What does the Bible mean by death?
Ephesians 2 and 4, and what happens when the body dies.
The short answer Settled
Separation. A person can be alive in body and dead toward God, cut off from His life; Paul calls that being dead in trespasses and sins. When the body dies, the spirit leaves it. The last separation, the second death, is taken up in Isn't hell just one place?
Dead while alive
Paul writes to believers about what they once were: "dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world" (). Dead, and walking. These people were not corpses. They made choices, followed their desires, and lived full lives, and Paul still calls them dead.
Then he says what God did: "even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ" (). No bodies were raised from graves that day. God gave life to people who had been walking around dead.
Paul names what that death is. He describes people who live "having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God" (). That is spiritual death: not the end of activity, but being cut off from the life of God while the body goes on. It does not mean God cannot see such a person, or that he is out of God's reach. It means he is cut off from the life that comes from God. A cut flower in a vase can stay bright for days, but it has already been cut off from the root that gave it life.
When the body dies
James uses a plain fact to make a point about faith: "as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also" (). His comparison works because the fact behind it is plain. When the spirit is gone, the body is dead. A glove can keep the shape of a hand, but take the hand out and the glove does nothing at all.
Ecclesiastes describes the parting: "the dust will return to the earth as it was, And the spirit will return to God who gave it" (). Two things that had been together go two ways.
Jesus' last words from the cross were "into Your hands I commit My spirit," and then "He breathed His last" (). Luke names both: the spirit placed in the Father's hands, and the last breath. A breath is not placed in anyone's hands. Stephen, as he was dying, prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (). And when Jesus raised the daughter of Jairus, Luke describes it the other way round: "her spirit returned, and she arose immediately" ().
The usual objection
Many people hold that a person is a body and nothing more. Death, on this view, is the body ceasing to work. When the Bible says the spirit leaves, it means only that breathing stops, since the Hebrew and Greek words for "spirit" can also mean breath or wind. And "dead in trespasses" is a figure of speech, since people who walk and act cannot really be dead.
The words can mean breath, but these passages give the spirit things a breath cannot have. In Ecclesiastes it goes to God while the dust goes to the earth. Jesus commits it into His Father's hands, and Luke then uses a different word for His last breath. Stephen asks the Lord to receive it. And "dead in trespasses" is more than a figure of speech: God's answer to it was to make those people alive together with Christ. The death was real, because the life He gave was real.
The words behind it
| Word | Where | Form | What it shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| ὄντας νεκροὺς ontas nekrous, "who were dead" (Strong's 1510, 3498) | Present participle with adjective | The ordinary word for dead, said of people who were walking. | |
| περιεπατήσατε periepatēsate, "you once walked" (4043) | Aorist active indicative, second plural | The same people, dead and walking. | |
| συνεζῳοποίησεν synezōopoiēsen, "made us alive together with" (4806) | Aorist active indicative | One word: God made them alive together with Christ. | |
| ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι apēllotriōmenoi, "alienated" (526) | Perfect passive participle | Made a stranger to, and remaining so: cut off from the life of God. | |
| χωρὶς πνεύματος chōris pneumatos, "without the spirit" (5565, 4151) | Preposition with noun | Apart from the spirit, the body is dead. | |
| וְהָרוּחַ תָּשׁוּב veharuach tashuv, "and the spirit will return" (7307, 7725) | Noun; Qal imperfect | The same verb, "return," sends the dust to the earth and the spirit to God: two subjects, two places. | |
| παραθήσομαι parathēsomai, "I commit" (3908), and ἐξέπνευσεν exepneusen, "He breathed His last" (1606) | Future middle indicative; aorist active indicative | Two different words: the spirit entrusted, the breath let go. | |
| δέξαι dexai, "receive" (1209) | Aorist middle imperative | A request that someone take something and keep it. |
No textual variants affect the conclusion.
This study checks the Greek Received Text against the Majority Text, and the written Hebrew against its traditional reading. If a difference could change a conclusion, this note explains it. Otherwise it says that none does.