Humans die. Here’s why.
The first time we read about death in the bible, it’s in the Adam and Eve story. God tasks the first
Unlike fast-food jobs, Adam was given free rein to eat anything he found growing there. Well, almost anything. One particular tree, you remember, was off limits.
Genesis 2.15-17 KWL - 15 The L
ORD God took the human - and set him in a delightful garden to work it and watch over it.
- 16 The L
ORD God commanded the human, saying, “Eat, eat, from every tree of the garden. - 17 From the knowing-good-and-evil tree: Don’t eat from it.
- For on the day you eat from it, you’ll die, die.”
Ancient Hebrew
No doubt you also know the rest of the story: God’s warnings notwithstanding, the first humans did eat from that tree. That’s the risk inherent in free will: Sometimes people exercise it to do profoundly stupid things. Satan used its free will to go wrong; Adam and Eve did too. And since actions have consequences, they were gonna die, die.
Genesis 3.17-19 KWL - 17 God told the human, “When you heard your woman’s voice,
- you ate from the tree I commanded you about, and said not to eat from it.
- The ground—what you produce from it—is cursed.
- All the days of your life, you’ll eat of in in pain: 18 Thorns and thistles will grow from it.
- You’ll eat the grass of the fields, 19 and eat bread by the sweat of your nose
- till you go back to the ground that you were taken out of:
- You’re dust, and you’ll go back to being dust.”
Humans were meant to live forever. Now we don’t.
Sin is why. Apparently Adam could’ve got hold of the tree of life, eaten of it, and lived forever despite this curse. Which is why God had to boot the humans out of the garden and post angelic guards around it.
That is, till Jesus died for us, and our sins died with him—and now we can go back to living forever.