1 Cor. 5:5: “To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Although this text is quoted to prove the separate conscious existence of a part of man between death and the resurrection, the reader cannot fail to notice that the time when the spirit is saved is in the day of the Lord Jesus, when the resurrection takes place. This text proves nothing, therefore, respecting the condition of the spirit previous to that time; and, so far as our present purpose is concerned, we might dismiss it with this remark; but a word or two more may serve to free the text still further from difficulty. What is meant by delivering the person to Satan? and what is the destruction of the flesh? Satan is the God of this world; and if any man is a friend of the world, he is on the side of Satan and an enemy of God. The church is the body of Christ, and belongs to him. A person committing the deeds spoken of in this chapter must be separated from that body, and given back to the world. He is thus delivered unto Satan. This is for the destruction of the flesh. The flesh is often used to mean the carnal mind. Gal. 5:19-21. The spiritually-minded man has crucified, or destroyed, the flesh. Now, a person who desires eternal life, when he finds himself set aside from the church, and placed back in the world, the kingdom of Satan, on account of his having the carnal mind, understands that to gain eternal life he must then put away the carnal mind, or crucify and destroy the flesh. If he does this, he becomes spiritually minded, joined again to the body of Christ, and the old man, the flesh, being destroyed, he, as a spiritually-minded man, will be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Spirit we understand to be used in contrast with the flesh, the one denoting a person in a carnal state, the other, in a spiritual. To deal with a person as the apostle here directs, set him aside from the church till he sees, and repents of, his sins, is often the only way to save him. In the day of the Lord Jesus, a person is saved by having his body fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body, not destroyed. Phil. 3:21. The destruction spoken of in the text cannot therefore be the literal destruction of the body in contrast with the disembodied spirit.
CHAPTER XII.
DEPARTURE AND RETURN OF THE SOUL.
We have now examined all those passages in which the word spirit is used in such a manner as to furnish what is claimed to be evidence of its uninterrupted consciousness after the death of the body. We have found them all easily explainable in harmony with other positive and literal declarations of the Scriptures that the dead know not any thing, that when a man’s breath goeth forth and he returneth to his earth, his very thoughts perish, and that there is no wisdom nor knowledge nor device in the grave to which we go. And so far the unity of the Bible system of truth on this point is unimpaired, and the harmony of the testimony of the Scriptures is maintained.
We will now examine those scriptures in which the term soul is supposed to be used in a manner to favor the popular view. The first of these is Gen. 35:18: “And it came to pass as her soul was in departing (for she died), that she called his name Benoni.” This is adduced as evidence that the soul departs when the body dies, and lives on in an active, conscious condition.
Luther Lee remarks on this passage:--
“Her body did not depart. Her brains did not depart. There was nothing which departed which could consistently be called her soul, only on the supposition that there is in man an immaterial spirit which leaves the body at death.”
We may offset this assertion of Luther Lee’s with the following criticism from Prof. Bush:--
“As her soul was in departing. Heb. betzeth naphshah, in the going out of her soul, or life. Gr., ἐν τω ἀφιεναι ἀυτην την ψυχην, in her sending out her life. The language legitimately implies no more than the departing or ceasing of the vital principle, whatever that be. In like manner when the prophet Elijah stretched himself upon the dead child, 1 Kings 17:21, and cried three times, saying, ‘O Lord my God, let this child’s soul come into him again,’ he merely prays for the return of his physical vitality.”--Note on Gen. 35:18.
The Hebrew word here translated soul is nephesh, rendered in the Septuagint by psuche; and it is unnecessary to remind those who have read the chapter on Soul and Spirit that these words mean something besides body and brains. They often signify that which can be said to leave the body, as we shall presently see, rendering entirely uncalled for the supposition of an immaterial spirit which Mr. Lee makes such haste to adopt.
What then did depart, and what is the plain, simple import of the declaration? We call the reader’s attention again to the criticism of Parkhurst, the lexicographer, on this passage:--