Meaning of IMMORTALITY

Life without end, exempt from death and annihilation. By definition, God is the only one who has immortality (1 Tim. 1:17; 6:16). He alone is essentially eternal (Ps. 90:2), as are the Son (Heb. 13:8) and the Holy Spirit (Heb. 9:14).
A. The immortality of man or the human soul.

Today it is common to deny it, with the justification that only God possesses this attribute (1 Tim. 6:16). There are also those that present the text of Ez. 18:4, "the soul that sins, it shall die." (Cf. Rom. 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death.").

It is argued, just as death causes the decomposition of the body, so it also annihilates the sinful soul; Based on this position, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, far from being biblical, would be based on pagan doctrines, especially the Greek ones.

For conditionalists, our immortality is totally subject to the condition of faith: man, mortal by nature, is only a candidate for immortality, and his "immortalization" would be the goal of redemption. The existence of sinners, prolonged beyond the grave, would only be transitory, and would finally come to an end.

It is true that the Greeks, with Plato in particular, believed in the survival of the soul, but in a very different way from that indicated in the Scriptures. For them the soul already existed before conception, being of divine and immortal essence.

By incorporating herself into a body, she was imprisoned, and "salvation" for her becomes her liberation from corporeality. If the soul has been completely purified, it will live without a body for all eternity.

It is evident that such theories constitute a denial of the biblical notion of the resurrection of the body, linked to the regeneration of the soul, which is neither divine nor pre-existing before the beginning of human life.

B. The teaching of the Scriptures.

God alone possesses immortality, just as in Him alone is “life,” the sole source of all existence (John 1:4; 14:6; Acts 17:28). Paul does not say that He alone is immortal. He possesses this immortality, and grants it as a gift to creatures made in his image (Gen. 1:27).

The biblical texts clearly state the following:

(A) There is another life in the next world for the just and the unjust. According to Jesus, the patriarchs who had been missing for so long were still alive (Lk. 20:37-38). The unrighteous continue to exist in the abode of the dead (Is. 14:9-10; Ez. 32:21-32).

The term used in Ez. 18:4 is clarified if the entire sentence is read: “Behold, all souls are mine; As the soul of the father, so the soul of the son is mine; "The soul that sins [that is, the person who sins, the one who is guilty], that one will die."

This text, thus, does not at all indicate an annihilation of the sinner in the other world. Christ teaches that the unrepentant, upon their departure from the earthly sphere, are fully conscious in a place of torment (Lk. 16:19-31).

(B) Existence beyond physical death will have no end, neither for the saved nor for the lost. Naturally, the eternal life of the elect will have no end, but the punishment of the reprobate will have the same duration (Dan. 12:2; Mt. 25:46; Rev. 14:10-11; 20:10).

(C) The term immortality, when referring to man, is applied to the resurrected body, not the soul (1 Cor. 15:53 b). It is the corruptible body that is corrupted and dissolved, and it is the body that needs to reach incorruptibility and immortality. As for the soul, although it knows "spiritual death", it does not cease to exist, neither in this world nor in the afterlife. It can be said, thus, that man receives:

(I) from the beginning of his life, with his soul, endless existence;

(II) with the new birth, in the spirit of it, eternal life;

(III) in the resurrection, in his body, immortality.

(D) It is also undoubtedly that angels are spirits called to an endless life.

Scripture does not speak of immortality limited to the soul, but of man created in the image and likeness of God. The believer now has eternal life (John 5:24; 17:3); At his death, his soul passes into the presence of the Lord (1 Cor. 5:3; cf. 2 Cor. 12:2), consciously enjoying his company (cf. Luke 16:22- 25); At the resurrection, his body will receive the promised immortality (1 Cor. 15:53 b).