***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: . . . witnesses that the follower of Christ can ever give, and it is one of the greatest parts of the peace of the child of God. Jesus came to deliver those who through fear of death were all of their lives long subject to bondage, and the greatest bondage in human life in general is the fear of death. That is that great force by which human society and government as we know it is organized. If you take away the threat of death, human government is not possible. I’m not just talking about capital punishment. I’m talking about war and all of the instrumentalities of death which pervade the fallen world. And I say that if you take away the fear of death, human government is not possible. And that indeed is a large part of what will bring an end ultimately to human government, because you know it will end. For us who live today, we can know a complete and utter release from the fear of death. You can know that. I can know that. And we can lead others into that same knowledge.
Now all of us are going to go through what is called death unless we live until that time when Christ returns in a way which will transform us without death. All of us will know death. But he is not an enemy. He is a friend. Saint Francis of Assisi closes his great hymn with the words, O thou most kind and gentle death, waiting to take our latest breath. O praise him, hallelujah. Thou bringest home the child of God, and Christ himself the way has trod. O praise him, hallelujah.
I want us to look at some scriptures this evening which bear upon the topic of death and which amount to simply a denial of death for those who have placed their lives in the hands of Christ. First of all, in the Gospel of John, the 11th chapter, we find Jesus in a situation where one whom he loved had died. And he comes purposively late into this home in order that his friends might better know the power of God over death. And when he comes, Lazarus is dead, as the 14th verse says, and he has been dead for some days. But when Jesus comes in the 20th verse, Martha runs to meet him while Mary sits still in the house. These are the sisters of Lazarus, the man who died. Then said Martha unto Jesus, 21st verse, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now what soever thou wilt ask of God, God will give thee. And Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. And Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. And Jesus saith unto her, I am the resurrection, I am the life. He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And now notice this 26th verse, and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die. Believest thou this? And I say to you, believeth thou this? Do you live? I’m sure you do. You look like it. And do you believe on Jesus? I’m sure that most of you do. Then don’t plan to die. Don’t plan to die.
In 2 Timothy, the first chapter, Paul is talking as he is always about his ministry, and he is telling Timothy some things about how to carry on as a minister. And he is in a position where he knows that very soon he will literally lose his head. But he doesn’t plan to die. And he says here in the 8th verse of the first chapter of 2 Timothy, Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but be thou the partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God, who hath saved us and called us within holy calling, not according to our works. That’s crucial now, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace. There’s something else at work here in Paul and in Timothy and in the ministry and in the church than the works of man. According to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Jesus Christ, in Christ Jesus, before the world began. That’s very important to see this larger context, now within that larger context, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death. Who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. Before Jesus Christ came into this world, people did not know what life was. He came into the world and made clear what life was and therefore what immortality was and abolished death. He did away with it. He that liveth and believeth on me shall never die.
Now, it is important for us to try to understand exactly what these words of Paul mean. He’s not playing a word game. He’s not whistling in the dark. He is trying to tell us something about the nature of human beings first, and secondly, the nature of the born again believer. Now in these past two Sunday evenings I have been talking about the life of the Spirit. I’ve spoken about the gifts of the Spirit, and I’ve spoken about the fruit of the Spirit. These are the two main dimensions which stand out in such a way that they can be separated and analyzed and discussed. They are not, of course, separable in the sense that you can take them apart and have the one without the other. You cannot. They don’t function without one another well. But they are two dimensions of a life which is raised above the natural. And what Jesus is saying here is, and what Paul is saying here is, when we understand human nature, we understand that death, as it is understood by fallen human beings, does not exist. There is no such thing as death. Death is viewed as an end. Death is viewed as a separation. Death is viewed as a disaster. Death is viewed as a tragedy. And let me tell you that as you stand in the full understanding of the gospel of Christ, about the kingdom of God and the life of the Spirit, you cannot believe any of those things about death. They’re not true.
Now let’s begin at the beginning. And the beginning, of course, is Genesis, isn’t it? So let’s turn to Genesis 2.7. In Genesis 2.7 we have the culmination of the creative work of God so far as the natural order of this world is concerned. There has been a description of the way in which various forms of matter and life came into existence. In the beginning, of course, God said, let there be light. He’s not talking about what you see in itself. He’s talking about all those many forms of energy which constitute matter. And also, of course, those forms of energy which make matter visible, wood, bodies, things of that sort, are made visible to the human eye by a form of energy which we call light. But ordinary visible light is only one small portion of that vast range of energy which constitutes our radio waves, x-rays, all kinds of waves and rays which are familiar to scientists. And that’s the first move of God to create those things. And then he goes along in his way whatever it may have been to complicate that and to create worlds and to create the sun and the moon and the earth. And then from the earth he calls forth life. He commands the waters to bring forth life. He commands the earth to bring forth life.
And then we come in verse 6 or verse 5. And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. So we have a world which is without human beings. There went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground, and the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground. Now, would you please not tell the Lord how he did that? A lot of people have an image that he got down and made a rather large mud baby and then got down over the mud baby and gave it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. And all of a sudden it came to life kind of like some sort of muddy Frankenstein and started waddling around. Now, you don’t know how the Lord formed man out of the dust of the earth. You remember that? You don’t know how he did that. I don’t know how he did that. He hasn’t seen fit to tell us. You want to remember that when you’re arguing with people about evolution. Because if you aren’t careful, you may get drawn into an argument about how God did it. The important thing that is at issue between what many people present as evolution and the theistic view of creation is not how God did whatever he did with reference to the dust of the earth, but whether or not God performed a specific act of creation to bring forth man. See, that’s the issue. And upon that issue, the scriptures are very plain.
And we have here in this verse, God formed a man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Now, don’t you believe that that’s oxygen he’s talking about? The breath of life is not oxygen. The breath of life is something more like soul or spirit. And God breathed into him a special principle, which the man didn’t get from a monkey or a rat or anything else, got it from God. And man became a living soul.
So now, what do we have? We have man which is formed from the dust of the earth. But he’s not just dust of the earth, you see. Man is a living soul. But you see, God’s creative work was not finished there. And we have to understand that the creative work of God is inextricably connected with his redemptive work. And let me read you just a verse from 1 Corinthians 15, tying right in with Genesis 2.7. Genesis 2.7 says that God breathed into man the breath of life and man became a living soul. Now, look at verse 45 of 1 Corinthians 15. Excuse me. The first man, Adam, was made a living soul. Well, now we’ve already heard that, haven’t we? We know where that came from. The last Adam was made a life-giving spirit.
Soul and spirit are not the same thing. Soul is, to put it in general terms, soul is the principle of natural organic life. Soul is the principle of natural organic life. Soul explains why you have the shape you have. It explains why you are male or female. It explains why your body is of a certain color, a certain weight, a certain chemical structure, not so. Now, the principle of life that goes all the way down the line among living things is soul. It is the principle of life which organizes matter in such a way that it exhibits things like growth, reproduction, nutrition, local movement.
Back in the third chapter of Genesis, the same word that is used to refer to Adam as a living soul is used to refer to the living creatures which come before Adam to get their names. Soul is a principle which is common within all of God’s creation where there is organic life. Now, you think creation is not alive. Well, I’ll tell you, it is alive. It expresses the creative power of God, and that’s why, for example, in the eighth chapter of Romans, all creation is groaning, waiting for the sons of God to be made manifest. God cares for all of these things on the face of your bulletin as Bob or Mark, I think it was, pointed out to us this morning. There is a lion with a lamb. Now do you believe that when Isaiah says the lion will lay down with the lamb, he’s just talking poetry? No, he’s not talking poetry. He’s talking about a change that is going to come through all of bloodthirsty, normal life as we know it. Whenever the sons of God, the children of God, are revealed.
But you see, there’s much more to man than there is to an animal. When God breathed into man the breath of light, the spirit of light, he gave life. He created a living soul. But just as he quickened into natural life the form of Adam, and just as he gave it the human form that we know as natural human existence, that same quickening spirit came in another form in the Son of God. It came to give a different level of life, a life according to the spirit. And it is that life and immortality that Jesus brought to light through the gospel when he abolished death. Because when he abolished death, he simply showed life on a spiritual plane which knows no death. He made clear that the possibilities of human nature are. He revived in man the image of God, and that image is spiritual, for God is spirit.
Now, I want to go ahead right at this point and just say, I don’t mean to say to you that people are non-bodily. I’m going to read in a moment again out of the fifth chapter of 2 Corinthians trying to explain just how the spiritual body works. But I want to say to you, remember just because the only kind of body we know is this sort of flesh and blood thing we carry around, that doesn’t mean that it’s the only kind of body there is. For Paul says, there is a spiritual body. And when Jesus was raised from the dead, his body was not just the same old flesh and blood body that he had. For Paul again says, flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
Now it is, I think, an accepted view among Christian theologians today of very widely differing persuasions, that the view taught about the afterlife in the scriptures is one of the resurrection of the body, not of the simple immortality of the soul. That is to say, we are not mere spirits. We’re not mere spirits. We are spirits with a body. And that is true both in this life and in the afterlife.
But now here comes the great divide. And this comes when we begin to ask ourselves, how do we know that there is such a spiritual life here in this world, such that we can become so used to it and so acclimated to it, that death will be nothing. And we know that. What makes us sure that when we look at the nature of man and we say, well, at this level, he’s a body. All of you are bodies. You’re seated in a particular place in the room. But you’re not just bodies. You’re also alive. Your bodies are functioning. Your heart is beating. Your brain is functioning. You’re breathing. Blood is circulating. You have a vital principle in you, which is your soul. But now you see, this is what we must understand when we ask how do we know that there is anything more to us than that. There is a third level of you. There is a third level, which Jesus Christ came in the world not only to tell you about, but to make real in you and me. And that is the level of the Spirit. And the level of the Spirit is a new level of power, which you can actually come to exercise independently of your body.
Let me just stop you a moment. This is all very theoretical and I’m very difficult to follow. And so let me just put it to you this way. Can you do anything without using your body? If you believe you can’t, then you still have yet to be introduced to the life of the Spirit. If you believe you can, then you are looking to the life of the Spirit. Last time I mentioned the case of Abraham and Sarah, and I pointed out that they could not have a child by using their bodies. There was something else that had to come into play, and that’s why Paul says that Isaac is a son or child of the Spirit.
Now you can do something without your body. Let me be clear and simple in illustrating this. You can pray without your body. You can pray with your mind. And you can make things happen at the spiritual level through prayer. Now that’s a very simple illustration. The more complex illustrations involve things such as you see in the life of Jesus, where he does things simply by the authority of his person. You remember that when he raises Lazarus from the dead, he says that he speaks out loud and causes something to happen for the benefit of those who are standing by. He didn’t have to do that to make Lazarus rise from the dead. He could have simply done that at the level of the Spirit without doing anything bodily.
Now the real question before us as Christians when we begin to understand that Jesus came to bring life on a different plane, one where if we identify with it, we will know the truth of his saying, He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die. We will have moved ourselves from the plane of the flesh to the plane of the Spirit. And our knowledge of the reality of spiritual force will be the sure sign to us that death is nothing. Body? Yes. Soul? Yes. Spirit? Yes. You see, before we can overcome our fear of death, we must come to understand the reality of the Spirit. And that is something we come to understand by a life given to the Spirit.
Paul says in Romans 8 these words, verse 5, For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death. If you wish to die, then fill your mind only with what belongs in the natural powers of natural life. But to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Now Paul knew so well the reality of this that he had utter confidence that whether he was in the body or not out of the body, or out of the body, made absolutely no difference. You see, Paul knew what the new birth was. The new birth is precisely the effect of that quickening Spirit which the second Adam is. The new birth is, as John’s Gospel puts it, a birth from above. Now the old version says born again. And that’s alright, as long as we understand where the birth came from. In 1 Peter 1.23 we read that we are born again, or regenerated, by the Word of God. The Word of God is the manner in which our minds are quickened to a new level of reality. The Word of God is the Spirit of God, John 6.63 tells us. That’s how we’re born again. I’m so anxious to stress to you, we’re not born by making a decision. The new birth is not a decision any more than your old birth was a decision. You didn’t decide to be born, did you? There isn’t a person here who decided to be born. The new birth, the birth from above, is not a decision. It’s not a resolve. It is the effect of the creative Word of God. And it enters our mind and it puts us in touch with a new level of reality.
And that new birth is what Paul calls the earnest of the Spirit. It is a new life. But you see, Paul did not stop there. Paul’s whole life was given to a cultivation of his spiritual powers by the grace of God. And that’s the Paul that is speaking in 2 Corinthians 5 where we read a moment ago. Paul knows this business about the varying levels of life and reality. He knows how there is in man the body. He knows there is the soul and he knows there is the Spirit. And he has decided to live at the spiritual level. His life is a rich panoply of fruits and gifts of the Spirit. He has no doubt whatsoever that God is an ever-present help in time of trouble, as the psalm says, and also an ever-present help in times when there is no trouble. He lives by the Spirit. He knows the presence of God in his life.
Now then, remember that when you read, for we know, verse 1 of chapter 5 of 2 Corinthians. So we know, we know that if the earthly house of this tabernacle, this tent, what is he talking about? He’s talking about the fleshly body. He says, we know that if it is dissolved, we have a building of God and a house not made with heaven with hands, eternal in the heavens. If this old house, as the song goes, is taken away, we have another house.
Now, we groan in this body. You ever groan in this body? A lot of groaning goes on. We find this body as much sometimes a burden, as a blessing. This body is not really all that commodious and nice to have. This body makes us vulnerable to all of the ills to which flesh is air, as the poet says. This body makes you tremble before cancer. It makes you ache before cold. It makes you locatable by the tax collector. You just think, if you didn’t have a body, I mean, how would they collect taxes from you? They can come and get you because you have a body. We groan. We can put you in prison because you have a body. We groan earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven. We want a spiritual body. A spiritual way of acting and living is what we want.
Paul, in the third verse, expresses something of the horror of death because he says, we don’t want to be found naked. He’s not talking about physical nakedness. He’s talking about being in a position where you’d be totally isolated and cut off from everything because you have no way of reaching them, no way of affecting them, no power, no way of touching them. You’re saying, we don’t want to be without a body. It isn’t that. We want a body, but we want a heavenly body. And what does that heavenly body consist in? It consists simply in the spiritual powers which we learn as children of God in the kingdom of God to exercise. The spiritual power to communicate and to do the work of God and to express a loving heart towards others. That body is not something invisible. It’s visible. That body is cast in the model of Jesus’ resurrection body. And that’s what Paul is saying, oh, to be clothed upon with our body which is from heaven.
For we that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened, not that we should be unclothed, but clothed upon that mortality might be swallowed up in life. Now he that hath wrought us for the self same thing is God. Now watch that verse. You see, he’s saying, there is built into us a desire for a different kind of body, a spiritual body. God has made us for that kind of body. And while we are in this stage of transition, he has given us the earnest of the Spirit. What is an earnest? Well, an earnest is something which shows us that God is in earnest. He’s not fooling around. It is a kind of down payment. It is something which is given to us to show the seriousness of God in bringing us into our new house. What is that earnest? It is nothing but the spiritual reality that comes with the new birth and that grows in the gifts and in the fruits of the Spirit. And more and more as these grow, we are clothed upon with immortality and life. More and more our mortality is put off. The old man is put off. The old man of the flesh and the new man of Christ, the new man of the Spirit, is put on as we come to live by the gifts and the fruits of the Spirit.
Now then, look at Paul’s confidence. This is a thrilling verse. Therefore we are always confident. Why is he confident? Because the fear of death is so completely removed from him and because his knowledge of God is so firm based upon day to day to day existence that he knows any lack of confidence is unwarranted. Therefore we are always confident. That’s for you and that’s for me. That’s the gift to the child of God, always confident. We are always confident knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. For, he admits, we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.
Do you know what I am most anxious to say to you now is simply that Paul, this for Paul was a simple statement of his constant attitude. This is the Paul who could say, for me to live is Christ, to die is gain. And it is because for him to live was Christ, that to die was only gain. You may have many plans which you would not like to see lost. You may have many projects which you would like to carry on. You might not like to leave the comfortable confines of your flesh. And I don’t mean to say when I say death should hold and can hold no fears for the believer, I don’t mean to say it is not exciting. It would be exciting. If it is exciting to get on the great white knuckler and ride it around a few curves, it would surely be exciting to go from this world into the next. But we mustn’t confuse excitement with fear.
And above all, we must understand that what we call death is nothing but a doorway into greater and more ample life for those who have learned the walk of the Spirit and who have put on the new man, the man of the Spirit, here and now, and know by experience the constant companionship of the power of God. You see, one of the great secrets of the spiritual life is that all of our action and interaction with other persons is through the cooperation of God. And in that world to which we go, there is such a close relationship between God, the Father of all spirits, and every individual spirit that there’s not a single action from one person to another which is not mediated through the presence of God. It is God who constitutes the spiritual body. It is God who gives us everlasting eternal life. And as he does so, he abolishes death.
I challenge you to think this through until it comes to be a part of your mind. I know what it is to fear death. I know as a child how I feared death. I remember so many years of struggling with this. But I know also we can be free from that, and we can be completely at rest in the reality of God if we open ourselves to the influences of his Spirit. And day by day, where we are at work teaching, working at a lathe, at a service station, at a kitchen table, wherever we may work and where we may live and play, if in those places we are open to the reality of the Spirit, then we can know, as Paul knows, that if our earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building of God and house not made with hands, eternal in the heaven. The fear of death is gone. There is nothing but the sweet will of God to live in in this world and in the next. There’s no fear of loss. There is a confidence in God’s care for you and for all of those around you. And although there may be sorrow at parting, after all, there is sorrow when a friend gets on a bus and goes to the next city for three months. And that’s normal, and that’s not what I’m talking about. All of the morbid fear and the excessive concern which dominates the mind of the natural person are completely done away with in the new confidence of the reality of the spiritual world.
We’re going to sing now a number, number 261. If there is anyone here this evening who does not know the reality of which I’ve spoken, this is a time when you can come forward. There are those here who would be glad to try to help you find your way into contact with this world where death is abolished.