IV. What kind of death is meant by the text—“Shall save a soul from death.”

Observe, it is a soul, not a body, that is to be saved from death; consequently we may dismiss all thought of the death of the body in this connection. However truly converted, his body must nevertheless die.

The passage speaks of the death of the soul.

By the death of the soul is sometimes meant spiritual death, a state in which the mind is not influenced by truth as it should be. The man is under the dominion of sin and repels the influence of truth.

Or the death of the soul may be eternal death—the utter loss of the soul, and itsfinal ruin. The sinner is, of course, spiritually dead, and if this condition were to continue through eternity, this would become eternal death. Yet the Bible represents the sinner dying unpardoned, as “going away into everlasting punishment,” and as being “punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.” To be always a sinner is awful enough—is a death of fearful horror; but how terribly augmented is even this when you conceive of it as heightened by everlasting punishment, far away “from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power!”