Transcript

ANNOUNCER: When translators of the Bible have a word in the original language that can be translated with two different meanings, how did they decide which one to go with, which meaning fits? Hello friend, welcome to Grace in Focus as we begin this new week. Grace in Focus is a radio broadcast and podcast ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. We are a focused Free Grace ministry and you can find out more about what that means at our website, faithalone.org. You can also learn more about what we have to offer you, hundreds of free articles that you can read and research, a magazine that you can subscribe to for free called Grace in Focus, and our upcoming national annual conference, May 18th through the 21st. Now is the time to make your plans and get registered for that conference. Our theme, Believe in Jesus for Life. Our website, faithalone.org. 

Now let’s get on with our discussion for today. Here’s Bob Wilkin, along with Sam Marr. 

BOB: All right, Sam, I believe you have a question from Cindy, which happens to be your mother’s name, and this happens to be from your mother, right? 

SAM: This is from my mother. Yeah, she sent me an email. She said she was listening to the episodes you did with David Renfro, and she had a question about 1 Peter 1:9, the verse that says, “receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” Since this is such a big verse used by lordship salvation proponents, she knows that this isn’t talking about persevering to the end in order to receive salvation or receive everlasting life. But how do you explain to other people that “lives” is a better translation here? Or if you’re going to use souls, why is this not talking about your eternal soul? 

BOB: That’s a good question. The word, psuche, and when I taught at Multnomah School of the Bible, I said suke, or suken in the accusative, and this guy came up to me and who was really good with Greek, and he said, I couldn’t figure out why you kept talking about the salvation of the fig tree, because suke means fig tree, and psuche has a PS sound at the beginning: life, soul, living being. 

So in the New Testament, the word psuche has multiple meanings. For example, what is it? I think it’s Revelation 16, is it around verse three where it talks about a living being, and it uses the word psuche. I believe it’s every living being. 

SAM: Yeah, this is the second bowl when the sea turns to blood. It says, “every living creature in the sea died.” 

BOB: Okay, and that is the word psuche, but it’s translated living creature. You also have, I think, what is it? 1 Corinthians 15:45, and that uses that word, psuche, what does that verse say? 

SAM: Yeah, Paul says, “And so it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being. ‘ ” or psuche, “The last Adam became a life-giving spirit,” and there it’s pneuma. 

BOB: So the point here is, Cindy, that if you look at the context, you try to ask, what English word best conveys the sense of the Greek? So you wouldn’t translate it “soul” when you’re talking about a living being, or Adam became a living soul. It is true, we do use the word “soul” to refer to life sometimes even today in aeronautics, and also in terms of the sea. 

For example, I’m told that they will say, how many souls do you have on your flight today? How many souls were lost when the ship went down? That kind of thing. And so sometimes the word “soul” is used when you’re referring to lives, but it’s more normal in English to say how many lives were lost, right? If you’re not talking about planes or boats, you generally would use the word life not soul. So for example, when Jesus says, “My soul is exceedingly troubled,” you probably wouldn’t translate that life because He’s talking about His inner self is very troubled. Or Jesus says, “I lay down My life.” Well, He uses the word psuche to say, I lay down my life, but it would sound odd in English, don’t you think Sam to say, Jesus said, I’ll lay down my soul? 

SAM: Yeah, because of what you’re talking about, generally in English, if we’re talking about our physical life, that we use the word life, but in English, soul usually conveys a non-physical, a metaphysical meaning. 

BOB: Yeah, and if you think about it, the saving of the psuche is unique in both the Old Testament, the Greek Old Testament and in the New Testament, it often refers to saving one’s physical life. For example, James 5:19-20, “he who turns the sinner from the error of his way, will save” his psuchen from death, his life from death, although sometimes it’s translated “save his soul from death.” 

And you can see how that might confuse people because they will think, oh, well, this is saving his soul from hell or from eternal condemnation. No, he’s talking about saving the life from physical death. But sometimes it is used more in the sense of saving your inner, like you used the word metaphysical sense, sometimes it’s saving your inner self. Look at Matthew 16:25-26. And this is an example of where the translators really messed it up, because the word psuche occurs four times, and yet it’s translated as soul, twice, and life, twice. So do you have it there? 

SAM: Yeah, Matthew 16:25, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” 

BOB: Okay. Now the life-life there is psuche. And although that’s just a pronoun, it is referring to the same thing. Now in verse 26, the same exact Greek words used. And unfortunately, the New King James and most translations shift the translation from one verse to the next. Now read verse 26. 

SAM: “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul, or what will a man give an exchange for his soul?” 

BOB: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that verse used as an evangelistic verse. And they basically say you need to lay down your life for Christ in order to go to heaven. You need to suffer for Christ in order to spend eternity in Jesus’ kingdom. You need to persevere to the end of your life in faith and good works if you want an eternal relationship with Him, something like that. 

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BOB: Verse 26 is talking about the same thing as verse 25. We’ve got to lose our life in order to gain it. In other words, I’ve got to lay down my inner self, what’s really important to me, in order to really gain what’s important to me. And then verse 26, how does it read again? 

SAM: “What profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” 

BOB: So it would be what profit is if man gains the whole world and loses his life. 

SAM: Which makes just as much sense because if you become rich and then you die, those riches, I mean, even if you’re not a Christian, you don’t take your riches with you.

BOB: Exactly, but the only problem there is it gives the impression we’re talking about dying. And really what is talking about is losing your significance, losing your joy in living both now and in the life to come. And then he says, what will a man give in exchange for his life or in exchange for his soul? 

The illustration I like to use is two presidents, President Nixon, he had the whole world by the tail. He was president for two terms. He had everything going for him. And not only did he authorize the Watergate break-in, but then he authorized the cover-up. As a result, he ended up resigning in disgrace. He gained the whole world, but he lost his inner self. He lost what was so important to him, which was his reputation. 

Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton had the world—President of the United States, he pivoted to a more centrist position, made some great strides economically. Everything was going great. Then he had an affair with an intern and then he covered it up and then he lied under oath and then he got impeached by the House, but fortunately not by the Senate. Well, he managed to stay in office, but his reputation was severely tarnished by that and remains tarnished to this day. So I would argue both President Nixon and President Clinton gained the whole world, but lost their lives. They lost their inner selves. 

Verse 27 then says, “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Fathers (with His angels) and then He will recompense each according to their works.” Well, verse 27 makes it clear He’s explaining what he just said in verses 24, 25 and 26. 

So in answer to Cindy’s question, I would translate this “life” in all four places or “soul” in all four places, but I wouldn’t shift back and forth—that confuses the English reader. These aren’t evangelistic verses. We know they’re discipleship verses because He starts out by saying, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up His cross and follow He.” He doesn’t say if anyone wishes to come to Me, let him believe in Me for everlasting life. 

SAM: But so back to 1 Peter, should we translate 1:9 as souls or lives? 

BOB: I would say either one works, pick one. I like souls and the reason I like souls is because we’re not talking about saving one’s physical life from being curtailed. What we’re talking about is saving one’s inner self for ruling with Christ in the life to come. That’s what I believe 1 Peter 1:9 is talking about. 2 Peter talks about the same basic thing and he talks about a rich entrance into the kingdom and second Peter 1:11. And I think this is the same basic thing. 

Saving your life is saving your fullness of life. Of course, if a believer walks with Christ now, we have abundance of life now, but we also will win abundance of life in the life to come. And so that’s why I would translate that probably “saving the soul” or the inner self. The thing you have to keep in mind is you’ve got to translate this word all through the New Testament. So it has to be consistent however you pick and the key is to recognize that words have ranges of meaning. Psuche can mean a living creature. It doesn’t even have to refer to humans. It can refer to animals. It can refer to a living being, like Adam becomes the first human, but it can also refer to the inner self or it can just refer to the physical life. For example, 1 Peter 3:20. What does that say? 

SAM: It says, “who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.” 

BOB: Yeah, and I might translate that “eight lives were saved through water.” But the nice thing about translating eight souls is you see that the word soul is sometimes used just of lives. 

But anyway, it’s a great question. Ultimately, every believer ought to learn enough Greek so that they could at least do some rudimentary Bible studies using the Greek. Unfortunately, that’s not possible for everybody, so we rely on translations to help us. If you don’t know anything about Greek, you might want to compare three or four different English translations or whatever your native language is, three or four different translations, because they may give you different nuances. 

Well, thanks, Cindy, and thank you all, and Sam, let’s remember to keep grace in focus.

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