Page 70 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”

The central purpose in His coming was to die and release life. He could not then

descend to earth in any heavenly form for there is nothing in heaven that even
contains the potentiality of death. He must needs then take on an outward form that
under given conditions could die. Heb. 2:14 gives that as the reason for His entrance
into a body of flesh and blood, “that through death, He might destroy him that had the

power of death.” In studying the divine purposes it is particularly necessary for us to
note carefully these occurrences of the great purposive word that. In this particular
verse we have two great purposes set forth together. We have the answers to why He
took on a human body, and why He died. It was to die that He took on a human body,

and it was to “destroy him that had the power of death” that He must needs die.
The inhabitants of the prairies know well how to fight fire with fire. God fights
death and destroys its author through the death of His Son. The Infinite Godman, as
Son of Man, assumes in His human nature the responsibility for the sin of the whole

race with which He has identified Himself, and contracts to pay its penalty, which is
death. He absorbed in His own body all the implications of death, the wrath of God,
the curse, the judgment, the separation and alienation, its Godward aspects, which
caused Him the most acute suffering of all—in His human spirit. The manward

manifestations of His passion were the shame, the ridicule, the misunderstanding, the
contumely, all of which occasioned Him untold agony in His human soul. These two
phases of His sacrificial dying were vastly more difficult to endure than the physical
pangs, with which we are more familiar and which we, creatures of sense, are inclined

to emphasize far out of proportion to their importance.

He gathered all the horrors of death up in His cup of suffering, which He tasted for
every man. He took it all down into the grave and deposited it there. All the power of

hell was assembled to keep Him there, because Satan and all his hosts knew that when
He came out their spell would be broken, not for Christ alone, but for all who would
be or had been incorporated into Him by faith and through the agency of the Holy
Spirit.

But here all the forces of hell proved puny in comparison with the forces of heaven
which were unleashed. Paul prayed that the Ephesian Christians might come to know,

through the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, “what is the greatness of his power to
usward who believe according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought
in Christ when he raised him from the dead… and you who were dead in trespasses
and sins.” Four Greek words for power are used in this passage to describe that energy
which the Holy Spirit used in breaking the mobilized might of hell, to bring again

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