Do Human Beings Have Immortal Souls?

The answer from Jesus and the Bible may surprise you

[This is part of my series, Short Shots in which I lay up short shots of Biblical truth. Each installment consists of audio (scroll to the bottom for it) and readable text. Enjoy.]

After singer Marianne Faithfull died last week, one of my favorite musical artists, Paul McCartney, issued a statement. “May god bless you Marianne,” McCartney said in part, using a lowercase g to describe whatever he thinks God is.

But it’s the end of McCartney’s statement that caught my eye. He said he hoped that “god” would “guide [Marianne] in the next steps of [her] journey.”

I’m sure that McCartney thinks himself, as the cliche puts it, “spiritual but not religious” in giving this sendoff to Faithfull, maybe even hip and up to date.

The notion of a spirit or soul that is separate from one’s body can be traced back to the ancient animists though. And Plato also believed in this division of body and soul or spirit and that immortal human souls went on to live after dying. He held this view, reasoning that it was inconceivable that a human “soul” could not endure eternally. Plato, the animists, Paul McCartney, and even some misinformed Christians have believed in the immortality of the human soul.

But this isn’t the teaching we find in Jesus or His book, the Bible.

Jesus and the Bible agree with the observations of science: When the heart and other organs stop working, human beings die.

As the late theologian T.A. Kantonen writes in his little classic, Life After Death, “According to the Bible, [a human being] is a psychophysical unit.” He means that when the Bible speaks of the human soul, it has in mind the whole being of people.

When a human soul, encompassing everything we mean when we talk about body, mind, soul, and spirit, is conceived, it already is ticketed for death.

That’s because we inherit the condition the Bible calls “sin” from our parents. It’s the sin condition that ensures that among an infant’s first words is “No!” and that their focus will be self-centered rather than centered on sensitivity to or concern with God or others.

King David speaks for us all when he says, “In sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5)

As I pointed out in an earlier post, The Message We All Need to Receive, because we are born in sin, we commit all kinds of sinful acts–what we usually call sins–that express contempt for or indifference to God and other people.

We are born with death in us and are destined to die.

We don’t have immortal souls; we are mortal souls who will each one day pay the price for our sinful nature.

As the Bible tells us, “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23)

Fortunately, God doesn’t leave us without hope.

Jesus Christ, God the Son, entered into our world, led a sinless life, took the wages for death you and I deserve, and after He had truly, completely died, God the Father, Who once breathed life into particles of dust to create human beings in His image, brought Jesus to life again.

But that wasn’t just good for Jesus.

Jesus is the sinless Savior able to save you from death and sin by giving His righteousness, His eternal life to you when, by the power of His saving Word, you can repent (that is, turn from sin and death) and believe in Him.

When the history of this cosmos comes to an end, Jesus will raise us all bodily. And He will invite those who have believed in Him to stay with Him in His new heaven and new earth, while those who have spurned Him will be allowed to follow the eternity in hell they have, by rejecting Jesus, chosen for themselves.

The God we meet in Jesus has never wanted this. “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD; so turn, and live.” (Ezekiel 18:32)

Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25-26)

Death was not meant to be the end of the human story.

But death is a reality that Christians can live with.

We don’t have to live in the cheerful denial of that fact.

The notion of the immortal human soul is fairy tale.

Death is real.

But real too is the fact that God has conquered sin, death, and condemnation for us.

You can believe in Jesus Christ and that in Him, all your sin is forgiven and you have life with God now and will have it eternally.

Turn to Jesus and live.