01.05.03. What Takes Place at Death?
3. WHAT TAKES PLACE AT DEATH? The passage before cited tells us that “the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns unto God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). But what becomes of the soul? An actual case is better than much speculation, an ounce of fact being worth a ton of theory. Of the Man Christ Jesus we ate told distinctly what took place at His death.
1. His dead body was laid in the tomb.
2. His last words on the cross were, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46), the human spirit thus returning unto God who gave it. That the human spirit is not the divine Spirit is seen clearly in the case of our Lord, for His entire holy humanity was a created thing conceived by an operation of the Holy Spirit in Mary (Luke 1:35); years later it was anointed with power by the Spirit of God coming upon it; and at last on the cross, He surrendered His human spirit to the Father: an act impossible in relation to the Spirit of God with Whom He as God was in indissoluble union. The distinction - necessary and unavoidable ‑ between the human and the divine is thus ever maintained. It was the human spirit which vitalized His body that Jesus gave up that He might die.
3. But the Spirit of prophecy in David (Psalms 16:10) had put into Messiah’s mouth these other words: “Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol,” which words were later, on the day of Pentecost, applied by Peter to Christ. “Thou wilt not leave my soul unto Hades” (Acts 2:27). The error of Apollinaris (cent. 4), that the person of Christ consisted of a human body and soul only, with the divine Spirit (or Logos) taking the place in Him of a human spirit, must be steadfastly resisted. His humanity, as ours, consisted of body, soul, and spirit.
Sheol and Hades are equivalent words in Hebrew and Greek respectively. Of this region there is abundant information in Scripture. It is very far from the fact, as spiritualists assert, that no certain information as to the state after death is available save what they think they receive from spirits through mediums. But most unfortunately the reader of the Authorized Version is completely stopped from this study by the variety of the terms employed. Sheol and Hades are rendered “grave,” “pit,” and “hell.” The last in its older English meaning was not inaccurate, but it has come now to mean only the final place of the lost, the lake of fire, which never is the sense of Sheol or Hades. However, any diligent reader can pursue the subject in the Revised Version, for these original terms are given in either text or margin where ever they occur. This is one example, and an important one, of the superiority of the R.V. over the A.V.