What Is Man

Very shortly after sending my friend the lesson on “Why Do We Need Salvation” he send me the following note.

Yes, received and thanks!

I still could not understand the diagram attached. I don't understand the meaning of death and eternal life. If you are dead, everything is gone and why still have external life?

His note makes the picture much clearer. Unless God begins a spiritual work in his heart no amount of writing on my part will ever produce spiritual life or even spiritual understanding. As long as my friend is willing to read what I write I must pray and continue to write to him. Following is my response to him.

[Name], I really appreciate you note in response to the lesson on the question, “Why do we need salvation?” I think we need to go back to the beginning again and look at what God created when he created mankind. We have to understand the nature of the first person God created. In fact we must start with the fact that there is a living God who created everything that exist. The amazing complexity of the universe and its contents is impossible without an intelligent designer and creator. Man is so wonderfully made that medical science still does not understand all there is about him. This creator God is eternal and is spiritual. He created us in his image and gave us a physical body to allow us to exist in the physical world. That first man was both a physical and spiritual being that had the ability to live forever.

God’s initial plan for humans was for them to have a loving, obedient relationship with him and partner with him in managing the environment in which man was placed. God did not create a robot designed to love and serve him, but to freely choose to love and serve him. Man chose to turn from God and live life as he wanted. As a result the spiritual part of man died and the horrible results darkened his soul and produced the horrible evil and suffering we experience today. In my diagram the little stick person standing on the left side is spiritually dead but physically alive for a few years. God could have left us in that condition with no hope beyond this physical life, which is what you believe according to your note to me. But because of God’s love he provided a way, through his Son, for us to again obtain spiritual life and live forever with him after physical death. In the diagram Jesus Christ is shown as the bridge from the life you are living now to one that becomes spiritually alive. I know that spiritual life is real because of the change that took place in my life when I was born spiritually as a teen. Since that spiritual birth I have grown spiritually and understand things about spiritual life that are still hidden from you. If you sincerely, humbly ask God to begin a spiritual work in you he will. Then these things I write about will begin to make some sense. 

[Name], think really hard about this and please write back your thoughts.