Can the Monist View Account for "What Is Life?"

In this article we would like to address the soundness and adequacy of the monist view of reality which conceives of “all that there is” as ultimately reducible to the concept of “matter in its motions.” This view holds that there is no essential difference between living and non-living systems in nature since both ultimately are expressions of the workings of the physical laws and only the physical laws. This insight or expectation leads one to presume that the laws of physics and chemistry are entirely sufficient to explain how matter came one day to spontaneously generate Life and thus all evolving living systems. This hypothesis is called abiogenesis and, try as hard as many first-rate researchers have done thus far, the fact is it has never yet been scientifically demonstrated.

Darwin studiously avoided abiogenesis in his major works — hence the insistence on the forum that the “theory of evolution” does not include abiogenesis. Perhaps his avoidance of the issue was for political reasons, we don’t know. At any rate, Darwin was known for his speculations about a “warm little pond” though evidently he didn’t want it to be a part of his theory. http://www.evowiki.org/index.php/Abiogenesis.

And yet one readily gets the impression on following the forum debate that many, if not most, subscribers to Darwin’s theory suppose that abiogenesis did, in fact, occur in some far distant past. On this view, biological evolution takes its origin from an unvalidated event that is presumed to be wholly material in character. This materialist aspect is fully consonant with the Darwinian view; abiogenesis rounds out the cosmological view to include a “beginning,” the problem that Darwin sought to avoid.

Implicit in the monist theory is the expectation that the universe is causally closed. All causes are material causes, and what we see all around us is the present cumulative effect of a virtually infinite succession of random material events that have taken place from a virtually infinite past until now. Such causes arise only within the 3+1 dimensional “block” of space-time as we humans normally experience/conceive it.

Yet as Elitzur (1993) points out, “the most essential attribute of randomness is the absence of connection between the states of the system’s components.” Organization, by definition, means that the system’s parts are highly correlated. The converse of “organization” is “reducibility” or “separability.” Therefore, organization means non-separability, connectivity. A. Grandpierre points out that “biological organization is different from physical ordering that is accompanied by a decrease of entropy. While physical ordering (misleadingly called ‘self-organization,’ but its actual meaning is self-ordering) plays an important role in storing information, the dynamical process of government through information is a process with a quite different nature.”

And yet the monist view holds that “all that there is” is fundamentally reducible to material random events or accidents being fortuitously tamed or shaped by physical laws. Which is what you would expect if you think that only material, physical, tangible entities are real. And thus information processing in living systems is a subject that can never come up in the first place; for fundamentally it is an immaterial, intangible process.

And yet here’s the interesting situation that develops from the physicalist (i.e., monist) concept: The physical laws themselves are immaterial, non-physical, intangible entities. It is here that the monist view breaks down as a valid interpretation of nature on its own terms. You can’t at the same time say that physical matter is all that there is and then turn around and invoke an immaterial principle that conditions or determines material behavior without engaging in self-contradiction.

And what can we say about the physical laws themselves — the great laws of motion and thermodynamics? Assuming that they “tame matter” or cause it to behave in certain ways, and assuming that matter is more or less “dumb and blind” (and quite possibly “lazy!”), then the physical laws must possess an informative content. And there’s another very interesting thing about the physical laws: They are in the main all laws of conservation. It has been observed that the amount of information required for conservation of a system seems not to be high, at least in comparison with the amount of information needed for a system to organize itself, modify its behavior, develop, evolve. For matter, left to its own devices (e.g., blind, dumb, and lazy devices), will follow the principle of “least action.” To put this into perspective, Paul Davies (The Fifth Miracle, 1998) writes:

“The laws of physics … are algorithmically very simple; they contain relatively little information. Consequently they cannot on their own be responsible for creating informational macromolecules … life cannot be ‘written into’ the laws of physics…. Life works its magic not by bowing to the directionality of chemistry, but by circumventing what is chemically and thermodynamically ‘natural.’ Of course, organisms must comply with the laws of physics and chemistry, but these laws are only incidental to biology.”

For the above reasons, the present writers remain skeptical about claims issuing from the monist position with regard to the fundamental origin and nature of life in the Universe. There is a need to account for, not only the fact that life cannot be exhaustively explained in terms of what is “chemically and thermodynamically ‘natural’”; but even more importantly, that life seems to work to counter the outcomes predicted by the physical laws.

Of particular interest is the possible relation of entropy and information in living systems. By information we mean the successful communication of a message (or “informative text”) such as to cause a “reduction of uncertainty in the receiver,” as formulated in terms of Shannon information theory. Note that “reduction of uncertainty in the receiver” issues as an actual event by virtue of a “decision” made and thus is analogous to state vector collapse in quantum microsystems, and to realized intended outcomes of sentient beings in “real-world” macrosystems. In all three cases, it appears that the probability amplitude is collapsed into just one “choice,” and all other possibilities vanish into a netherworld of unrealized (at that moment at least) potentialities. In all three cases, we seem to be looking at instances of very frank “quantizations” of “the continuum.”

Thus the thought occurs to one: Perhaps it is the ubiquitous presence of “observers” making “informed” choices which constitutes the irreversible “arrow of time” of the second law of thermodynamics. For “observations” lead to events (decisions) which, in the 3+1D block, constitute a successive temporal sequence of newly produced causes or, more to the point, a history (which can be thought of as evolution in retrospect). And history — like memory — is an irreversible process.

Alternatively, in the Feynman/Everett multi-world models, history may be a sum of histories (the cat is both alive and dead). In the second case the apparent thermodynamic entropy on our particular worldline as observer (the phenomenon which suggests an arrow of time) — is only one selection — though for our worldline that path or arrow of time would likewise seem irreversible. Whether or not it is actually irreversible and whether the arrow of time itself points in one direction only depends on whether there is another temporal dimension (f-Theory, Vafa). We need to mention that we recognize the significance of other multi-world and extra temporal dimension models as competing cosmological views. A fuller treatment of this subject is beyond the scope of the present article.

Now it is controversial that thermodynamics can have anything at all to do with the propagation and transmission of information. Indeed, it is reasonable to draw the negative conclusion, provided that one’s thermodynamical model is the one espoused by Boltzmann, whose hypothesis was that the second law is a law of disorder, of chaos. That hypothesis alone would appear to make thermodynamics a problematical construct for systems that are complex and self-organizing, such as living systems seem to be. And yet living systems are ineluctibly microstates within the global macrostate so well described by the second law of thermodynamics. This problem has been well noted.

Yockey, for instance (in Information Theory and Molecular Biology, 1992), presented a mathematical proof that Shannon entropy and thermodynamic entropy are functions of probability spaces that are not isomorphic. From this mathematical fact, he draws the conclusion that these two entropies have “nothing whatever to do” with each other:

“The function for entropy in both classical statistical mechanics and the von Neumann entropy of quantum statistical mechanics has the dimensions of the Boltzmann constant k and has to do with energy and momentum, not information.”

But what if the sine qua non hallmark or signature of living organisms is that they work by converting thermodynamic entropy into Shannon entropy? This would mean that although the two entropies belong to non-isomorphic probability spaces, living organisms preeminently possess a mechanism to bring the two probability spaces into direct relations. Indeed, that may be the entire point about what it is that constitutes the difference between a living and non-living system.

This is the problem that Hungarian astrophysicist A. Grandpierre tackles straight on in a forthcoming work. It is perhaps surprising that an astrophysicist would veer into biology. It turns out that his researches into the nature of the Sun suggested that astral bodies are self-organizing systems that actively work against the setting up of thermodynamic equilibrium that would otherwise obtain given initial and boundary conditions. In other words, the Sun is not a “hot ball of gas.” And so the resemblance of the Sun’s observed behavior to anything that we normally perceive as “biological behavior” struck him as an interesting problem.

As for the criteria of “biological behavior” to be applied, Grandpierre primarily draws on Ervin Bauer, a Hungarian theoretical biologist and physicist active during the first part of the 20th century, largely under Soviet auspices. Bauer is little known today. (His work, Theoretical Biology [1935], was published only in German and Russian and, we gather, is out of print anyway.) But we think he will make a come-back. For as far as we know, it was Ervin Bauer who first drew thermodynamics into explicit connection with biological theory, and Grandpierre highly values his insights:

“Living organisms do not tend towards the physical equilibrium related to their initial and boundary conditions, but [at all times] act in order to preserve their distances from the deathly physical equilibrium” predicted by the second law.

This says that, unlike physical systems, living systems move in just the opposite direction from that predicted by the second law: that is, living systems, for as long as possible, are devoted to evading or forestalling the eventual total loss of potential energies for the task of productive work, and thus ultimately “heat death.” But if living systems can counter the second law, then one must ask, how do they do that?

Grandpierre notes that “entropy is a somewhat subtle concept just because it connects two fundamentally different realms, of which only one is usually termed as ‘reality.’ Entropy connects the realms of possibilities with the world of manifested phenomena. If one would guess that possibilities do not exist since they do not belong to the phenomenal world, this would be conceptually confusing at the proper understanding of physical world. The central role of entropy is one of the most fundamental laws of Nature; the second law of thermodynamics tells that possibilities do belong to reality — and determine the direction of development of physical systems.”

“[First we must] quantify some biologically fundamental aspects of entropy, information, order, and biological organization. Thermodynamic entropy, S and the entropic distance of the human body from its physical equilibrium at constant internal energy [must be] determined quantitatively, together with the number of microstates related to physical, chemical, and biological macrostates.

“We distinguish between physically and biologically possible states. In physical objects internal energy is redistributed by dissipative processes. In living organisms the Gibbs free energy, G is also redistributed, but not only in the individual degrees of freedom, but also by means of the consecutively coupling action of biological organization, which works on the whole set of all possible collective degrees of freedom.”

From the “here determined quantities [that] shed light on the source of biological information….our calculations show that the relatively high value of S [entropy] enhances the ability of living matter to represent information.”

And thus, by “determining the average information flow of a cell in the human body, and determining the enthalpy of a DNA molecule, we can draw quantitative consequences with regard to the static and dynamic information content of DNA. We estimated that the information necessary to govern the >105 chemical reactions sec^–1 cell^–1 in the 6*10¹³ human cells requires >10¹⁹ bits sec^–1 that cannot be supplied from the static sequential information content of DNA ~10⁹ bits for more than 10^–10 sec. Physical self-ordering and biological self-organization represent opposite yet complementary tendencies that together cooperate to serve optimal balance. All these results together show that the source of biological information is ultimately to be found in the Bauer principle, in the same manner as the source of physical information is to be found in the [least-]action principle of physics.”

Elsewhere Grandpierre refers to the Bauer principle as the “life principle.” This has been alternatively termed as the fecundity principle (Swenson), or “the will to live.” It is customary to regard DNA as the information source that drives living systems. But having estimated the gigantic information flow present in the human body, and comparing that with the static information content of DNA, Grandpierre realized that there is something like a 20-orders of magnitude deficit in DNA information as compared with this number. We point out that DNA is the same in every cell of the body; and yet different cells are undergoing all kinds of different reactions, are involving themselves in collective modes (formation of macromolecules, organs, etc.) constantly. Obviously, the relatively low information content of DNA cannot explain the huge variety of functions that are taking place in the human body at every instant of time. Another interesting fact is that an organism’s DNA is exactly the same in a living cell as it is in a dead one. Thus if anything, it appears that DNA primarily works at the level of “physically-possible systems” (which are those that are still operational after death occurs), and so does not appear to be the only or even the main factor in biological self-organization, self-maintenance, etc. In order to be effective in the governance of “biologically-possible systems,” DNA itself must have access to a dynamic information source in order to compensate for the deficit of its static information in terms of driving biological behaviors.

So, where does this dynamic information come from? We are usually criticized for introducing a “pink unicorn” at this stage of the argument, for we propose that biological information is carried by a universal field. And yet the existence of fields is uncontroversial in science. We know that there are particle fields, force fields (e.g., EM, gravitation fields), and the reality of vacuum field is also uncontroversial. The main point about a field is its universal extent. Being universal, it is not an “ordinary” object of 3+1D spacetime. Rather, fields constitute matrices in which events happen, ultimately unifying all world processes into one integrated whole.

Fields apply universally to all points in space/time — every where and every when — thus they are neither time-restricted nor spatial coordinate restricted.

Grandpierre argues that, in addition to the other fields identified by science, there is also a “biofield” or an organic zero-point vacuum field that is the carrier of biological information. An analogy might help to explicate the theory. The Internet is a “universal” information field that can be accessed by anyone who has the proper equipment. There are often cases when communications are sent to us over the Internet. DNA stands for the particular “address” at which we can be successfully contacted; DNA is “smart enough” to be a router for incoming information addressed specifically to a particular receiver. And its presence as a router is necessary; otherwise, information being addressed to us would have no efficient way to reach us and, thus, to do us any good.

One might speculate that the physical laws, being also universal in extent and application, may similarly be field-carried phenomena in this sense.

In any case, when we speak of a “netherworld of yet-unrealized possibilities” occasioned by a re-imagined second law, are we not speaking of potentially real things that have to reside somewhere, because they represent states of potentiality that may become actualized? If this “netherworld” is of universal extent, then it would need a field to carry it.

In the space of a short article, we can only briefly touch on the arguments advanced by Dr. Grandpierre and his associates. If you have an interest in looking at his research, the Journal of Theoretical Biology may soon publish an article of his (working title: “Thermodynamic Entropy and Biological Information”) which richly details the merest sketch of certain key points given above, and a wealth of others besides.

" Gen 1:27 says that God gave men His own capacity. But how can a statement like this be understood? Does it mean that in the beginning, God intended to propagate a species of "godlets?" Or only that God endued man with some of his attributes, namely reason and free will?"

The gift was complete. There was nothing left out of the set of capacities and attributes. Man was given his Freedom to make of that gift what he would. The knowledge and power of God was not given. Man was to make his own way and develope his own spirt.

Here's what God says about it:
John 10:33-39“We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods’(Psalm 82:6)? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came–and the Scripture cannot be broken– what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God's Son’? Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.

"...man's use of it.

God looks at a man's heart, not collective impressions. We can see what Moses and John the Baptist did and what God said of them. We know that God said that neither the blind man, nor his parents had sinned.We all know are limitations and failings if we are honest. We know the Jesus had the same limitations, w/o the failings.

" God is unsearchable (Psalms 145:3)."

On the contrary, Luke 11:1-13
One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

He said to them, “When you pray, say: “ ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’ ”

Then he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.’

“Then the one inside answers, ‘Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

" Job and his friends thought they knew a thing or two about God. He did not take very kindly to their presumption which He then made very clear to Job in no uncertain terms in Chapters 38-41.

He was teaching and He came here to do so. Those passages contain a series of important questions and contain answers to implied questions. They are questions to be answered and not just by Job.

Job 40:1&7-14
The LORD said to Job:
"Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?
"Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

"Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?
Do you have an arm like God's,
and can your voice thunder like his?
Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,
and clothe yourself in honor and majesty.
Unleash the fury of your wrath,
look at every proud man and bring him low,
look at every proud man and humble him,
crush the wicked where they stand.
Bury them all in the dust together;
shroud their faces in the grave.
Then I myself will admit to you
that your own right hand can save you.

Notice how God unleashes the fury of His wrath. Here is His justice.

Isaiah 63:1-
Who is this coming from Edom,
from Bozrah, with his garments stained crimson?
Who is this, robed in splendor,
striding forward in the greatness of his strength?

"It is I, speaking in righteousness,
mighty to save."

Why are your garments red,
like those of one treading the winepress?

"I have trodden the winepress alone;
from the nations no one was with me.
I trampled them in my anger
and trod them down in my wrath;
their blood spattered my garments,
and I stained all my clothing.
For the day of vengeance was in my heart,
and the year of my redemption has come.
I looked, but there was no one to help,
I was appalled that no one gave support;
so my own arm worked salvation for me,
and my own wrath sustained me.
I trampled the nations in my anger;
in my wrath I made them drunk
and poured their blood on the ground."

Notice that He has trodden the winepress alone. Notice in the following how He tramples the nations and note what it is that He asks and what was looked for in Job 40:14.

Matthew 12:18 “Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations.

Here is what He said.

Matt 19:16-22
Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.”

“Which ones?” the man inquired.

Jesus replied, “ ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Matt 5:43-48
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor( Lev. 19:18) and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The last statement

Matt 12:29
“Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house.

“He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”

"All we know of Him is what He reveals.

Of course. You can't know someone that never shows himself. He said, "seek and you shall find." There is no exception. Is there another that has shown himself and made such claims? I've seen them presented by men, but they themselves never show their face. The only face that shows babbles, fails to answer my questions and falls short of my judgements.

"different Spiritual wavelengths"

Yes, it would appear so. I take it that you are a Calvinist, or beleive in predestination. I beleive in Free will and the draw to God is, because of my values and finding that His are perfect. I read Scriptures by going to the source first, that is Jesus quoted in the Gospels.

I judge good and evil as based on The moral code. To me the judgement requires the choice, or decision of a being to apply the terms.

Heaven is a stable existence with God. Earth is a transient existence, where men develope their spirit. It's that spirit developed here, by the action of man's Free will, that will be judged. I posted the condition of that judgement above. God forgives all those, except the one's that reject the Holy Spirit. Those will given their own eternal domain to exist with those tossed out of Heaven for making the same choice. The fires of hell will be created by the spirits in their own domain, not by God, just as they lit them previously. He gave them Life and Freedom unconditionally.

Alas, I am a heretic, I don't beleive in original sin. In my own judgement, applying the stain of sin of one man to all his progeny is fundamentally unjust. I also don't find the concept in the Bible. What Paul said, means no more than the first man sinned and thus sin entered the world at that point.

John 9 illustrates my thoughts on the matter. Jesus says neither the man born blind, or his parents sinned. The Pharasees grilled the man and did their best to get him to say Jesus was a sinner. The man remained truthful and honest. John9:34
To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.

Jesus, the man Jesus healed and the man's parents were innocent, so they conjured up the lie. As far as I was told, the Jews don't and didn't believe in original sin.

Jesus ends with John 9:39-41
Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”

Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

I welcome the discussion and must answer honestly. I'm in an out of FR though, so I can't always answer promptly. God bless.

Thank you for your replies! And may God always bless you, too!

I see that you figured out I am not Calvinist. I’m not Arminian either. Nor Eastern Orthodox, nor Catholic, nor Mormon. I eschew all doctrines and traditions of men (Mark 7:7).

I read Scriptures by going to the source first, that is Jesus quoted in the Gospels.

Here we probably have some agreement. For years I read the Bible with great effort, word by word, phrase by phrase, with maps, encyclopedia, lexicons and the whole nine yards. I referred to the Bible as the “Word of God”. All this until one day it occurred to me that I was terribly wrong, that Jesus Christ Himself is the Living Word of God (John 1, Revelation 19). Since that day, the Spirit within me brings the Word alive within as my eyes scan over the text. Passages come to mind at just the right time, etc. The Scriptures are alive, unlike any other manuscript. The Spirit Himself authenticates everything and leads.

I judge good and evil as based on The moral code. To me the judgement requires the choice, or decision of a being to apply the terms.

Here we have a bit of a difference. God is Good by definition (John 10). Therefore, His will is Good in the Spirit which indwells me. Everything which is contrary to His will is evil to me and troubles me deeply such that I choose not to “know” it – only to recognize it to avoid it. I judge no person – mortal or immortal – only matters. (Matt 7, I Cor 6)

Here we have a few differences. God created the heaven and the earth (Gen 1) and will create a new heaven and earth (Rev 21). Heaven is a reality though not separated from physical reality by anything corporeal or geometric. The Jewish tradition sees the firmament in a like manner – that it is more like the speed of light – a limitation on the physical side but which is no limitation on the heavenly side. This makes sense also in the New Testament when Christ appears in the midst of a room, or as a stranger and again telling doubting Thomas to feel his hands and side. We’ve entertained angels unawares, etc. It also helps to understand the timing and events of Genesis 1-3.

I disagree also with what God forgives or does not forgive. Indeed, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit will not forgiven (Matt 12) nor will rejecting Christ after having received Him (Hebrews 10). But then again God says He will have compassion according to His own will (Romans 9:15) and He gives allowance according to whether one has done right under the law or without the law (Romans 2). And the way we treat each other will also be in the judgment (Matt 25).

The fire of Hell – the second death (Rev 20 and 21) – is something of which we who are indwelled by the Spirit need not fear. We are already alive with Christ in God (Col 3:3).

Again, we disagree. I point to Romans 5 and I Cor 15 - Adam’s sin is what made Christ’s sacrifice necessary.

If it were possible to be good enough to get to heaven, then Christ died for nothing. (Galatians 2:21, Romans 1-8)

I understand your point in John 9 – but that’s not what it is about. Adam was banished to mortality because of his disobedience so that he would not eat of the tree of life and be eternal. (Gen 3,4) His spirit was stained – no amount of good deeds can ever get rid of that stain. He could never become worthy again. He was cursed by the law of sin and death (Romans 8). The only way God’s children can be washed of that stain (Isa 1:18) and brought home is to be made a new person by the indwelling Spirit (John 3). Even so, the body will still die because of the law of sin and death (Romans 8).

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