What does the Bible say about death?

The apostle now speaks of a fact which is admitted by all men: "As it is appointed unto men once to die." Solemn word that is! Word uttered in Eden before the fall! "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die," — a word which has found its echo in every sob and grief by the bed of death, from that day to this. Death has reigned from Adam to Moses, and spreads its dark pall everywhere, a solemn witness of the universality of sin. Death has come in because of sin, and there is never a death but is witness to the fact of sin and separation from God. God declared it should be so, and He has carried out inexorably that solemn declaration in the whole history of humanity.

The fact is, so far from the truth are those who judge solely from present experience, that man was naturally made at the outset to live. Death was sin's wages, not then a physiological necessity. God had provided the means for prolonging his life if obedient; but deprived him of that means peremptorily when fallen. For what greater misery, or moral anomaly, than an everlasting life of sin? Death therefore is in no way a debt of nature but of sin; and here we read its knell for each even of those who stood aloof from the evil way of Cain, the ancestors not of Israel only but in due time of the Messiah. Of Adam, so of Seth, Kenai], Mahalaleel, Jared, it was alike said "he died." Now that man is a sinner, it is the one event that happens to all in the seen world; in the unseen there will be another still more solemn. "For it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this judgment" (Heb. 9:27).

In the old creation, man belongs to death. Hence it has been truly said that the very moment man begins to live he begins to die. Solemn fact! Man cannot escape death. “It is appointed to men once to die, and after this the judgment.” There is not so much as a single thing which man possesses in the old creation that will not be wrenched from his grasp by the ruthless hand of death. Death takes everything from him, reduces his body to dust and sends his soul to judgment. Houses, lands, wealth and distinction, fame and influence, all go when the last grim foe approaches. The wealth of the universe, were it in a man's possession, could not purchase one moment's respite. Death strips man of all and bears him away to judgment. The king and the beggar, the peer and the peasant, the learned philosopher and the ignorant clown, the civilized and the savage, are all alike. Death seizes upon all within the limits of the old creation. The grave is the end of man's earthly history, and beyond that the throne of judgment and the Lake of Fire.

As already said, the solemnity of death lies in this, that it is the removal of man as failed out of the scene of his failure — the solemn sentence upon him as unfitted for the place for which he was created. The lower creatures, indeed, have never sinned, — are incapable of it, — yet they die; and men plead, therefore, that death is natural. But they cannot persuade themselves, whose whole nature cries out against it. The scriptural account is, "The wages of sin is death;" and thus, "man, being in honor, abideth not; he is like the beasts that perish" (Ps. 49:12).

What is death? Scripture tells us, “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). It is terrible, unnatural, dreaded, however much it may be camouflaged by terms or softened by its accompaniments.

It is an ancient Eastern Book which alone furnishes the answer. Before ever a death occurred in the world, God made it plain what its nature would be. It is the fruit of man’s disobedience, the direct inevitable result of his fall. God in His wisdom had given every tree in the Garden of Eden to our first parents, but in mercy forbade them to eat of one tree—the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God had plainly said, “Thou shalt not eat of it for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17).

We all know the story. Disobedience entailed death. Death was no puzzle at the first. But man threw off the knowledge of God and lost the light God had given him, and he has consequently been left groping in the dark.

The case of the sinner is here stated (verse 12), not on the moral evidence of personal evil, but on the decisive testimony of death. Death is God's pervading and irrefragable witness of the presence, in and throughout the world, of that which produced it, even sin. "Sin entered into the world, and death by sin." But the means of this entrance of sin are immediately stated. It was "by one man." Adam died by the direct sentence of God pronounced upon his transgression. Mankind die because born of one who was himself mortal as thus judged. But death is not derived to the posterity of Adam, merely as an effect of his mortal condition, but as a consequence of his sinful nature. Sin, having taken hold on Adam, vitiated utterly the nature in which it lodged. And so it is sail that death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.* Death is never separable from sin. The participation, therefore, of a sinful nature, produces death as its necessary effect. Sin, having found entrance and lodgment in the nature of Adam, did not vacate the world at the death of the first transgressor. It remained in the nature which reproduced itself in Adam's seed. It was in the world (verse 13), antecedently to the Law.

Many souls are greatly perplexed who find, though they believe their sins are forgiven, yet they find the root, sin, in the flesh. Much of this confusion arises from want of carefully noticing the distinction between sins and sin, as in this epistle. As we have seen, verse 11 closes the question of sins. Verse 12 takes up sin. “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Thus there are two proofs of the origin of evil: sin entered into the world by one man. Of the whole race of mankind, all sin, and all die. What absolute consistency in the word of God, and with facts! And this has been found to be the case, whether man was placed under law, or without law. After sin had come in, and man fell, the law was not given for two thousand five hundred years. “For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed [or, put to account] when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.” (Vers. 13, 14) That is, they had not transgressed a given law; yet there was death, the proof that sin was there. Sin and death then came into the world by its head, Adam. Death, then, is not merely the penalty of a broken law; but sin having once come in, death is its result; or, as expressed in the word, “The wages of sin is death.” Now, in contrast with what came in by the creature’s sin, the first head — sin and death — God is pleased to reveal to us what has come in for a new race by the gift of His own Son — righteousness and life. Only the infinite gift must abound over the finite, dreadful as has been the result of that creature’s sin. God could not, in His free favour to us, give a gift that would come short of our need. Hence, the care of the Holy Ghost to show us how that gift of free favour has abounded over the sin; the root of evil, and death, that came in by Adam. “But not as the offence, so also is the free gift [the act of favour]. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one Man — Jesus Christ — has abounded to many.” (Ver. 15.) No doubt the effect of the offence of Adam’s sin on the many, even all his posterity, is great and terrible; and we all belonged to that “many.” Death passed upon all men. Yet if we have passed from death to life in the risen Head of the new creation, we have now to see how the grace of God, and the gift, by grace, by One — Jesus Christ — has abounded to the many in Him.

(V. 12). The passage opens by tracing all the sorrows that have come into this world to one man — Adam. Through Adam's act of disobedience sin came into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all Adam's race. The outcome of "sin" must be sins, but it is of "sin" that the Apostle more especially speaks in this portion of the Epistle. In chapters 1, to 5:11, the word sin occurs but twice; in this division. 5:12 to 8, it occurs thirty-four times. "Sin" is the evil principle of "lawlessness", or the creature doing his own will. This evil principle entered the world. through Adam's one act of disobedience. Death followed as the penalty of sin. Sins can be forgiven; but "sin", the evil principle which leads to sins, can only be met by death that brings to an end the life governed by sin. Therefore the penalty of sin is death. Thus the death penalty passed upon all Adam's race. That all have come under the evil principle of sin is proved by the fact that all have sinned. The bad fruit shows the character of the tree. So the Apostle says, "Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned".

“The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” There was first the figure of clay, formed of the dust, concerning which it is written—“Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19). Into this lifeless form, God inbreathed “the breath of life.” The body is spoken of in Scripture as man's “tabernacle,” which he may “put off” (2 Pet. 1:14), in which he may be “at home” (2 Cor. 5:6), or from which he may be “absent” (v. 8). It is said to be “mortal” (Rom. 8:11 ), that is, subject to death, as a result of the fall. Men may kill it (Matt. 10:28 ), and it may see corruption (Acts 13:36 ), from which it will be delivered at resurrection (John 5:28 -29). Materialists say the body is the man, ignoring spirit and soul as Scripture describes them and their functions, and denying consciousness or any survival after death. With Annihilationists, death is the “extinction” of man's being.