“… and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”
(Ecclesiastes 12:7)
God created man from the dust of the ground, but that man of dust was not alive until God breathed life into him. At that point, man became a “living soul,” (Gen. 2:7). God is life – life-giving and life everlasting. He is the creator and sustainer of life, giving unending life to souls that originate from Him.
This explains why when we die, our physical bodies return to dust from whence they came (Gen. 3:19), but our soul, or “life-breath” (Isa. 42:5, Job 33:4) does not cease to exist. Rather, it returns to realm of the God who gave it. As William Gouge said, “It is God who is described as the Father of spirits, in opposition to fathers of our flesh. He creates immediately from Himself that part of man which is called spirit (Gen. 2:7; Eccl. 12:7).” This spirit lives forever.
It is God’s desire that His creatures live forever. This truth was affirmed initially by the covenant of works God made with Adam. In essence, had Adam and Eve lived in perfect obedience to the law God laid down for them, death would never have entered the picture. They would have lived forever in a state of perfection in the Garden of Eden.
Nevertheless, God ordained the course of creation in eternity past, so once Adam and Eve sinned and by that sin introduced death into the world, God’s covenant of grace came to light in Jesus Christ. By grace, through the substitutionary death and resurrection of His Son, God destroyed death once and for all, reopening the door for man to live with Him in eternity.
Life here is fleeting (Ps. 144:4, James 4:14), but Scripture plainly teaches that death of this body of dust is not the end of our existence. When a believer receives Christ into his or her heart as Lord and Savior, at that moment God imparts a blessed eternal life to them (2 Tim. 1:10, John 17:3), because God is Spirit and the Father of spirits. Said another way, God is life and He granted the life He has in Himself to His Son (John 5:26)… so that “whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life,” (1 John 5:12). The plight of the unbeliever is that he too has an eternal spirit, but if he does not receive Jesus Christ as Savior, he will not have eternal life, but eternal death forever.
God gives us life and breath not only here, but hereafter. That is, He grants us eternal life through His Spirit and His Son, Jesus Christ, that we might adore God all our days and ascribe the glory of His work of creating souls to the Father of spirits alone (Deut. 32:39).
- Lord, You are my Father, the Father of my spirit. In this You are the Author of my being, as I am formed in Your likeness, in Your image. I am also born again by Your Spirit and adopted into Your family. I am Your child by regeneration and adoption.
- It is a blessing to know that I am not like the beasts You created. I know that I am created in Your image, and that man is the only aspect of creation adorned with that attribution. You are life itself, and the giver of life. You are the Father of all spirits, and I adore You for giving me life.
- Lord, You made man from the dust. You gave life to man that you created. For this reason, You are the only one who can save man from death. “Salvation is of the LORD,” (Jonah 2:9). We cannot save ourselves, for You are the Father of spirits, the Father of life everlasting.
Further References for Eccl. 12:7
Eccl. 3:20; Gen. 2:7; Job 34:15; Zech. 12:1; Ps. 103:14; Num. 16:22; Heb. 12:9
