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Matthew 16:24-26

I’ve said this little statement before but, I find it especially important To today’s devotion. The person that no one can see, is the person that really is me. Think about that for just a moment While we review a bit this morning.

We’ve been talking about the prayer shema from the book of Deuteronomy which Jesus quotes in the Gospels As being the most important commandment. And the second is just as important as the first commandment which is loving others as we love ourselves. We’ve specifically gotten it from Mark 12:28-34.

And we’ve talked about loving God with all our heart and today I want to take the next section and talk about loving God with all our soul. Now that word for soul, is actually nephesh in ancient Hebrew, in the Greek it’s psyche.

Has anyone ever heard the phrase “soul-sucking job?” Perhaps some of you have been at a job that did this to you. When you hear that phrase it means that the situation was demeaning, depressing, unfulfilling, hostile, and working at that job did not give you life. It seemed to drain you of all energy and any positivity you had. The idea of the soul carries a lot of weight in our minds. We can relate the idea of having life drained from you with having the soul drained.

Jesus is talking with His Disciples one day and trying to prepare them for His death. He’s giving them an understanding of what discipleship truly is.

Remember Jesus was a Disciple of the Father as our example. He prayed to the Father, He only brought to the Disciples what He heard from the Father. That’s exactly what a Disciple does. Let’s read today’s passage together.

Matthew 16:24-26 (NIV) Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life (psyche) will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul (psyche)? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

So when Matthew writes the specific Greek word used in the text for soul is the word psyche. He is referring to the different parts of a human that are not the physical body. Greeks and Romans believed in a soul, or the immaterial part of a person that lived on when the physical body died.

However, the biblical text also relates the word soul to life. For example, in Matthew 16:24–26 Jesus uses the word psychē for the translated words life (v. 25) and soul (v. 26).

When we talk about loving God with the part of us that is not physical, the part of human beings that we really cannot measure or see, in the Greek words used here, the understanding would have been that we are to love God with our life – in all of its extent. To love God with all my soul is to love God unreservedly with the very essence of my being. And some would say it is to worship God out of our unreserved love with all of our soul.