The word soul (usage & meaning)

Hillsage said:

My view is this; We are not made in the image of God and after His likeness. Adam and Eve were. But that all changed with the sin of Adam/Eve and the BIRTH of the first human being.

GEN 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Genesis 5:3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth:

If I say you are the spitting image of your father, what does that mean? It means you are physical substance is like him (hair eyeballs, teeth, features). And if I say you 'You act just like your dad.' What do I mean? I mean you have the same 'character' likenesses (personality, emotional expressions).

JOH 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word and THE WORD was GOD"....not the fleshly body of Jesus. That "sinful flesh body" wasn't "in the beginning" of creation.

But "the image/substance of God was, and still is spirit.

Joh 4:12 "God IS SPIRIT"

Luke 24:39 "a spirit has not FLESH AND BLOOD"

Above, Jesus is speaking, not out of His fleshly body, but His resurrected spiritual body. God is spirit again because "The Word" which "gave up equality with God" as a spirit to "become FLESH..." is now again spirit.

JOH 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

God is spirit/in substance/image
God is love/a functional characteristic/likeness.

God created dirt, then made a dead body out of it. Then He breathed into that dead body spirit the image/substance of God. Thus making man in his image. If God just breathed AIR into that dead body, what would happen? It would EXPIRE air right back at Him out of its dead lungs. But if God breathed a spirit of life into that dead body, then the brain/soul would come alive and be functioning. It would tell the diaphragm muscle to contract inhale air and keep breathing as 'a breathing creature'. (a Hebrew definition of soul).


1CO 15:45 Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
46 But it is not the spiritual (body) which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. (Not a spirit Word body first, but a spirit Word become flesh body first).
47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven (Word/spirit become the flesh/body of Jesus).
48 As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven (born again spirit of Christ in us).
49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image (spirit) of the man of heaven. (eg the spirit of Christ)

I know I'm way down the rabbit hole concerning your "We are mortal" comment. But if you can hang in there a little longer I think I can put where I'm coming from to hopefully be understood by 'most'. Hopefully anyway. I know this was long, but does what I've just said make sense? I'm not asking if anyone believes it. But can you scripturally follow what I've said so far? I am not twisting scripture, but I know I am challenging orthodoxy....That's why I come to the UNORTHODOX forum.

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disciple Clint said:

“Our soul is our personality, who we are. With our soul we think, reason, consider, remember, and wonder. We experience emotions like happiness, love, sorrow, anger, relief, and compassion. And we’re able to resolve, choose, and make decisions.”

Using this as a backdrop, let’s now apply this to animals.

Do Animals Have Souls?
People will often use the term soul and spirit interchangeably, and how you use the word will determine how you answer the question do animals have souls. If you are equating the soul with the spirit, then I would say that animals don’t have souls. If you are defining the soul as we did above as the place where your emotions flow out of, where you think, reason, and make decisions, then absolutely animals have souls. Animals can think, reason, sense danger, experience happiness, sadness, and all of the things we mentioned in our definition of the soul.
Do Animals Have Souls?
The soul is the principle of life. Since animals and plants are living things, they have souls, but not in the sense in which human beings have souls. Our souls are rational–theirs aren’t–and ours are rational because they’re spiritual, not material.
Do Animals Have Souls like Human Beings?

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Hillsage said:

I agree that just having 'a spirit' doesn't give us immortality. That is something we have to work for by totally overcoming sin, I believe.

We who are born again have the holy spirit of Christ IN US, just like Jesus did. He was born with it, we received it when our spirit was born again. For 30 years he worked out the salvation of His soul as, "one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." Heb 4:15 Jesus wasn't born perfect he was born sinless and became "perfect through suffering" Heb 2:10 the same "sinful flesh" nature we struggle with.

ROM 8:3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,

ROM 2:7 to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;
If we suffer and overcome sin totally, we too can put on immortality this side of glory.


1PE 4:1 Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same thought, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 so as to live for the rest of (the) time in the flesh no longer by human passions but by the will of God.
The word (the) is not in the Greek.

ROM 8:11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you. 12 So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh -- 13 for if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.

ROM 8:6 To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

GAL 6:8 For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

If we reap eternal life by being led of the Spirit TOTALLY, "work out your salvation of your souls with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12), we will reap the 'ETERNAL LIFE' from the Spirit that will give immortality to our soul and bodies. And we will "destroy the last enemy of death" (1Cor 15:26).

I believe Jesus was the pattern son for us to follow unto perfection and sinlessness. If we attain that, we have access to the same 'LIFE' on earth He did. That is "the high calling of Christ"

PHI 3:14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
15 Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded:
EPH 4:13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ;

Yes it is a high calling to which we are called, if we want to put on immortality this side of glory.

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disciple Clint said:

I am not aware of any Scripture that indicates that man has an immortal soul. Man as created was not intended to experience death but I think it would be wrong to conclude that man had an immortal soul. The immortal soul was introduced in the philosophy of Plato, if my memory is correct.

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Hillsage said:

To me scripture seems plain that soul refers to 1/3 of ‘the person’. The other 2/3 is spirit and body. Just like Jesus had.

Matt 26:38 Then says he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death:
Matt 6:41Watch and pray, that all of you enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is flesh is weak.



Jesus said what he said because He knew your spirit can never die. Spirit was the only part of mankind which was long dead in Soul and body when Jesus went and preached to their eternal spirits.

1 Pet 3:18 For Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: 19By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;

He left the soul out in Ecclesiastes. He was dividing between the spirit and the soul and the church mostly doesn’t and apparently can’t. That’s why we’re here.

Heb 4:12 For the word of God is active, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart

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Hillsage said:

That depends IMO. If your spirit is saved/justified by regeneration it is wholly saved once and for all. Once saved always saved. Then you have to work out the complete salvation of your soul through ‘sanctification’. And you have to do that to the point you are walking in complete obedience to the leading of the ‘holy spirit of Christ in you’, just like Jesus walked, for 30 years in sinlessness before He received the baptism of the Holy Spirit OF GOD.

That’s a rabbit hole of stuff not believed obviously.

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