The doctrine of the classification of death

1. Spiritual death — Ephesians 2:1; Romans 5:12; 6:23; 1 Corinthians 15:22. Spiritual death is a judgement on the human race at the point of birth. It is being born into the devil’s kingdom as citizens. We are born spiritually dead and related to the devil’s kingdom and we continue that way until we believe in Jesus Christ at which point this thing is broken. This means that when grace found us we belonged to Satan’s kingdom because we were born with spiritual death. Therefore the participle in verse is not only ascriptive but it is linear aktionsart. It is a status that continues and can only be broken by a new birth, and therefore the necessity for the new birth. The new birth breaks spiritual death. Spiritual death is not only separation from God but it is the penalty of sin, and it is totally the penalty of sin. Physical death is not the penalty of sin and it does not have anything to do with the penalty of sin. The only way that physical death is related to the penalty of sin is that since we are born spiritually dead it is inevitable that eventually we will all die. The first use of spiritual death in the Bible is in Genesis 2:17.

2. Physical death — Matthew 8:22; 2 Corinthians 5:1-8; Romans 8:38,39; Philippians 1:21. Physical death is the separation of the soul from the body.

3. The second death is the perpetuation of spiritual death into eternity — Hebrews 9:27; Revelation 20:12-15. It refers to the final judgement of the unbeliever in which the unbeliever is cast into the lake of fire forever. So it follows the general concept of separation but it is the eternal lake of fire.

4. Operational death — James 2:26. “Faith without production is dead [non-operative].” This is a reference to the believer’s failure to produce divine good, the failure of the believer to reach supergrace, the failure of the believer to GAP it consistently; it is the failure of the believer to get an accumulation of doctrine that leads to the ECS, occupation with Christ, supergrace capacity, supergrace blessing .

5. Positional death — Romans chapter 6 is the major passage of discussion. It is also found in Colossians 2:12, 20; 3:3. At salvation we are entered into union with Christ through the baptism of the Spirit. The baptism of the Spirit has two aspects. We are in union with Christ as Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father. We are also in union with Christ as Christ died on the cross — current and retroactive positional truth. Positional death is retroactive positional truth or identification with Christ in His death. We are identified with Christ in His death because at the cross Jesus Christ rejected human good. He bore our sins in His own body on the tree but He rejected human good. Retroactive positional truth is simply our rejection of human good through identification with Christ on the cross.

6. Temporal death — Romans 8:6,13; Ephesians 5:14; 1 Timothy 5:6; James 1:15; Revelation 3:1; Luke 15:24,32. It refers to the believer out of fellowship through sin. It is simply carnality or the perpetuation of carnality in reversionism. Temporal death just means that death is used to show that when you and I sin we are out of fellowship, we are dead to God in the sense of being out of fellowship. The prodigal son was still a son but he was dead to his father — “This, my son, was dead but now is alive.” He was out of fellowship, now he is back in fellowship.

7. Sexual death which is the inability to copulate — Romans 4:16-21; Hebrews 11:11.12.