Borrowed Life

Public libraries are now loaning out audiobooks through an app called Libby. Although these audiobooks are digital recordings, they are treated like physical copies. This means that there is a limit to how many people can borrow them at any one time.

God gives each person the breath of life, and that breath returns to God at death. However, unlike audiobooks, the Bible verses that speak of the spirit, or breath, treat it as a kind of life force. In other words, the life force is not a conscious or perceiving identity. Instead, it is the power that God infused into Adam’s lifeless body to bring him to life for the first time.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word that is translated “breath” in the Creation account is translated “spirit” at other times. In addition, Solomon gave a clue as to the meaning of the human spirit. He explained that it is something that came from God and returns to Him at death: “The dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Because the Bible does not teach that people’s conscious identities were with God before they were born, there is no reason to think that the spirit in this passage is something other than a life- giving force.

Additionally, Solomon explains that animal spirits may go to a different place after death: “Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth?” (Ecclesiastes 3:21). This difference between the location of animal and human spirits after death also suggests that spirits are not conscious identities. Otherwise, Solomon would be teaching that people and animals are in different places after death. However, there is no verse in the Bible that suggests this.

Apply It:

Return something that you’ve borrowed.

Dig Deeper:

Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20; Psalm 146:4; Job 33:4

Key Bible Texts

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7 KJV)