What Are We Made Of?
Ask a hundred people what a human being is and you will hear many answers. Some say you are only a body, a brain made of chemicals. Others say you are a spirit trapped in a body, waiting to escape. Scripture says neither.
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 (Genesis 2:7). You are dust and breath: a body God shaped and a life God breathed. You are not a soul that happens to have a body, or a body that happens to have a soul. You are one person, made for embodied life before God.
This truth reaches into ordinary life. It tells you why your body matters to God, why worship engages every part of you, and why sorrow can weigh on body and spirit at once. It tells you what happens when you die. And it gives you hope at every graveside: death parts body and soul for a while, but Christ will raise the body and make the whole person new.
When someone you love dies, where is he, and what will become of the body you buried?
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For Deeper Study
- The Tripartite Nature of Man: Spirit, Soul, and BodyAmazon J. B. HeardA nineteenth-century defense of the three-part view from Scripture, with chapters on the new birth, the state after death, and the spiritual body.
- Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism DebateAmazon John W. CooperReformed. A careful case from Scripture for the soul's conscious existence between death and resurrection, against views that we are only physical.
- Body & Soul: Human Nature & the Crisis in EthicsAmazon J. P. Moreland and Scott B. RaeDefends the reality of the soul against physicalism and shows what is at stake for questions of life and death.
- Two Views of Hell: A Biblical & Theological DialogueAmazon Edward William Fudge and Robert A. PetersonFudge argues for annihilationism and Peterson for everlasting punishment, each answering the other. Peterson's case is the one taught here.
- HeavenAmazon Randy AlcornA popular, Scripture-filled study of the intermediate state, the resurrection body, and the new earth.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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The Image of God
Every human being is made in the image of God: marred by sin but not erased, and restored in Christ, the image of the invisible God.
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