THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

Life and Immortality

Shelby G. Floyd

September, 2008

The Bible is not only a book that reveals God to man, but it is also a book that reveals man to him-self. So if you want to know about the nature of man you must inquire of God’s Word. According to the philosophy of Paul, man is spirit, soul and body:

1 Thessalonians 5:23

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

NKJV

The Whole Man

Paul is speaking of the whole man. What is the whole man? Paul prays that God will preserve the whole spirit, soul and body. That’s the order. When we ask the question “What is man?” we usually say we are a body with a spirit. We have it turned around. When we say a man is a body with a spirit, we are indicating in our minds and to other people that the primary nature of man is the body. You are a body with a spirit. Maybe that is because we live in a material, physical world and so we even think of ourselves primarily as a material being with a spirit. But the truth of the matter is that even though we live in a physical, material world, the primary nature of man is not the body, but the spirit. So we should say, “I am a spirit with a body.” That’s our primary nature – a spirit with a body. Now we attempt to develop more fully a lesson on the primary nature of man.

Man Made in God’s Image

What is man? We are a being made in the image of God as suggested by the text in Genesis:

Genesis 1:26-27

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

NKJV

Man Has an Immortal Spirit

The Bible affirms the immortality of the soul, or the spirit of man. The spirit of man is invisible, but does that mean that the spirit does not exist because it is invisible and we cannot see it? The mind of man is invisible, but does that mean we do not have a mind? According to the Cartesian philosophy, “I think, therefore I exist.” We know that we are—that we exist, because we can think. That suggests that the mind exists or we couldn’t think. Just because something is invisible does not mean that it does not exist. Some of the cults today deny that there is a spirit or a soul of man that exists and will exist forever. But man does have an immortal spirit that will live forever. I confidently affirm that God’s Word teaches that the spirit of man, the soul of the man, is immortal and will exist forever.

For instance, Daniel said, “I was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body and the visions in my head troubled me.” (Daniel 7:15.) Now Daniel was grieved. Where was he grieved? We have a Hebrew parallelism. He was grieved in his spirit. Daniel, where’s your spirit? My spirit is in the midst of my body. Daniel, how were you grieved? My head troubled me. So in the head or in the midst of our body there is a spirit, a mind that can be troubled. Are you not conscious right now there is something inside of you dwelling in the midst of your body that controls your thinking, your movements and everything about you? I think all of us are conscious that there is some thing within us that controls our entire being. Daniel points out then that man has a spirit and that spirit is in the midst of our bodies.

Also Job said, “But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding.” (Job 32:8 NIV.) Both Daniel and Job affirm that there is a spirit in man and God gives inspiration to that spirit and that spirit is in the midst of our body or in our head and it can be troubled as well as have peace and serenity.

We also read in the Old Testament about two men who were made in the image of God, but never died. They didn’t see death, so they are untypical from all of us. We will see death: “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” (Hebrews 9:27 KJV.) Enoch (Genesis 5:21-24), and Elijah (2 Kings 2:1-15), did not experience death, but they were translated into the world of spirits. If there is no spirit in the midst of man’s body, then what was translated into the world of spirits? Obviously, their bodies and spirits were translated or transformed, because they didn’t see death. Their bodies were not placed in a tomb here on the earth, but both their body and spirit were transformed into a spirit world. I believe that proves that there is a spirit in man.

Our Lord Jesus Christ was God in the Beginning.

John 1:1-4

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

NKJV

The Soul Cannot Be Killed

When the Word came down from heaven, the Bible says, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14.) Jesus Christ became one of us. He took upon Himself not the nature of angels, but He took upon Himself the nature of man. He was the Son of man, as well as the Son of God, identifying Himself with the human race. He said one time to His disciples, “Fear not them which can kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear Him, which is able to cast both soul and body into Hell.” The Greek word there for Hell is Gehenna, the place of eternal punishment. So we are not to fear those that can kill the body, because that’s not the primary nature of man. They can’t kill the soul. They can kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul. The soul is immortal and not subject to a physical death like the body. We should rather fear God because He can cast both the soul and the body into Hell. And we should fear Satan because he is the agent that can make that happen. I believe that man does have a soul, an immortal spirit that dwells in the midst of his body. The body can be killed, but the spirit cannot be killed.

The Soul Should Be Strengthened

The apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth where he had spent about a year and a half during one of his evangelist tours. He affirmed that man has a dual nature. “…Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.” (2 Cor. 4:16.) As we get older, we are conscious that what Paul said is the truth. Why? Because the outward man is perishing, but the inward man, the primary nature of man, is being renewed everyday and should be sharper and more mature and intelligent and more in tune with the way of God, because that is the nature that will transfer into the spirit world upon death. So the apostle Paul teaches that in view of this fact we must all appear before the judgment day of God to give an answer for the things that we’ve done in the body according to that we’ve done, whether it be good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5:10.) In view of that fact he says, “As long as I am present in the body, I am absent from the Lord.” But he said, “I am rather willing to be absent from the body that I might be present with the Lord.”(2 Corinthians 5:6-8). So when death overtakes us, we can be present with the Lord in a closer relationship than we are as long as we are at home in the body. Man has an animal self and man has a soul self. Today so much emphasis is on strengthening the animal self. But there is also a spirit self and many who are very strong physically in the animal self, but their soul self, is dwarfed, dwindled and ready to die. So our primary task is to exercise the soul self: “For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.” (1 Timothy 4:8). We need a lot more Godly exercise than we do bodily exercise, because that’s the primary nature of man.

What is man? We proved with these scriptures that man has a spirit in the midst of his body. That is the soul self, the spirit self, and we are to strengthen it, we are to exercise it unto Godliness and that soul self, spirit self, will exist forever, either in the body or out of the body. It doesn’t make any difference. In 2 Corinthians 12, I think Paul was talking about himself when he said, “I knew a man fourteen years ago that was caught up into the third heaven whether out of the body or in the body, I don’t know, but God knows.” That may have been when Paul was stoned at Lystra and left outside of the city for dead. I don’t know. It’s just my opinion. But at some time or another it seems that Paul was caught up into the third heaven and he heard revelations from God that he said it was not even lawful for man to utter to mere human beings. He only said that a man he knew was caught up there and he didn’t know whether that man had been caught up there in the body like Enoch and Elijah or whether God had actually taken his spirit out of his body and caught him up there. But the point is that the spirit can exist in the body or out of the body. And Jesus, after He had died upon the cross and after He had appeared to His disciples, they came to Him and they were fearful of Him because they thought He was a ghost, a spirit. Jesus told them to come near and touch Him. He said, “A spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones such as you see me have.”(Luke 24:39). Jesus existed after He died upon the cross and He still exists and so shall we because we have a spirit made in the image of God. We have proved that the Bible teaches emphatically that man has a soul or a spirit in the midst of his body and that soul or spirit is immortal.

The Relationship of the Soul to God

Now I speak about the relationship of man’s spirit or soul to his maker, to his God, to his creator. God gives the soul of man to him. It is so fascinating to see a little baby born into this world like our new little grandson, Trent Christian Hutchings, and how he has begun to exercise and develop an individual personality. In Ecclesiastes 12:7, Solomon, the preacher, the wise man of the ancient times, talking to the people of his generation, said, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” Now I don’t know how that process works. I believe that at conception God gives a spirit to the fetus, because I believe that the fetus is a living human being even at conception. It is at a beginning stage of growth and development. We are a different person today than we were in grade school or high school or college. So conception begins the cycle of life—life has started. The body comes from our father and mother. The Hebrew writer speaks of the “the fathers of our flesh,” and he says, “God is the Father of our spirit.” So we fathered the bodies of our children, but the Bible affirms that God is the Father of all spirits. So we’re not the fathers of their spirits, but rather the fathers of their bodies. God gave them their spirit. Therefore, all of us are subject to our creator because He gave us our spirit. We’re subject to our parents because they brought us into this world with a physical body, but as we grow and mature their responsibility begins to diminish. Then the subjection to God becomes primary. God is the Father of our spirits.

God Gives Us Our Spirit

The prophet said, “This is the word of the LORD concerning Israel. The LORD, who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the spirit of man within him.” (Zechariah 12:1 NIV.) Who formed the spirit within each one of us? Zechariah says the Lord formed our spirits. All right since that is the case then, the spirit of man is subject to his creator or to his God. The apostle Paul on one of his evangelistic journeys came into the great city of Athens, Greece. Athens and Corinth were known in ancient times as “the two eyes of all Greece.” While he was waiting for Timothy to come down from Macedonia he made a tour of the city. As he walked the streets of Athens he was amazed at the idolatry of that city. They had so many idols that out of fear they had left one of the gods out they erected a statute with an inscription on it:

Acts 17:22-28

"Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. `For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, `We are his offspring.'

NIV

So there is a spirit in man. It is in God that we live and move and have our very being. God determines the bounds of our habitation and even our life itself and so we are subject to Him and we are responsible to Him for all the activities of our lives.

The Eternal Destiny of the Soul

Now in the final part of our lesson, I want us to think about our responsibility and what our eternal destiny is going to be when this life is over if we do not make sure that our soul self, our spirit self, is in tune with the Word of Almighty God and, therefore, we bring the animal self, the body, in control and use the body as the instrument to serve God rather than Satan.

Let us illustrate with a Biblical story of two men who were living on the earth one time and they had an entirely different destiny and I think it was because one of them didn’t understand the true nature of man. In Luke 16:19-31, the Bible says, “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and he fared sumptuously everyday.” We do not know his name. Some commentators have said his name was Dives. That’s not his name. Dives is the Latin term for rich, but man likes to give somebody a name, so we’ll call him Dives. He doesn’t have a name. He had a name, but God didn’t reveal it to us. He was just a certain rich man and indicative of his riches, he was clothed in purple and fine linen and he fared sumptuously everyday. He went to all of the banquets; he had the finest clothes, the best transportation; he had all the good things that this world could give him in his day and time.

The Bible says there was a certain beggar. We know his name. His name was Lazarus. His name meant, “God is my helper.” And the Bible says that he desired the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. The crumbs back then came from the bread that was left over after the meal and they didn’t have napkins, so what they did was take the bread and dry their hands by rubbing that bread with their hands and then just dust the crumbs off on the floor. Usually the dogs would come in and eat the crumbs that fell from their master’s table. That’s all that Lazarus wanted—some crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. That’s how hungry he was.

The Bible says that he had sores on him and moreover the dogs came and licked those sores. I think medical science has found today that the saliva from dogs is healing, but I don’t think the doctors encourage parents to have the dogs lick the sores when your children have a scratch or a scar. We used to do that when I was growing up and we usually healed up. The Bible says he was laid at the gate of the rich man. The Greek word there for laid [ballo--ballo], means they flung him down. “Ballo,” is the word from which we get the word ball. You throw a ball. So they threw him down at the gate of the rich man and the dogs licked his sores. Isn’t that quite a contrast of the two men in life? The one emphasized the animal self, the outward man.

Lazarus, though he was a beggar, didn’t go to heaven just because he was a beggar or poor. There had to be something about his character that made him different. He loved God; he trusted God; he served God in his own capacity. The Bible says, “It came to pass that the beggar died.” Yes, death will overtake all of us. “The beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom.” What was carried? The angels did not carry the animal self of Lazarus. They did carry away the soul self or spirit self to Abraham’s bosom. The word carried there in the Greek means that the spirit was carried tenderly and was deposited in Abraham’s bosom, a place of rest and peace.

And it came to pass afterward that the rich man also died. You know he had lived for many years after Lazarus died, but the Bible says he died and was buried. His emphasis in life was the animal self and the emphasis in his death is on the animal self. It’s on the burial of the body; he was buried. The scriptures say nothing about his spirit being carried to Abraham’s bosom by the angels because it was carried someplace else. I know it was carried someplace else, because the Bible says in the very next verse, “In Hades he lifted up his eyes being in torment and seeing Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom,” and he cried, “father, Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am tormented.” I don’t know how he was tormented. It could be that it was mental, but he was tormented. He said he was tormented in a flame and he wanted a drop of water to cool his tongue. But he was in a spirit world and he was tormented even before the judgment day because he knew that he had emphasized the wrong aspect of his nature while he was here on earth and not only that but he knows that he has five brothers back on earth that are headed to the same place that he is because they are living just like he lived back on the earth. Even though the rich man had five brothers back on earth, he may not have known what they were doing. He only knew that when he left them they were living a life like he had lived and he had gone to the wrong place. The important thing to remember is the way we die is the way we are going to spend eternity.

Exhortation

What is man? Man is a being made in the image of God, created by God, to serve God, to be like God, to love God and to want to be with Him forever. That will never happen unless that is our desire and consuming aspiration. When your spirit leaves your body, the spirit that God gave you, you will shuffle off “the mortal coil” into the dust and when our Lord Jesus comes again we’ll have a new body, an immortal body with an immortal spirit and we’ll be with Him forever and ever and we’ll love Him and praise Him and glorify and magnify His great name throughout eternity. That’s what I want to do and I pray you do too. I urge you to obey the gospel. Repent of your sins, confess your faith in Jesus Christ and we’ll immerse you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit into a relationship with the Godhead. (Cf. Matthew 28:18-20). You then can live and serve Him and heaven will ultimately be your home. Will you do so today!*