"For as the body without the spirit is dead..." James 2:26
Can anybody give a definition of death? Does the Bible tell us exactly what it is? Yes. In fact, in the words before us we have what is surely the simplest, shortest, most straight forward definition of death to be found anywhere. James tells us that death is the body without the spirit. What a wonderful explanation. James doesn't say that death means that the life of the body is extinguished, not at all. It is simply that the life is absent - it's away. The body is
without the spirit. This verse doesn't tell us that to die means that the spirit is without a body. Or, to put it another way, that the spirit without the body is dead. Absolutely not. The spirit can not die. It doesn't matter if it is on the inside or the outside of the body.
Tomorrow evening I will fly out of Greenville to attend the 2011 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Phoenix. I'm not really sure how many of these meetings I've attended in my lifetime, but it's probably safe to say that it's been more than a few. As I have thought about this year's convention, I have been overwhelmed with mixed emotions. While I deeply love and am committed to being a Southern Baptist, I am increasingly concerned about many of the things that I see transpiring in our denomination.
