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NASB | James 2:26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | James 2:26 For just as the [human] body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works [of obedience] is also dead. |
Subject: Ref. on animals having no spirit? |
Bible Note: Hi Tuggy, I agree with you. If you have read my posts you would have seen very very similar understanding as to what the Holy Scriptures say about the soul. Very well put. There are a few points I would like to add. King David wrote: “I foresaw the Lord always before my face; for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved . . . moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope: because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell [Sheol], neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” (Ps 15:8-10, LXX, Bagster [16:8-11, NW]) On the day of Pentecost, 33 C.E., the apostle Peter applied this psalm to Jesus Christ, in declaring to the Jews the truth of Christ’s resurrection. (Ac 2:25-31) The Scriptures, both the Hebrew and the Greek, therefore show that it was the “soul” of Jesus Christ that was resurrected. Jesus Christ was ‘put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.’ (1Pe 3:18) “Flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom,” said the apostle Paul. (1Co 15:50) This would also exclude flesh and bones. Flesh and bones do not have life unless they have blood, for the blood contains the “soul” or is that which is necessary for the life of the creature of flesh.—Ge 9:4. Throughout the Scriptures it is evident that there is no “immaterial soul” separate and distinct from the body. As you have said, the soul dies when the body dies. Even of Jesus Christ it is written that “he poured out his soul to the very death.” His soul was in Sheol. He had no existence as a soul or person during that time. (Isa 53:12; Ac 2:27; compare Eze 18:4.)He trusted his God totally. He existed only in God's memory for 3 days. Consequently, in the resurrection there is no joining again of soul and body. However, whether spiritual or earthly, the individual must have a body or organism, for all persons, heavenly or earthly, possess bodies. To be again a person, one who has died would have to have a body, either a physical or a spiritual body. The Bible says: “If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual one.”—1Co 15:44. But is the old body reassembled in the resurrection? or is it a precise replica of the former body, made exactly as it was when the person died? The Scriptures answer in the negative when they deal with the resurrection of Christ’s anointed brothers to life in the heavens: “Nevertheless, someone will say: ‘How are the dead to be raised up? Yes, with what sort of body are they coming?’ You unreasonable person! What you sow is not made alive unless first it dies; and as for what you sow, you sow, not the body that will develop, but a bare grain, it may be, of wheat or any one of the rest; but God gives it a body just as it has pleased him, and to each of the seeds its own body.”—1Co 15:35-38. The heavenly ones receive a spiritual body, for it pleases God for them to have bodies suitable for their heavenly environment. And is it immortal? Jesus gained immortality when resurrected and likewise the anointed Christians called to reign with him in the heavens (1Pe 1:3, 4), the promise is that they share with Christ in the likeness of his resurrection. (Ro 6:5) Thus, as in the case of their Lord and Head, the anointed members of the Christian congregation who die faithful receive a resurrection to immortal spirit life, so that “this which is mortal puts on immortality.” (1Co 15:50-54) As with Jesus, immortality in their case does not mean simply everlasting life, or mere freedom from death. That they, too, are granted “the power of an indestructible life” as fellow heirs with Christ is seen from the apostle Paul’s association of incorruptibility with the immortality they attain. (1Co 15:42-49) Over them “the second death has no authority.”—Re 20:6 This grant of immortality to the Kingdom heirs is all the more remarkable, in view of the fact that even God’s angels are shown to be mortal, despite their possessing spirit bodies, not carnal ones. Angelic mortality is evident in view of the judgment of death entered against the spirit son who became God’s Adversary, or Satan, and also against those other angels who followed that satanic course and “did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place.” (Jude 6; Mt 25:41; Re 20:10, 14) So the grant of “indestructible life” (Heb 7:16) or “indissoluble life” to those Christians who gain the privilege of reigning with God’s Son in the heavenly Kingdom marvelously demonstrates God’s confidence in them. Truthfinder |