Is “Die” A Metaphor?
Admittedly, the Christian concept of death was the hardest for me, as a former since 1995, to get settled in my mind. The idea of man being created with an immortal spirit took a while to believe. There is no doubt any more.
That being said, when God told Adam that the day he ate of the forbidden tree he would surely die, die was a metaphor for his spirit being condemned to the place of eternal punishment, because it did not refer to his physical body’s death. So it appears to me that when a person believes and accepts Jesus Christ his “dead” spirit/soul is reborn into a new spirit with eternal life. So help me out: is “die” a metaphor?
Also, it appears that Moses and Elijah’s spirits were temporarily transformed on the Mount of Transfiguration into their physical bodies for the disciples’ benefit. True? I don’t want to read more into it than I should.
Any thoughts you have I’d appreciate.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Good questions. I remember when I was struggling with this whole subject AFTER we came out of Adventism. I was reading what Scripture says about people being born dead in sin (Eph. 2:1–3; Romans 3:9–15, etc) and then thinking about Adam and Eve—and I realized that Adventism had given me the wrong understanding of DEATH. Death does not mean to cease to exist. It does mean that one no longer functions as what one was originally intended to be. For example, a destroyed bicycle doesn’t mean the parts cease to exist; it means that the bicycle has been dismantled and destroyed so that it no longer can function as a bicycle. Instead it is a wrecked pile of metal and plastic.
I finally realized that “death” means disconnected from God’s own life. Another example: Satan is DEAD. Oh, he functions, but he is dead. Further, he has no body; angels are spirits (Heb. 1:14). Yet he is very real, but he has no life from God. He is utterly evil and devoid of God’s righteousness and LIFE.
When Adam and Eve sinned, their spirits DIED. They were no longer connected to God’s life. They immediately behaved sinfully: hiding, accusing, refusing to take responsibility for their transgressions. God graciously clothed them with adequate clothing and promised that Eve’s own seed would ultimately crush the serpent’s head, so He intervened and provided redemption for them—but they died spiritually that day even though their bodies continued to breath. Their spiritual death was not a metaphor or a “promise” of eventual death. It was a reality at that moment. They were LOST. DEAD in sin.
It is this spiritual death that is our inheritance as children of Adam. This is the death INTO which we are born. Ephesians 2:1–3 states that we are born dead in sin, under the power of the prince of the air, “by nature children of wrath”. That is our NATURAL condition because of Adam. DEAD. Our need is not to become righteous but to be made ALIVE.
Jesus is the only Person ever born who did not need to be born again. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and had spiritual life from conception. He was born alive—God’s way of “smuggling” LIFE into our domain of darkness. He lived without sin, and He died a sinless human death and paid for all of our sin, breaking its curse and rising on the third day. When we trust His finished work, we literally pass from death to life (Jn. 5:24) at that moment. We are transferred by the Father out of our domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Col 1:13). We receive Jesus’ literal resurrection life—the life that raised Him from the dead raises our spirits to life the moment we believe. Like Ezekiel prophesied, we receive new hearts and new spirits. Our own dead-in-sin spirits are brought to life—PLUS we are sealed and indwelled by the Holy Spirit:
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules (Ezekiel 36:26–27).
Also, see Ephesians 1:13-14.
No, “death” and “spiritual death” are not metaphors. They are literal and real. We are born depraved, dead in sin, unable to know, seek, or please God (Rom. 3:9–15). God has to enter our darkness and give us the desire and the faith to believe in Jesus. When we do, we pass from death to life!! Jesus, not a future event, IS the resurrection and life, as He told Martha in John 11.
As for Moses and Elijah, we aren’t told how they appeared. We know that God allowed them to be visible, and we know that the pre-incarnate Christ was allowed to be visible in Christophanies in the Old Testament when the Angel of the Lord would appear to people. But Jesus told His disciples that spirits do not have flesh and bones—yet God allows angels, the spirits who minister to those who are being saved (Heb. 1:14), to appear visible when He desires. Moses and Elijah were allowed to appear visibly, but that does not mean they had literal physical bodies. Jesus was the first fruits from the dead; He was the first one to break death and to appear in a glorified body. Moses and Elijah were not yet glorified and reconnected with their eternal bodies because Jesus hadn’t yet risen from death.
Here is an article and a video that might be helpful.
Adventist Pastor Claims Early Christians All Kept Sabbath
I love reading your articles. I have a question: I once asked an Adventist pastor, “Why is the fourth commandment not reiterated in the New Testament?”
His answer was, “Because there’s no need to reiterate since all Christians in that time were already worshiping on the Sabbath day.”
Is this claim true?
I read your magazine as one of my sources when I am study. I also cross-reference their Sabbath School lesson with your lesson commentaries in the magazine because sometimes there are things in the lesson that seem to be faulty. I also love to listen to your podcasts.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: No, his claim is not true. Jewish believers may have met on the Sabbath, but the gentiles certainly did not. None of the epistles command the gentiles—who did not have the law—to meet on the Sabbath. They would have had to be TAUGHT to keep the Sabbath because they never had kept the law or the Sabbath. Acts 15 explains that the gentiles were not expected to keep the law.
Moreover, the Adventist pastor’s answer ignores the fact that the New Testament was not written just to people of the apostles’ time. It was written to people for the rest of human history, and the church had to be taught what the new covenant was and how to live in it. Sabbath would have had to be taught.
Furthermore, the New Testament commands moral behavior included in the Ten Commandments; using the pastor’s argument, this listing would not have been necessary since people were already aware of those things. However, using the argument of Scripture, the moral commands listed in the New Testament are not repetitions of the Ten Commandments and thus of the old covenant. Rather, they are the commands of the new law, the Law of Christ under which we live in the new covenant (see Hebrews 7:12; 1 Corinthians 9:21; Galatians 6:2).
No, the New Testament explains the nature of the new covenant and explains to believers how to live in the new covenant. If the Sabbath had been part of the new covenant for the church, it would have had to be taught. Gentile believers were not expected to have had the law; they would have had no knowledge of keeping the seventh day!
Sabbath Confusion
Please help me with verses that really prove that the Sabbath is not binding anymore. I’m a former Adventist, and somehow I keep questioning whether or not the Sabbath is to be kept. I went through your website and watched the YouTube videos, but somehow the question hasn’t really settled.
I was convinced by Colossians 2:16, but then the question came up as to whether the Sabbath mentioned there is the weekly or the yearly Sabbath. How do we come to the conclusion that the order used is weekly, monthly, and yearly or the other way around? Please help. Your response would really help me.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Your confusion is normal for those of us steeped in Adventist proof-texting and almost-right arguments.
The bottom line that deals with Sabbath is the covenants. The Sabbath was the sign of the Mosaic Covenant God made with Israel (Ex. 31:16-17). Sabbath was never given to the whole world in spite of Adventism’s arguments. Hebrews 3 and 4 explain that the Israelites had the Sabbath, but they never entered God’s rest, so God set a different day: TODAY. Today if you hear His voice, enter His rest! And Hebrews 4:9 uses a unique word—“sabbatismos”—to say there remains a “Sabbath-like rest” for the people of God. This sabbatsimos does NOT mean “sabbath-keeping” ; rather, it means a sabbath-LIKE rest. When we believe in the Lord Jesus’s finished work, we enter God’s rest and no longer work to gain His favor or work to be worthy of being saved.
Sabbath was never primarily about human’s rest; it was about entering GOD’s rest!
The Adventist argument that Sabbath was a creation ordnance is actually not true. God did not give a Sabbath command at creation, but He declared the seventh day holy and sanctified it. Interestingly, only the seventh day had no “evening and the morning were the _______day” boundaries. All other days had a beginning and an end—an evening and a morning. Not the seventh. The seventh day was the day God CEASED from His work, and it was finished. Perfect! In fact, God created Adam and Eve INTO His finished work. They were created on the sixth day—the seventh day when God ceased was their second day of life. They were given no command to keep the seventh day. The first Sabbath command was given to Israel, and it was a sign to them of the Mosaic covenant.
The New Covenant has a new “remember”: to eat the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of Him!! Jesus fulfilled the Sabbath and all the shadows of the law that pointed to Him. In fact, Hebrews 7:12 says that where there is a change of the priesthood, there is a change of the law. In fact, there were NO Sabbath commands in the New Testament, and those new gentile believers who did not have the law would have had to be taught how to keep the Sabbath had it been required. Furthermore, in all the New Testament lists of sins that God will not allow in His kingdom, Sabbath-breaking is never listed.
The Colossians 2:16-17 passage is about the weekly, monthly, and yearly feasts/sabbaths. This order of sabbath holidays is listed in either ascending or descending order several time in the Old Testament; Paul was using a formula that was well-established. He is definitely speaking of the weekly Sabbath in that passage as well as of the New Moons and the yearly feasts.
I will give you a couple of articles to read that may help you with this understanding of the covenants:
- The Covenants: the Continental Divide of biblical interpretation
- Jesus Is Not An Old Covenant Priest
You might also find our podcasts on the covenants to be helpful:
- April 27–May 3, 2024 - April 25, 2024
- We Got Mail - April 25, 2024
- April 20–26, 2024 - April 18, 2024