Psuche Life vs. Zoe Life

6/1/2013

This recording begins with a discussion about the use of the word “soul-life” when referring to the word “life” in Matthew 16:25, “Whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

I assume it’s because the Greek word is psuche. It’s not Zoe. Zoe is the word for life that’s the God kind of Life, and psuche is the word for soul-life, psychological life. Psuche is the Greek word. Bios obviously is the physical kind of life. There were several words in the Greek. We say “life”—who knows what it means? We say “love”—who knows what it means? In the Greek there were several words for each of those and many other things. That particular scripture—“Whoever loses his soul-life, his psuche, for my sake”—is why he’s reading it that way. It’s because Jesus didn’t say, “Whoever loses his Zoe for Me” or even, “his bios—loses his life—dies for Me.” You can give your body to be burned, but if you don’t have love, then it means nothing. So giving your bios life isn’t what He meant, and giving away your Zoe life is impossible—that doesn’t make any sense. So, the Greek word there obviously is psuche.

What is the Zoe definition?

Zoe? God’s Life, a life from heaven, eternal life, life that always was and always will be that was manifest in Jesus. “The life became the light of men.” (John 1:4)

Psuche meant what?

Psuche is...the root word is what? It’s spelled with a “ps,” by the way.

Is it flesh?

Psychology is the English word from the Greek word psuche. It’s psychological life or your emotions, your mind, the person you think you are in the flesh. Your preferences, your opinions, your manner, your sense of humor. All the stuff that makes up the personality called “you” would be psuche life.

I’ve been listening to Watchman Nee’s “The Release of the Spirit” lately, and it’s the soul-life he was talking about that needs to be broken. He called it the middle layer versus the flesh.

He referred to it as “body, soul and spirit.”

So it would be the soul-life?

Can we re-read that section?

“And Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever desires to save his soul-life will lose it, and whoever loses his soul-life for my sake will find it.’” That’s in Matthew 16. “To lose our soul-life means losing our soul-life as the initiator, decision maker and definer of how we feel or what we want. In these verses the Lord is saying, ‘Lose setting your mind on the things of men. Lose it. Take Me. Lose yourself, do not find yourself. When you lose yourself to find Me, then you will find yourself in a proper way.’ “For the church to be in the reality of Christ, we need many experiences of starting to do something out of ourselves and then stopping out of ourselves...” “For the church to be in the reality of Christ, we need many experiences of starting to do something out of ourselves and then stopping ourselves by calling on the Lord. By this we bring our being back to Christ. We sink back into our mingled spirit. We stop ourselves from initiating, from thinking, acting, deliberating, feeling, and reacting. And we bring ourselves back to Christ as our source. At that point we lose our soul-life. The more we lose our soul-life, the more satan comes out of our system. And the more satan cannot destroy the church through our undealt-with mind and opinion. “When Peter took the initiative to rebuke the Lord concerning His going to the cross, the Lord looked at him and said, ‘Get behind me, satan.’ That means satan was in Peter’s system. He was occupying Peter’s soul. Satan will be ejected out of our system if, day by day and hour by hour, we do not initiate anything but lose our soul-life to find it in Christ. “When the self initiates things, satan is unrestrained in his attack on the church. We must all learn not to initiate. Do not live, do not reason with your flesh and your opinions and your desires. Just say, ‘Lord, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Then like Peter we will learn to eject satan out of our system and our independent, undealt-with self will not be satan’s doorway into your personal life and the church.”

•  Exponential Evil, Exponential Bride