IS MAN IMMORTAL?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 20, 1898

L. A. J. F. Behrends, D.D., in a study on “What Is Man?” in the Christian Work of January 6, says:—

There is another element in the Biblical conception of man, which is hardly another, as it is the implicate of our bearing the image and likeness of God. It is the affirmation of man’s personal immortality. The breath of God can not perish. Moral personality, once conferred, endures forever. The longing for that lies deep in every human soul. Intimations of it have been found in man’s nature by the most earnest of ancient and modern thinkers. It finds expression in every literature, in funeral service, column, and epitaph. But no hunger can create the bread. Darkness broods over these eternal depths in the soul, until the light of God pierces it. Even the Old Testament saints lived in the twilight, finding refuge and rest in the covenant of God. Jesus Christ has brought life and immortality to light by His Gospel of the resurrection.

Where is the Bible affirmation that man is in himself immortal? True, the breath of God gave him life; but when that breath, or spirit, or life returns to God, man dies, the body returns to earth, and the life to God. It came from Him as life; does it go back to Him a personal, conscious, immortal entity? There is nothing in Scripture to affirm it. On the other side, we are told that God is immortal (1 Tim. 1:17), that which we would naturally take for granted; that He “only hath immortality” (1 Tim. 6:16); that Jesus has brought it to man in the Gospel (2 Tim. 1:10); that man should seek for it (Rom. 2:7), an inconsistent thing to do if he already possessed it; that the believers in Christ will put it on, but not until Christ’s coming and the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:51–54).

It is Satan’s falsehood that man shall not, does not die (Gen. 3:3, 4), and it is sad that so many good people have believed it. To say that “moral personality, once conferred, endures forever,” may be to state honest belief, but it is no evidence of truth. God put the longing in the heart of man, that man might seek it through Christ. But belief, nor imagination, nor hunger, can create immortality; Christ only bestows it, and He will at His coming in the resurrection day, bestow the incorruptible body and nature. on the ‘uncorrupted character. That character is possible only through Christ, the only bestower of immortality. It is not to be found within, only as He dwells there by living faith.