Body and soul

Jesus said, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” Matthew 16:26

Did you hear about the teenage girl who was doing her homework with the help of her dad when she received a text message from her mum? It was short and to the point: “What do you want from life?”

This rather startled both daughter and father. The mother/wife in question had not previously been noted for throwing around profound theological-cum-philosophical questions. Still, it triggered an interesting chat for the next half-hour, homework forgotten...

It was only later that they discovered that the message had got muddled, due to something called “predictive text” (which I confess I don’t know much about, but which my son has just explained to me). What the mother meant to ask her daughter, in fact, was “What do you want from Lidl?” - which, in case you don’t know, is a cut-price supermarket.

Well, read the gospels and you find that Jesus is much more interested in the wrong message than the right one, as the verse from Matthew 16 makes clear. Indeed, in his sermon on the mount (Matthew 6:31-33), he specifically tells us not to get too preoccupied with what we want from Lidl or wherever: “Don’t worry, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’... Seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness...”

Not that food, drink and clothing are unimportant - of course not. (I think of the millions who are actually starving; Jesus certainly doesn’t mean to disregard them.) But there are other things of far greater importance; and they are summed up in that little word “soul”.

Two questions arise. First, what is your soul? Second, what does it mean to “forfeit” it?

The word soul is not easy to pin down. In essence it means the complete you, body, mind and spirit. We often use it to distinguish our true or inner self from the physical part of us, the body. And so we imagine that when we die our soul continues to exist, while our body is destroyed: as someone once put it to me: “My body is just an envelope I will leave behind when I die”. 

But that isn’t the way the Bible sees it. We human beings don’t just have bodies, we are bodies: body and soul are inseparable. Jesus himself, risen from the dead, wasn’t “pure soul” (whatever that might mean); no, he still had a body, though it was wonderfully different from the one he had had before his death.

And so will we. Go to 1 Corinthians 15:44, where Paul tells us, “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body”. Our present physical bodies fit us for our earthly existence; but when we eventually enter God’s eternal kingdom we will be given not just a new body, but a new kind of body, one that fits us for heavenly existence.

Your soul-and-body-together, then, is the real you, the person that makes you you: the true essence of you, if I can put it that way. So when Jesus speaks of the soul he is talking about your very life, and all that it means.

This helps us to answer our second question: what does it mean to “forfeit” our soul?

Well, if what I have just said is right, it must mean losing our essential identity, our true personhood.

Put it like this. We human beings are made not only by God, but also for him. He has designed us - “in his image and his likeness”, as Genesis 1:26 puts it - in order to have a relationship with him. And that relationship is intended to be one of trust and love. God made us to be his children.

And this means that if we focus too much on the purely material things of life - what we want from Lidl, so to speak - then we lose our true selves. We never become the people God intended us to be. We are lost, in effect enemies of the God who loves us, and therefore subject to his eternal judgment. 

And this is why Jesus sounds this solemn warning about the frightening prospect of losing, or forfeiting, our souls. 

Is this a warning some of us need today? Is your soul secure in the love of God? Have you yet discovered your true self through faith in Jesus? Or are you still too concerned about what you want from Lidl - or Tesco, or Sainsbury’s, or Waitrose or wherever? 

It’s the eternal things that ultimately matter. Find your true, beautiful and authentic self - your very life - through the one who died and rose again! He longs to make you the you you were intended to be!

Lord God, open my eyes to see that life is more than the passing, material things, however real they may seem to be. Help me to find my very soul in finding Jesus. Amen.