was given birth, the Son of God entered the child. God became human in the likeness of a man.

• Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. (Philippians 2:6-7)

Unfortunately, because humans are born into sin, instead of what was originally planned, the Son of God had to become Son of Man the Savior, as well as be Lord of the Sabbath. This was not the original plan. This was the plan that required Jesus to die as a physical being for the ransom of what Adam and Eve, the first man lost—the two were one. This was to prove that God is righteous (Romans 3:21-26). He delivers everything in accordance to the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11). Unless we possess God's omniscience, we have to accept that which is revealed to us through Moses, Jesus, the prophets and the apostles within the sixty-six books of the Bible.

Since it was the plan of the Almighty for man to reign on Earth as biological beings in His image, the Son of God had to redeem what was lost, so this could be brought about. This required for the Son of God to become flesh (John 1:18) so He could sacrifice His physical body to pay the purchase price for the return of the planet Earth from Lucifer, who had taken captive the man and his descendants. Lucifer wanted to rule over the Son of God. The Son of God became man so that Lucifer could take His life. But being a sinless life, Jesus' life also became the purchase price for the first man. Not only this, the righteous life of Jesus became the ransom for those who were kidnapped by virtue of being Adam and Eve's descendants.

The physical realm we know as Earthlings differs from the spiritual realm. This is because thought is spiritual and not a physical substance. Chemicals do not produce thought. DNA does not produce thought. However, our spirits produce thought.

The One Who possesses full comprehensive knowledge of existence, calculates what will be brought into being by virtue of the counsel of His will and this emanates as thought. The thought of the Omniscient One was to create individuals who would learn from experience to appreciate the value of existence and the joys of creativity. Because our Creator has created us as biological beings encoded with instructions within cellular structures (what we call DNA), this does not mean thought is a similar substance.

According to the Bible, each one of us are given a spirit and this is what distinguishes us from animals by enabling us to be rational beings. Therefore, we are spiritual beings in physical bodies with the capacity for developing rationale.

The Bible teaches that we possess a spirit, a soul and a body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). All breathing biological bodies have souls. Only humans are biological bodies that have spirits. The spirit of each person is attached to the soul of the body. Humans therefore possess spiritual life in the physical bodies of animals.

When Jesus died, Lucifer took His life and disease covered His body (Isaiah 53:4; Job 18:13). Those who stood nearby saw what happened to Jesus' body. None would have witnessed nor heard beforehand of other persons who had been crucified where any of their bodies had become stricken with disease in an instance. Consequently, even Roman soldiers believed that Jesus had to be the Son of God. This is what is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew:

• Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God. (Matthew 27:54)

• And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39)

• Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, and said, “Certainly this man was innocent!” And all the multitudes who assembled to see the sight, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. (Luke 23:47-48)

It is doubtful that an eclipse and an earthquake would have made such an impression on these people to the same extent as seeing Jesus' body become like leprosy, while those crucified on either side of Him did not.

When Jesus rose from the dead, He possessed a glorified body. This is a physical body; only unlike the biological bodies that we possess which are subject to death, the glorified body possesses no blood. Contrary to the idea of spirits floating off into some ether, the Bible teaches that everyone will be resurrected from the dead with physical bodies. Those who are to be saved will have glorified bodies. Those who reject the truth will be given resurrected bodies. After they have seen every aspect of their lives played before them, and after each one of them is evaluated, because their names are not in the Book of Life, they will be thrown into the Lake of Fire.

Jesus died physically to pay the ransom for a physical Earth. Since the realm that we live in exists in a different dimension to what we refer to as the spiritual realm, this does not mean we are not spiritual creatures. For we are spiritual creatures within physical bodies.

According to the Bible, all who choose to accept the righteous life of Jesus, and their portion of the inheritance He left, shall be reunited spiritually with the Heavenly Father. This was made possible because, at death, Jesus could bequeath to every human an inheritance for each to claim. The inheritance is Jesus' righteous life. In this respect, we are like poor creatures without hope, which have been left an abundance of wealth, so that we can have hope. The transfer of Jesus' eternal righteousness to ourselves, enables us to live forever and relate to our Heavenly Father in the realm of the spirit, even as physical beings.

God is a Spirit Being who has placed spirits within us so that we might relate to Him in spirit and truth. However, we exist in a world that is both physical and spiritual, but one that is separated from God because of sin (a contractual violation to do with relationships). Only through a legal (just) transaction that required the death of a righteous person (Jesus) for an unrighteous person (Adam) could the inhabitants of the physical world be reconciled to their Creator, a Spirit Being. In effect, this has brought about a new creation that is analogous to a caterpillar becoming a butterfly (unfortunately, nearly all currently die in the chrysalis state). The resurrection is about physical bodies being able to live forever and relate to God as spirit beings, as originally intended; except the resurrected bodies will not be functioning metabolically in the same manner the biological bodies that we now possess do.

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