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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 55. Tracing the Trail
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Tracing the Trail
Now take a thoughtful run through the Book. Do it for yourself. Plainly it is a sheer impossibility to quote the long string of passages. But we can follow the trail of the definition. It is an easy trail to follow. And when one has followed it to the end, another run through brings to one's attention the countless illustrations. The separation of spirit which the definition emphasizes as the crucial thing colors the narrative from end to end.
Now, just a few looks at that trail. Death is separation in one's spirit from God. It affects one's spirit at once, and with a growing intensity. It affects one's body at once, imperceptibly, increasing gradually until it quite loses contact with the human spirit inhabiting it, within certain time limits (Mat_8:22; Luk_15:24; Luk_15:32; Rom_8:6; Eph_2:1; Eph_2:5; Eph_5:14; 1Ti_5:6; Rev_3:1).
Death is the immediate logical outcome of sin. It is not a result of arbitrary action on God's part. Sin is death in the green; death is sin dead ripe. Sin is death begun; death is sin in its final finished shape. Here is the grammar of the verb to sin. Present tense, to sin; first future tense, to suffer; second future tense, death. The verb becomes a noun; the pliable verb a hardened, set noun (Rom_5:12; Rom_6:21; Rom_6:23).
Death does not mean merely bodily death (1Ti_5:6; Rev_3:1; Eph_2:1; Eph_2:5; Eph_5:4), though, of course, it comes to include that. It is not cessation of existence. Spirit never ceases to be. It cannot. The rich man still lived, quite possibly against his will, after his body was dead (Luk_16:19-31). And death is as clearly not being asleep. For spirit never sleeps. The same reference covers that.
Death is not a natural thing. It is unnatural. It is a break in the natural order, and so, being a break, it is a thing painful in itself. It is natural to dread death, and to shrink from it. Death is an enemy, intruding upon a forbidden domain. That word "enemy" sums up the whole case here (1Co_15:16).
Death, from its beginning to its end, passes through three stages. The first stage is the break of spirit with God. It is the rupture of friend-ship or fellowship with Him. Man was made to be God's fellow. And his remaining in that relation depends on his own desire, his choice and action (Gen_2:17, with most of the quotations already made).
God eagerly longs for that fellowship, but only on the level where fellowship belongs, that is, when it is freely given. That's the first stage. It begins at once with the beginning of wrong choice. This is the worst, the most damnable stage, thus far. It is spirit death. It goes to the very roots.
It puts the dry rot of death into the very seed of life. It is death by suicide. The man cuts himself off from the source of his life. It means separation from God, separation of spirit, of heart. This reveals the bigness of what Christ must do when He's allowed to. He has to make a wholly new start (Joh_3:3-6).
The second stage is the thing that bulks so big with us when we speak of death, that is, death of the body. The break between the human spirit and its body becomes complete. That break of spirit with God, working imperceptibly from the moment of the break, now affects the body in the extreme degree.
This is the least part of death. It is the temporary stage. And this stage is for all, believers and others alike, up to the limit of time when Christ comes again. Then there comes a change for those in touch with Him.
There is the third stage. This is the final, the permanent stage. This is not for all. It is only for those who incorrigibly insist in their choice of leaving God and Christ out. It is called "the second death." The first death is that spirit death already mentioned. This is that same first death in its final hardened form (Rev_2:11; Rev_20:6; Rev_20:14; Rev_21:8).