Chapter 3 - The Grand Exchange
On earth, Jesus lived as a man anointed with the Holy Ghost. So He did everything, not because He was Jesus, but because the power of the Holy Spirit was upon and within Him – just like the power of the Holy Spirit is upon and within you. He is our example. Just as he had to exercise His fath for the will of God to come to pass in His life, you and I also must exercise our faith.
I mentioned earlier that God the Father actually exercised this very principle in resurrecting Jesus from the dead. Hebrew chapter 1 takes us into the heaving during the time that Jesus had died and gone in the lower parts of the earth. Jesus had died on the cross and Christ, the Anointed One and His anointing, was being given back into the hands of the Father.
His should was made an offering for sin (see Isaiah 53:10). That means He should died, for the “wages of sin is death” and death is separation from God. “By whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:19). What prison? The prison in which the spirits of just men were held until redemption’s price was paid because no one could get into Heaven until redemption’s price was paid in full. So for every man in the Old Covenant who died in faith believing that a Messiah would come there was a place where those spirits were held. Jesus called it “Abraham’s bosom.” It was a matter of spiritual legality.
The Bible says that when the rich man died he lifted up his eyes in hell and looked and saw the beggar in “Abraham’s bosom” (See Luke 16:23). That was not Heaven. You cannot see Heaven from hell, and you cannot see hell from Heaven. Heaven would not be a glorious place if you could see the torment of your loved ones who died.
Abraham was the father of faith, and this was a place where the faithful were held. I am not talking about purgatory, which the Bible does not say anything about; it was called Abraham’s bosom.
He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation?...Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; he has put Him to grief. When you make His should an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the labor of His should, and be satisfied (Isaiah 53:7-8, 10-11).
Isaiah was saying that it pleased God the Father to bruise Him and make His soul and offering for sin, then Jesus’ should experienced death or separation from God. He died in a state of sin, not because He committed it, but because He became sin on the cross. He took yours and mine.
