What is the nature of the soul?

What is the nature of the soul? Here again the Word of God is clear. It never speaks about a soul that lives forever. Indeed, Adam and Eve were plainly told, "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). The life of Adam and Eve depended on their continual obedience to God's requirements. God did not create Adam and Eve immortal. Neither did He create them simply to die. He made them to live to live forever on the condition that they exercise their free will and cast their lot on God's side continually. Had Adam and Eve not sinned, surely the history of the world would have been different. Sin would not have reigned; death would have had no place. But man sinned "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12).

All men are thus subject to death. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:20). God is holy. Immortality is His and His alone. The Bible declares that He "only hath immortality" (1 Timothy 6:16). But thank God, the Bible also declares that it "is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Timothy 1:10).

The Scriptural position is clear. Through Christ and through Him alone can the children of Adam have immortality. Eternal life is not inherent in man; indeed, man has no right to it. The Word of God leaves no room for doubt on this point. Search through the sixty-six books of Holy Writ, and you will not find one verse to support the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. On the other hand, scores of passages bear testimony as to what happens to man at death. Let Inspiration speak:

  1. In death the thought process perishes. "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish" (Psalm 146:4).
  2. In death, the dead have no part in anything that is done on earth. "For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 9: 5,6)
  3. In death, there is "no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom" (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
  4. In death, the capacity of man to fellowship with God is absent. "The dead praise not the Lord" (Psalm 115:17).

Thus we see that the experience of death is the antithesis of life. Everything that is present in life is absent in death. Everything that makes man what he is personality, thought process, social life, free will, possibility of worship, moral obligations ceases at the moment of death. Man dies wholly and completely.

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