Genesis 2:17
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 3:3-4
³From the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, “You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.” ⁴The serpent said to the woman, “YOU SURELY WILL NOT DIE!“
This was half the truth, so a complete lie!
Indeed the body did not die instantly, but lost its eternal life, and mankind lost the life that the Spirit of God gave them, when God blew His Spirit into man, making him a living soul.
People today say: “You see, your faith is based on nothing, for satan spoke the truth! We all are still alive, aren’t we?” Are we really..? Do you mean that because you still breathe you are living? Is life no more to you than breathing a few years?
We see here a similar confusion as there was between Jesus and the Jews, satan is using this, and is entangling mankind in it.
John 2:19-21
¹⁹Jesus answered them (the Jews) , “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” ²⁰The Jews then said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” ²¹But He was speaking of the temple of His body.
The confusion with Jesus was, that Jesus was speaking of His body, while the Jews thought that He was speaking of the building in Jerusalem.
In Genesis 1, where it speaks of the creation of man(kind) we read:
Genesis 1:26-28
²⁶Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
²⁷God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
²⁸God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
God said: “Let Us (God, The Trinity, that is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) make man in Our image, according to Our likeness”, and this is literally what He did.
He made man(kind) completely in His likeness, and according to His likeness. Also a trinity consisting of body, soul, and spirit.
In Genesis 2:7 we read that “the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.“
Let us look a bit deeper in these words: “He breathed¹ into his nostrils the breath² of life; and man became a living being²”.
¹) ‘He breathed‘ (Hebr.: naphach’) can also be translated with ‘He blew’.
²) The breath (Hebr.: nᵉshamah’) can be translated with breath or spirit.
³) The word ‘being‘ comes from the Hebrew word “ne’phesh”. This word is in the Amplified Version 475 times translated with soul. This is the person, the man himself, the person or individual, the seat of emotions and passions.
So only after God blew His Spirit into man(kind) we became a living being, a living soul.
But after man sinned we read in Genesis 3:22-23
²²Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” – ²³therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.
This also means that after man(kind) sinned, God would take His life giving Spirit away from us. Causing mankind to go back to his dead state before God blew His Spirit into him.
Sin did not only destroy this, but also took away the original eternal life of body and soul.
Maybe now it is also better to understand why Jesus said to Nicodemus:
John 3:3
Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again (unless one is born from above) he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
By being born again
▪︎ the Spirit of God, Whom we lost after sinning in paradise, can come back to us,
▪︎ than we are again becoming a complete human being, consisting of body, soul, and spirit.
▪︎ Through the Spirit we again can be man in God’s image, according to God’s likeness, as God intended it when He created us.
Romans 8:10
If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.
Now you know this, you will also understand why non Christian rulers can so easily decide to close churches because of Corona.
A dead person doesn’t experience hunger, and doesn’t need food. And because they are dead, it is impossible for them to understand that people who do have the spirit, have a life of which they have no knowledge, and it is impossible for them to understand that these people need spiritual food and fellowship.
For them closing a church is no more than closing a theater, they have no idea the need we have for the food of God’s word.
Twitter: @SchoemakerHarry
Website 1: https://devotionals.harryschoemaker.nl
Website 2: http://bijbelplaatjes.nl
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