Salvation of the soul (part 1)

In our last two articles we looked at the distinction between the soul and spirit of man. Now let’s look specifically at the soul, and how God has designed that it be restored from the awful effects of sin. The soul of man refers essentially to his identity – comprised of his wants, thoughts, memories, emotions, personality and will. Both the Old and New Testaments make it clear that the soul of man was corrupted by sin, and therefore doomed to a state of separation from the Spirit of God. But the Bible makes it clear that God both desires and has provided a way for our soul to be restored from it corrupted state.

In Matthew 10:39 Jesus said, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” And again in Matthew 16: 25-26 Jesus said, “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” In both of these passages the word translated “life” is the Greek word “psuche” – the same word that is translated “soul” throughout the New Testament. What Jesus is saying then, is that the only way for a man to “save” his soul is to “lose” it – by being crucified with Christ – so that he might “find it” again through the miracle of resurrection. Paul referred to this process like this in Romans 6:5:  “If we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection.”

This process, of “saving” our soul is referred to in different ways throughout the New Testament. In 2 Thessalonians 2:13 Paul refers to it as, “Salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.” He refers to it again in Romans 8:2, instructing us not to be conformed to the world, but rather “Transformed by the renewing of your minds.” In 1 Peter 1:9 this process is referred to as “the salvation of your souls.” And in James 1:21 James instructs us simply to “receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”

Perhaps the simplest and yet most profound reference to this process is found in this simple parable used by Jesus in Matthew 13:33:  “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened.” In this illustration, the “leaven” is the life of God – in the form of His Spirit and His Word. At the moment of our new birth, God’s very life was “hid” in the innermost of the three parts of man – our spirit. At this moment our Spirit was “sealed with” and “joined to” the spirit of Jesus (Ephesians 1:13, 1^st Corinthians 6:17)

But it is also clear from this verse that it was never the plan of God that this “leaven” should stay hidden in our Spirit. By God’s design, the life of His Spirit begins to “leaven” us from the inside out, until eventually all three “measures” of our being – that is our spirit, soul and body – are “leavened.” (1^st Thessalonians 5:23) Jesus also made allusion to this process in Matthew 23:26, when He told the Pharisees, “First clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also.”

Most religion attempts to somehow make mankind better from the outside in, through laws and regulations. But the wonder of Christianity is that God literally has a man working “on the inside” of us – Jesus! As Paul said in Philippians 2:13, God is “at work in us to will and do his good pleasure.” One Christian writer put it very well when he said, “God never intended us to live the Christian life – He intended to live it through us.”

As we continue to allow the Spirit of God to live through us, his life continues to leaven us from within, healing, restoring, cleansing, sanctifying and restoring our soul. We will look at this process in greater detail in the following articles.