Death is Separation of Soul and
Spirit from…
The Bible scripture
says: “…as it is appointed (reserved) unto men once
to die, but after this the judgment:…(Hebrews 9: 27). The key message
is that all men are to die…but to die once…not twice. The Scripture further
says that God is not willing that any should perish. (John 3: 16; 2
Peter 3: 9) These two statements of scripture do not contradict each
other. But to fully understand their
meanings, it is important to review both the makeup of a person and the concept
of death.
The title of
this post marks the emphasis I’m placing on “death”, for reasons that I hope
will become obvious. The full title should read: “Death is Separation of
Soul and Spirit from the Body and/or from God.” (See Strong’s Expanded
Concordance, Greek Dictionary of the New Testament, #2288, “Thanatos”. https://biblehub.com/greek/2288.htm ) As we will discuss, that
“separation” could be temporary or permanent.
As
Christians, we are expected to be able to share with other Christians and
non-Christians what the Bible says about many topics. One such subject is related
to the concepts of “life” and “death”. Among
the first posts on my blog, I addressed the topic of life - how it is defined
in humans vs. other animals, and when it begins. In this post I’m going to
review what the Bible says about “death”, with some further discussion related
to the “life” that preceded it.
Regarding
our human makeup: We are three-part
beings comprised of an invisible, eternal soul and spirit,
contained in a visible, mortal / temporary body. (Genesis 1: 27, 2: 7; 1
Thessalonians 5: 23)
In review,
the soul is our essence. It contains our mind, will and emotions and
determines our personality. It is the place of our self-consciousness; where we
have the ability to think and make choices / decisions; where we develop
reactions to world around us; where we seek to satisfy our desires for self-gratification
/ pleasure (our sin-nature inherited after Adam’s sin against God); where our
emotions are formed; etc. The spirit
is the seat of our awareness of the one true Creator God, and is the critical
link to our being able to communicate with Him. Our body is the
temporary physical structure that contains the soul and spirit. It contains the
various organ systems that sustain the “life” of the person through the blood. Among
other functions, the body’s organs / components also enable the person to
interact with the world’s environment through the senses of sight, smell,
hearing, taste and touch.
It is very
important to understand that there are “separate beginnings” of both “life” and
“death” for each of those parts of our makeup.
Let’s review
the Bible scripture to get more context for that statement. Remember, our God
is not only eternal, but He is All-Knowing, knowing the end from the beginning.
(Isaiah 46: 9-10) He not only knew us (our beginning and our future) before He
laid the foundations of the world, but with that knowledge, He also predestinated
us to be part of His Plan / purpose for mankind. (Rowans 8: 28-29; Ephesians 1:
4-5, 11). At the time of His choosing, He birthed each of us from our mother’s
womb as a “living soul”, by breathing into our physical body, as
He did the first man, Adam. (Genesis 2: 7).
Now, what
about the birth of our spirit? Let’s
review what the Bible says.
In the Garden
of Eden, after his creation, the first man Adam’s body, soul and spirit were
alive, and he freely communicated with his Creator LORD God. (Genesis 2: 15
–25, 3: 8-9) Remember, the “spirit” is
that part of us that enables us to communicate with our Creator. Here it is also important to make the point /
distinction that the spirit is very closely linked to the soul. (Hebrews 4: 12)
We know that the spirits of Adam and Eve
had died / become “dead” / separated from God because after Adam’s sin, God had
to “search” for them. (Genesis 3: 9) But
quickly after that, their spirits were “made alive” by the LORD God’s
intervention. He restored them to righteousness and Himself by shedding the
blood of an innocent animal to clothe their nakedness. (Genesis 3: 21)
However, as
the result of Adam’s sin (Genesis 2: 16-17, 3: 6), from birth all future
generations of man begin life with the spirit being present, but the spirit
is “dead” / separated from God.
By
continuing to read in the Bible, we learned that the act by the LORD God to
redeem / restore Adam and Eve to Himself was the foreshadowing of how He would send
the Holy Spirit to intervene in the awakening of the “dead spirit” of believers.
In future generations, the spirits of Christians
would be “made alive” through faith in their knowledge of the shedding of the atoning
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 8: 6-11, Colossians 2: 12-13), (https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Christ-Atoning ) By man’s spirit believing / having faith in what the Holy Spirit has taught,
believers are accounted for righteousness in the eyes of God and their communications
are restored with Him. (Genesis 15: 6; Galatians 3: 5-9)
[Unfortunately,
for the majority of mankind who will not or have not believed in God’s
gift of reconciliation, their spirit remains dead. (Matthew 7: 11-14; 1
Corinthians 1: 18) They are losing, or if deceased have lost the opportunity to
gain true communication with their Creator. Regarding unbelievers, see also
Romans 1: 16-21, and John 1: 1-9]
Another
consequence of Adam’s sin / disobedience was bringing the curse of death of
the human body on all future generations of mankind. The LORD God had
forewarned Adam of the dire consequence of eating from the tree of knowledge of
good and evil, saying: “…for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die.” (Genesis 2: 16-17) Consistent
with God’s punishment, Adam’s and Eve’s spirits died immediately, but their
physical bodies began the process of dying that lasted many years. [The Bible notes
that Adam lived 930 years before his body died. (Genesis 5: 5) As we continue reading the scripture, the
Bible also states that “…one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a
thousand years as one day.” (2 Peter 3: 8) No man has lived one thousand years.
Remember, God lives outside of the constraints of time as we know it.] Although the length of time for the life of our
bodies varies, we know that they are not eternal. Made of the earth, in death these
bodies will decay and return to the earth. (Genesis 3: 19)
At the time
of the death of the body, the eternal living soul is separated and departs.
The soul (which is our essence) then
returns to the Creator who gave it life. The Bible says: “To be absent from the
body is to be present with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5: 8) This is the “first death” that was noted in
the first paragraph of this post: “it is appointed (reserved) unto men once
to die.”
[Remember,
the Bible scripture tells us that in the future we / our living souls will each
be resurrected into a new eternal physical body but unfortunately, some
will die again. More on that later.]
The soul
continues to live, even after the body is dead / separated.
Now let’s
look back at man’s spirit, that was “dead” at birth, and had to be “made alive”…
As Bible
students you might remember the brief conversation that our Lord Jesus had with
Nicodemus, a Pharisee ruler of the Jews. (John 3: 1-21). The Lord was
explaining His statement that a man must be “born again”. He noted: “Except a man be born of water and
of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of
the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3: 5-6)
The Lord is showing that there are three requirements for a man / “living soul”
to have eternal life. One is that the soul
must have been born with a flesh body. (Genesis 2: 7) The second, “of
water”, means that birth had to be through the amnionic fluid of the mother’s
womb. (That means a “live birth”, not, as some would argue, the contentious “life” of an unborn fetus.) The
third requirement is that the person’s dead spirit has been “born again” /
“quickened” / made alive by the “Spirit“, (Note the capital ”S” in that
last word “Spirit” means this is an action of the Holy Spirit.) (Romans 8:11; Ephesians
2: 1-5) Through that critical action, the man’s / soul’s communication with God has been restored, as
it was with Adam and Eve. That is what happened to us as Christians today when
we had faith in / believed the Gospel of
God’s Grace. (1 Corinthians 15: 1-4; Romans 10: 9-13)
But, what
about the connection between man’s soul and spirit after the soul is separated
from the body? If the communication
between the soul and God has been restored “in person”, that role of the spirit
as “communicator” has been fulfilled. There
are alternative possible answers, but I’d like your assistance in finding a
definitive answer in our Bible, if it is there.
The
reference above to man’s having to die “once” leaves the question of “How can
someone die more than once?” The answer
lies in the earlier definition of death itself…in this instance, the eternal
separation of the soul from God. The Bible calls this the “Second Death”.
The Second
Death is that terrible fate that awaits those many souls who have rejected
or will reject God’s offer and gift of reconciliation. The final fate for each
of us will be determined at the end of this Age, when all the dead will be resurrected…but
not all at the same time. (https://versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/what-are-the-three-resurrections )
In the
Bible, the Book of Revelation describes the End Time events as revealed by the
Ascended Lord Jesus to the Apostle John. In Chapter Twenty, note the following verses:
Revelation 20:10-15
“10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of
fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be
tormented day and night for ever and ever.
11 And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it,
from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no
place for them.
12 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and
the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life:
and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books,
according to their works.
13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death
and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every
man according to their works.
14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This
is the second death.
15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was
cast into the lake of fire”
I’ve underlined selected portions of
that passage because they point to the “bottom line” in defining the “second
death”. We all want our names written in the “Book of Life”, giving us eternal
life with our Creator God. As believing Christians, we have that certainty
based on our faith in what our Lord Jesus has accomplished on our behalf. (1
Corinthians 15: 1-4; Romans 10: 9-13)
The vast multitude of others who
either had no faith, or thought they could “earn” their acceptance by God through
their “good works” or thought they had “lived good lives”, etc. will have their
names written in the “Books” where they will be “judged according to their
works”. Unfortunately for them, they did not believe / have faith in God’s ultimate
gift to man. (John 3: 16-18). The Bible’s “Faith Chapter” (Hebrews Chapter 11) contains
the following “absolute” in Verse Six: “But without faith it is impossible to please
him (God): for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Those without that faith will
experience the second death…eternal separation from God.
Our Lord Jesus gave
this caution in His Sermon on the Mount to those who followed Him:
“13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is
the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth
unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew 7: 13-14)
Following the path of the many will not lead to eternal
life. The majority are often wrong. In this Age and time, we have been given
every advantage in making the right decision to avoid the “second death”.
Dr. W. A. (Bill) Robinson
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