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The Dead in Christ
Part One
By John R. Gavazzoni
In the instances of Paul referring to, "the dead in Christ," was Paul referring only to those who had died as believers, or was his understanding more inclusive? In order to interpret his meaning accurately, we must consider that phrase within the context of what all he proclaimed to be in Christ, i.e., that in Him all things were created and in Him all things consist. The Greek for, "all things" can be rendered equally accurately as, "the whole." (JMT}
Jonathan Mitchell in his translation of the New Testament, expands the meaning of, "consist" as, "been placed together and now continues to jointly-stand (stands cohesively; is made to have co-standing). If all things (the whole) had been created in Christ, and in Him it has been made to jointly stand cohesively, it follows that the ongoing condition and development of the whole, i.e., of all creation's existence and experience continued within the realm/sphere/domain of His Person.
The fundamental question the thinking mind goes to is, when Eve succumbed to the serpent's beguiling, with Adam joining her in disobedience, did they do so in Christ? The answer seems unavoidable, yes! For where else could it have occurred since there is no other else other than in Christ. Nothing exists outside of Him. There is, in fact, not even such a thing as a void of existence outside of Him. Paul is very emphatic re: that fact, for of God, in Christ, he declared, "For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things." (KJV) More precisely, again referencing Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of the New Testament: "Because, forth from out of the midst of Him, then through the midst of Him (or: through means of Him), and [finally] into the midst of Him [is] the whole (or: everything proceeds into the center of Him)."
Within the Christ, the Son of the living God, all things, the whole, have their beginning, their progress toward, and ending at, their fulfillment/goal/destiny. I would not be surprised that the scope of reader's reaction to this repeat of Paul's eschatological announcement will range all the way from, "it's heresy and I refuse to believe it," to, "Wow! Glory to God in the highest." The negative reaction would, of course, involve how preposterous it understandably would seem to be that the sin through which death entered the world, and death by sin: all that occurred in Christ.
I will not go on in an attempt to intellectually convince the skeptical mind, but rather end with this thought. Is it conceivable that sin and death could-with all that is included within the consequence of death-as one preacher put it- end up being a loose cannon in God's universe? Not for me, folks; not for me. I prefer knowing our Lord and Savior to be the containment field of all things.
The Dead in Christ
Part two
John R. Gavazzoni
In our article above, I believe, with full scriptural support, it became clear that the entirety of creation's experience, with Adam as its federal head, began in Christ, has continued in Christ, including the entrance of sin and death, and will reach its/our glory-filled destiny in Him. Contrary to common misperception, the problem-factor, the contrarian sin-death factor, facing anyone seeking to understand the process involved, is not, first, that sin, i.e., missing-the-mark is the up-front factor, but rather, what moves sin along in the process is death, as in, from the Greek text, "For as by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men upon which all have sinned." (most conventional translations have "for all have sinned" or "because all have sinned.")
The better rendering of the Greek, rather than, "for all have sinned," or, "because all have sinned," is, "upon which all have sinned" Sin is the outgrowth of death. As righteousness is the result of the springing up of life from the inner artesian well of life: Jesus to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. Contrarily, sin, unrighteousness, originates out from the cesspool of death. So, it is fundamentally important that we understand just what death is; what is its nature. Dear reader, understanding the nature of death does not require the theological equivalent of rocket science. Just establish what life is, and then you can extrapolate to what death is.
Since our study is of creation's experience as it is in Christ, the life to be understood in that context is the life of, pertaining to, during and enduring, and having the quality of, age-life. In the Greek, it's zoe aionios. "Zoe," in New Testament theology is a Koine Greek word for the highest form of life which particularly the Gospel of John and 1 John is set apart from other Greek words for life, as the life of, and the life enjoyed in communion with, God. So, we proceed to Jesus' definition of "zoe aionios" from Jn.17:3, KJV: "And this is life eternal (really, eonian life as the English translation of the Greek}, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent." Zoe aionios is the life of knowing God, intimately and experientially. The Greek word for "know" in Jesus' explanation is the word for the kind of knowledge that is not intellectually conceptual; not the knowledge that belongs to abstract thinking, but the knowledge of communion with God whereby we come to know God intimately and experientially.
From that understanding of eonian life, we proceed logically to its opposite: death in its ongoing age to age presence, activity and influence. As eonian life is the operative capacity to truly know God and His Son, death continuing on from age to age is the lack of life's operative capacity to know God truly. It's the opposite of that knowing, i.e., the ignorance of God as He truly is; an ignorance that goes beyond simply not knowing God, but of deeply-rooted misperception. Without zoe aionios, man's knowledge of God is deviant and malevolently misrepresentative of God's true nature. It's not an intellectual/conceptual problem. It's a problem of the heart, "for the heart is deceitful (full of deceit) and desperately wicked." (the Hebrew text more accurately translated has the heart as sick).
The death passed on to all men from Adam is not a static condition; rather its intrusion into the human psyche involves death dying. From the Hebrew text of God's warning to Adam and Eve: "for in the day you eat thereof, dying, thou shalt die," rather than the KJV rendering, "thou shalt surely die." Death involves a process of dying, in effect, death dies just as life lives. Why is it that an English major would find it grammatically intolerable to speak of dying death when we easily speak of living life. Life is lived; death is died. In its process out from within its anti-nature, death keeps penetrating the human soul until death has fully died. In human experience, there are different levels of death's penetration from one individual to another from one end less penetrating allowing for some level of normal humanity, while on the other end, the complete fragmentation of the soul.
Death continued until in the fulness of time when God sent His Son into the world to sum up all mankind's death in/by His death and by that all-inclusive death, death was fully died. That death, seminally accomplished in and by our Lord's death, is now, by the Spirit of Christ's working within us, what was done for us in Him, will be consummated in our experience by Him in us. A seminal statement from Paul is revealing when a particular option of translation is chosen: Paul wrote, as rendered in the KJV: "... for in that He died, He died to sin once..." Choosing an option of translation that fits how scripture explains the nature of death, I suggest the better rendering that can be found in some translations: "for the death He died, He died to sin once...." Yes! It's the death He died that brought death's reign to an end. He died all death completely once for all. In Him/by Him, death has been died in order that life might be revealed in all its glory in resurrection.
[Also see, The Containment Field of All Things]
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