What Is The Soul?

"Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." Genesis 2:7

This Sunday as I continue my series on Heaven I will be talking about the soul. I have a soul and you have a soul and all God's children have a soul.

So, what is the "soul"?

It is God's life breathed into us. It is essential life force that animates us and serves as the seat of our intellect, emotion, conscience, self-awareness and will. It is the "image of God" within us.

I found these references in my studies online:

Over and over again in Scripture, people are referred to as "souls" (Exodus 31:14; Proverbs 11:30). The human soul is that part of a person that is eternal—the part that lives on after the body dies and decays. Jesus said we were not to fear men, who can only kill the body, but not the soul (Matthew 10:28). 

There is some confusion as to whether the human spirit and the human soul are the same thing, or different in some way. The Bible is not entirely clear on this point, but there is evidence of at least some subtle differences. The spirit is described more in terms of force (Numbers 14:24), while the soul seems to be a static entity. Again, there is very little in the Bible to tell us what differences exist between the two. However, there is indication that they are separate entities (1 Thessalonians 5:23; Hebrews 4:12)."

The threefold nature of man might be illustrated in several ways. Dr. Clarence Larkin uses three circles (Rightly Dividing The Word, page 86). The outer circle stands for the body of man, the middle circle for the soul, and the inner for the spirit. At this point it will be well to quote a portion from Dr. Larkin’s book:

In the outer circle the ‘Body’ is shown as touching the Material world through the five senses of ‘Sight,’ ‘Smell,’ ‘Hearing,’ ‘Taste’ and ‘Touch.’

The Gates to the ‘Soul’ are ‘Imagination,’ ‘Conscience,’ ‘Memory,’ ‘Reason’ and the ‘Affections.’

The “Spirit” receives impressions of outward and material things through the soul. The spiritual faculties of the ‘Spirit’ are ‘Faith,’ ‘Hope,’ ‘Reverence,’ ‘Prayer’ and ‘Worship.’

In gotquestions.com I found this thought:

Jesus Christ, because he was fully man as well as being fully God, also had a human soul. His soul experienced anguish at Gethsemane while He prayed before going to the cross. He said "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death" (Matthew 26:36-46). The Messianic psalm also speaks of the soul of the Messiah, saying that his soul will not be abandoned to Sheol, nor his body to corruption, or decay (Psalm 16:9-10; Acts 13:35-37). 

The human soul can be strong or weak (2 Peter 2:14), saved or lost (James 1:21; Ezekiel 18:4). It was created by God (Jeremiah 38:16). The human soul needs the protection, purification, and atonement of God (Leviticus 17:11; 1 Peter 1:22). The human soul is eternal and imperishable, and every human soul will be somewhere for eternity. This is a sobering thought—every person you have ever met is a soul, living in a body, and that soul will last forever. Some will reject the love of God and as a result they will have to pay for their own sins with death (Romans 6:23), and since the soul is eternal, it will be an eternal death. Those who accept the free gift of forgiveness and Christ's atoning sacrifice will experience the opposite—eternal life and peace, in heaven (Psalm 23:2). 

The supreme Creator of heaven and earth did two things in creating man. First, He formed him from the very dust of the ground, and, second, He breathed His own breath into the nostrils of Adam. This distinguished man from all of God’s other creatures.

This one passage contains three significant facts about man’s creation. The first is that God and God alone created man. Man did not evolve from other creatures. Impersonal forces did not form man. All the cells, DNA, atoms, molecules, hydrogen, protons, neutrons, or electrons did not create man. These are only the substances that make up man’s physical body. The Lord God formed man. The Lord God created the substances, and then He used those substances to create man.

The word formed is a translation of the Hebrew yatsar, which means “to mold, shape, or form.” It conjures an image of a potter who has the intelligence and the power to form his creation. God is the Master Potter who had the image of man within His mind and who possesses the power and the intelligence to bring that image to life. God had both the omniscience (all-knowledge) and the omnipotence (all-power) to do exactly what He wanted.

Second, God breathed His own breath of life into man. Man is more than “dust” or physical substance. Man has a spirit. We can picture it this way: Adam’s body had just been formed by God from the dust of the earth—a lifeless human body lying on the ground. Then God leaned over and “breathed” His own “breath of life” into the man’s nostrils; God is the Source of life, and He directly placed life within man. This breath of life is seen again in John 20:22, as Jesus imparts new life to His disciples.

Third, Genesis 2:7 tells us that man became a living soul (KJV). The word soul in Hebrew is nephesh, meaning “an animated, breathing, conscious, and living being.” Man did not become a living soul until God breathed life into him. As a physical, animate, rational, and spiritual being, man is unique among all living things upon the earth."

So, how is your soul today?