Life Within Ourselves

"Life Support" has always fascinated me. I don't really understand it. How can a machine keep a spirit within a body? I get keeping breath inhaling and exhaling, and keeping blood circulating, but how does keeping a physical body alive actually keep the person (body, soul and spirit) alive. Often a doctor will advise the family to remove life support citing the fact that the person is "brain dead." If true, then there is no recovery since the body depends on the brain to live. I guess what confuses me is that we are all on life support from the moment of conception to the moment of death. Jesus said in John 6:53, "Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves." This keeps the Catholics running to Mass each day as surely as a kidney patient stays close to his dialysis center. It is life support.

But, notice Jesus speaks of something called "life in yourselves." What is that? I will admit this touches on two extremely controversial theological topics, i.e. the immortality of the soul and the doctrines of Calvin. Both are very complicated and thorny. For the record let me state that I do not believe in the immortality of every "soul" nor do I believe in the five points of Calvinism as he explains them. But, this short blog spot will not presume to tackle such lofty matters in depth. But, I do want to offer a perspective that might shed some light on this. In John 6:63, Jesus says, "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life."  Regardless of the mechanisms of the life giving process, it is clear, and we all agree, that without the presence of the Spirit of God there is no eternal, immortal life. At some point we go from external life support to a sustained internal life. Regardless of what one thinks about the immortality of the soul, the Bible is clear that there is a second death that we will experience unless we have life within ourselves. (Rev.21:8)

Imagine it this way. We come to the end of the world, or judgment day, or physical death by which we slip over into the other realm (however you want to say it), and we have not believed in Jesus, taking his life into ourselves, having failed to eat true bread and drink of true water. By the way the picture in Romans 6 of baptism has us being raised to newness of life. What happens? Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable (1 Cor.15:50). Since we are triune beings (body, soul and spirit) God must keep us all together in the new realm. This is why Paul tells us about the new spiritual bodies we will exchange for these old and decaying ones. But, the life-force that has maintained these bodies, earthly life rooted in the soul-breath of man which we share with the animals, will not sustain our lives in the new world. Like a man on the moon, we may be sustained for a short time until the oxygen supply runs out, but then we will have no means of life left and we will die. But, if we had "life within ourselves" then we could and would live eternally. Now don't tell me a relationship with Jesus is unimportant. When our current life support plug is pulled, what will we do? Tell your loved ones about this lest at death they merely float off in to space and die.