Cause and effect.
The spirit and the life are distinct one from another. God gives us breath or spirit and the RESULT of God’s gift is our span of life. The life is dependent on the spirit, the breath being in us. God takes away our breath and we die. Breath is air, or wind. It does not have life in its own right. Breath is not alive by itself, but when we have breath, we are alive. The spirit, the breath, is what gives life. We cannot say that the spirit is something living in its own right. It is the spirit or breath that gives us life. The spirit, the breath from God is the CAUSE of life. Life is the EFFECT the spirit, the breath, has in us. When the spirit leaves us then the effect, the life, ceases.
This spirit or breath of life is on loan to us from God for the period of our probationary time here. It is not our own. We only have it for a short period and then it is taken from us. We are basically the dust of the earth, the minerals and chemicals of the soil and, without the breath of life, we soon return to the dust again. When God takes the breath, He is taking back the ‘life principle’ that gave us life. He is not calling home something that will go on living somewhere else for ever and ever.
Safe Study. In any serious Bible study, we must always read what the words and the context tell us, not what we expect to see in the words. This is where so many errors begin. If we already believe in the immortal soul that has been trapped in the body during life, as pagan Plato and the Greeks did, and that is released at death to fly upwards to god, it is natural to put this meaning to these words. There are, however, so many verses that explain about man’s unconsciousness in death that to hang our whole belief on one or two texts is not a sound way to explain the scriptures. A basic Bible Study Principle is that a single text must always be explained in the context of the majority of texts on the same subject. The Bible must be its own interpreter and commentary, and scripture should be compared with other scriptures.
A man once asked his vicar what happens when we die and he was told without hesitation that we go to heaven. He came home however and took out his concordance and found all the texts about death. He preferred to believe what the Bible told him rather than what the ‘expert’ said. We need to be like the Bereans (Acts 17:11) to see if those things that we are told are so. God has promised to guide us into all truth. |
