In Trinitarianism Jesus doesn't give up his life only his body dies.
This is dependent on the notion that "the spirit" that Jesus "yielded up" was something other than his 'breath'.
It is a common error to assume that "spirit" and "soul" are one and the same thing in scripture.....they are different words with quite different meanings. The soul includes the body...flesh, blood brain personality, etc...and the spirit (breath of life) needs lungs to breathe. Neither can be disembodied. There is no immortal soul.
Jesus was not God incarnate because an immortal God cannot die....mere humans cannot kill God. Jesus had to be the exact equivalent of Adam....a sinless, mortal human being....if he was 100% God, he could not be 100% human.One cannot be mortal and immortal at the same time.....they are diametrically opposed.
When Jesus died, it had to be the exact same death as Adam's. In order to redeem mankind, Jesus' life had to cancel out the debt that Adam left for his children....which was enslavement to sin and death through his disobedience. As a "redeemer", the price paid to release a slave was the exact equivalent of what was owed. Under God's law, it was
"an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life". No human life was sinless, which is why Jesus had to come from outside of Adam's offspring in order to pay the redemption price.
The trinitarians will tell you that Jesus really didn't die because a dead man can't go and preach to "the spirits in prison". What they fail to understand is that the text says that the spirit of Christ was in Noah who preached to the people about the coming flood. The same spirit that dwelt in Christ was the spirit which dwelt in Noah during the 120 years the ark was in building.
Again, who are the "spirits in prison" that Jesus went to? When did he go to preach to them....and what message did he give them?
"For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you— not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to Him."
(1 Peter 3:18-22 NASB)
What do we see here, and what other scripture will shed light on the correct interpretation of it?
Since Jesus was not raised
"in the flesh" but was resurrected as a
"spirit" (1 Peter 3:18) here again we have that word "spirit".....so what does that mean? When was Jesus resurrected? He himself said that he would be
"in the heart of the earth" for the same amount of time that Jonah was in the belly of the fish.....
"three days and three nights" (Matthew 12:40)
That means that the man Jesus, was in his tomb for three days after his death, in the same state as Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10 explains....
"For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten......Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are going." (NASB) (Sheol is the equivalent of Hades in Greek)
Christendom's interpretation of "hades" is "hell", which puts the "spirits in prison" in "hell" and Jesus supposedly visiting them in that place. But is that what the Bible means?
Since Jesus was "dead" (in the Jewish understanding of death, which involved no part of humans continuing to live in spirit form after death, according to Ecclesiastes) then Jesus did not go anywhere for the three days before God resurrected him. But after three days, he was resurrected in "spirit" form, with ability to come and go in both realms. He went to the spirit realm and to deliver his message of condemnation to the wicked spirits who materialized in Noah's day. These demon angels were thrown, not into a literal prison, but into "Tartarus" also erroneously translated "hell" in some Bibles.
This word is used only once in scripture and pertains to a condition of restraint, rather than a literal location. The demons were very active in Jesus' day, so they were not in a literal prison. After the flood of Noah's day, they were restricted in their activities, since there is no mention of them ever materializing again. Their freakish offspring perished in the flood, but their fathers were forced to return to the spirit realm where God imposed the restrictions of "Tartarus", (2 Peter 2:4) depicting dense spiritual darkness, cut off from any spiritual enlightenment.
The demons have been active among mankind all along, but in these last days, their activity was to intensify. (Revelation 12:7-12) This coincided with the establishment of Christ as the authorized King of God's Kingdom. (In Daniel 7:13-14, concerning the "time of the end", Daniel saw in advance the coronation of Jesus in the heavens, unseen to human eyes.)
Only in the Revelation, (which was way into the future when John received it) are the devil and his hordes thrown into a literal prison, (an abyss, Revelation 20:1-3) but only after God is finished using them to test mankind for now, then he returns the earth and the human race to his original purpose under the rulership of his Kingdom.
"Woe" is foretold for our time as these enemies of God try their best to alienate mankind from the true God by misrepresenting him to the confused masses. Those who are misled, will be in the majority according to Jesus, including "many" of those who identify as "Christian". (Matthew 7:13-14; Matthew 7:21-23)
Those (spirits) who drowned in the flood were locked up in the prison house (abyss) of the grave and dead men can not preach to dead men. Yep, Jesus really died!
This "Abyssing" of satan has not happened yet, as is evidenced by the level of wickedness still ever increasing on earth in this "time of the end". Woe for the earth is what we are experiencing.
Think about it....spirits cannot drown....but their gigantic, violent, immoral offspring did. They had no right to live.
It was satan who brought the disastrous tests on Job, and his demons who caused much distress to people in both Noah's day and in Jesus' day. When these wicked spirits were confined to the earth, after being evicted from heaven, we should see a marked difference in world affairs aligning with what Jesus foretold concerning his "presence" (not his "coming") in Matthew 24:3-14. We believe that "the last days" of the present world system began with World War 1 and have continued to the present. This present system is in its death throes.....only one last form of government is foretold.....and it will spread "woe" in the earth the likes of which we have never seen before.......thankfully, it won't last long.
The Bible explains itself and there is never contradiction.