Learning4Comfort

The Inner Being

2. Life, breath and death

Before I take the inner words one at a time, I want to set them where Scripture sets them: inside a life that God gives, that is lived before him, and that ends. Beyond that end, he offers life.

Scripture does not speak of the heart, the soul and the spirit as parts that sit still. It speaks of them as alive. "Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life" (Proverbs 4:23). I read this as saying that the life a person lives flows out of what is within. So the questions of this chapter come first:

  • What is life?
  • Where does it come from?
  • What is it for?
  • What is death?

The rest of the book follows the inner being at work inside the answers Scripture gives.

At death, too, the inner words come closest to being separated. So this is where I have had to read most carefully and claim least.

Life breathed in

"The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature" (Genesis 2:7).

The man does not receive a soul. He becomes a living soul, a nephesh ḥayyâ ("living soul, living creature"). The same phrase has already been used of the fish, the birds and the beasts (Genesis 1:20–24). God's covenant after the flood is made "with every living creature" (Genesis 9:10). So the phrase itself does not set the man apart from the animals. What sets Genesis 2:7 apart is how the man became a living creature: God formed him with his own hands and breathed into him with his own breath.

The word for "nostrils" in that verse, ʾaph ("nostril, face, anger"), is also the ordinary Hebrew word for anger, and for the face. To be patient is to be "long of nostrils". God uses the same phrase of himself: "slow to anger" (Exodus 34:6).

  • The same word is used for the face bowed to the ground in worship (2 Chronicles 7:3).
  • It is used for the face lifted in pride: "In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him" (Psalm 10:4).

Isaiah draws the lesson from the breath: "Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he?" (Isaiah 2:22).

It is tempting to turn this verse into a formula: body plus breath equals soul. I have stopped doing that. It is not an equation of parts. Scripture speaks of God making every side of the person:

  • "the Lord … who made our souls" (Jeremiah 38:16)
  • God "formed the spirit of man within him" (Zechariah 12:1)
  • "The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life" (Job 33:4)

And Paul says it of every person: "he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything"; "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:25, 28).

Before birth, Scripture speaks with deliberate reserve: "As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything" (Ecclesiastes 11:5). Whether "spirit" there means breath or spirit, the verse's point is that we do not know. God's Spirit can be at work before birth:

  • John "will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb" (Luke 1:15).
  • When Mary greets Elizabeth, "the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit" (Luke 1:41).

I leave it there. Scripture does not say more, and I do not want to reason past it.

Breath lent, and held by God

Life is held in the breath, and the breath is God's to give and to take back.

  • "In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind" (Job 12:10).
  • Daniel tells a king who had praised idols that he had not honoured "the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways" (Daniel 5:23).
  • "If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust" (Job 34:14–15).
  • "When you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your Spirit, they are created" (Psalm 104:29–30).
  • "No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death" (Ecclesiastes 8:8).
  • "When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish" (Psalm 146:4). Thinking goes when the breath goes. "Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow" (Psalm 144:4), and the Lord "knows the thoughts of man, that they are but a breath" (Psalm 94:11).

God holds both ends. "I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal" (Deuteronomy 32:39). "The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up" (1 Samuel 2:6). When a letter asked the king of Israel to heal a man of leprosy, he tore his clothes: "Am I God, to kill and to make alive …?" (2 Kings 5:7). And between the two ends, he keeps alive:

  • "that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine" (Psalm 33:19)
  • "He does not keep the wicked alive, but gives the afflicted their right" (Job 36:6)
  • Joseph to his brothers: "you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive" (Genesis 50:20)
  • Moses joins it to the fear of God: "to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive" (Deuteronomy 6:24)

The breath does more than keep a body going. "But it is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand" (Job 32:8). "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts" (Proverbs 20:27). There the word the ESV renders "spirit" is nəšāmâ ("breath"). Words come out on it too. Job asks a friend, "With whose help have you uttered words, and whose breath has come out from you?" (Job 26:4). Not everything breathed out is good: "a false witness breathes out lies" (Proverbs 14:5). Section 10.5 follows that.

The breath can fail in a person who is still alive. After his vision Daniel says, "no strength remains in me, and no breath is left in me" (Daniel 10:17). Zion is pictured "gasping for breath, stretching out her hands" (Jeremiah 4:31). The psalm's last word gives the breath its purpose: "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!" (Psalm 150:6).

God gives this frailty as a reason for holding back his anger: "I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of life that I made" (Isaiah 57:16). "He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and comes not again" (Psalm 78:39). And a whole life can be felt as lived under that anger: "For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh" (Psalm 90:9). Chapter 13 follows this.

In this, humans and animals share one lot: "They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts" (Ecclesiastes 3:19). The flood fell on "all flesh in which is the breath of life" (Genesis 6:17), and "Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died" (7:22).

Where life flows from

Scripture does not treat life only as a length of time. It says where life comes from, and it names what life is.

From within, life flows out of the heart, and the state of the heart reaches the body:

  • "Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life" (Proverbs 4:23).
  • "A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot" (Proverbs 14:30).
  • God "has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end" (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
  • The span of life is meant to teach the heart: "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12).

From God, life is given and fed by what he says. Israel was fed with manna so "that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 8:3). "For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light" (Psalm 36:9).

And Scripture names life itself as a person. Moses says of the Lord, "he is your life and length of days" (Deuteronomy 30:20). Paul speaks of "Christ who is your life" (Colossians 3:4). At Lazarus's grave Jesus says it of himself: "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live" (John 11:25). Jesus says what life is: "this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3).

Life set before a person

Life is set before the inner being as something to choose. "I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live" (Deuteronomy 30:19). The choice is made by doing, seeking and holding on:

  • "if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord" (Leviticus 18:5)
  • "Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live" (Deuteronomy 16:20)
  • "Let your heart hold fast my words; keep my commandments, and live" (Proverbs 4:4)
  • "Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight" (Proverbs 9:6)
  • "Seek me and live" (Amos 5:4); "Seek good, and not evil, that you may live" (5:14)
  • "his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith" (Habakkuk 2:4)

Death is set before a person just as plainly. "See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil" (Deuteronomy 30:15). "Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death" (Jeremiah 21:8). Proverbs marks where the other way ends:

  • "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death" (Proverbs 14:12)
  • "In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death" (Proverbs 12:28)
  • "Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits" (Proverbs 18:21)

Some of what kills a person is named from within. "Surely vexation kills the fool, and jealousy slays the simple" (Job 5:2). "The desire of the sluggard kills him, for his hands refuse to labor" (Proverbs 21:25). Sections 10.1, 10.5 and 10.6 follow these.

God says what he wants. "Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?" (Ezekiel 18:23). "For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live" (18:32). He says it to people who had given up: "Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we rot away because of them. How then can we live?" The answer comes at once: "turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?" (33:10–11).

The turning is a considered act, and it reaches back over the past:

  • "Because he considered and turned away from all the transgressions that he had committed, he shall surely live; he shall not die" (18:28).
  • "None of the transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him" (18:22).
  • It reaches back the other way too: when a righteous man turns to injustice, "None of the righteous deeds that he has done shall be remembered" (18:24).

Section 10.7 follows the choosing, and Chapter 14 the turning.

Life can also be wrongly kept or taken by words. God condemns those who were "putting to death souls who should not die and keeping alive souls who should not live, by your lying to my people, who listen to lies" (Ezekiel 13:19).

Life asked for

Life is not only given and set before a person. It is asked for. The prayer "give me life" runs through Psalm 119, and each time it rests on something in God:

  • "My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word!" (Psalm 119:25)
  • "Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways" (119:37)
  • "Behold, I long for your precepts; in your righteousness give me life!" (119:40)
  • "I am severely afflicted; give me life, O Lord, according to your word!" (119:107)

The life asked for is for something. "In your steadfast love give me life, that I may keep the testimonies of your mouth" (119:88). "Let my soul live and praise you" (119:175). "Give me understanding that I may live" (119:144). "Give us life, and we will call upon your name!" (Psalm 80:18). The psalmist also knows it has already come by the same word: "This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life" (119:50). "I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life" (119:93).

Life is asked for others, too:

  • Abraham: "Oh that Ishmael might live before you!" (Genesis 17:18)
  • David, fasting while his child was ill: "Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?" (2 Samuel 12:22)

It is asked for a whole people. "Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?" (Psalm 85:6). "In the midst of the years revive it … in wrath remember mercy" (Habakkuk 3:2). In slavery, Ezra gives thanks "that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving" (Ezra 9:8). Section 10.9 follows this asking.

What death is

Death is the breath gone. "When you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust" (Psalm 104:29). Of the widow's son, Scripture says "there was no breath left in him" (1 Kings 17:17).

It is the end of a life's way. David on his deathbed: "I am about to go the way of all the earth" (1 Kings 2:2). Abraham "breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people" (Genesis 25:8).

It comes to everyone. "What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?" (Psalm 89:48). "Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever?" (Zechariah 1:5). Living forever was withheld at the very start, "lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever" (Genesis 3:22). And Job asks: "If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come" (Job 14:14).

A wise woman put it to David in a picture: "We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God will not take away life, and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast" (2 Samuel 14:14). Death falls alike on those the world would set apart:

  • "How the wise dies just like the fool!" (Ecclesiastes 2:16)
  • "a time to be born, and a time to die" (Ecclesiastes 3:2)
  • "it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment" (Hebrews 9:27)

The same death is met in different ways. "One dies in his full vigor, being wholly at ease and secure"; "Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of prosperity" (Job 21:23, 25). Nothing goes with the dead: "For when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him" (Psalm 49:17); "When the wicked dies, his hope will perish" (Proverbs 11:7). No one knows when it will come: "I am old; I do not know the day of my death" (Genesis 27:2). Yet the Preacher can write that "the day of death" is better "than the day of birth" (Ecclesiastes 7:1).

Jesus speaks of death as sleep. "the girl is not dead but sleeping. And they laughed at him" (Matthew 9:24). Of Lazarus, "Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep" (John 11:13). Paul uses the same word of those who die believing: "God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep" (1 Thessalonians 4:14).

Death and sin

Scripture ties death to sin from the first command. "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:17). The first word spoken against that command denies the death: "But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die.'" (Genesis 3:4).

Paul traces death's entry the same way: "just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned" (Romans 5:12). He names what death is in relation to sin:

  • a reign: "death reigned from Adam to Moses" (Romans 5:14)
  • a wage: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23)
  • a sting: "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law" (1 Corinthians 15:56)

James and Paul describe the movement from within, in their own order. James: "Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death" (James 1:15). Paul: "our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death" (Romans 7:5); "I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died" (Romans 7:9); "The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me" (Romans 7:10). Section 10.6 follows the desire, and Chapter 12 the sin.

Each person answers for his own. "the soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). "But each one shall die for his own sin" (2 Kings 14:6). Jesus says it of unbelief: "unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins" (John 8:24). John speaks of "sin that leads to death" and of sin that does not, and tells a believer to ask life for a brother whose sin does not lead to death (1 John 5:16–17). He does not say which sin leads to death, and I do not guess.

Sin can be put away while a death still follows. Nathan says to David, "The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die" (2 Samuel 12:13–14).

Death in the living

Scripture also speaks of death inside a living person:

  • The heart can die first. Nabal's "heart died within him, and he became as a stone" ten days before he died (below).
  • The living can be called dead. Paul writes to living people, "you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh" (Colossians 2:13; also Ephesians 2:5).
  • The mind can be set on it. "For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace" (Romans 8:6).
  • A person can abide in it. "Whoever does not love abides in death" (1 John 3:14). And "worldly grief produces death" (2 Corinthians 7:10).
  • A person can cry out under it. "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24).
  • A church can be near it. "strengthen what remains and is about to die" (Revelation 3:2).

The living can also feel themselves among the dead. "like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more" (Psalm 88:5). "For the enemy has pursued my soul; he has crushed my life to the ground; he has made me sit in darkness like those long dead" (Psalm 143:3). "among those in full vigor we are like dead men" (Isaiah 59:10). It is on "those dwelling in the region and shadow of death" that "a light has dawned" (Matthew 4:16).

Facing death

Scripture does not make the coming of death a calm thing. It shows the inner being under it:

  • "My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen upon me" (Psalm 55:4)
  • David to Jonathan: "there is but a step between me and death" (1 Samuel 20:3)
  • "Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death" (Psalm 13:3)
  • In Gethsemane: "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death" (Matthew 26:38)

The fear of dying shapes what people do. Isaac passed off his wife as his sister: "Because I thought, 'Lest I die because of her.'" (Genesis 26:9). God asks his people, "who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass" (Isaiah 51:12). Hebrews names that fear as bondage: Christ shared flesh and blood "that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery" (Hebrews 2:14–15). Section 10.1 follows fear.

Paul gives the nearness of death a purpose: "Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead" (2 Corinthians 1:9). Jesus himself "offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence" (Hebrews 5:7).

Wanting to die

Scripture is honest that people sometimes want to die. In the words of Elijah, Jonah, Job and Saul below, the Hebrew word behind "my life" or "I" is nephesh ("soul, life"). Most other such wishes name no inner word at all.

  • Elijah "asked that he might die, saying, 'It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life'" (1 Kings 19:4).
  • Jonah: "take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live" (Jonah 4:3).
  • Job: "I would choose strangling and death rather than my bones. I loathe my life; I would not live forever" (Job 7:15–16). A few verses earlier he spoke of "the anguish of my spirit" and "the bitterness of my soul" (7:11).
  • Saul, wounded on Gilboa: "anguish has seized me, and yet my life still lingers" (2 Samuel 1:9).
  • Job speaks of those "who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures" (Job 3:21), and asks, "Why did I not die at birth, come out from the womb and expire?" (Job 3:11).
  • Rachel, envying her sister: "Give me children, or I shall die!" (Genesis 30:1).
  • The Preacher: "I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive" (Ecclesiastes 4:2).

Under judgment, death is wished for and withheld: "Death shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family" (Jeremiah 8:3); "people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them" (Revelation 9:6). And Job's wife urges it on him: "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die" (Job 2:9).

What answers these wishes is seldom death.

  • Elijah is given food, twice: "Arise and eat". He goes "in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights" (1 Kings 19:5–8).
  • Jonah's wish came with his anger at God's mercy: "angry enough to die" (Jonah 4:9). He is given a question about God's pity for Nineveh (Jonah 4:10–11).
  • Israel, wishing they had died beside the meat pots of Egypt, is given bread from heaven (Exodus 16:3–4).
  • When Israel loathed the manna and spoke against God, the answer was something to look at: "everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live" (Numbers 21:8).

Where the wish is granted, it comes at the end of a life already lost. Samson is given one last act of strength (Judges 16:30). Abimelech, wounded, says to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and kill me, lest they say of me, 'A woman killed him.'" And "his young man thrust him through, and he died" (Judges 9:54). Saul's death is carried out by an Amalekite, whom David then condemns (2 Samuel 1:14–16).

In these passages, the one who has had enough is more often fed than taken.

The inner person dying

At death, Scripture gives each inner word its own verb.

  • The soul departs. "As her soul was departing (for she was dying), she called his name Ben-oni" (Genesis 35:18).
  • The heart stops attending. When the wife of Phinehas heard that the ark was taken and her husband dead, the women told her, "Do not be afraid, for you have borne a son". "But she did not answer or pay attention" (1 Samuel 4:20). Literally, she did not set her heart. Rachel is told almost the same words, "Do not fear, for you have another son" (Genesis 35:17).
  • The spirit is committed and returns. "Into your hand I commit my spirit" (Psalm 31:5). Jesus "yielded up his spirit" (Matthew 27:50). "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!" (Luke 23:46). Stephen: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59). "The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:7).
  • The body without spirit is dead. "The body apart from the spirit is dead" (James 2:26).
  • Even the corpse is nephesh ("soul"). "Whoever touches the dead body of any person" (Numbers 19:11). The word names the individual to the very end.

And one thing I did not expect: the heart can die before the body does. When Nabal sobered up and heard how close he had come to disaster, "his heart died within him, and he became as a stone. And about ten days later the Lord struck Nabal, and he died" (1 Samuel 25:37–38). The heart died first; the man died ten days later. The psalmist knows a similar death in life: "I have been forgotten like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel" (Psalm 31:12). Literally, forgotten from the heart.

Life that returns

Scripture shows life coming back through each of the inner words.

  • The spirit returns. Samson, dying of thirst after his victory, drank the water God gave, and "his spirit returned, and he revived" (Judges 15:19). Jairus's daughter: "her spirit returned, and she got up at once" (Luke 8:55). Jesus then tells them to give her something to eat.
  • The life returns. Elijah prays over the widow's son, and "the life of the child came into him again, and he revived" (1 Kings 17:22). Elisha "restored the dead to life" (2 Kings 8:5). Even after Elisha's death, a dead man thrown into his grave, "as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet" (2 Kings 13:21).
  • The breath enters. Ezekiel is shown a valley of bones and asked, "Son of man, can these bones live?" He answers, "O Lord God, you know" (Ezekiel 37:3). God's word to the bones builds the body first, then gives the breath: "I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live" (37:6). Bones, sinews, flesh and skin come together, "but there was no breath in them" (37:8). When the prophet calls to the breath, "the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet" (37:10). In Revelation, "a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet" (Revelation 11:11).

Ezekiel 37 moves through every sense of rûaḥ ("wind, breath, spirit") in one chapter. "The Spirit of the Lord" carries the prophet out (Ezekiel 37:1). Breath enters the bodies. The four winds are called on (37:9). And God promises, "I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live" (37:14). Wind, breath and Spirit are one word, and the chapter uses all three.

Life also returns to the inner person who is still alive. God says he dwells "with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite" (Isaiah 57:15).

  • To those who seek him: "let your hearts revive" (Psalm 69:32).
  • To those who listen: "hear, that your soul may live" (Isaiah 55:3).
  • Hezekiah, recovered from his illness: "in all these is the life of my spirit. Oh restore me to health and make me live!" (Isaiah 38:16).

What revives depends on what drained the life.

  • Thirst is answered with water.
  • Grief is answered with a comforter: "a comforter is far from me, one to revive my spirit" (Lamentations 1:16).
  • Disbelief is answered with words and evidence. Jacob's "heart became numb, for he did not believe them" (Genesis 45:26). Then "when they told him all the words of Joseph … and when he saw the wagons … the spirit of their father Jacob revived" (45:27).

Delivered from death

Many verses speak of the soul being "delivered from" Sheol or death. Sheol is the grave, the realm of the dead. Read in place, these verses are almost always about a living person rescued from dying.

  • "The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me … Then I called on the name of the Lord: 'O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!'" The psalmist then turns to his own soul: "Return, O my soul, to your rest". And he declares: "For you have delivered my soul from death … I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living" (Psalm 116:3–9).
  • "You have delivered my soul from death … that I may walk before God in the light of life" (Psalm 56:13).
  • "O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit" (Psalm 30:3).
  • "You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again" (Psalm 71:20).
  • "You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption" (Psalm 16:10).

The verses picture death as something that surrounds and holds. "For the waves of death encompassed me, the torrents of destruction assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me" (2 Samuel 22:5–6). It has gates: "O you who lift me up from the gates of death" (Psalm 9:13). God is named by the rescue: "Our God is a God of salvation, and to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death" (Psalm 68:20). Even his discipline stops short of it: "The Lord has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death" (Psalm 118:18). Paul says it of a danger in his own life: "He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us" (2 Corinthians 1:10).

A person can have a part in it too:

  • "Rescue those who are being taken away to death" (Proverbs 24:11)
  • "whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death" (James 5:20)

Section 10.10 follows that.

Deliverance from death is for something: for walking before God among the living, and for telling of him. "I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord" (Psalm 118:17). And sometimes it comes by a price. In Job, a messenger says, "Deliver him from going down into the pit; I have found a ransom" (Job 33:24). The man answers, "He has redeemed my soul from going down into the pit" (33:28). No human can do this: "Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?" (Psalm 89:48).

Proverbs joins life with the fear of the Lord.

  • "The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short" (Proverbs 10:27).
  • "The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death" (Proverbs 14:27).
  • "The fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied; he will not be visited by harm" (Proverbs 19:23).

These verses do not say that the soul goes to Sheol while the spirit goes to God, as if they had two different destinations. Where the spirit goes, the Preacher leaves as a question: "Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?" (Ecclesiastes 3:21). I leave it where he left it.

Made alive

In the New Testament, giving life belongs to the Father, to the Son and to the Spirit.

  • "For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will" (John 5:21).
  • Abraham believed "God … who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Romans 4:17).
  • "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life" (John 6:63).
  • "For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Corinthians 3:6).

In these verses the dead who are made alive are living people, "dead in your trespasses". "God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses" (Colossians 2:13). "Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ" (Ephesians 2:5). Jesus says the crossing happens now: "whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life" (John 5:24). "If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death" (John 8:51); "everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (John 11:26). John gives a sign that the crossing has happened: "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers" (1 John 3:14). Paul says it is meant to show in the way a person lives: "just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4). "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3).

The making alive rests on a death:

  • "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3)
  • "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8)
  • "so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone" (Hebrews 2:9)
  • Isaiah says it of the soul: "he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many" (Isaiah 53:12)

Paul says what that death means for those who live: "he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised" (2 Corinthians 5:15). He also speaks of a death the believer has died, and of a putting to death still to be done. "How can we who died to sin still live in it?" (Romans 6:2). "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you" (Colossians 3:5).

Of Christ himself, Peter says he was "put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit" (1 Peter 3:18). Chapter 14 follows the new life.

Dying to the Lord

Death, too, can belong to the Lord. Paul says it plainly: "For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Romans 14:7–8). He says it of himself: "Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:20–21). And he speaks of a dying that goes on while he lives:

  • "I die every day!" (1 Corinthians 15:31)
  • "For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh" (2 Corinthians 4:11)
  • "as dying, and behold, we live" (2 Corinthians 6:9)

The death of those who belong to God is seen by him. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints" (Psalm 116:15). Balaam says, "Let me die the death of the upright, and let my end be like his!" (Numbers 23:10). "The righteous finds refuge in his death" (Proverbs 14:32). Hebrews says of the patriarchs, "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised" (Hebrews 11:13), and of Abel, "through his faith, though he died, he still speaks" (Hebrews 11:4). Jesus speaks of a death that bears fruit: "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24).

Some of the last words Scripture records before a death are a blessing or a request:

  • Isaac: "that my soul may bless you before I die" (Genesis 27:4)
  • Jacob, on seeing Joseph again: "Now let me die, since I have seen your face and know that you are still alive" (Genesis 46:30)
  • Joseph: "I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land" (Genesis 50:24)
  • "Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die" (Proverbs 30:7)
  • "By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff" (Hebrews 11:21)

Others hold to someone even to death. Ruth says to Naomi, "Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried" (Ruth 1:17). Section 10.10 follows that loyalty.

The body raised

The hope Scripture gives does not leave the body behind. Job says it of his own flesh: "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!" (Job 19:25–27). The psalmist says it of waking: "As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness" (Psalm 17:15).

  • "Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! … the earth will give birth to the dead" (Isaiah 26:19).
  • A few verses earlier, of other lords: "They are dead, they will not live; they are shades, they will not arise" (26:14).
  • "After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him" (Hosea 6:2).

Paul ties the raising of the body to the Spirit already living within: "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you" (Romans 8:11). The resurrection reaches the inner being before it reaches the body. God "has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). Chapter 14 follows that.

Sown and raised

Paul puts into words the question that was being asked: "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" (1 Corinthians 15:35). He answers with a seed. "What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body" (15:36–38). "Not all flesh is the same", and "There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another" (15:39–40).

Then he sets what is sown beside what is raised (15:42–44):

  • "What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable."
  • "It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory."
  • "It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power."
  • "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body."

The word for "natural" is psychikos ("natural, of the soul"), from psychē ("soul"). Said of the body, it carries no blame: "it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual" (15:46). Said of a person, the same word does carry blame: "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God" (1 Corinthians 2:14). Paul does not say what a spiritual body is made of, and I do not try to.

He goes back to Genesis 2:7, where this chapter began. "Thus it is written, 'The first man Adam became a living being'; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit" (15:45). The first man received life. The last Adam gives it. "Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven" (15:49).

Christ first

"But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (15:20). "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ" (15:22–23). He is "the firstborn from the dead" (Colossians 1:18). "God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power" (1 Corinthians 6:14). Peter says death could not keep him: "God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it" (Acts 2:24). He and Paul read the psalm of him: "For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption" (Acts 2:27). "For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption" (Acts 13:36–37).

The Gospels show his risen body. They do not define it.

  • He could be touched, and he ate. When the disciples "thought they saw a spirit", he said, "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have" (Luke 24:37, 39). They gave him broiled fish, "and he took it and ate before them" (24:42–43). The apostles "ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead" (Acts 10:41). To Thomas he said, "put out your hand, and place it in my side" (John 20:27).
  • He came and went. With "the doors being locked … Jesus came and stood among them" (John 20:19). At Emmaus "their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight" (Luke 24:31).
  • He was not known at once. On the road, "their eyes were kept from recognizing him" (Luke 24:16). Mary "saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus" (John 20:14). At the lake, "the disciples did not know that it was Jesus" (21:4).

Paul also writes, "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable" (1 Corinthians 15:50). Scripture states both: flesh and bones that can be touched, and flesh and blood that cannot inherit. I leave them side by side.

Changed

"We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality" (15:51–53). Then Isaiah's word comes to pass: "Death is swallowed up in victory" (15:54; Isaiah 25:8). "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" (15:55). Hosea had already said it: "I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol; I shall redeem them from Death. O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting?" (Hosea 13:14).

Death is named as an enemy to be undone. "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1 Corinthians 15:26). The risen Christ says, "I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades" (Revelation 1:18). Paul says he "abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Timothy 1:10).

The change is to be like him. "Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself" (Philippians 3:20–21). John says how much is still hidden: "what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2).

Waited for

The raised body is waited for, and the waiting is felt within. "We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23). Paul calls the present body a tent: "if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling" (2 Corinthians 5:1–2). He does not long to be without a body: "not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life" (5:4). Sections 10.1 and 10.6 follow the groaning and the longing.

Life, and judgment

In the resurrection, "they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Matthew 22:30). Luke gives the reason: "for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection" (Luke 20:36). "Death shall be no more" (Revelation 21:4).

The rising is not to life for all. "An hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment" (John 5:28–29). Daniel had been told it: "many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Daniel 12:2). Paul states his hope "that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust" (Acts 24:15).

Revelation names a second death beyond the first. "The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death" (Revelation 2:11). Its list opens with the cowardly and the faithless: "But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death" (Revelation 21:8). Death itself goes there: "Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire" (Revelation 20:14). Chapter 13 follows God's anger.

Paul gives the order at Christ's coming: "the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17).

After death

Scripture does speak of people alive before God after death, and it uses both words.

  • John sees "under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God", crying out for justice (Revelation 6:9–10).
  • Hebrews speaks of "the spirits of the righteous made perfect" (Hebrews 12:23).
  • Peter speaks of "the spirits in prison" (1 Peter 3:19).
  • And Jesus: "do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul" (Matthew 10:28).

Whether soul or spirit is used, these verses speak of people alive before God after death.

Scripture also speaks of the dead from this side of death, and there it says something different. The dead are silent and gone:

  • "But a man dies and is laid low; man breathes his last, and where is he?" (Job 14:10)
  • "For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten" (Ecclesiastes 9:5)
  • "For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise?" (Psalm 6:5)
  • "The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence" (Psalm 115:17)

And with God, the dead are carried, blessed and at rest:

  • "The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side" (Luke 16:22)
  • "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on." "Blessed indeed," says the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!" (Revelation 14:13)
  • David, of his dead child: "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me" (2 Samuel 12:23)

Scripture states both. I leave them side by side.

What follows

The chapters that follow take the inner words one at a time: the heart, the soul, the spirit, flesh, conscience and the bosom. Each has already appeared here, inside life and death:

  • the heart from which "flow the springs of life"
  • the soul that the man became, "a living creature"
  • the spirit that "returns to God who gave it"
  • the body that "apart from the spirit is dead", and that God will "give life to … through his Spirit"

After the words come the activities of the inner being. They, too, are lived between the life God gives and the death that ends it.