Human beings consist of spirit, soul, and body. Scripture teaches that God formed man from the dust of the ground and then breathed into him the breath of life (Gen. 2:7). The Bible also tells us that God is Spirit (John 4:24); therefore, what God breathed into Adam was spiritual in nature. Unlike the material universe, the spiritual realm cannot be comprehended by the soulish mind of mankind. Yet we can observe that all natural life is animated by an unseen and unknowable force—what Scripture identifies as the breath of God.

Moses wrote that when God breathed this spiritual breath into Adam, he became a living soul. However, the Bible never states that Adam became a living, self-aware spirit. In fact, the weight of scriptural evidence suggests that God did not endow mankind at creation with a fully formed, self-aware spiritual person capable of independent choice. Adam received the spiritual breath of God, but not a complete spiritual personhood. At creation, Adam’s soul alone possessed self-awareness, rational thought, and the ability to choose.

If Adam had been given a fully developed spiritual person at creation, the Tree of Life would have been unnecessary. Furthermore, Jesus’ teaching on the need to be “born of the Spirit” would make little sense if humanity were already born of the spirit. When speaking with Nicodemus, Jesus clearly distinguished between two births: a natural birth and a spiritual birth (John 3:5). Adam did receive a spirit at creation, but it was God's breath which the Bible says returns to Him when our body dies. When the body dies, Solomon states in Ecclesiastes 12:7 that man's spirit returns to God.

Additional evidence for my supposition appears after the Fall. Following Adam’s sin, the Godhead realized that Adam must not be allowed to eat from the Tree of Life because he would then live forever in his fallen state (Gen. 3:22). This raises an important question: why would eating from the Tree of Life cause Adam to live forever in sin? The only logical implication is that the Tree of Life would give birth to Adam's hitherto unborn spirit, but would not provide redemption from sin. Adam would become like angels who sin, who seem to have no possibility of redemption. This line of reasoning is consistent with the statement in John 14:6 which says that Jesus is the only way to come to the Father, meaning God, himself. The Bible also makes it clear that no sin or sinner can enter into the Kingdom of God. 

The truth is this. God knew that Adam was going to sin before he created him. That's why God made him a little lower than the angels with a living self-aware soul, an earthen body, but no self-aware spirit. God knew that He was going to give Adam a new spirit joined to the redemptive Spirit of Jesus Christ to produce a new creature. (2 Cor. 5:17) This new creature could never be touched by sin. The Tree of Life would have brought Adam’s spiritual person into being. However, because the Tree of Life had no redemptive power, Adam would have lived forever in his sinful state just as the angel live forever in their sin.

It is also significant that Scripture never states that the human spirit goes to Hell. Solomon says the spirit returns to God at death (Eccl. 12:7). Jesus taught that it is the soul that can be destroyed in Hell, not the spirit (Matt. 10:28). Nowhere does Scripture explicitly state that the human spirit is corrupted by sin or condemned. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that Adam’s spirit could not sin because it was not yet a self-aware moral agent. Again, if Adam had possessed such a spirit from the beginning, the Tree of Life would have served no purpose.

Although Scripture does not fully explain the Tree of Life, it appears reasonable to conclude that it existed to give Adam the opportunity to exercise free will at the spiritual level. Had Adam become like the angels, there would have been no redemption for humanity after sin. Instead, redemption is made available through Christ. Being born of Christ’s Spirit provides cleansing for all sin—past, present, and future (1 John 1:7).

When we confess Jesus Christ as Lord (Rom. 10:9), we become fully formed, self-aware spiritual persons—the “new man.” This new man is created in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4:24). God seals our newborn spirit with His Holy Spirit until the day of redemption (Eph. 1:13; 1 Pet. 1:23; 1 John 3:9). Sin cannot touch this new spirit, though it can still affect the soul, which must be continually sanctified during our earthly lives. That sanctification is completed at the judgment seat of Christ (1 Thess. 5:8).

In salvation, God gives us a new heart and removes the old, stony one (Ezek. 36:26; 2 Cor. 1:21–22). This new heart is the seat of the soul and a core component of the believer’s personality. It communicates directly with the new spirit through the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit. Through this “beachhead” of the soul, the Holy Spirit leads us to take every thought captive in obedience to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5).

I recognize that these ideas involve many interconnected theological concepts, and I have studied them for many years. Interestingly, the more I meditate on these often-overlooked truths in Scripture, the more my faith grows—developing into deeper trust in an unseen God.