Ecclesiastes 12:7

"The preacher," speaking of death, also refers to the two parts of man — the material and the spiritual. He says, "and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Elihu refers to the material and the spiritual too. Speaking of God, he says, "If He set His heart on man, if He gathered to Himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust" (Job 34:14-15). This Scripture gives us further light, because the spirit is linked with the thought of breath. That suggests that the breath of life in Genesis 2:7 is the spirit of a man.

This is not a man taught by the Spirit. The Spirit of God leads in no such path. The result is that, when a man searches by human wisdom, the grave into which all go stays a mystery he cannot see into. Men die as the beast dies. They have one breath, one ruach, and they go to the dust alike. As to what is beyond, no mere human knowledge can pierce it: who knows the spirit of man that goes upward, or the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth? That word, ruach, means either breath or spirit, and it suits the doubtful questioning of the passage. But this is the uncertainty of mere human knowledge. The Spirit of God could not doubt or question… he says finally and clearly that the spirit of man does not "go downward to the earth."

Here we have the truth — not that the spirit ceases to exist at the death of the body, but that it returns to the God who gave it. That teaches two things. The spirit lives on after death. And it does not depend on the body to keep existing; it is responsible to the One who gave it.

Now if that is the conclusion of the whole matter, does it look as though the matter he drew it from ends with the blank silence of the grave? Rather, does it not show plainly what that return of the dust to the earth "as it was" is for? It is only what brings the spirit into the presence of the God who gave it — not "as it was," but with the character it gained in its earthly tent.

Finally: man came from God's hand at his creation. God sustains his life as long as he lives, for in God "we live and move and have our being." At death the spirit will return to the God who gave it, and then we must give an account to Him.

The spirit is a person's highest part, and it links him with God. It gives the body life and controls it, and it comes from God Himself; without it the body is "dead" (James 2:26). At death it returns to God who gave it. For the believer, the Lord Jesus receives it (Acts 7:59), and it stays conscious apart from the body (Hebrews 12:23)… Death is separation: never extinction.

The sign of old age is the grey head and the shrinking from burden or effort. It marks the approach of the grave and all that comes with it. The inner powers all fail, the body returns to the dust it belongs to, and the spirit goes to Him who breathed into man alone on earth the breath that makes him immortal. Where the word of God is honoured, so sharp a description of human decay may well warn us. For people like us, putting off the attention we owe Him is a real danger.