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At the end of a
long, pleasant chat, while preparing to depart, I suddenly was impressed to ask
him, ‘Are you born again?’ This
simple question opened a new avenue for an unanticipated, lengthy extension in
our conversation, which he peppered with a wide range of probing questions on
spirituality.
‘I don’t want eternal life’, was the theme
of what followed. As a child, he was raised in the ‘Baptist tradition’, had
lived a relatively good, satisfying life of service, and was ok with just
dying, and let that be it, with no further expectations. His steady stream of
probing questions, however, framed an opportunity for me to paint a different
picture than the one he had imagined. The theme of my dotted responses to his
shifting questions was, L.I.F.E., namely what it is from God’s
perspective.
1. God designed
human life to be forever.
2. Created in
His tripartite (3 part) image, each
of us is an eternal spirit, temporarily housed in a physical body,
and blessed with a soul interface (mind,
emotions, will, imagination, and intellect) by which our eternal spirit
operates our body and facilitates interactions in our physical world. Consider
your body as your spirit’s ‘avatar’
in this world.
3. Death as we
know it, is simply a stage of this eternal life through which we must pass as a
result of our sin nature, given to us all as the offspring of Adam, who
disobeyed God. God calls Adam’s disobedience, ‘sin’, and calls his offspring
(the entire human race), ‘sinful’. He had told Adam, before his disobedience,
that the price of sin and sinfulness would be death.*
4. Since we are
tripartite beings, made in God’s tripartite image, death to us is far more than
simply ceasing to breathe and a failing heartbeat. Death manifests itself on
all three of our planes of existence, spirit, soul and body, in this specific order. Spiritual death is separation from the
goodness of our Creator who loves us, and from His abundant blessings on each
plane of our being. Soul death is
the mental and emotional anguish and distresses we experience as a result of
this separation (fear, pride, evil thoughts and imaginations, greed, lusts,
depression, anxiety, hatred, etc.). Physical
death is the gradual, steady deterioration of our physical ‘body houses’, our
present avatars, culminating in total
physical death. Each of these types of deathly experiences is the fruit of Adam’s
sin, and of the sinful nature he imparted to us all. Out of our nature, we also
naturally sin and, thus, displease God.
5. The expressions
of death on these three, current planes are temporary. Because we are eternal spirits, God has ordained that
we ALL
will be resurrected (arise) from physical death, and be clothed with a new,
eternal/immortal body (your final avatar,
if you will), with full, permanent, ‘soulish’ functionality. And just as we
were initially designated to spend our physical, mortal lives on earth, God has
similarly designated physical places for us to spend our permanent/eternal
lives. In this designation, He offers us a choice between two destinations --
either in a new, heavenly earth with Him; or in a fiery, tormenting hell with
His angelic enemies (demons and devils) who rebelled against Him long, long
ago.
6. To
facilitate our choice and selection, out of His great love for us, God prepared
a salvation plan, offering Jesus as our substitute, Who paid the inescapable
punishment sin demands. In accepting God’s offer, we initiate His tripartite ‘re-creation’ process,
correcting the problems created by Adam’s sin and our sin nature.
First, we are ‘born
again’ spiritually, i.e., made new in the essence of who we are.
Second, I we are
challenged to ‘renew’ our souls (mind, will, emotions, intellect,
imagination) through study and meditation of God’s Word, The Bible, and
application of its revealed Truth to our lives.
Finally, just as a
caterpillar receives a new body after
time in a cocoon, we will receive our permanent body upon
resurrection from our graves. We will spend the remainder of our ‘forever
existence in our fresh, totally re-created, tripartite being, fully equipped
with the key ‘being’ faculties we
currently possess, i.e., spiritually knowing and imagining; mentally
thinking and understanding; and physically feeling and needing.
7. Rejection of
God’s offer automatically means an eternal existence, in permanent, functional
bodies, separated from Him,
which He calls eternal damnation in the forever flames and torment of hell.
Hell is a real, physical place, not some mythical fairytale. Jesus spoke
of hell often; more than any other person in The Bible, and He didn’t mince His words.
Perhaps you, or
someone you know, may have been raised in a church environment, but may not
comprehend God’s synoptic message presented across the pages of The Bible. If
so, may this post help to clarify a critically important point that is so easily
misunderstood, namely that God irrevocably
gave to ALL humans ever born (and possibly those who were conceived,
but not born)...
L.I.F.E.
Life Is Forever, Eternally!
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*
“…but 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)
