Jesus died twice on the cross. I knew this for many years, but I had no scriptural evidence of it. One day I discovered Isaiah 53:9, the answer to my long search. “And they made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his deaths.” The word “death” is plural in the Hebrew.
Many of you who have Bibles with marginal renderings will notice it. That is, Jesus died two deaths on the cross: He died spiritually before He died physically. In John 10:18 He said that no one could take His life from Him. He could not be killed; He could not die. Why? Because His body was not mortal.
Jesus had a body like Adam’s before he sinned. It was a perfect, human body, not Mortal, nor Immortal. It was a body that could not die until sin had taken possession of His spirit. In other words, Jesus had to die spiritually before He could die physically.
If Jesus’ body had been like yours and mine, then He was not Deity, He was not a Substitute, and He did not die for our sins; He merely died as a martyr. But, if He had a body like the first man Adam’s body, that was not Mortal, not subject to death, (that would mean subject to Satan) then He was Deity.
In our last chapter, we saw a man nailed to the cross with Christ. In this, we see the human race died with the Crucified One. Paul says, “If we died with Christ, we believe we shall also live with Him.” Romans 6:8 and 2 Timothy 2:11. In these scriptures we notice we died with Christ when He died.
He was our Substitute. We were one with Him on the cross. We were one with Him in His death. He died under our judgment, in our stead. He died because He was made sin. If we accept Him, there can be no judgment for us.
Isaiah 53:10-12 “Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him; he hath made him sick: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by the knowledge of himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet he bares the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” That sounds just like the Pauline Revelation, doesn’t it?
The Pauline Revelation is an unveiling of what happened from the time that Jesus was made sin on the cross until He sat down at the right hand of God. Nowhere else can we find that knowledge? This is Substitution. This is absolute Identification. This is a part of the great Substitutionary truth in prophecy.
He poured out His life into death. Through that death, we were made alive. It was our sin that slew Him. It is His Righteousness that gives us life. He drank the cup of death, that we might drink the cup of life. In that mighty ministry, before He arose from the dead, He destroyed death’s lordship.
When death slew Him, it slew itself. He conquered sin when He allowed it to overcome Him. He conquered Satan when He let Satan gain mastery over Him. He conquered disease when He let the disease take possession of Him. He became one with Satan in spiritual death, to make us one with God in spiritual life.
“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He became one with us in weakness, in sin, in disease, and in spiritual death, that He might make us one with Himself in Righteousness, in perfect health, and fellowship with the Father.
He became death’s prisoner in order to set us free. In the mind of justice, we died to sin and its dominion when we died with Christ. “He that hath died is justified from sin.” (Romans 8:7). He is free from the lordship of spiritual death. There was in God’s mind at the Crucifixion, a perfect oneness of Christ with us, and in the Resurrection and New Birth, a perfect oneness of us in Christ.
Just as Jesus conquered death by submitting to it, we in the New Creation conquer Satan by submitting to the Lordship of Jesus. We and our diseases were laid on Him and became a part of Him when He was made sin with our sin. We are healed by becoming partakers of His divine nature.
Disease and sickness do not belong to the New Creation. It is an abnormal thing in the mind of the Father for a child of God to be sick. We died with Him. We died to the dominion of sin. We died to the dominion of disease. We died to the dominion of circumstances and habits.
1 Peter 2:24 becomes a reality. “Who his own self bare our sins in His body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed.” This is Identification, our utter oneness with Him in sin and judgment on the cross.
“That we, having died unto sins.” His death and our death are identical. This is not His physical death. This is spiritual. He died twice there. He partook in our spiritual death. We were utterly one with Him in that judgment.
“That we might live unto Righteousness.” Or, that we might partake of His Righteousness as He partook of our sins, that we might be Righteous as He became sin with our sins. Then the next marvellous statement: “By whose stripes ye were healed.” He not only had our sinful nature, but He had our diseases.
He took over our diseases; He put them away when He put sin away. “By His stripes, we are healed.” This is thrilling. As He put our sins and diseases away by becoming sins and diseases for us, so we partake of His Righteousness and healing when we accept His work for us.
Christ has died once and for all as our Sin Substitute. He, in judgment, met the demands of Justice for us. He took them with Him when He went to the place of Substitution, the place of judgment, the place of suffering. I am convinced that the Father sees us in Christ as perfect, as the finished work of Christ is perfect. He saw that our union with Satan was a perfect union.
We were one with the devil. He laid our spiritual death on Christ. Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.” That work was wrought by the great master workman, Christ before He arose from the dead. The Father sees us now in all our beauty and perfection in Christ. This beauty is all His own. He made us to please His own heart.
We died to sin once and for all in Christ. We died to Satan’s dominion. We died to the old habits that held us in bondage. We do not need to die again. The theory of our dying daily with Christ comes from the old version, “I am crucified,” which is an incorrect translation.
The passage in 1 Corinthians 15:31 is speaking of Paul’s living in the presence of physical death, the expectation of being thrown to the lions in the arena. We died once with Christ. Now we live with Him, we reign with Him. His perfect Redemption is ours. His perfect Righteousness is ours. All He is and did is ours. All we are is His. The Father made us one with Himself in Christ.
WE WERE BURIED WITH HIM
We have seen how He became sin with our sin, how He became our Substitute, bearing our diseases. We have seen Him under the absolute dominion and power of the adversary on the cross.
We saw Him leave the cross, bearing our diseases and sins away as He was conveyed to our place of confinement. We can see Satan’s gratification. We can see that great celebration in Hell when Satan brought Jesus, a captive, into the prison house, Read Acts 2:24, 27, 31-32.
You remember how the Philistines rejoiced over Samson, and with what joy they put out his eyes and bound him in helplessness. What a gala day it must have been in Hell when He who had raised Lazarus from the dead, had destroyed the power of death and disease, had ruled the winds and the waves, had fed the hungry, cast out demons, and defeated Satan in open combat, was conquered and made one with the devil. He was made sick. They could see in Him all the diseases of the ages.
What an hour it must have been. When the disciples took His body from the cross, embalmed it, and laid it in Joseph’s tomb, how little they appreciated what He was going through, and what His sufferings were.
How little the world appreciated where Jesus was and what He was doing. They laid His body in the tomb, and the Roman Government sealed it and set guards to keep watch to see that the body of Jesus was not stolen. They had heard Him cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
God had forsaken Him whom they loved. They had lost all hope. They had thought that it
was He who was going to redeem Israel. For three days and three nights, the Lamb of God
was our Substitute in Hell. He was there for us. He had our pains and our diseases, our sins, and iniquities.
He was there waiting until the claims of justice were fully met. Such an hour had never been and never can be again. There had to be an adequate meeting of the penalty for the transgressions of the human race, and He met them. He became one with Satan when He became sin, as we now become one with Him when we are Recreated.
