Kingdom Ready Blog

Hi All,

In this series of posts, I would like to give my understanding of the overall subject of “life after death”. This information comes from a document that I wrote a few months ago – and as it turns out, I actually had that document “peer reviewed”! (Angela was nice enough to go over the doc for me.) Please let me know if you have any comments or questions!

Introduction

One of the most important questions, that all religions try to answer, is the question of: “What happens when we die?” In particular, most religions attempt to explain if human beings have any hope of living again, after our bodies die.

Most Christian denominations believe that all human beings have “immortal souls”. According to this belief, the soul is some sort of invisible presence, which is contained inside our bodies while we are alive, but which leaves our bodies – and keeps on living – when our bodies die. In addition, according to that doctrine, the soul is the “real you”; and as a result, people are still conscious after their bodies die – because their souls are still living.

The question is, is the above doctrine listed anywhere in Scripture? In this document, I will discuss my understanding of what Scripture actually says about the soul – and about what happens when we die. Unless otherwise indicated, all verses are from the King James Version of the Bible.

What is the soul?

To start with, let’s see what the soul is. The Hebrew word which is translated as soul is nephesh, and the Greek equivalent is psuche. The following verse gives us an indication of what, exactly, the soul is.

Genesis 2:7

 ⁷And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

As we can see, two things happened, when God created Adam. First, God formed Adam out of the dust of the ground. In other words, God initially created Adam’s physical body. Adam was not alive at that point, though – because his body was dead. In other words, at that point, Adam was a corpse.

Then, God breathed the “breath of life” into Adam’s physical body. When God did that, Adam became a living soul.

From the above information, we can see that Adam did not have a soul – he was a soul. In other words, as soon as the breath of life is placed into a person’s body, that person becomes a living soul.

From what I can see in Scripture, a concise definition of a “soul” is: a conscious being, or simply “consciousness”. Basically, when the breath of life is added to a person’s body, that person becomes a living, conscious being – i.e., he becomes a soul. Some of the verses that support the definition of the soul as “consciousness” are as follows:

Psalms 31:9 (ESV)

⁹ Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul (consciousness) and my body also.

Proverbs 16:24 (ESV)

²⁴ Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul (consciousness) and health to the body.

The verse in Psalms indicates that stress causes problems for people – both mental (consciousness) problems, and physical (body) problems. The verse in Proverbs indicates that being “nice” to people provides both mental and physical benefits to people. (Interestingly, the medical community is finally beginning to verify both of those items – items that David and Solomon wrote about almost 3,000 years ago!)

Also, consider this verse, from the apostle Peter:

1 Peter 2:11

¹¹Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly (body) lusts, which war against the soul (consciousness);

In the above verse, Peter tells us that our bodily desires can affect our consciousness (i.e., our souls). I suspect that everyone can relate to that statement.

The apostle Paul echoes that sentiment as follows:

Romans 7:25b  (ESV)

²⁵So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind (consciousness, or soul), but with my flesh (body) I serve the law of sin.

So, my belief is that a “soul” is basically a person’s “consciousness”. That is, when the breath of life is added to a person’s body, that person becomes a conscious being – i.e., he becomes a soul.

What is the spirit?

The “breath of life” is sometimes referred to as “spirit” in Scripture. This spirit is not the Holy Spirit; instead, it is simply the “energy”, or “life force”, which animates our physical bodies.

The Hebrew word for “spirit” that refers to the breath of life is ruach; and the Greek equivalent is pneuma. Both ruach and pneuma denote “air”, “wind”, or breath – so it makes sense that those words would be used to describe the breath of life.

As noted earlier, when the spirit is added to a physical body, a “soul” (conscious being) comes into existence. The following verse describes what happens when the spirit stops animating a person’s body:

James 2:26

²⁶For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

 The above verse tells us that physical bodies cannot live without the spirit (a.k.a. the “breath of life”). Basically, when the spirit stops animating a physical body, that body dies.

A simple analogy for the spirit is electricity, flowing through a light bulb. As long as electricity is flowing through a light bulb, the bulb remains illuminated. As soon as electricity stops flowing through a light bulb, though, the bulb goes dark – or “dies”.

The above analogy is very similar to the spirit, animating our bodies – because our nervous systems use electrochemical impulses, to send signals through our bodies. So, as long as the spirit is active in a person – and is therefore causing electrochemical impulses to flow through his body – that person remains a living, conscious being. As soon as the spirit stops being active in a person, though, those impulses stop flowing through that person’s body – which causes that person to die.

Next week: Are souls immortal?