The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

III. Encompassing Involvements of Death Penalty

Man, because of his sin, was now on his way to destruction. Without divine intervention he would have been doomed to return to the nothingness, or nonbeing, whence the Creator had brought him into existence at creation. But divine mercy had already intervened. The promised Seed, or Saviour, was to come and exhaust the death penalty, and regain the lost life—eternal life—for man. The blow that in justice should fall on man was to fall on Christ. Death at the close of life’s tenure, the return to dust, was to be simply a “sleep,” from which all would be awakened by a resurrection from this initial, or “first,” death. CFF1 73.4

God set His attested seal upon the gospel of the resurrection by raising Jesus from the dead—His resurrection becoming the pledge of our own in due course. Otherwise there would be no assurance, no tangible guarantee, of life beyond the grave. But the promise and provision of Christ, the Redeemer, provide that assurance. Thus the light of the radiant gospel of life was injected into the impenetrable darkness of death at the very gates of Eden. CFF1 74.1

1. “DEATH” EMBRACES TOTAL PUNISHMENT FOR SIN

Death was the total penalty that was forewarned upon Adam by God as punishment for that primal sin. All that God purposed to inflict upon Adam and his posterity because of transgression was comprehended within that single word “death.” “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” was the solemn but all-inclusive decree (Genesis 2:17). That clearly meant complete loss of life, deprivation of being, forfeiture of existence. CFF1 74.2

2. JUSTICE REQUIRES PENALTY BE UNDERSTOOD

Elemental justice requires that the penalty for a transgression be explicitly stated, so it may be unmistakably understood by all who may be involved. And in this instance that penalty is declared, according to the term “die,” as just noted, to be loss of life, cessation of being and existence—not, as some later came to contend, eternal living existence in endless agony. It would be a strange way of understanding a law, which requires the plainest and most direct words, that by death should be meant eternal life in misery and perpetual torment, as later advocated first in paganism, then in Jewry, and finally in a major segment of Christianity. CFF1 74.3

Christ must have suffered the very penalty to which sinning man was sentenced at the beginning, for Christ bore our sins. Consequently, an eternal life in misery can form no true part of the meaning of death (Romans 5:7, 8; Romans 6:10; Hebrews 2:9). Christ did not endure Eternal Torment. He was raised the third day. The ultimate penalty for sins is the cancellation of life when the true objective has been lost (Ezekiel 18:4, 13, 18). And inasmuch as God gave life initially to the human race, He could by the same power withdraw that life if man sinned. And that is just what the death sentence means. CFF1 75.1

3. “SECOND DEATH” COMPLETES THE DEATH PENALTY

The initial death, at the end of the natural life (and which in the Bible is called a sleep), is a consequence of racial or universal sin. The first, or natural, death is not the penalty to be paid for our personal sins. Descendants are not punished for the sins of their ancestors, unless they persist in their ancestors’ sins. The initial death that overtook Adam and Eve was not the end. The punitive death for unrepented sin is the second death, and does not come until after the second resurrection for the execution of judgment. CFF1 75.2

That will be a death of both soul and body, which involves final and irretrievable loss of the total life (Matthew 10:28; Malachi 4:1; Revelation 20:14). So man’s first death is not the end; it is only the first, or natural, death, which passed upon all men (Romans 5:12). The second death, which will bring about the completion of the death penalty, will be executed only upon the obdurately evil. CFF1 75.3

Let us consider it another way: The wicked die the first time in their sins, but the second time (after their resurrection, Revelation 20:5, 6), they die for their sins (Ezekiel 18:26). It is appointed unto all men “once to die” (Hebrews 9:27). All die the first time because they became mortal as a result of Adam’s transgression. In the matter of this first death men have no choice. But it is a matter of complete and inescapable choice as to whether we die the first death in our sins, or are saved and safe in Christ. For if we die in Christ, then the second death will have no power over us (Revelation 20:6). And the second death, which is eternal, can be averted by accepting Christ’s provision of salvation. CFF1 75.4

4. “SECOND DEATH” IS LOSS OF LIFE, NOT CONTINUANCE

We would stress this point, that the second death—for unrepented of and unpardoned sin—is not to be confounded with the first death, which all men, whether saved or lost, undergo alike as the children of Adam. This is often misunderstood. CFF1 76.1

The second death applies only to future punishment—for the second death is the punishment for personal, unconfessed sin, just as everlasting life is the reward of individual righteousness, received through and in Christ. CFF1 76.2

Thus loss of life was the doom pronounced against sin. But this loss of life is not simply implied in Scripture. It is definitively stated to be the punishment determined—“The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4, 20; cf. Ezekiel 3:18). CFF1 76.3

The Old Testament explicitly and repeatedly describes this loss of life, or existence, as the reversion of the organized being into its original elements—reduction to what it was before it was called into being. Here are a few of the less-known texts: CFF1 76.4

“The destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they ... shall be consumed” (Isaiah 1:28).
“Prepare them for the day of slaughter” (Jeremiah 12:3).
“The slain of the Lord shall be many” (Isaiah 66:16).
“They shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed” (Isaiah 66:24).
“He shall destroy them” (Psalm 28:5).
“The transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off” (Psalm 37:38).
“They shall be rooted “out of the land” (Psalm 52:5).
“Let them be blotted out of the book of the living” (Psalm 69:28); et ceter

Every clear-cut Old Testament declaration on the punishment of the wicked states it to be loss of life, not continuance—dissolution of life into its original elements, as though one had never been called into existence as an entity. And while the redeemed are to have life immortal which knows no end, the lost will succumb to the second death, which knows no awakening. CFF1 77.1

5. DOOM APPLIES TO MAN AS A WHOLE

God’s sentence declared, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19). This pronouncement was more explicitly explained after man’s transgression, as related to his person. But there is nothing in the context that minimizes or changes the meaning or force of the words or limits their all-inclusive application. CFF1 77.2

There is no hint of a distinction between body and soul in the application of Adam’s destined doom. The whole man sinned. And the sentence appearing in the Inspired Record applies to man as a whole. Accordingly, as with the sentence so with its execution—the man, without redemption, would at death utterly and forever cease to live. Such would have been the final, tragic outcome had it not been for the divine plan and provision of salvation. This involves man’s being brought back to life, through resurrection, for pronouncement of sentence based upon a just judgment, and then for final reward or punishment. CFF1 77.3