A bed of thorns?

Recently, something in my pastor's sermon suddenly made a thought flash in my mind. As I toyed with it and tried to make it more clear, give it shape and color, I came to the conclusion that I had just managed to come up with one of those "Thorny Theological Problems". Now to try to unravel it.


Now, I don't profess to be a Biblical scholar, but I do believe I know far more about scripture than the average person. I knew it well enough to teach Sunday school for two years. I had a special interest in what we call the "Old Testament" which is really, mostly, the original Hebrew scriptures. You could call it my area of specialty, but I love and study the New Testament as well.


The thorny issue is this:

• Given: Jesus was wholly Human, and was and is wholly God. He was as human as any other human, but possessed, and evinced on earth, in totality, the full, pure Spirit of His Father, God.
• Given: God appears to have one limitation, He is not capable of looking at sin. If sin comes near to His being He must turn His face away. But this is not a limitation; God simply does not possess in His being the capacity for sin to be presented directly before or to Him.
• Given: Jesus allowed His physical body to be abused and tortured, and ultimately nailed to a cross to become the redeeming sacrifice for everyones' sins—past, present, and future. His death would provide the payment to satisfy God's requirements for us to be allowed to be His children again.
• Given: Jesus' great suffering in the garden of Gethsemane was not about facing the physical agony of the crucifixion, but of knowing that for the only time in eternity would He and the Father be separated in their Spirit.
• The Question: At that moment when Jesus cried "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?", the moment when Jesus literally became sin, the moment when His Father turned His face away from His spotless, unblemished Son who was now the epitome of all sin in the world for all eternity, where was the Holy Spirit?
• If the Holy Spirit is God's spirit and God cannot look at sin, then it follows that the Spirit must have left Jesus, even if only momentarily. He couldn't have "become sin" if the Spirit of God was in Him.
• Conclusion: I believe that at the critical moment when Jesus was at the brink of being made sin, God withdrew His Spirit from Jesus so that the unbelievable burden of all humanity's sins could be allowed to infest Him. In that moment God's wrath was poured out on Christ and then the Spirit was restored to Him. It was at that time when Jesus could say "tetelestai", voluntarily surrender His human life, and die.

"Tetelestai" is the Greek word that means "it is finished". What was finished? By accepting God's full measure of wrath that rightfully belonged to the human race, Jesus "conquered sin and death" forever. Do people still die? Of course, but that's physical death and comes to all people. But those who refuse to accept Christ's completed work on the cross will also choose the certainty of spiritual "death", which is eternal separation from God and the chance to live in Hell for eternity. Those who accept Christ will enter into life and the chance to spend eternity with God and Jesus, sharing with them, forever, in the complete filling of the Holy Spirit.

I chose eternal life. How about you?