What Was Accomplished There

Work backward from the architecture this book has been building.

Death in Genesis 2:17 is not primarily biological. It is the severance of the relational knowing that John 17:3 calls eternal life. Adam died spiritually on the day he ate. His soul entered Sheol — the condition of separation from the living God, the finite soul cut off from the source and ground of its being. That primary spiritual death is what the fall primarily cost. The biological death that followed was the downstream consequence of a soul no longer oriented toward the tree of life.

The repair of that consequence had to address the primary consequence directly. Not manage it from the outside. Not provide a legal mechanism by which the debt was transferred to a third party while the condition itself remained unchanged. Enter it. The one who is life itself had to enter the condition of separation from life — which is what the descent means. The Son of God, in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwelled bodily, descended into the condition that is defined by the absence of God. He entered Sheol. He entered the thing that Sheol is — the soul cut off from the Creator, the relational knowing severed, the asymptote traversed not from our side toward God but from God's side all the way to the bottom.

And then He broke it from within.

This is what Revelation 1:18 means. The keys of death and of Hades. The one who entered the realm as its prisoner came out as its conqueror. Not by being rescued from outside — by conquering from within. The gates of Hades, as Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, will not prevail against His church. Gates are defensive structures. They do not attack. The gates of Hades are not pressing against the church from outside. The church is pressing against the gates from outside, and the gates cannot hold — because on Saturday the conqueror entered from inside and the lock was broken from within.

What was accomplished on Saturday is the direct reversal of what was accomplished in the garden. Adam's eating severed the relational knowing and inaugurated the condition of Sheol-separation for the human race. Christ's descent entered that condition, from within, at its deepest point, and broke the power that had held it closed. The condition is not abolished for every person automatically — the New Testament is clear that different paths lead to different outcomes, and Part Nine will trace those outcomes. But the condition is no longer unbreachable. The wall has been breached. The prisoner who entered has come out holding the keys.