Our 3rd Word is Die

“You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from if you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:17)

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The simple meaning of die – To cease to be alive.

According to experts, about 200 people will have passed away by the time you’ve finished reading this post. That’s approximately 6,300 people departing this life on earth every hour, which comes out to some 150,000 people each day and 53 million souls leaving this earth each year on average.

The grim reality of the word “die can make us squirm so we often use euphemisms like “shuffling off this mortal coil:” or “entering eternal rest.” But when the Bible first talks about the subject of mortality, it’s in the second chapter, the language is very blunt, straightforward, and free of euphemisms. God tells the very first human that if you try to find life and meaning apart from Me, you will surely die.

In Hebrew, “die” means exactly what you think: to stop living. In the Bible it is an intense declaration from God about the consequence of rejecting Him. “You will die.”

When you look at the word die on a practical level, death means separation. We all know this tearful reality all too well. In death the soul leaves the body. This personal separation then leads to relational separation: survivors are left behind to mourn their departed loved ones. You’ll find in Genesis 2-3 that there is even a worse separation. Defying God is like unplugging from God. The result of sin is spiritual death.

Death is the consequence of sin and is an entirely logical theological truth. What other outcome could there be when we separate ourselves from our Creator who is the essence of life and who first animated us with His mysterious “breath of life”. (Genesis 2:7)

In Romans 5:12 Paul says this “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people because all sinned.”

The rebellion of Adam and Eve in Paradise is really beyond tragic. The first book of the Bible opens up with life in all its pristine beauty and wonderous goodness. Eden is a world without death, just as God meant for it to be. However, sin came crashing into the picture, and as a result of that sin, Genesis ends with talk of embalming fluids, coffins, and burial plots.

Sadly in Genesis, death quickly goes from a possibility to an ugly and sad reality.

But there’s good news. Genesis is just the beginning of God’s great story. Even though all has been lost in Genesis, all is not lost because even then God had a plan to put death to death.

Questions to Ponder

1. What do you think about the idea that death, physical and spiritual is the result of sin for humanity turning away from the one true God, the source of life?