ANNOUNCER: A question about death. What does death mean in the Bible? Does it mean the same thing every time it occurs? What are the figurative uses of death in the Bible? Thank you for joining us, friend. This is Grace in Focus. Delighted that you’re here. And this is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org. There you can learn about our free online seminary where you can earn an MDiv degree. Get ready for the application and registration window to open on May 4th—that’s coming up soon. It’ll close on August 2nd, but if you get everything done you can study with us next fall. And then our Grace Old Testament Commentary volume 1—pre-order ends on May 1st. All these things you can know more about if you go to our website, faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here’s Bob Wilkin, along with Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right, Bob. We’ve got a very cheery topic for today. We’re going to be talking about death and dead and dead things in the Bible, so…

BOB: I think you’re too young to talk about death, didn’t you just turn 25? 

SAM: Yeah, quarter of the way there. 

BOB: You know, I’ve almost got you tripled. When I have, we have several friends who just hit 75 or 76. And when you get 75 you get three candles. Each one stands for a quarter century. So anyway, you’re just a young guy. So what’s Ruth’s question about death? 

SAM: Well, she’s got a lot here, but the gist of it is, what is, first off, is there a kind of physical death and spiritual death? Are those two things or is it the same thing? And then what are the different kinds of death that we see in the Bible? 

BOB: Okay, so the first question is easy to answer. The second question is hard to answer, because there’s lots of figurative uses of the words dead and death in the Bible. But let’s start with the first one. Is there a distinction between physical and spiritual death and the answer is yes. Physical death is the predominant meaning of the words dying, died, death, dead, etc. They’re commonly used that way. 

For example, I call Genesis 5, “the temporary reign of death” because Moses goes through the patriarchs up to Noah and he says, and he died, Adam, and he died. Seth, and he died, so forth. He goes all the way through the patriarchs down to Noah and we don’t see the expression “and he died” concerning Noah until after the flood in Genesis chapter 9. I believe it’s verse 27. 

So you see this and he died, and he died, and he died, but you get to a little sermon that concerning Enoch. I think it’s in Genesis 5:22-24 where Enoch doesn’t die because God took him while he was alive and he went into the third heaven and was taken up, which could be a type of the rapture, not sure, but I think it may well be a type of the rapture. But he’s an example of the fact that there’s a day coming when there will be no more death. 

Revelation 21 says there will be no more death. I take it, that means not only no more death for humans, but it probably means no more death for the animals either. 

SAM: So then what happened in Genesis 2:17, what did God mean when he was talking to Adam there? Because we didn’t get to all the “he died” statements until well after. But in Genesis 2:17, “And the Lord [God] commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden he may eat freely; but the tree of knowledge of] good and evil, you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.’ “ 

BOB: So “you surely die” in Hebrew is something like “dying, you shall die.” And so it’s an emphatic statement of death. And there’s two ways to understand that. The common way of understanding that is that Adam and Eve died spiritually when they ate the forbidden fruit and they say the reason we know that is because they didn’t die physically that day. It was over 900 years later, it was 930, according to Genesis 5, when Adam died. So they say, well, that couldn’t be physical death. So they would say that spiritual death. 

There’s a ginormous problem with that and the ginormous problem is, if they were spiritually alive, that is if they had everlasting life before the fall, then they had everlasting life after the fall. And they didn’t need the death of Christ in order to have eternal life, Genesis 3:15, the seed of the woman who’s stomping on the head of the serpent, they wouldn’t have needed that because they already would have had everlasting life. So what most people say when they say they died spiritually is they say it means they lost fellowship with God, which that would fit with them hiding in the garden after they sinned and them making fig leaves and all that. 

However, I don’t think that’s the most natural understanding of the expression here. I think the most natural understanding of the expression, and many people understand Genesis 2:17 this way, is that Adam and Eve died physically that day. Within Hebrew thinking or construction, they would believe that if a person is mortal, he’s dying. Even though you’re 25, and even though I’m 73, we’re both dying. Now, you may die long after I die assuming that the Rapture doesn’t occur in your lifetime, but the truth is we’re both dying. We’re both mortal. And I think what Genesis 2:17 means in the day you eat of it, you will begin the death process. You will become mortal. 

SAM: Right. If they hadn’t sinned, they would have had no reason to expect that they would die in a thousand years, two thousand years, however long. 

BOB: They would have been immortal eventually. If God removed that temptation or that opportunity to fail, they would have been sealed in perfection and they would have lived in a natural body, but an immortal body forever. Now, we are not in immortal bodies. We are immortal bodies and so that’s how I would understand Genesis 2:17. 

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SAM: So that’s physical death and then you’ve explained spiritual death, but there’s a lot of other ways that death is used throughout the Bible. 

BOB: Let me quickly on spiritual death, say, we just went through in our Greek class translating and exegeting Ephesians 2:1-10. And in Ephesians 2:1, Paul says, “When you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” And that refers to spiritual deadness. And we know that because in Ephesians 2:5, he said He “made us alive together with Christ, by grace you’ve been saved.” The “made alive together with Christ” refers to regeneration, and Ephesians 2:1 “to be dead in trespasses and sins” means to lack everlasting life. 

SAM: And that’s the starting point for humans, right? You don’t come into life and some of them were to say, you don’t come into life alive and then you die and then you go back to being alive. You come into life an unbeliever, unregenerate, and you’re dead in that sense. And that’s why it characterizes being born again because the first time you’re born, you’re born into death, but the second time you’re born, you’re born into life. 

BOB: That’s exactly right. And I think it’s important to recognize that when he says, and when you were “dead in trespasses and sins,” he doesn’t mean you were dead because of trespasses and sins. He means you were dead in your trespasses and sins. That is, you were a slave of sin. You were slaves of sin. The people he’s writing to, the Gentile believers in the church of Ephesus. And he’s saying, look, dead in trespasses and sins means lacking God’s life and being a slave of sin. And that’s why Jesus said, “if you don’t believe I am He ,you will die in your sins,”  He meant you will die physically and he meant you will go all the way from now till the grave as a slave of sin. That’s why after he said that, they said, we’ve never been slaves to anyone. And he went on to talk about slavery to sin and how they were slaves of sin. If you read Romans 8, verses 33 and following. 

SAM: Right. So to sum it up, spiritual life, spiritual death. Your mother gives you physical life and that’s still from God, but you’re not given that spiritual life until you believe in Christ and then you’re born again and you receive an everlasting life. 

BOB: Right. And you mentioned, mother, your father gives you the sin nature. And that sin nature is, your father gives you slavery to sin. Now the other part you asked about the figurative uses of death. 

SAM: Yeah, there’s a lot of other ones. Death is often a character, it’s personified and that’s a very Greek thing too. 

BOB: Oh, Death where is your sting. 

SAM: Right. And in Revelation, we see Death following Hades and them both cast into the lake of fire. 

BOB: And you like the Avengers series, don’t they? Yeah, like Thanatos, but he’s not Thanatos. 

SAM: He’s just Thanos, Thanos from the Greek there. So it’s personified a lot and it can characterize things other than just physically dying, like the nature of the world it leads to death. 

BOB: For example, in Luke 15 verse 24, the father of the prodigal son says what? 

SAM: He says, “for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found. And they began to be merry.” 

BOB: Now he was the son of his father. The whole time he was in the far country, he was not saying he was lacking eternal life. What he’s saying is my son was dead to me in terms of fellowship and now he’s alive again, meaning he’s in fellowship with me again. So it doesn’t have to do with eternal life, it has to do with fellowship 

SAM: and we see something similar in James 2, also often misunderstood, but… 

BOB: Three times in 17, 20 and 26, he says what? 

SAM: In 17, “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” In 20, “But do you not know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead.” 

BOB: And 26 also says, 

SAM: Yep, “the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” 

BOB: And all of those can be explained by looking at verses 14 through 16 of James 2, it begins with what does it profit and it ends verse 16 with “what does it profit” and in the Greek it’s ti to ophelos, it can also be translated what good is it, what use is it. So when he says “thus also faith without works is dead,” he means unprofitable, useless, it’s good for nothing. The issue there is not faith without works is not faith, which unfortunately some people take it that way, it means faith without works is unprofitable and he’s not talking about saving faith without works. He’s talking about anything we believe in the Bible without works is unprofitable. For example, if I believe it’s more blessed to give and then receive, but I don’t give. Well, that doesn’t profit me or the person I’m supposed to be giving to, that’s James 2:15-16. 

There’s lots of figurative uses of death and dead in the Scriptures. I encourage you to check it out at faithalone.org. I believe we have some articles on that. Great question, Ruth, and I would encourage all of you to meditate on this important subject and in the meantime let’s keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: do Mormons and lordship evangelicals have different gospels? Please join us and until then let’s keep grace in focus.