(August 23, 2013 at 7:42 am)Tonus Wrote:(August 22, 2013 at 2:41 pm)Drich Wrote: Abraham, Isac, Jacob, Joseph, Nathaniel, and on and on were not under the law yet they still sinned...Which is why I specifically excluded them. However, there still is the matter of:
Drich Wrote:Not to mention The penality for adultry was death of the adulturers no animal in under that covenant could cover that sin. A sin both David and soloman were guilty of...If David and Solomon both died, then they paid the penalty for their sin of adultery. And pretty much every other sin they committed. They don't need Jesus to atone for their wrongs. They did so on their own, by dying.
It does bring up a bit of a paradox, in that it would mean that every person who dies is absolved of sin by the act of dying. Death squares the account with god. But that runs against the idea of an afterlife where bad deeds are punished. It still works as a way of providing a path to heaven as a way of rewarding people if god wishes to do so. But it's not atonement for sin. Dying took care of that.
As in the case of Adam continued physical life after the warning eating from the tree of knowledge would surly kill him, God is not warning of a physical death. God warns of Sheol/hell being the death that sin brings to the sinner. We all die in this life or as Christ puts it we "sleep" which means even though to us in this place death is final, to God from His perspective our knowledge of death is of a spiritual rest or sleep. When God Speaks of Death in this context He is referring to a Spiritual death, one that you can never come back from.