Heresies in the church - Part 2

In my last post I showed how the WOF crowd tampers with the Atonement of Christ.

Spiritual Death

The WOF camp is big on the spiritual death of Christ. It is not the physical death of Christ, in their gospel, that paid the price for sin, but the spiritual death of Christ. Kenneth Copeland has this to say: "Jesus had to go through that same spiritual death in order to pay the price. It wasn't the physical death on the cross that paid the price for sin. Because if it had of been any prophet of God that had died for the last couple of thousand of years before that could have paid that price. It wasn't physical death. Anybody could do that." [1] Kenneth Hagin has this to say: "He (Jesus) tasted spiritual death for every man. And His spirit and inner man went to hell in my place. Can't you see that? Physical death wouldn't remove your sins. He's tasted death for every man. He's talking about tasting spiritual death." [2]

WOF preachers emphasize the "spiritual death" of Christ while excluding the physical death of Christ completely. To them, if all it took was a physical death, then anyone would do! The problem with this is simply that it is unbiblical. The Bible's emphasis is on the physical death of Christ, not the spiritual. The teaching of scripture is: "Without shedding of blood is no remission" (Hebrews 9:22). This points to the physical attributes of Jesus in the atonement.Well, did Jesus die spiritually? How do WOF teachers come to this conclusion? They use

Mar 15:34 ESV And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Jesus uttered these words as a prophetic fulfilment of Psalm 22:1. Did God abandon the psalmist? No! When reading this prophetic psalm we find that the psalmist was merely expressing how he felt in his time of distress. When we read verses 9-11, 19-24 we realize that at the same time the psalmist felt abandoned, he also knew who his help came from. He certainly was not abandoned. Jesus on the cross merely expressed the same feelings as the psalmist did. God never abandoned Christ on the cross. Rather, God turned His back to what was on Jesus, namely sin. Jesus was man's sin-bearer, but He was not polluted with man's sin-nature and the nature of Satan as the WOF teachers claim.

Jesus did not die spiritually. As a matter of fact, the Bible teaches just the opposite.

1Pe 3:18 ESV For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,

There are many verses in Scripture which attest to our redemption being fully accomplished by the physical death of Jesus.

Heb 10:10 ESV And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Rom 7:4 ESV Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

Col 1:22 ESV he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

1Pe 2:24 ESV He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

1Pe 4:1 ESV Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin,

Eph 2:14-15 ESV For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility (15) by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace

Jesus spoke often of His impending physical death, yet never once did He refer to a spiritual death. Man died spiritually because he sinned. Jesus never sinned!

My next post will deal with the supposed "satanic nature" of Jesus when he died spiritually.

Read Heresies in the church - Part 1.
Continue with Heresies in the church - Part 3.

Just thinking...

End Notes

[1] Kenneth Copeland, "What Satan saw on the day of Pentecost" tape #02-0022.

[2] K. Hagin, "How Jesus Obtained His Name, Tulsa, OK: K. Hagin Ministries n.d. audiotape #44HO1, side A.