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I have seen many people who value the message of the loving character of God struggling with the question of whether God kills. Desiring to put God in the best possible light, a being of infinite love and mercy, they struggle to accept the Bible stories that describe God as killing the wicked—such as the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the firstborn of Egypt, the 185,000 Assyrians, Uzzah, the platoons who came to arrest Elijah, and others. Thus, they take the position that God has never killed anyone and argue various explanations, such as Satan being the destroyer—therefore, whenever the Bible describes God as killing, they assert it really means that God has stopped protecting people and that Satan is the one doing the killing.
I respect the motive behind such conclusions, knowing that these individuals only want to put God in the best possible light—but sadly, in truth, they are inadvertently undermining God’s character and misrepresenting His actions. They are not presenting reality in light of design law; they even make God out to be inept and one who must rely on His enemy to accomplish His purposes; and they eclipse one of the most incredible displays of God’s grace: that of the first-death experience.
As with most areas of confusion, the underlying cause is trying to explain events when one still holds to the imposed-law view of God’s law. Under imposed law (laws like creatures make), justice is the infliction of punishment, whereas under design law (the laws that the Creator built reality to operate upon, like the laws of physics and health), justice is healing the damage and restoring to righteousness all who trust—leaving all who refuse to surrender in trust free to choose to reject God’s remedy and reap what they have chosen: eternal destruction.
The imposed-law view understands death as being inflicted by God as punishment for sin. Those who want to present God in the best possible light rightly reject the idea that God is the source of death or would act in a manner similar to His enemy.
The problem for such individuals comes from not only misunderstanding imposed law and design law, but also failing to differentiate between the first death and the second death.
Two Deaths
The Bible describes two deaths:
The second death is the punishment from sin, the wages of sin, and is the total annihilation of body and soul from which there is no resurrection that only the unsaved experience.
The first death is a temporary cessation of activity, a sleep, a pause, a time-out from living from which there is a resurrection (Matthew 9:23, 24; John 11:11–14; 1 Thessalonians 4:13–17; Revelation 2:11, 20:6).
When God told Adam that he would surely die in the day he ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, He meant that Adam would die eternally, the second death, the wages of sin death, the annihilation of his being. That is the natural result of sin if God does nothing—as the Bible teaches:
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23 NIV84, emphasis mine).
“Sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (James 1:15 NKJV).
“The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction” (Galatians 6:8 NIV84, emphasis mine).
If God did nothing after Adam sinned, Adam would have died the second (eternal) death. Therefore, because God is love and He loved the world so much, He intervened. God stepped in—as the Bible teaches, “Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Romans 5:20 NKJV). God interceded in the natural course of sin to save humanity. Jesus dedicated Himself to be our substitutionary Savior, who is God’s “Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8 NIV84, emphasis mine).
God intervened by not only promising Jesus to be our Savior but also by putting enmity between sinful humans and Satan (Genesis 3:15). The Holy Spirit immediately began working in human hearts to bring conviction of sin; a desire for love, truth, righteousness; a dissatisfaction with evil; a longing for our Eden home of peace; and reconciliation with God.
God also intervened by veiling His life-giving glory that Adam and Eve had previously walked in and placed Earth in an artificial bubble of reality, one in which His presence is hidden, because if God did not do this, His life-giving glory would consume and destroy the very sinners He desires to save—as Scripture teaches: “Our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29 NIV84).
In the future, when sin is eliminated from human hearts, God’s life-giving glory will again flow freely over this planet. When the Ancient of Days takes His throne, it is blazing with fire, rivers of fire will come out from Him, and the saved will stand in this fire (Daniel 7:9, 10). And in the New Jerusalem, the sun will not need to light Earth, for God’s presence will be its light (Revelation 21:23). When God restores His universe and this planet to perfection, the saints and angels will all walk in the “fiery stones” of His presence, just as Lucifer had done before his rebellion (Ezekiel 28:14,16).
Earth today is a dark place compared to heaven and what Earth will be when God’s glory covers it again. However, this planet is now being protected by God’s grace intervening to create this artificial—meaning not natural to God’s kingdom—bubble in which God’s plan of salvation can be worked out.
The Artificial Death
As part of His grace, God intervened to create another artificial condition, another state that would not naturally occur if God didn’t act to make it so, another manifestation of His grace—the first death, the artificial death, the state of sleep in which a person is not destroyed but is in suspended animation, a state in which the body decays but the soul (the mind, the individuality) is retained in a state of sleep awaiting the resurrection. This is like a computer whose software is backed up on a “cloud” server and the hardware is destroyed. Our body is analogous to the hardware, and our individuality (mind, soul) is analogous to the software. Without the hardware, the computer is not operational—so the software sleeps, is stored, awaiting download into new hardware. This is what the Bible teaches about the first-death experience; we sleep awaiting download into new hardware (bodies).
The great Reformer Martin Luther wrote, “It is enough for us to know that souls do not leave their bodies to be threatened by the torments and punishments of hell, but enter a prepared bedchamber in which they sleep in peace” (Weimarer Ausgabe, 43, 360, 21–23 (to Genesis 25:7–10); also Exegetica opera latina, Vol 5–6 1833 p. 120 and the English translation: Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols., St. Louis: CPH, 4:313).
This artificial state of being is not the natural result of sin—the natural result of sin is eternal death, eternal separation from God, destruction of both soul (individuality, mind) and body. This sleep state would not exist if God did not intervene to provide it in order to restrain the full destructiveness of sin while He, through Jesus, eliminated the cause of death from humanity and opened the way back to unity with Him and eternal life.
Jesus was referring to this artificial state of grace when He said,
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? (John 11:25, 26 NIV84, emphasis mine).
Jesus is saying that those who believe in Him will not die eternally; they will not be annihilated; they will not have their individuality destroyed; they will not cease to exist; they may sleep, have their daily operations suspended, and have their souls (individualities, software) safely secured in heaven with Jesus on the “heavenly servers” (Lamb’s book of life)—but they will not die the wages of sin death.
Then when Jesus returns, as Paul describes, these sleeping souls who are safe with Jesus in heaven come back with Him to be downloaded into new bodies:
Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 NIV84, emphasis mine).
What good news! An incredible promise!
Understanding the difference between eternal death (second death), which is the wages, penalty, natural result of unremedied and unremoved sin, versus the sleep death (first death), which is the artificial state of grace in which living operations cease but the individual is not destroyed, allows us to understand the true meaning of a variety of Scriptures, such as:
“See now that I myself am He! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand” (Deuteronomy 32:39 NIV84).
“The LORD brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up” (1 Samuel 2:6 NIV84).
These texts are talking about the artificial state of sleep, the first death, the state of mercy and grace that God controls and that allows people to rest from all the pain, suffering, and conflict that this world of sin brings as they await resurrection into life eternal—when there will be no more sin, pain, suffering, disease, or death for the righteous—or, for the wicked, into death eternal.
God’s grace in providing the first death also limits the life of the truly evil, those like Hitler and Stalin, limiting the harm they can cause in this world.
The Second Death
But the eternal death, the death that is the result of unremoved and unremedied sin, as described in the Bible texts above, is not a manifestation of God’s grace nor a result of His power. This death is the domain and power of God’s enemy, the result of breaking away from God’s design laws for life, and is destroyed by God, the source of life:
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14 NIV84, emphasis mine).
“Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10 NIV84, emphasis mine).
“Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:24–26 NIV84, emphasis mine).
Eternal death, the second death, is caused by sin, and its power is wielded by Satan and is destroyed by Jesus Christ! Eternal death is the natural result of what sin does if sin is not removed from the sinner.
So, I agree, God doesn’t kill (second death) anyone! Instead, death (second death) comes from unremedied sin in sinners when God’s grace stops holding at bay the death that sin causes. But God, in His grace and mercy, has put millions of His children to sleep (first death), but He will resurrect each person into the resurrection of their choice, either the resurrection of eternal life or the resurrection of damnation. It is only those who have refused to trust and have sin removed from their hearts and minds who will suffer the wages of sin death, when God finally does His strange act and stops using His power to protect them from what sin naturally does, cuts them off from life, and they die eternally, both body and soul.
I invite you to rejoice in the eternal life freely provided to us by Jesus Christ and celebrate God’s grace—and you have nothing to fear for the future, for the power of death has been destroyed by our Savior Jesus Christ!
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