6:3
¶ And the LORD said, My spirit shall not
always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an
hundred and twenty years.
God
declares His intentions to limit the lifespan of man from hundreds of years to
a hundred and twenty. This does not mean that every man will live that long but
merely gives a general and average upper range nor does it mean that this is
immediate but we see it happening after the Flood. Men still live a long time
after the Flood but the lifespan continues to decline. There are noteworthy
examples of men living longer than that.
The
Holy Spirit, when referring to God, uses the word spirit, lowercase s, for intentions and attributes that do not
signify the person of God.
For instance, Isaiah 11:2
And the spirit of the LORD
shall rest upon him, the spirit of
wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of
knowledge and of the fear of the LORD;
Contrast
that to God’s Spirit, which is His presence, as all three parts of God can be
represented by that Spirit.
Genesis
1:2 And the earth was without form, and
void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Romans
8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in
the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of
God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
Luke
4:1 And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and
was led by the Spirit into the
wilderness,
It
is interesting to note that while God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Ghost
are all referred to by the pronoun “he” that the Spirit, the vehicle by which
God operates in the world and in the believer, can be called “it.”
Romans
8:16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of
God:…26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth
our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the
Spirit itself maketh intercession
for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
Anyway,
this spirit, spoken of as not always
being in contention against man, who lives a long time and whose bloodline is polluted
by the fallen sons of God and the
rebellious attitude of Cain, will reduce the average upper range of man’s
lifespan. This is something that is ongoing. Today we typically regard average
lifespan as including infant mortality, which can lower it significantly, but
it is important to consider that, in spite of all of our modern medical
advancements, as biologist R.C. Lewontin explained, “In the last 50 years, only
about four months have been added to the expected lifespan of a person who is
already 60 years old,” if you take out infants who die under one year.[1] (24)
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