Question: What is the difference between spirit and soul?

Answer: I need to take you to the beginning when God created man. In the book of Genesis 1:27 we are simply told that God created man and woman.

In the second chapter we get the details. Gen 2:7  "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

So God took dust and made a body, then he breathed into him the breath of life, the word here is 'Pneuma', translated as wind or spirit. That is what God did.

When the spirit entered and fused with the body, a new creation occurred, then 'man became a living soul.

The soul is who you are; unique and different from every other person on earth.

Your soul will exist, feel, wish, want, plan, and be forever. Your body may die, and the breath of life, the spirit in you will depart, but your soul lives forever. When Adam sinned his soul was separated from God by his disobedience. His body eventually died, but his children were born with the sin nature they inherited from Adam.

Jesus was the only human not born of man's creating. He was concieved of a Virgin, by the Spirit of God, much like Adam's creation. He is called the Second Adam in the Bible. Because of this he had no sin, and when He died on the cross, he paid for your sin and mine. So we can be forgiven by a loving God, because He gave His son Jesus to pay for your and my sin.

When you received Jesus, your sins were forgiven, and you have started a new life.

Joh 3:16-17  "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."

© 2013 Jim Cole-Rous