The saddest fact about being human is one day we will die. But did you know this was not God’s original intent for mankind? God designed us to live forever. We have eternity living in our hearts. So why do we die?
We die because of a decision made by the first humans. The first humans, Adam and Eve, decided to go against God by doing something he told them not to do. In Genesis 2:16-17, God said the following.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 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 2:16 (NKJV)
Adam and Eve eventually ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The moment they ate from it they died. If they died immediately, then why were they still walking and talking after they ate the forbidden fruit?
The first sign of death was their attempt to resolve their nakedness. In Genesis 3:7, Adam and Eve saw they were naked, and they decided to cover up it. They attempted to do this without God because they hid from him when they heard his presence. Their attempt to cover up their nakedness is a sign of death because death simply means having an existing outside of a loving relationship with God.
This definition of death may be different from how you commonly think of death. But it aligns with how you think of God. We associate heaven, the place where God lives, as a place of bliss. Heaven is the place of bliss because you experience Father’s love there. We associate the place where God isn’t, Hell, as a place of pain and misery. Hell is the place where you not experiencing Father’s love.
God shows his love to us by providing a means for us to overcome death. In other words, God provided a way for every human to have a loving relationship with him. This relationship comes through faith in Jesus Christ.
Through faith in Jesus Christ we obtain the promise of living with him on the earth forever. This requires a metamorphosis of our current bodies. Our current bodies carry the curses God pronounced on Adam and Eve because they chose to live without him. This metamorphosis is called the resurrection which we will touch on in a different post. In our resurrected bodies, we will live on earth forever having the best time you can imagine.
As proof of the promise of living forever, God gives us power to overcome anything that is a byproduct of death and evil thinking, such as sickness, disease, depression, poverty, racism, worthlessness and anxiety. This is why when people come to faith in Jesus they share stories of how they overcame problems in our world today. This doesn’t mean after coming to faith in Jesus all problems go away. It means that you have power to not to succumb to the misery, hopelessness and lack of joy that accompany the problems. In some cases, these means getting rid of the problem, such as an illness. In some cases it means having peace and joy in the face of the problem, such as losing a job or a loved one.
Overcoming these problems requires letting God lead us in every aspect of our lives. That is easier said than done. We have a lot of misconceptions and strong opinions that make it difficult for us to yield to God. Over time, we do yield and reap the benefits of yielding. And so will you.
If you haven’t done so, you should read how Adam and Eve went from living to dying in Genesis 2 & 3.