The Daily Word of Righteousness

To Perish or To Live, continued

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. (Revelation 2:7—NIV)

Our Redeemer has come to restore to us that which was lost in the beginning. What Adam and Eve lost was access to the Tree of Life, not life in Heaven. If they had eaten of the Tree of Life (which is Jesus Christ) they would have lived forever. God drove them from the Garden so they would not be able to eat of the Tree of Life and live as immortal sinners, being unable to die.

Physical death is a blessing from God because it removes our inward nature from our physical body until Jesus Christ has made our inward nature fit to be housed in an immortal body. Did you ever wonder about that?

Some may be thinking at this point, "It was not the bodily death of Adam and Eve that God was referring to when He said, ‘In the day you eat thereof you shall die.' It was their spiritual death, their separation from God."

We must come to understand God made man body, soul, and spirit. None of these can be missing if man is to remain man. It is the duality contained in Gnostic thinking that leaves the impression we can be without our physical body and remain man.

Didn't God say to Adam and Eve, "You are dust and are going to return to the dust"? God treated them as though all they were, were bodies. In the same manner the Lord Jesus Christ, upon being raised from the dead, referred primarily to His body when He said, "Take a look at Me. A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see Me have. Look at My hands and feet." Can you see the emphasis on the physical body?

Let's see what the Apostle Paul says about the death Adam and Eve died. Was it spiritual death or physical death that was at issue?

For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. (I Corinthians 15:21-23—NIV)

Now, when Paul says death came through a man, was Paul speaking of physical death or spiritual death?

Since Paul then says, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man, and the subject of the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians is the resurrection of the physical body, not the resurrection of our spirit, then Paul was speaking of physical death. The sin of Adam and Eve caused physical death.

Since physical death came through a man so the restoring of life to the physical body comes through a Man.

"Should not perish but have eternal life."

Look further into this passage.

"For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive."

To be continued.