Does God Decide How Long We Live?

The other day, I attended a funeral for someone who lived almost to 90 years old. It got me thinking, “Does God decide how long we live?” You, don’t here people living to 90 or 100 much anymore. So, Iet’s see what the Bible says about our question.

God has not limited the human lifespan in the sense that humanity is not allowed to live past a certain age, say 120 years. The Bible does state the average life expectancy as 70-80 years. This is consistent with data today, the global average life expectancy being 73 years. However, God does know the exact number of days we will live individually. So, we should seek to live for God everyday.

Average Lifespans Around the World

	Average Life Expectancy (combined)	Male Averave Life Expectancy	Female Average Life Expectancy
United States	79.11 years	76.61 years	81.65 years
Philippines	71.66 years	67.67 years	75.92 years
United Kingdom	81.77 years	80.22 years	83.28 years
Canada	82.96 years	81.15 years	84.74 years
Nigeria	55.75 years	54.80 years	56.75 years
Australia	83.94 years	82.08 years	85.80 years
India	70.42 years	69.16 years	71.80 years
South Africa	64.88 years	61.46 years	68.42 years
Ghana	64.94 years	63.78 years	66.13 years
Kenya	67.47 years	65.04 years	69.87 years
Indonesia	72.32 years	70.12 years	74.64 years
American Samoa	73.75 years	71.69 years	75.97 years
France	83.13 years	80.32 years	85..82 years
Singapore	84.07 years	82.06 years	86.15 years
Japan	85.03 years	81.91 years	88.09 years

According to the United Nations, the global life expectancy is 73 years.

Has God limited How Long We Can Live?

This question is often asked when we read the story of Noah. The story starts out,

 When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

Genesis 6:1-3

These verses are full of interpretive challenges. But we are going to focus on “their days will be a hundred and twenty years.” Does this mean that God has limited the max number of years we can live to 120? Or does it mean something else?

Many people use and interpret this verse to mean that God has capped our age limit to 120. Why? Because before the flood we see people in the Bible living into their 900s. Then after the flood we see a decrease in how long people live until they don’t reach 120 anymore.

So, it is a possible interpretation of this verse. But, that’s not God’s point. If we read the context around this verse, a more precise interpretation would be that 120 years is a countdown to the flood. We see Noah around 500 years old when we are introduced to him and 600 when the flood arrives.

How Many Years Did God Promise to Men?

Several years after the flood, several hundreds of years after the flood, Moses said,

Our days may come to seventy years,
    or eighty, if our strength endures;

Psalm 90:10

Seventy to eighty years, that’s the average lifespan, according to Moses. And if we look back at our chart, we’ll see that that is still true today.

Does limit our lifespan to 70-80 years? No, This doesn’t set an age limit for humanity, but does state a general rule. There are people today who live well into their hundreds. But the average lifespan (as we see in the chart) is 70-80 years.

God doesn’t promise that we’ll live 70-80 years. Jesus died in His 30s. Stephen, the first martyr, was probably still a young man. Many people today die a tragic death at a young age. Moses’ point and God’s is that life is hard and death inevitable.

Why? Why is life hard and death inevitable? Because of sin. Our sin is so deadly we are lucky to make it to 80 years old. But if we put our faith in Jesus Christ, as our Savior from sin, we can have eternal life.

God Knows How Many Days We Have

So, we’ve discovered that God hasn’t limited the human lifespan in general. But he does know how long our life will be specifically. Job says,

A person’s days are determined;
    you have decreed the number of his months
    and have set limits he cannot exceed.

Job 14: 5

God knows the exact moment we will die. Just like He knows how many hairs are on our head, He knows how many days are in our life.

David writes in Psalm 139,

Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139:16

God knows the story of our life. The high moments and the low moments. Every gritty detail. That is both encouraging and terrifying to me. Terrifying because He knows every bad thing I’ve done. Encouraging because He knows what’s coming and will help me through it.

Your life doesn’t surprise God. He knows those sleepless nights, the secret thoughts, those anonymous good deeds. And He knows how and when you will die. So, how do we live in light of that reality?

How To Live in Light of The Fact

First, we need to make sure our relationship with God is right. Because of sin we will die. So, we need to make sure that we have our eternal destination figured out before then. We can be prepared for the day we will die by trusting Jesus as our Savior and Lord.

Second, we should live each day for God. Just because God knows how long we have to live, doesn’t mean we do. We have an average (70-80 years), but that’s no guarantee. So, we need to be living every day for God. Live every day like it is our last.