Barnhouse: This is why men fear physical death.

When Adam sinned, he stepped from the halls of light into a chamber of darkness. Though he was physically alive, spiritual life was gone. When the moment came for him to face God, he fled in terror to hide among the trees. He feared to meet the One who had given him all things, and whom he had disobeyed. Sin had done its work. Man had broken fellowship with his Creator, and feared to face Him.

This is why men fear physical death. Written in our very being is the fact that physical death ends delay. The God who has been wronged must be faced. The reckoning day has come. Some men profess to believe that death ends all, but the majority are honest enough to admit that something lies beyond, and they are afraid of it. Epicurus expressed the thought of the former group in his letter to

Donald Grey Barnhouse, God’s Grace: Romans 5:12–21 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1959), 31.

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John Stott on the "old man" and the "body ruled by sin" in Rom 6 v 6

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