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What are human beings?
Ecclesiastes 12:7
What are human beings? Now that maybe seems like a very strange question. After all, anybody asking that question should know, right? After all, don’t only human beings ask the question, what are human beings? We should be able to tell each other what we are from our own experience. Yet I think it’s a very important question for us to ask, because people have different opinions, different ideas on this topic of what a human being is.
There are the materialists, people that say that we’re basically just a big clump of cells with these electro chemical pulses that happen in our body that cause us to move, that causes us to think and cause us to have sensations and feelings and that sort of thing. But then what happens when you die? Well, such people would say that once you cease to live any longer, once those electro chemicals stop, well, then you’re dead. And that’s it. No more. There’s no more you. Right?
Then there’s kind of another train of thought that believes that there is both the material part of a human being, but also an immaterial part, sometimes referred to as a spirit or soul. And that’s really what the Bible tells us concerning human beings, that we are both body and soul. I think of one place in Scripture that we see this is recorded in Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verse seven, as it speaks concerning one who has died. As it talks about the body.
The dust goes back into the ground—just as it was before, and the spirit goes back to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:7)
The passage talks about that when a Christian dies, their body is buried in the ground. It returns to the dust. And we hear in Genesis chapter one that our bodies, human being, bodies, were made from dust, but the soul or the spirit returns to God who gave it. It says that there’s part of us that remains even beyond death. And isn’t that good news to hear? To know that there is a part of us that remains even after we die. You know, think about how tragic it is to think in those other terms of the materialistic way of thinking that when you’re dead, you’re dead, and that’s it. That means that you never again can see a loved one who has died. That’s it. They’re gone forever.
But the Bible tells us very differently. The Bible tells us that isn’t the end. The Bible tells us, furthermore, that those that die trusting in their Savior, Jesus Christ, their soul, doesn’t just go to be with God for a time. But on the last day, we’ll be reunited with the body. They will be a whole human being once again, both body and soul. To live with God in a perfect place called heaven. And we can see them there again, too, trusting in that same Savior, Jesus Christ and what he has done for us. We can know that we will not end up in hell forever because of our sins, but rather because of what Christ has done for us. We will live with him, both body and soul, with all other believers in Christ for all eternity.
So that’s some good news for us, especially as we consider what human beings are. Let us not just understand human beings are both body and soul, but more importantly, let us trust the Savior that gives us eternal life, both body and soul, forever in heaven. Amen.
