A Most Important Message!
Human beings have a spirit, a soul, and a body.
Scripture teaches that God formed man from the dust
of the ground and then breathed into him the breath
of life (Gen. 2:7). That breath was spiritual
because the Bible tells us that God is Spirit (John
4:24); therefore, what God breathed into Adam was
spiritual. However, that spiritual breath only gave
natural life. Unlike the material universe, the
spiritual realm cannot be comprehended by the
soulish mind of mankind. Yet we can observe that all
natural life is animated by an unseen and unknowable
force—what Scripture identifies as the breath of
God.
Moses wrote that when God breathed this spiritual
breath into Adam, he became a living soul. However,
the Bible never states that Adam became a living,
self-aware spirit. In fact, the weight of scriptural
evidence suggests that God did not endow mankind at
creation with a fully formed, self-aware spiritual
person capable of independent choice. Adam received
the spiritual breath of God, but not a complete
spiritual personhood. At creation, it was Adam’s
soul alone that possessed self-awareness, rational
thought, and the ability to choose.
If Adam had been given a fully developed spiritual
person at creation, the Tree of Life would have been
unnecessary. Furthermore, Jesus’ teaching on the
need to be “born of the Spirit” would make little
sense if humanity were already born of the Spirit.
When speaking with Nicodemus, Jesus clearly
distinguished between two births: a natural birth
and a spiritual birth (John 3:5). Adam did receive a
spirit at creation, but it was God's breath, which
the Bible says returns to Him when our bodies die.
When the body dies, Solomon states in Ecclesiastes
12:7 that man's spirit returns to God.
Additional evidence for my supposition appears after
the Fall. Following Adam’s sin, the Godhead realized
that Adam must not be allowed to eat from the Tree
of Life because he would then live forever in his
fallen state (Gen. 3:22). This raises an important
question: why would eating from the Tree of Life
cause Adam to live forever in sin? The only logical
implication is that the Tree of Life would give
birth to Adam's hitherto unborn spirit, but would
not provide redemption from sin. Adam would become
like angels who sin, who seem to have no possibility
of redemption. This line of reasoning is consistent
with the statement in John 14:6, which says that
Jesus is the only way to come to the Father, meaning
God himself. The Bible also makes it clear that no
sin or sinner can enter into the Kingdom of God.
God knows everything, so God knew that Adam was
going to sin before he created him. That's why God
made him a little lower than the angels, with a
living, self-aware soul and an earthly body, but no
self-aware spirit. God knew He would, in time, give
Adam a new spirit, joined to the redemptive Spirit
of Jesus Christ, producing a new creature. (2 Cor.
5:17) This new creature could never be touched by
sin. The Tree of Life would have brought Adam’s
spiritual person into being. However, because the
Tree of Life had no redemptive power, Adam would
have lived forever in his sinful state just as the
angels live forever in their sin.
It is also significant that Scripture never states
that the human spirit goes to Hell. Solomon says the
spirit returns to God at death (Eccl. 12:7). Jesus
taught that it is the soul that can be destroyed in
Hell, not the spirit (Matt. 10:28). Nowhere does
Scripture explicitly state that the human spirit is
corrupted by sin or condemned. On the contrary, the
evidence suggests that Adam’s spirit could not sin
because it was not yet a self-aware personage
capable of making moral judgements. If Adam had
possessed such a spirit from the beginning, the Tree
of Life would have served no purpose.
Although Scripture does not fully explain the Tree
of Life, it appears reasonable to conclude that it
existed to give Adam the opportunity to exercise
free will at the spiritual level. Had Adam become
like the angels, there would have been no redemption
for humanity after sin. Instead, redemption is made
available through Christ. Being born of Christ’s
Spirit provides cleansing for all sin—past, present,
and future (1 John 1:7).
When we confess Jesus Christ as Lord (Rom. 10:9), we
become fully formed, self-aware spiritual
persons—the “new man.” This new man is created in
righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4:24). God
seals our newborn spirit with His Holy Spirit until
the day of redemption (Eph. 1:13; 1 Pet. 1:23; 1
John 3:9). Sin cannot touch this new spirit, though
it can still affect the soul, which must be
continually sanctified during our earthly lives.
That sanctification is completed at the judgment
seat of Christ (1 Thess. 5:8).
In salvation, God gives us a new heart and removes
the old, stony one (Ezek. 36:26; 2 Cor. 1:21–22).
This new heart is the seat of the soul and a core
component of the believer’s personality. It
communicates directly with the new spirit through
the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit. Through
this “beachhead” of the soul, the Holy Spirit leads
us to take every thought captive in obedience to
Christ (2 Cor. 10:5).