whats a soul?

the Soul...

what is that?

what is it's function?

what difference does it make?

it is able to be saved.... ook??

it's not like this word is one of those 'old fashioned' words that only king james liked to use..

(bequeath, dearth, come hither, nary thither..)

we use it all the time..

soul-mate.

S.O.S. 'Save our Souls'

tortured soul.

soul music.

the window of my soul is open.

chicken soup for the soul.

sole of my shoe.. ;)

(did you know that there are over 25,000 idiomatic expressions in the english language? wow what a headache!)

'soul' HAS TO MEAN MORE.

the reason why i'm even wondering this is because of all the Bible verses that say 'soul' sound REALLY important. namely the one we looked at last sunday downtown "receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your soul" -james 1. that bugs me!

how is 'the word' saving my 'soul'?

first i thought it had to do with your mind.. (which is close but just cant be) and i thought that because most of my 'mind' understanding comes from verses like 1 thess. 5:23 "may God sanctify you spirit soul and body." Logically i thought the 'soul' paul was referencing meant 'mind'; myself and the watchmen nee. then we turn to hebrews 4:12 where the word of God is alive and active..... able to divide between your 'spirit and soul', so i figured what else could that mean other then the times when our spirit and our mind don't agree with each other..

THEN i read Mark 12:30

"you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind and with all your strength."

ok.... now we have a clear Biblical line drawn [by Jesus] between 'mind' and 'soul'.. back to square one. if the soul is not the mind:

what is it?

what does it do?

why save it?

when noah webster & co. define 'soul' it just makes things more confusing.

SOUL 1 : the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life

ok? so your telling me Jesus is asking me to love Him with my immaterial essence...?

hmm lets try something else. i asked the mr. world wide web about how many times this word is translated in the Bible, and if it is translated into any other english words. and he said that in the new testament the word appears 101 times and only is translated 'soul' 47 times. (interesting). in the 1st testament the word appears 780 times and is translated 'soul' only 250 times. some of the other english words used to translate this word are:

breath

life

person

the greek & hebrew word for soul is translated life just over 200 times in our Bible. soul is translated a little over 300 times. same word originally, different word in english... hmm now we're getting somewhere.

ok 'mind' does not = life.

apparently soul.. does.

where I had been wrong in thinking 'soul' Biblically was representing your mind, it was really talking about your 'life'

SOUL = LIFE

and an easier way to define life is "everything that is 'you'"

if soul means life then Jesus wants to save your life. what happens when someone saves your life? your thankful, your SOOOOO thankful, that person has just become the most important person in your galaxy. because everything that is 'you' was just saved from death. Jesus wants to save everything that is 'you' from eternal death, and Jesus wants everything that is 'you' to love Him back.

matthew 16:25 & 26

25For whoever would save his life [or soul] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul [life]? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

He saved your soul, give your life to Him.

1. what is your soul? your soul is you. c.s.lewis said, "you don't have a soul, you are a soul, you have a body"

2. what does it do? look at your lifestyle, that's what your soul does.

3. why save it? God puts tremendous value on you, and everything that is you. Because loving him with all your heart, with all of your life and who you are [soul], and your mind, and all your strength, is why we exist, and when we live our lives with that objective then we get to know God. He saves our soul's so we will be with Him eternally and John 17:3 eternal life is knowing Him, and the One He sent.
-D. Thompson