I sincerely hope this book has been an inspiration to you. I pray that the pages have worked together to bring this assuring message: God loves you. He is ever available to help you begin again. Before we part company, might I have just another few minutes to discuss God’s grand plan for you?
He tailored you for more than a grave, fitted you for a grander destiny than a casket. You are an eternal being equipped with an eternal soul.
What God gave Adam and Eve, he gave to you and me. A soul. “The LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7).
You are more than a bipedal ape, a chemical fluke, or an atomic surprise. You bear the very breath of God. “[God] breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7).
Our souls distinguish us among God’s creation. God did not breathe his breath into the giraffe or the beluga whale. He gave a hump to the camel, but he gave his breath, or a soul, to humanity.
Without a soul Adam was without life. His body was complete yet lifeless until God breathed into it. The soul enabled him to breathe, to move, to think . . . indeed, to live.
Humanism may see you as a coincidence of chromosomes, but God sees you as a steward of his essence. You bear the stamp of God. You think. You love. You create. Like Adam, you have a soul.
And, like Adam, you’ve used your soul to disobey God.
God gave the charter couple one command: “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Gen. 2:17).
Disregard God and pay a fatal price. Disobedience, God warned, leads to death. Not just eventual death, mind you, but immediate death. “When you eat from it you will certainly die” (emphasis mine).
Wait a second. Did Adam and Eve die? We know they failed the test. Eve ate the fruit and gave some to Adam, who did the same. They hid from God and were banished from the garden. They lived many more years. How do we explain their longevity? Did God change his mind? Or do we misunderstand the definition of death? The culprit is the latter. We assume that death means cessation of life. It does, eventually. But the first death means separation from God.
Before Adam and Eve lost the ability to breathe, they forfeited their community with God. They hid from him. His presence stirred panic, not peace. Adam heard God’s voice and reacted like a kid caught raiding the pantry: “I was afraid” (3:10). Intimacy with God ceased; separation from God began. The guilty pair was “banished . . . from the Garden of Eden” (v. 23). We’ve loitered outside the garden ever since.
Sin spawns two fatalities: spiritual and physical. Spiritual death separates our souls from God. Physical death separates the soul from the body. Adam and Eve experienced the first death when they bit the fruit and the second when they bit the dust. “Dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:19).
If Adam had not sinned, he would not have died. But he did, so he died.
As do we. Our sin isolates us from God. Left alone we are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1 NKJV) and consequently “separated from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18).
Spiritual death—the soul separated from God.
Physical death—the soul separated from the body.
So what do we do?
Jesus invites us to believe that “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Christ restores what Adam and Eve lost, in the same order they lost it. He reconnects the soul to God, then the body to the soul.
He restores our souls with God when we believe in him: “You who were far away from God are brought near through the blood of Christ’s death” (Eph. 2:13 NCV).
He will rejoin our souls with our bodies upon his second coming. Those who die prior to his return pass immediately to their eternal destinies. We know this because of passages like the one in which John sees in heaven “the souls of all who had been martyred” (Rev. 6:9 NLT). Paul equated residence with God as absence from the body. “We really want to be away from this body and be at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8 NCV). In the era between our deaths and Christ’s return, our souls are separated from the flesh. But when Christ comes, “all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned” (John 5:28–29).
But how do we know this will happen? Why trust this as a truth? What gives credence to this claim of Christ’s?
The empty tomb does. “Since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died” (1 Thess. 4:14 NLT).
When Jesus vacated the tomb, he robbed it of its power. Death may touch us, but it cannot have us.
A family was on a picnic when a bumblebee flew near the table. The mother jumped up to shoo it away from her son. He was allergic to bees. He could die if stung. The insect avoided her and flew even closer to the boy. The father stood up and stepped over. Quick-thinking, and quick-handed, he snatched the bee out the air.
After a moment, with a grimace on his face, the dad let the bee go. The boy became upset and ran from the table. The dad calmed him, saying, “Don’t worry, Son. You don’t have to be afraid.”
The father showed his son the palm of his hand that was beginning to swell, and he revealed the stinger. “It’s okay. Now all he can do is buzz. This is what could have hurt you, but I took the sting away.”
So did Jesus. That’s why Paul could ask, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:55–57).
Because of Christ’s resurrection, all death can do is buzz.
Trust him, won’t you?
Trust him to take your life and turn it into a life worthy of heaven. Thanks to him, you and I can begin again.