A body without a spirit is just a shell of a person; it is a dead body. When a person dies, his/her spirit departs from the body, and the body is no longer able to sustain life. It is a corpse. Jesus came to give us life and life more abundantly (John 10:10). When God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil lest they die (Genesis 2:17), it wasn’t a metaphoric statement of dying. All humanity became a shell of existence—no longer fully living, as the Spirit of God no longer dwelt in us.
Jesus said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). We are dead without Christ. However, we come alive when we come to know Christ. This is why it is said that we are “born again” (John 3:3-7). We receive new life - a hew Spirit - when we accept Christ. And even Paul called the early Christian “babes” in Christ who needed to mature (I Corinthians 3:1-2) because we are born again, starting afresh, given new life by the Holy Spirit.
As a follower of Christ, it is also why Paul says, “It is not I who lives but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20). We literally are the Body of Christ. We host the Spirit of God. Otherwise, we are merely shells of existence (sadly like much of the world). We must deny the flesh and live as new creations. Christ is our Life. He lives on earth through us by His Spirit.
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