Tag Archives: Death

31 Biblical Facts about Man’s Spirit

Given the space I devoted yesterday to spiritual death, I thought I’d follow up today with a post on the biblical case for man’s spirit.

Here we go.

1. Man has a spirit. 

2. Man’s spirit is immortal. [See the heading ]

3. Man’s spirit can be divided from the body and destroyed. .

4. God’s spirit contends with man’s spirit. [Some translations say “abide.”] 

5. Can be sad or vexed to the point a person can’t eat. 

6. Man’s spirit can be encouraged and motivated. 

7. Can be in anguish. 

8. Can turn against God. 

9. Can search for meaning and truth. 

10. Man’s spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. 

11. Can be revived by water or food.  and 

12. Can be faithful and steadfast in the Lord. 

13. Can be rebellious. 

14. Can faint and melt in despair and fear. 

15. Can be reborn. 

16. Can be grieved and troubled and alarmed. 

17. Can be drug down by lethargy and stupor. 

18. Can be fervent. 

19. Can be meek and gentle. 

20. Can be present though the body is absent. 

21. Can be holy. 

22. Can be restless. 

23. Can be filthy. 

24. Can be lifted out of sorrow. 

25. Can be in unity with others. 

26. Can worship God. 

27. Can rejoice. 

28. Can be an example to others. 

29. Leaves body at death. 

30. Can be dead through sin. 

31. Can be made alive in Christ. 

Naturally, this is not an exhaustive list, so…what’d I miss that you think I should include? Looking forward to your thoughts. Brutal and all.

Four Ways of Looking at the Sin That Leads to Death

Serious v. minor. The unforgivable sin. Physical death as punishment. Spiritual death. Which one best describes the sin that leads to death? You decide.

I’ve been rummaging around 1 John again. Particularly the 5th Chapter…

There is a sin leading to death. 

This concept of a sin that leads to death can be a notorious torment to readers because there are a number of ways you can twist it.

Now, sin that leads to death…it occurs in the Old Testament in the books ,  and .

In each instance physical death is the consequence of sin. Not much room for misinterpretation.

In the New Testament context, however, it’s not so cut and dry. But scholars and pundits have boiled the interpretation down to four fundamental ideas.

Let’s look at and evaluate these four ways.

Serious Sin v. Minor Sin

On the surface, the sin that leads to death could simply refer to serious sins over minor sins.

If this is the case, the author may be telling his readers to pray for a brother on behalf of a minor sin, but should leave those who commit more serious sins to the care of God.

But it’s unlikely this is the true meaning.

The Unforgivable Sin

Another way to look at this concept is to see it as identical with the “unforgivable sin” Jesus mentioned in  and , namely being ashamed of Him.

Jesus also suggests  is the unforgivable sin. This is closer to the truth. But were not there yet.

Physical Death as Punishment

Some interpreters see the “sin resulting in death” as a sin so serious that the sinner deserves to die…

Immediately.

It’s not one particular sin like homosexuality or lying or idolatry. It could be any grave, calculated and unconfessed sin that exhausts God’s patience.

In the early church, this was an extreme but effective form of . This is seen in the .

But I don’t think this is how were supposed to walk away with it either.

Spiritual Death

In all of John’s literature there’s a tendency to talk about spiritual rather than physical death that makes this final option the best option.

For example,  evaluates the Church at Sardis as follows: “I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.”

A clear reference to spiritual death.

So, in 1 John, there is evidence that John had unbelievers in mind when he wrote 5:16. The author also spoke about unbelievers who ,  and .

These opponents–once believers–eventually departed from the church. Now they’re all spiritually dead.

Now, pay attention: Jesus, in his , excludes the “world” from his prayers. This sets a precedent.

And it makes sense.

Following the behavior of Jesus, John warns his readers against praying for apostates–believers who walked away from the church.

Thus the sin leading to death refers to the apostasy–refusing to believe in Jesus as the Christ–which marked a person as an unbeliever and sealed their fate.

And John says were not supposed to pray for them.

Our Response to the Sin Leading to Death

But that sounds so narrow minded. Fundamental. Extreme. Unbiblical. Yet, that’s exactly what John suggests you do. And that’s the kicker.

It’s just a suggestion. Not a law.

So, do we pray for those who’ve fallen away even though John recommends we don’t?

I say we do.

Only God knows who has committed the unpardonable sin. We don’t have the knowledge or authority to make such claims.

But what do you think? Am I missing anything? Do you know of any other theories on how 1 John 5:16 is handled? I look forward to your responses, brutal and all.

Can God Die? Nitty-Gritty Guide to Self Existence

Where you take a deep, under the hood look at why the doctrine of God’s self-existence is as practical as the latest surgical technique.

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

Those words were written by Friedrich Nietzsche in his book  over 100 years ago.

Many believe Nietzsche and those words heralded in secular atheism.

In the 1960s this atheism peaked in the “death of God” movement…a movement that quickly blossomed in pulpits and the press…but sunk just as fast.

The scope of this movement can be judged from its four best-known advocates: Altizer, van Buren, Hamilton and Vahanian.

A Short but Sensational History of the Death of God

In a 1966 Time article called , Emory professor Thomas J. J. Altizer said, “the transcendent God of the Bible had died when he became Jesus, whose incarnation made God man for all time.”

By contrast, Paul van Buren, who fought the God-is-dead theologian label despite his book The Secular Meaning of the Gospels and article “Christian Education Post Mortem Dei,” gloomily . Language that could not be empirically proved, through the five senses, was meaningless.

In an essay called “Thursday’s Child,”  that after the death of God, all we have left is love.

While Altizier, Van Buren and Hamilton proclaimed the death of God with emotion, sociologist of religion Gabriel Vahanian calmly : our idea about God is the product of primitive Christianity’s encounter with Greek philosophy.

Many critics complained that this movement did nothing more than reduce Christianity to just another kind of Jesus-inspired humanism. Next to Barth’s 14-volume , the theology was really thin stuff. And because of it’s shock value, it died off quick.

Yet the question remains: Did God really die?

The Single Attribute That Separates God from All Other Beings

The short answer is no, God did not die. On the other end of the stick, we have this: God was not born.

The fact is, no one made God. He’s always been. He’s always existed. He simply is. This is the essence of God’s self-existence: he was never born, will never die and will always exist.

To say that God is self-existent is to say He has “aseity.” He is “from himself.”

Classical theologians refer to aseity as the thing about God that makes him God. Aseity separates him from other beings. He is the Supreme being. We are the human beings.

You and I can suffocate to death. Starve to death. Drown to death. You and I can catch the bird flu and die. We can suffer from a stroke, cancer or mental illness. But God cannot. He will neither die nor decompose.

Self-Existence Means Perfection and Power

The Catholic Encyclopedia frames  this way: “The nearest approach we can make to a definition is to call Him the Actus Purus. It is the name God gives to Himself: ‘I am who I am”, i.e., I am the fullness of being and of perfection.”

In other words, He is the being who is “from himself.” The being who cannot die, but simply exists. Augustine said, “Not only has God his own essence…but he is also his own existence.”

“His presence in the world,” says John Frame in the article , “is an implication of his universal power and authority. Wherever we go, we cannot escape from him. God’s presence is inescapable, unavoidable, and therefore not dependent on the will of creatures.”

Why God Is Necessary for Man’s Existence

Furthermore, we get our life from God. We are dependent on his existence. We are dependent on his life. We are contingent beings. He is a necessary being.

A necessary being is a being on which the ground of all other beings exist but needs no other ground for his own being.

, “The first argument to prove that the world as a whole is not self-existent and eternal, is that all its parts, everything that enters into composition, is dependent and mutable.”

God is independent and immutable. He is changeless.

And He is necessary because we are contingent. We depend upon something else to survive. Speaking to the men of Athens , “He is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else…. For in him we live and move and have our being.”

In other words, if we exist, something like God has to exist.

The Unthinkable Thing about God

Some argue that the universe is eternal. However, the universe cannot be eternal since it is running down. It is mutable: Snow melts. Mountains shift. Stars explode. Everything is subject to change and disorder.

God, however, is eternal and changeless. He is the being that has power in himself.

John Calvin in his  said “From the power of God we are naturally led to consider his eternity, since that from which all other things derive their origin must necessarily be self-existent and eternal.”

He is the being that cannot not exist. He exists independently of humans, time and matter.

Physicists tell us the universe is made up of time and matter. Who made the universe? God made the universe. , “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

He made the universe because he is outside and independent of the universe.  “Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

And if God made the universe, he existed before the universe.

But Who Created God?

Like an inquisitive 3-year old, the skeptics favorite question to the  is, “So who created God?”

The answer can’t be God created himself. Nothing can create something. For something to create itself would be that it would have to exist before it existed. And that is absurd.

God is the uncaused Cause of all else that exists. He exists pure and simple.  “God has no origin.”

But we have origin, which makes it necessary for something out there to not have origin. Namely, the First Cause.

Why We Must Think about God’s Self-Existence

Thoughts about God means thoughts about a being without a beginning or an end. Thoughts about humans means thoughts about beings with definite beginnings and definite endings.

It’s hard to think about God.

We prefer to think about how to build a 40 foot slip for our 40 foot boat. Or how to pay to have our noses sculpted.

However, thinking about the self existence of God, as A. W. Tozer pointed out in , is essential, “because we are the handiwork of God, it follows that all our problems and their solutions are theological.”

That means we will never know anything about ourselves until we understand something about God.

For this reason the self-existence of God is not a, “dry wisp of doctrine, academic and remote; it is in fact as near our breath and as practical as the latest surgical technique.”

Meditating on this humbles us. Our own inadequacy, smallness and sinfulness emerges as we contemplate God’s greatness and glory. And in the end, all the problems we have would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God.

Christianity Hangs on God’s Self-Existence

In fact, Christianity pivots on the thought that God is everything and man is nothing. That is why man has always struggled throughout the centuries with Christianity.

God gave us moral choice. And one of our first exercises of that moral choice was to deny God and assert ourselves. But the assertion of self over God and the  is rebellion and sin.

Christianity is, therefore, the story of God redeeming a rebellious people. And it rolls back to God being our self-existent Creator.

To speak of God dying, absent or non-existent is to speak of a monastic religion…a religion obsessed with humankind, injustice and self. A decomposing and dying self.

Back to Nietzsche

On January 3, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown. Seeing a horse whipped, he ran to the animal, threw his arms around its neck, then collapsed to the ground.

From there it was all down hill–asylum and all–until late August 1900 when he suffered and died from his third and final stroke.

It is dreadful when we assert another man’s ideas over God. When we do, we find ourselves relying on a broken, narrow and wicked mind. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, that that level of ,  is steadily rising in our nation.

The history of man in every civilisation is the steady decline of man. He’s always rebelled against God, denied His existence, and even outright tried to kill him…which is nothing more than suicidal.

That’s why we need the security that comes with knowing God, and what He is like. Seek him then, and be at peace.

**Part of The Nature of God series.**