What Is Our Soul and Its Importance

The Bible describes our soul in two ways. The first is a traditional description: that divine presence inside our bodies. Paul echoes this description by asking “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?”(1 Corinthians 6:19).

The second description equates our souls with ourselves. When God created Adam with “the breath of life,” Adam became a soul (Genesis 2:7). The biblical Hebrew word for God’s breath, nephesh, means a “living being.”

Under either description, God created our soul and as a result, is possessive of it. He says, “For every living soul belongs to me” (Ezekiel 18:4).

When do humans have or become a soul? Is it at conception? When a fetus becomes viable around 22 weeks? Or at birth? This timing is important. If our soul becomes alive in the womb, this has profound spiritual implications regarding abortion and other fetal deaths.

Jesus described the importance of our souls when He said “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? (Matthew 16:26). By implication, our soul is priceless—worth more than the world. Jesus demonstrated how important our souls are to Him. He voluntarily underwent a brutal execution to save our souls from sin, what Apostle Peter calls, “the empty way of life” (1 Peter 1:18-19). Having had our souls saved, we must protect and nourish them. Reading God’s word is a great way to do so.