"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.
"Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." Genesis 22:1
"After these things..." After what things? After all the things of Abraham's life. Isn't that a strange place to assign such a sacrificial test? Normally we would expect that a man would be tested in the beginning of his life - in the years when the sun is rising. Why then is Abraham subjected to such a sacrificial test at sunset? Why has the sacrificial hour been placed at the close of his life? Isn't it normally expected that such test would come in the time when a man's power of sacrifice would be the most accurate measure of him? The simple answer is "No. No it's not."
