Chapter 7 - Christ – His life and His work

- 19 - human beings do not exist. If they did, mortals would no longer be what they are, and the material body would cease to be matter. Paul has recorded this truth in his Epistle to the Hebrews, in words that are uncomfortable for those who regard Christ as God and hence deny the possibility on his part of sin or of rebellion against God. Paul wrote: Hebrews 5: 7-9: ‘In the days of his life upon earth, Christ, amid loud lamentations and many tears, sent up fervent prayers to Him Who could save him from “death”.. His prayers were heard, and he was freed from his fear. Although he was God's Son, he also learned obedience through his sufferings. Only after he had attained perfection did he become the source of salvation for all who obey him.’ In these words, you find confirmation of everything I have told you, to the smallest particular. “In my explanation of God’s Plan of Salvation, I called your attention to the very important fact that even the highest of created spirits is exposed by incarnation to the danger of being overcome by Evil and to being persuaded to desert God. This danger threatened Christ himself, and he was fully aware of it. On more than one occasion he was on the point of succumbing to the assaults of Satan. Paul indicates this in the passage I have quoted, when he says that Christ called upon God amid loud lamentations and tears to save him from death. That it was not corporeal death from which he prayed to be saved is evident from Paul’s saying that Christ’s prayers were heard. So, God saved him from the death he so greatly feared. Did God save him from earthly death and its terrors? On the contrary, Christ was compelled to drain that cup to the dregs, so it must have been death of another kind from which Christ was saved in answer to his prayers. – As you know, the word ‘death’ in almost all passages of the Bible, and especially in the epistles of Paul, signifies ‘spiritual death’, or the abandonment of God. This was a danger at which Christ trembled even before he knew that he was fated to die on the Cross, such was the fierceness of Satan’s assaults upon him. Your Bible says nothing of Christ’s daily battles with the Powers of Hell, which spared no effort to break his willpower and thus to cause him to forsake God. From the fact that he called to God in tears, beseeching Him for help as Satan and his hosts bore down upon him, and that he trembled for fear that he might not prevail against hell for long – from all this you may gather that it was possible that even Christ might forsake God. • Had there been no such possibility, he would have had no reason to tremble before hell’s attack, still less, to loudly and tearfully call upon God to save him from death. – Furthermore, Satan, who knew exactly whom he had before him in Christ, would have known better than to take the field against him with all his forces had he seen no prospect of victory. It is for this reason that he never directs his attacks upon God Himself, but only against His creatures. If Lucifer, the second highest of created spirits, deserted God, why should not the highest of them all (Christ) do likewise, particularly when he, in the shape of a weak mortal, found himself face to face with the infernal powers. Satan knows full well what he is doing, and he undertakes nothing that does not offer at least a fair prospect of success. Paul also mentions in the same passage the fact that Christ had human weaknesses and failings, for he says that Christ, though he was a Son of God, yet learned obedience by the things he suffered.

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