Thanks, jsot, for looking at my question and rationale: as it happens, I do fathom the immortality and self-existence of divinity, thank you. Yes, asygo, I recall that divine nature cannot die.

Did God then actually die for us and our sins, or not???

While Jesus lived and died as a man, righteous by faith, his divinity could not die for not being mortal. He, being the only begotten, actual Son of God, died as a human. Technically, being divine, unless God's Son became a man he could not die for sinners, so, praise the Lord, the humiliation of the self-existent Son of God, worthy of worship with his Father, to become a man is glorious.

That last quote (DG 71.1) says the King of glory needed to be raised from the dead. When Jesus died for us, he died as a man and as the Son of God: being the Son of God, it was he who died, not his divinity. The King of glory died as a man; he whose identity is the Son of God, the Creator, died for his people and become one of us to do so.

Why do I raise this question, at all?

It's because any trinity doctrine fumbles this question: since the orthodox (Nicene) and SDA doctrines fail to secure the Son's personal identity next to his Father the Eternal God. In fact personal identities aren't real for any members of the Godhead, as we term it: labels and figurative meanings of 'Father', 'Son' and 'Holy Spirit', it's vague at best, mystical and unbiblical at worst.

Avoiding such personal ambiguities is what the Bible & SOP do ...and our church used to do, by being non-trinitarian in holding Jesus to be the actual Son of God, as jsot has spoken of: this secures the Gospel truth of God's Son dying for us. Amen.

God's wrath did fall on Him, but not for His own sins... for three days and three nights Jesus was cut off from the Father, beginning in Gethsemane.

“…Separation from His Father, the punishment for transgression and sin, was to fall upon Him in order to magnify God's law and testify to its immutability. And this was to settle forever the controversy between the Prince of God and Satan in regard to the changeless character of that law”.
EGW (2nd death)

If Jesus truly came here as a man, if He fell, He would have been subjected to His own laws and could not have redeemed men so He would have to be destroyed in the same fires that would destroy us in the second death BUT He did not sin, so He was permitted to suffer our second death for all of us to pay the penalty for our sins even though He had not sinned. This is where His divine nature was most important; the moment after He had successfully fended off the temptation from Satan in the Garden of Gethsemane to let men die for themselves when the sins of the world were rolled upon His head, He could not call His divinity to His aid but the fact that He had not tarnished His divine nature, an angel came to His aid and this gave Him endurance. The same as the 144,000 will experience after the end of probation.

“Jesus with his disciples now left the upper chamber, and crossed the brook Kedron. Sorrow and anguish again pressed heavily upon his heart…It was not a dread of the physical suffering he was soon to endure that brought this agony upon the Son of God. He was enduring the penalty of man's transgression and shuddering beneath the Father's frown. He must not call his divinity to his aid, but as a man, he must bear the consequences of man's sin and the Creator's displeasure toward his disobedient subjects. As he felt his unity with the Father broken up, he feared that his human nature would be unable to endure the coming conflict with the prince of the power of darkness; and in that case the human race would be irrecoverably lost, Satan would be victor, and the earth would be his kingdom. The sins of the world weighed heavily upon the Savior, and bowed him to the earth; and the Father's anger in consequence of that sin seemed crushing out his life… Having made the decision and reached the final crisis, he fell in a dying condition to the earth from which he had partially risen. Where now were his disciples, to place their hands tenderly beneath the head of their fainting Master, and bathe that brow, marred indeed more than the sons of men? The Savior trod the winepress alone, and of all the people there was none with him. And yet he was not alone. He had said, "I and my Father are one." God suffered with his Son. Man cannot comprehend the sacrifice made by the infinite God in giving up his Son to reproach, agony, and death. This is the evidence of the Father's boundless love to man…The angels who did Christ's will in Heaven were anxious to comfort him; but it was beyond their power to alleviate his sorrow. They had never felt the sins of a ruined world, and they beheld with astonishment the object of their adoration subject to a grief beyond all expression. Though the disciples had failed to sympathize with their Lord in the trying hour of his conflict, all Heaven was full of sympathy and waiting the result with painful interest. When it was finally determined, an angel was sent from the throne of God to minister unto the stricken Redeemer… The disciples were suddenly aroused from their slumber by a bright light shining upon and around the Son of God. They started up in amazement, and beheld a heavenly being, clothed in garments of light, bending over their prostrate Master. With his right hand he lifted the head of the divine sufferer upon his bosom, and with his left hand he pointed toward Heaven. His voice was like the sweetest music, as he uttered soothing words presenting to the mind of Christ the grand results of the victory he had gained over the strong and wily foe. Christ was victor over Satan; and, as the result of his triumph, millions were to be victors with him in his glorified kingdom.
{5Red 21.1}

THIS IS BEFORE THE CROSS IN GETHSEMANE AND BEGINS HIS THREE DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE HELL WE DESERVE! (I will go to my grave with this excitement)

But brother Colin, God goes to extreme lengths to say that He is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, it is not figurative in the least.

In fact it is as literal as the seven days of the creation process.

I agree they all have literal identities.

It's the (trinity doctrine) notion that they're figurative labels that I disagree with.

The death of Jesus for us was made possible by his incarnation, and he took our sinful, degraded flesh to become a man, but he never let corruption of sinning rest on him, forcing his sinful flesh to render perfect obedience to God his Father and our Father. Amen

Thank you for clarifying this point.



You are very close to the truth but one point is missing here.

The death of Jesus was only possible AFTER He became sin for us.

He did not receive the sins of the world until the night of His betrayal when He left the Upper room, then the Eastern gate and crossed the brook Kidron. Then He started to stumble under the weight of sin.

Here is an amazing point.

It was IMPOSSIBLE for Christ to die, unless He committed sin Himself or made it through His trials so He could receive our sins like prophecy foretold.

This point is proven in His 40 Days and nights of not drinking any water or eating any food, from earth or heaven.

He ate nothing, He had no water bottle, no food, no shelter from the heat in the desert AND most importantly He had no angel food, until He made it through His trial. Then the angels came and ministered to Him.

The point is, this proved that He was God, because no created being could endure that much deprivation without angels to support them. Moses was taken to the heaven to fast 40 days and nights when He went on the mount. Jesus was in a desert with no shelter. Most men would die in three days under these conditions. Jesus felt the hunger but it was impossible for Him to die because He had not sinned in His thirty years before that day. This was His test to prove He is God.

If Jesus had sinned even in thought before that time He would have died like the rest of us. But this began His ministry on earth, and revealed to the fallen world that He had come.

Now for three and a half years He spent teaching men how to live like Him...then, He was tempted again.

Satan threw everything at Him in the Garden of Gethsemane. He tormented Him with the thought that His Father could never accept Him back into heaven because He had received our sins upon His head, and He chose to do it anyway!

This is how much our God loves us. He was tempted beyond anything we will ever see, and He survived unscathed.

The perfect love of the Father grows through His Son. Perfection grows and we are to be the benefactors.

The test that we are about to go through will prove what side we are on. Father, please empower us in your love through the perfect name and spotless character of your Son, our Savior. Amen.