L.I.F.E.

Listen to audio version here

I met a fellow at a restaurant, a 30-year Marine vet who had served in a wide variety of functions, including as an honor guard in U.S. embassies. In gratitude, I thanked him several times for his service, and invited him to join me at my table. Retired and advanced in age, chess is now his major interest, including playing on-line, in local clubs, and even in regional tournaments. He reported having learned the game very well, and has advanced to higher ranks within the international structure of competitors.

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!

----------

* “…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)