Romans 6.9 - Jesus and the Lordship of Death
n our last “Jesus Made Sin” essay, Hebrews 2.9 - Death Remixed, we wrote that thneta which is usually translated as “death” in most Bible translations is better rendered “subject to death” with the idea that it includes spiritual death. We provided two verses to demonstrate that thneta cannot be equated to just physical death:
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal [thneto] body so that you obey its lusts - (Romans 6.12, NASB)
But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal [thneta] bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8.11, NASB)
From these verses, we went to Romans 5.12 and said “thnetos is all about spiritual death, not physical death (although physical death ensues from spiritual death).” One of our readers, slw, asked us to elaborate on our statement and we suggest that you read our response.
We refer back to this post because it provides a good platform for jumping over to Romans 6.9 and seeing it in its true light. Romans 6.9 says:
Knowing that Christ having been raised from among the dead no more dieth, - Death [thanatos] over him no more hath lordship. (Rotherham)
(We like Rotherham’s translation because of its Yodian (Galatic Basic) way of translating the Greek - transparent very it is.)
In Romans 6.9, in the Greek, “lordship” is defined as “to rule or reign over with the implication in some instances of ‘lording over’” (Louw). While many Christian leaders teach us that no one or no thing ever has lorded over Jesus, that just doesn’t fly with scripture. Romans 6.9 says that death did indeed exercise lordship over him at one point in time. The question is then, “Just what kind of death was this Romans 6.9 ‘death’?”
Average Joe Christianity says that it’s physical death and anyone that says anything differently should be tarred and feathered or at least be forced to wear a big ‘ole scarlet H. We found this quote in an online commentary which presents us with the conventional rendering of death in Romans 6.9:
Death (2288) (thanatos) physically refers to the final separation of one’s soul from their body. Physical death is the primary meaning of thanatos in this passage. Death equates with separation. Jesus absolutely defeated physical death on the Cross and He can never die and His life is now my life. Therefore, I have now have [sic] eternal life in Him. We can never die in that sense. Physical death may take place but the moment it takes place, immediately we are in the presence of our Lord (2 Cor. 5.8). As believers we never have to face the fear of death because Jesus has conquered death. (http://www.preceptaustin.org/romans_68-10.htm) (italics supplied)
[By the way, thanatos (death) is another word form of thneta (mortal). Both words have the same root.]
If we took this commentary’s statement that “physical death is the primary meaning of thanatos,” and sat down with Romans, we’d find ourselves sitting alongside Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party growing increasingly perturbed at the silly stories and riddles. For instance, Romans 6.12 and 8.11 would read:
Therefore do not let sin reign in your physically dead body so that you obey its lusts. (6.12)
But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your physically dead body through his Spirit who dwells in you. (8.11)
No one but a Cheshire cat could make sense of that. Also notice the Wonderland irony: Paul wrote all three verses - 6.9, 6.12, and 8.11 - and they’re all in the same book, no less. But the party just wouldn’t end there. Flipping back just a page we read:
For this cause, just as through one man sin into the world entered, And through sin death (thanatos), And so unto all men death [thanatos] passed through, For that all had sinned - … Yet still death [thanatos] reigned from Adam until Moses, Even over them who had not sinned after the likeness of the transgression of Adam, Who is a type of the Coming One. (Romans 5.12, 14, Rotherham)
If we applied “physical death” to thanatos in these verses we could start trumpeting a brand new doctrine: no one is going to die because it all stopped at Moses. Problem is, the Cheshire cat may be the only one that actually believes such a thing and we’d have to come up with some kind of fangled way to explain all of our cemeteries.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or even a Mad Hatter to see that Paul’s “death” (thanatos) cannot just mean physical death. Physical death did not end when Moses introduced the Law. It was spiritual death that ceased to reign like it did between Adam and Moses because the Law introduced sacrificial offerings that covered the people’s sin.
Like we said in our previous post, “thnetos [thanatos] is all about spiritual death, not physical death (although physical death ensues from spiritual death).” With that definition in mind, which, by the way, weaves a consistent thread all throughout Romans, we more cleanly see the harsh spiritual realities undergirding Romans 6.9’s “death”:
Knowing that Christ having been raised from among the dead no more dieth, - Death [thanatos] over him no more hath lordship. (Rotherham)
Romans 6.9 may be said to be a summary of our entire Descent and Jesus Became Sin series. This scripture expressly shows that Paul’s thanatos - more than mere physical death - lorded over Jesus from the cross until the time that he was resurrected by the Father.
[Note: This same commentary presents quite a different definition for thanatos for Romans 6.21 which is just a few passages down from 6.9 and 6.12:
What fruit therefore had ye then - in things for which ye now are taking shame to yourselves? For the end of those things is death [thanatos]. (Rotherham)
Death (2288) (thanatos) includes not only physical death, but also the quality of one’s present life (1 Ti 5.6). Here Paul uses the term of the death brought in by human sin and not referring merely to physical death but to death in its most comprehensive sense - separation of the creature from his Creator in the Lake of fire … (http://www.preceptaustin.org/romans_621-23.htm)]
One of the real dangers to a vibrant faith is caging the Gospel to a predisposed theology and changing the meaning of words, even those written by the same author, to fit that theology.
10 comments...What do you think?
Trackbacks...
- The Real Faith | Romans 4.25 - Righteousness as Divine Life
- 1 Timothy 3.16 - Jesus’s Righteousfied Life - 1
- 1 Timothy 3.16 - Jesus’s Righteousfied Spirit - 2
Peter,
I have to admit, pressing the separation of death into spiritual and physical components makes little sense to me. Spiritual death came to the entire human race with Adam’s sin, and was immediate. Physical death followed, as you’ve said, but would not even exist if it was not for former. They are part and parcel, the gunshot and the echo, pieces of the same thing. The human race (Ephesians 2:1-3 tells us) lives in deadness while they wait to die. How could Christ die physically, without spiritual death preceeding? To believe he died physically without dying spiritually (becoming sin) would be, it seems to me, embracing a type of swoon theory for the resurrection. I guess for me, truly, that imputin’ ain’t computin’. Thanks for this thoughtful series.
slw,
Thanks for the comment (and all the comments throughout the series). We started the series with just a few scripture verses by some old-time preachers. We had two aims in mind. First, we wanted to see if the heresy critics were right (they weren’t). Second, we wanted to get our feet firmly planted in the doctrine’s scriptural bases (our own resources only referenced a handful of scriptures). We believe that we accomplished our aims (though we still need to explore and preach on scriptures such as Hebrews 1.2-13).
We believe that Kenneth Hagin was correct: if you don’t understand or believe this part of scripture then you never will understand the believer’s authority in Christ.
I’ll admit, in my younger days when I never really thought about the theological implications of what the Bible said about Jesus’ death in the particulars, I always assumed it was a given that God the Father had to completely turn his gaze away from the Son and that Jesus underwent some kind of profound spiritual separation from God for three days when Jesus was resurrected both in his physical body and in His spiritual nature of divinity. How this “worked” I still don’t really understand at all — it’s far too profound and mysterious for my poor brain — but it makes some kind of intrinsic sense. For people to say it’s heresy to claim that Jesus underwent a spiritual death and descended to hell seems incredibly bizarre to me. If Jesus’ death on the cross were merely a physical death, then how on earth could we be spiritually redeemed in addition to physically redeemed?
Some modern theologians have critisized the “penal substituion” concept on the grounds that it seems like divine child abuse. I’m not sure I agree with that all the way, but certainly when you hear people say that Jesus’s physical suffering and death on the cross and subsequent physical resurrection was in and of itself the sole reason behind our salvation, it sure seems like a weird sort of abuse. That viewpoing is almost like an overreaction to gnosticism — putting everything in a physical basket rather than a balanced view of the physical and spiritual natures.
Jared,
Thanks for the comment.
Like you, in my early Christianity I always had just assumed that Jesus descended into hell as part of our redemption (I was raised Catholic and recited the creed every Sunday). After college and Bible school, it was news to me that such thinking was called blasphemy by more than a few “scholars.” Their knockdown criticisms seem to have won the day, so to speak, as many preachers began to avoid preaching the truths of it (in my own camp, I haven’t heard another preacher directly preach on it in years). While understanding the facts of his descent aren’t necessary to be born-again, I’m convinced that the Body needs to grow in the knowledge of them in order to be firmly “rooted being built up in Him and established in our faith” (Col. 2.7) as it is so central to all the NT letters.
As to “penal substitution” theory, we admit (gladly) that we are not well-schooled in the various atonement theories (or other theological classifications for that matter). We do all we can to concentrate on the question: “What saith the scripture?” We will say, however, that virtually every theory that we’ve run across says very little or nothing about Satan. While Satan, as a spiritual personality, might resemble Golum, the NT demonstrates that he is a major player in the redemption drama, e.g., “to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan … ” (Acts 26.18). (cf. Eph. 2.2 - “god of this world”). Galatians 1.3 paints redemption as a rescue (with Jesus as the supreme superhero) and it appears that many of the theories, including various strains of the penal substitution theory (at least the ones that we’ve come across), stray quite a bit from that narrative.
Peter, you said in response to Jared,
“Like you, in my early Christianity I always had just assumed that Jesus descended into hell as part of our redemption (I was raised Catholic and recited the creed every Sunday). After college and Bible school, it was news to me that such thinking was called blasphemy by more than a few “scholars.”’
I too made those assumptions, but it didn’t come from teaching or reciting creeds, but from reading the Bible. I think when one reads the Bible naturally, just taking it for what it says (without trying to jam every phrase into a preset theological template) the conclusion one comes to, in innocence, is that Christ experienced real separation (spiritual death), real physical death, a descent into hades, and real physical and spiritual resurrection. The particulars are certainly debatable, but for someone to be branded “heretical” for taking the Bible for what it says is just plain stupid and goes against the fundamental teaching of love for the brothers.
slw,
I agree with you about the “heretical” branding. Recently, in the blogosphere a prominent minister called blasphemy beliefs that do not adhere to the Calvinist view of God.
I’ve discussed with my wife many times how the preaching of the Gospel should be different from the practice of law (it seems like many theologians are lawyer-wannabes with their justification talk). Law these days is for specialists because there are tens of thousands of them in the U.S. alone and the law changes daily. The Gospel, on the other hand, is static and was written for the man on the street and should be preached with simple exposition. Our thinking is that if the man on the street cannot understand us (“reading the Bible naturally”), then we ought to rethink our presentation and even our theology.
AMEN!!!!