It was on the sixth day that “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 2:27) “Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:15-17) When Adam’s wife saw “that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” (Genesis 3:6)
…and Adam lived 930 years and then he died.
It seems Adam really didn’t die after all on the day he ate…or did he? This is where we encounter a dichotomy; we see such examples throughout Scripture…the visible and the invisible, the literal and the figurative. “Life” is such a dichotomy; on the one hand God speaks to Adam of physical death, on the other, spiritual death.
Indeed, on the day Adam ate he began to die physically, culminating in his body dying 930 years later. More importantly, the moment he ate of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he immediately died spiritually. At that moment sin entered him and his spirit died, eternally separated from his sinless, holy Creator. Since Adam is the representative head of the human family, all of us inherited his sin and likewise are naturally alienated from God because we are spiritually dead. Our physical death proves it.
Because of God’s love and mercy, He promised to send One that would atone for the sins of man and make him right with God once again. And Jesus came as that atoning sacrifice to bring LIFE once again to all that believe in Him. “He who believes in the Son has eternal LIFE, but he who does not obey the Son will not see LIFE, but the wrath of God abides on him.” (John 3:36)
None of us have life, physically or spiritually apart from God. Man desperately wants to live forever and science is attempting to make that happen, but as always, sinful man is only interested in the physical. Science thinks it is God. What must be realized is that every breath we take is a gift from God and the length of our days is set. “Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.” (Psalm 139:16)
“For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal LIFE, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:40)…and the perishable will put on the imperishable and the mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.'” (1 Corinthians 15: 53-54)
