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"In due time Christ died for the ungodly. " Romans 5:6

While the Bible everywhere declares the importance of the death of Jesus, Christian people in recent times seem to be perplexed upon the subject. Some dispute the Bible statement of the necessity for Jesus' death, and claim that His life was no different from that of other men, and His death was no different from that of others. Some claim that Jesus came into the world, and passed through various trying experiences, not in order to redeem mankind from anything, but in order to show His followers how they should live and die for a good cause. Others in bewilderment declare that they see no relationship between Jesus' death and what they have been taught is the penalty for sin; namely, eternal Torment.

In general, there is confusion upon the subject, and only those who get the proper Scriptural focus on the question of why Christ died can be mentally at rest, and able to enter sympathetically into the various features of the great Plan of God, of which the death of Jesus for human redemption is a part.

We protest against the too common practice of accepting a portion of the Bible, and rejecting the remainder. Any man wise enough to criticize the inspired Word should be accepted as an inspired authority capable of writing a better statement of the Divine Plan. For our part, we believe that the Holy Scriptures, as St. Paul declares, were written aforetime by holy men for the admonition of the Church. We believe that this was done because God wished His people to understand His Divine purposes and arrangements, and sympathetically to enjoy them and cooperate in their fulfillment. We should hold fast "the faith once delivered to the saints," and should not allow our own wisdom or the wisdom of other men to make the Word of God of none effect. We remind our readers how Jesus reproved the Pharisees for neglect of God's Word and for taking instead of it the traditions of men. Mark 7:6-8

However, our English Bible does not profess to be the Word of God, but merely a translation of it. If, therefore, we find some passages of Scripture which have been mistranslated, and thus misrepresent the original Scriptures, we should make haste to correct these, and to admit that the translations were not inspired. Additionally, we remind that all old manuscripts show that during the long period of eighteen centuries errors crept in-additions to the words of Jesus and the Apostles. At the time of the preparation of our Common Version English Bible the number of Greek manuscripts was only seven, whereas now there are several hundreds. Three of them in particular are very old-the Sinaitic, the Vatican 1209, and the Alexandrian.

The people of God are to so hunger and thirst for their Heavenly Father's words that they will spare no pains to know exactly what He said to them and what He did not say, and to base their faith upon the living Word, which surely will abide forever. So doing, the Bible becomes more beautiful and more reverenced by Bible students every day.

There is no dispute among the various orthodox creeds that there was a penalty against mankind which needed td be met, before the Divine blessing could come to any of our race. These creeds all agree that Adam, the father of the race, was created perfect, in the image, in the moral likeness, of his Maker, but that he sinned, and came under a penalty, or curse, on account of sin. Hence all of his race, inheriting life from him, shared his weaknesses and his condemnation to death.

God, having sentenced man to death as unworthy of life, could not consistently have any dealings with him, while still condemned. Hence God's provision that Jesus as the Son of God should recover Adam and his race from the sentence of death-in order that all might have an opportunity to return to harmony with God, and thus to everlasting life.

This is clearly set forth in both the Old Testament and the New. If we would forget our creeds and rid our minds of the false theories which they inculcate, these Scriptures would now "rude us without difficulty. Christendom is handicapped by the creeds of the Dark Ages, which confuse us. On this subject, for instance, of Christ's redeeming work, we are met with the proposition of the creeds that the curse of God against our race is eternal torture in some far-off place, we know not where-possibly within the earth.

The misconceptions of our forefathers on the subject of punishment for sin were built upon mistranslations or statements meant to be understood symbolically. For instance, we read of our Lord, "He opened His mouth in parables and dark sayings." When our Lord illustrated the utter destruction of the finally incorrigible by the destruction of the offal of Jerusalem, cast into the Gehenna fire outside of the city wall, it was not torment that He taught, but annihilation. Nothing was tormented in the fire of the valley of Hinnom. In the Book of Revelation, wholly symbolical, the plain statement is made that the lake of fire represents the Second Death.

"THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH."

Most emphatically the Bible declares the wages of sin to be death-not torment. And lest any one should think of this as merely meaning the death of the body, while the soul continues to live, the Scriptures expressly state more than once that the death of the soul is meant. "The soul that sinneth it shall die." "God is able to destroy both soul and body" in Gehenna, the Second Death. The penalty against Adam, "Dying, thou shalt die," signifies the death of his soul, his entire being. Under that sentence, unless redeemed, Adam and his race would have no future life.

But God from the very beginning purposed to redeem man from this death sentence. In due time He sent forth His Son to pay man's redemption price. Jesus' redemptive work will restore man's soul from the power of the tomb, by a resurrection of the dead. Therefore, even before Jesus had died for our sins, He said to some of the people, "Fear not them which can kill the body," and thus take from you all that remains of the present Adamic life. Fear God, with whom are the issues of the future life, for He is able to destroy not merely the temporary life of the present time, but also your prospective life, which He purposes to secure for you through the Redeemer's sacrifice, and by the resurrection from the dead.

We see, then, that God rested every feature of His Plan for mankind upon the great work which from the beginning He intended Jesus should accomplish for our race. St. Paul expresses this in a few words, saying, "As by a man came death [not eternal torment], by a man also comes the resurrection of the dead. For as all in Adam die, even so all in Christ shall be made alive, every man in his own order." The first order, or resurrection, is that of The Christ, Head and Body, to glory, honor, immortality, on the Divine plane of being. Search carefully the Old Testament Scriptures-every word of God through Moses and the Prophets-and we find not a hint of any other penalty for sin than this death penalty.

WHAT THE DEATH PENALTY INCLUDES

Many fail to grasp the full import of the death penalty. It includes not only the final act of dying, but all the steps leading thereto. Had there been no sin and no sin penalty, there would have been no dying process-no aches, no pain, no sighing nor crying, nor dying.

Man lived in Eden as happily as angels live in their Heavenly home on the spirit plane, for he is an earthly being, adapted only to earthly conditions. Besides, had it not been for sin, God would not have permitted the curse, nor brought thorns, thistles, storms, cyclones, drought and deluges, which in death-dealing power have been permitted to come to man, because he is a convict. He is already under sentence of death.

The favors that God has promised to him through Christ will come in their due season. They will make earth a Paradise Garden, with nothing to hurt or destroy. The Divine blessing will bring to all mankind the opportunity to return to the image and likeness of God, and to everlasting life, under the New Covenant.

ANOTHER OF OUR DIFFICULTIES

An additional difficulty under which we labored as Bible students in the past is that we confused the special work of this Gospel Age with the general work of the next Age. God's provision, through the death of Christ, for rolling away the curse of sin and death from mankind applies to the next Age, and not to the present Age. When His due time shall arrive, everything will be in readiness for the great work which He has promised shall be satisfactorily consummated. Divine Wisdom, backed by Divine power, will establish Messiah's Kingdom in power and great glory, bind Satan, break the shackles of ignorance, error and sin, and set humanity free from the slavery of sin and death, under which it has rested for six thousand years.

This great work is spoken of in two different ways; (1) It will be a time for overthrowing and breaking down the powers of sin, darkness and evil. (2) It will be a time for uplifting mankind to the original Divine image in which Adam was created.

As the entire reign of sin and death came, through Adam's disobedience, upon the whole world, so the entire release from the curse will come to every member of the race, through Jesus. The broad basis for this work has already been laid in the death of Jesus. "Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures." (1 Corinthians 15:3) Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man. "He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." 1 John 2:2

As all the race were involved in the death sentence, the one redemptive work was necessary for the releasing of all. In God's arrangement He has divided the redeemed into two great classes, both of which will attain everlasting life. But one class will receive it on the spiritual, or Heavenly, plane, while the other will get it on the earthly plane. This does not signify universalism, for while these two classes are to be saved, the Bible distinctly tells of some who will receive the grace of God in vain, and die the Second Death. Revelation 21:S

From this viewpoint, note the force of the Apostle's words: "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23) The death sentence passed upon all through one man, Adam. The gift of God is to come to all humanity through the second Adam, the Lord.

THE RICHES OF GOD'S GRACE

Our Great Creator is rich in grace, the Apostle tells us. He not only purposed to recover mankind from the disadvantages of the fall, but additionally took advantage of the circumstances connected with the permission of sin to give an especial opportunity to any of the sinners to manifest, if they would, special loyalty to Himself. God might have placed a different penalty against sin. He might have excluded our first parents from Eden for a year and then have returned them, or He might have simply banished the race from Eden, and have allowed all to live without sentence of death against us. Had He done so, Jesus would not have needed to die for man's redemption. Because the sentence of death had been imposed, however, it must be canceled before the race could be restored to perfection and to God's favor.

It is evident, then, that God wished to have the death penalty upon our race, so as to make necessary the death of His Son. This, in turn, meant that the Father invited the Son to become man's Redeemer, and that the Son accepted the offer, and came into this world for that very purpose. This implied that the Father would reward Him with a high exaltation, in recognition of His loyalty and obedience unto death, even the death of the cross. Thus Jesus suffered for our sins, and entered into His glory.

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