Our Inherent Mortality and the Gift of Immortality

Death, by definition, means "the end of life."

If someone dies, he or she lives no longer. The question that has been asked throughout the centuries is this: "If a man dies, shall he live again?" (Job 14:14).

The Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle - all of whom lived hundreds of years prior to the coming of Jesus Christ - believed things contrary to the Hebrew Scriptures. They taught their followers that life never really ends for anyone. For these Greek philosophers, the "soul" or "spirit" within a man is inherently and naturally immortal. Therefore, they declared, the soul exists forever -  even independent of the human body.

To the Greeks, the soul of a man was like the trick birthday candles you tried to blow out as a child. No matter how hard you tried, the candles couldn't go out. For the Greeks,  it was considered impossible for the "soul" of a person not to exist. They simply defined death as the separation of  "the soul" from the body, not the end of life. Socrates explains:

"Is death not the separation of soul and body? When the soul exists in herself, and is released from the body and body is released from the soul, what is this but death? (Five Great Dialogues, Classics Club, 1969, p. 93). 

Socrates (c. 470-399 B.C.) and his disciples taught that the soul of a man, once freed from the body at death, is rewarded by the Creator according to the good deeds done on earth or is punished for the bad deeds done on earth.

Socrates postulated his belief in the separation of the soul from the body after Malachi finished penning the last book of the Old Testament. So the belief that souls of human beings are inherently immortal became part of Greek thinking after the close of the Old Testament Hebrew canon.  Grecian King Alexander the Great (356 - 323 B.C.) conquered the known world, so Greek philosophy became part of most civilized cultures in the ancient world.

The Hebrew writers of the Scriptures, contrary to Socrates and the Greek philosophers, taught that death meant the end of life.

There is life after death, but it is only because God raises the dead. This is the teaching of the Bible. In fact, the resurrection from the dead is a central tenet of the Bible.

Jesus explained that the resurrection was taught in the Pentateuch:

"As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living." (Mark 12:25-27). 

God isn't the God of the dead for they cease to exist. He is the God of the living.  At the resurrection, the dead are raised to life. Some of the dead are raised to be judged for the evil things they've done in this life. After their judgment, they will be sentenced to die a second time (Revelation 20:14).

Others are raised from the dead to receive the grace gift of immortal life. 

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosever believes in Him should not perish (e.g. "the second death"), but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) 

The prophet Daniel spoke of the resurrection:

"And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame and contempt" (Daniel 12:2). 

Possibly the clearest teaching of the resurrection in the Old Testament is from the typology of the Festival of Firstfruits (see I Corinthians 15:20-23). The Bible is replete with the teaching that life after death only occurs because of the resurrection from the dead.

Many erudite biblical scholars have shown how the resurrection of Christ from the dead and the resurrection of all human beings from the dead is the crux of biblical faith. Death doesn't mean continued life. Death means cessation of life. Resurrection from the dead is the only way life after death occurs.

This truth causes some people to be upset.

"People were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead" (Acts 4:2).

It's easier for most people to believe that nobody ever dies (e.g. "because people are immortal and can't die") than it is to believe people die and that God raises the dead. I heard on the radio today a New Age charlatan who is charging money for a conference where she will "communicate with your dead loved ones" as if your dead loved ones continue to exist in the form of a spirit or ghost.

Isaac Watts, the great hymn writer of songs like Joy to the World, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, and other renowned songs clearly stated his belief that nowhere in Scripture is it taught that "the soul" is inherently and naturally immortal.

"There is not one Place of Scripture that occurs to me, where the word Death, as it was first threatened in the Law of Innocency, necessarily signifies a certain miserable Immortality of the Soul, either to Adam, the actual Sinner, or to his Posterity.... (The Ruine and Recovery of Mankind - p. 228).

Yet even the Hebrew religious leaders in Jesus day had come under the influence of Socrates and the Greek philosophers. The Sadducees, the educated religious elite in Jerusalem, many of whom had been trained in Greek philosophy, scoffed at the resurrection. Why is the resurrection needed, they philosophically pondered, if the essence of a man is the soul of a man, the soul which can never die or cease to exist?

"Then Jesus was approached by some Sadducees--religious leaders who say there is no resurrection from the dead." (Luke 20:27 NLT). 

Evangelicalism in our day has some similarities to Sadduceeism in Jesus' day. Though we evangelicals will speak of the resurrection of the dead, and although resurrection from the dead is part of our official confessions, we evangelicals often privately scratch our heads over the concept of resurrection because we've been conditioned to believe that death doesn't mean the cessation of life, only the separation of the soul from the body and the continuation of life.

Resurrection to those who've adopted Greek philosophy seems irrelevant and unneeded.

But Jesus declared:

"Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming  in which all who are in the graves will hear His foice and come forth - those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation." (John 5:28-29 NKJV).

I've actually had Christians say to me, "What's the big deal about the resurrection? Why would those already in heaven need anything else?"

Good question.

Some evangelicals seem unable to grasp that death means "the end of life."

If death means the cessation of life, then if life after death occurs, a resurrection is required.

The Bible teaches that God alone is immortal (I Timothy 6:16). Every living creature that the immortal God creates is therefore inherently mortal. Everyone dies. That includes male and female human beings. We are naturally and inherently mortal beings.

If mankind is to obtain to life eternal, it must be a gift from the immortal God.

Adam and Eve were created as spiritual living beings, with the ability to relate to the invisible, immortal Creator and with other things in God's realm (e.g. "Kingdom things"). Adam's spirituality separated both Adam and Eve - for the Bible calls both the "male and female" Adam (see Genesis 1:27)  - from the animals that God created.

You never see a dog bowing in prayer before eating. Nor do you see a horse with hooves raised to the heavens in worship. Animals are not spiritual like the human race. We relate to the spiritual realm.

Though Adam and Eve were created with the capacity to relate to the God, after their fall in their relationship with God, spirituality died. Adam and their descendants became "dead in their trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1) toward God.

Mankind now needs a resurrection of spiritual life to relate to God and the things of God. This is what the Bible calls "the new birth" (John 3:7).

Unless a descendant of Adam is "born again" by the Spirit of God (John 3), that person will be unable to relate to the spiritual.

"For a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishiness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised" (I Corinthaisn 2:14). 

Don't misunderstand. Spirituality doesn't mean a man is a spirit. Angels are spirits, and contrary to what you hear at funerals, men and women never become angels.

Man is a physical being that is capable of relating to the spiritual realm. To be a spiritual person with the ability to relate to spiritual things requires regeneration from God (e.g. "the re-beginning (generation) of spiritual life").

Human beings are living, breathing creatures (nephesh) with abilities that other living, breathing creatures (nephesh) do not have, for God created humans in His image. When you read the Old Testament and come across the English word “soul" or the phrase "living soul," these words translate the Hebrew word nephesh. The literal meaning of nephesh is “a breathing creature.”

Living creatures (nephesh) created by God in Genesis 1 and 2 include both man and animals.

The New Testament Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word nephesh is psuche.  Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words defines psuche as “the essence of life, the act of breathing, taking breath." 

The Bible teaches that God gives life (breath) to every nephesh. At death,  the breath of God returns to Him who gave it and the body goes to dust.  

"When you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust." (Psalm 104:29). 

"Thus says God the LORD, Who created the heavens and stretched them out, Who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it, Who gives breath to the people on it..." (Isaiah 42:5). 

"The Spirit of God has made me and the breath of God gives me life" (Job 33:4). 

When God made the first man (Adam), the Bible says in Genesis 2:7 that God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living creature (nephesh)."

Again, nephesh is also the Hebrew word also used for animals in Genesis 1.

"And God said, 'Let the land produce living creatures (nephesh) according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.' And it was so" (Genesis 1:24)

But animals don't have the ability to relate to the spirit realm or to the things of God. They are not spiritual nephesh, but they are nephesh.

Mankind is different from animals in that God created us "in His image" (Genesis 1:26).

If you are looking for a biblical definition of what it means to be created in the image of God, you won't find one.

However, if you look closely at Genesis 1 you'll see the living creatures (nephesh) that the Bible identifies as animals differ from the living creatures that the Bible calls mankind (nephesh) in two fundamental ways.

God made Adam and Eve with the potential for spirituality (a relationship with God) and the potential for immortality (a life that continues forever). These two potentials seem to reflect God's image (spirituality and immortality).

Adam and Eve lost both qualities for themselves and their posterity in their sin against God.

But the last Adam (Jesus Christ) brings both potentials back into play for the sinful human race.

The immortal God created spiritual nephesh in His image (e,g. Adam and Eve) with the ability to fellowship with Him and with free access to the tree of life (Genesis 2:9), the fruit of which gave Adam and Eve the gift of living forever. As long as they related to their Creator in love, obedience, and submission, they would live forever in relationship with God.

But when Adam and Eve rebelled against their Creator and broke that relationship, God banished them from the Garden and from access to the tree of life. God gave the reason for His banishment:

"Lest Adam stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” (Genesis 3:22). 

The first Adam and all who descend from him are now under the sentence of death. For the wages of sin is the sentence of death (Romans 6:23).

The death of things and all nephesh (e.g., "breathing creatures") other than man is natural, but the death of nephesh (mankind) created in the image of God is contrary to the gift of eternal life God gave promised man contingent upon obedience to Him.

Adam and his descendants have lost the gift of immortality and we all experience mortality (death), for all have sinned. Every human being is born dead spiritually toward God and under the sentence of physical death. Physical death is described by the prophet Ezekiel.

"The soul (nephesh) that sins, it shall die." (Ezekiel 18:20). 

Think carefully. Death is natural (e.g. "a part of nature") for every living creature (nephesh) as well as plants, stars, objects, etc. - but death is unnatural for the nephesh that God made in His image.

Death for mankind is a consequence of the first man's rebellion against God.

The Scripture teaches that there is coming a day when all descendants of Adam will be raised from the dead to either be judged for their sins and die again or to be granted immortal life through the work of the last Adam, Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 15:42-46).

"This has now been made evident through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who has abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." (II Timothy 1:10). 

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). 

I do not believe the Scriptures teach universal reconciliation but I love my brothers and sisters in Christ who do.

I do not believe the Scriptures teach the wicked will live forever in conscious torment though I love my brothers and sisters in Christ who do.

I believe the Scripture teaches those in Christ are given the gift of immortal life, and those outside of Christ will be judged for their sins and suffer eternal destruction (II Thessalonians 1:9).

Let the prophet Malachi have the last word.

"For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the Lord of hosts, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,” says the Lord of hosts (Malachi 4:1-3). 

Sola Scriptura. Sola Gratia. Sole Fide. Solus Christus. Soli Deo Gloria.