I had a special insight into this verse a couple of months ago in prayer. The fairly readily apparent meaning is that sin causes spiritual death, and can lead to Hell, which among other things, is the complete absence of love. Yet it seems to me, and presumably to the Holy Spirit, that there is another meaning.
As the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes points out in several memorable turns of phrase, the good and the bad alike all die here. What's the point, if we're going to live, and then we're going to die? But we know that most people are neither all good, or all bad. Most people can find someone somewhere to say something good about them and how they lived when they die.
But if death is not changed or transcended in some way, life is rather pointless, or so it seems. At the best, a life of sin is a pointless life. At worst, it is much worse, because the supernatural judgment where the sentence is a complete lack of love or consolation is almost unimaginably bad.
That's why the people who routinely do acts of love and kindness are those that stick out to us. We know on some level that if the idea of sin actually exists, it involves serving ourselves, rather than serving God and others.
I suppose that after we realize we can do nothing apart from God's grace, the advice we can give ourselves is not to act as if our soul is mortal, as our bodies are mortal. It's a mistake made ultimately only once.
I suppose it is encouraging and intellectually coherent to realize that resurrected and glorified bodies are the logical endpoint of beings with immortal souls that spend most of their time being united to a mortal body.
As the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes points out in several memorable turns of phrase, the good and the bad alike all die here. What's the point, if we're going to live, and then we're going to die? But we know that most people are neither all good, or all bad. Most people can find someone somewhere to say something good about them and how they lived when they die.
But if death is not changed or transcended in some way, life is rather pointless, or so it seems. At the best, a life of sin is a pointless life. At worst, it is much worse, because the supernatural judgment where the sentence is a complete lack of love or consolation is almost unimaginably bad.
That's why the people who routinely do acts of love and kindness are those that stick out to us. We know on some level that if the idea of sin actually exists, it involves serving ourselves, rather than serving God and others.
I suppose that after we realize we can do nothing apart from God's grace, the advice we can give ourselves is not to act as if our soul is mortal, as our bodies are mortal. It's a mistake made ultimately only once.
I suppose it is encouraging and intellectually coherent to realize that resurrected and glorified bodies are the logical endpoint of beings with immortal souls that spend most of their time being united to a mortal body.
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