What Is A Christian?  Part III

To pick up from Part II we will look at body, soul, spirit, and formed, made, created.

In the beginning (whenever that was) man was formed, made, and created.


Genesis 2:7

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground...


The Hebrew word for "formed" is yatsar, "fashioned out of something that was already in existence."  God formed man out of the dust of the ground.  The word "man" in Hebrew is adam, meaning "red earth".


Genesis 3:19

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.


Our next word, "soul", is the Hebrew word nephesh.  What is soul?  The soul in man is that which gives the body its life, its vitality.  It is "breath life".


Genesis 2:7

And the LORD God formed man [man's body] of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.


God put life into Adam; He made man a living soul.  The word "made" is the Hebrew word asah, "a substance required of which the thing made consists."  Sometimes it is called "the spirit of man".  It has nothing to do with whether you are a Christian or a non-Christian.


Acts 27:37

And we were all in the ship two hundred threescore and sixteen souls.


This record in Acts refers to Paul and Luke's ship sailing to Rome.  Except for Paul and Luke, the ship was full of non-Christians.  "Souls" merely means "alive people"; those having breath-life.

Soul is not spirit.  Soul is not eternal nor is it immortal.  The modern church has been illogical on this truth because it usually teaches that the soul is eternal life spirit and goes back to God; but then they deny that a cow, having a soul, must go back to God.


Genesis 1:30

And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life...


The word "life" is the Hebrew word nephesh, "soul".  Every living beast has a living soul, just as every living man and woman have a living soul.

Where is the soul life of man and beast?


Leviticus 17:11

For the life [nephesh] of the flesh is in the blood...


The soul life is in the blood and is passed on when the sperm impregnates the egg at the time of fertilization.

What ultimately happens to the soul?  As the body goes back to dust, the soul is passed on from one person to his progeny.  If a person has no offspring, his soul is gone when he dies; it is no more.  When a man takes his last breath, his soul terminates -- since it is not immortal.

After briefly studying "formed" and "made", we must now consider the Biblical usage of the word "created".


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Part II | Part IV