The Soul in the Trinitarian Model

.... In comparing the Trinity of God to the tripartite nature of man, in our search for basic similarities, our next question must be, does God have a soul? This brings us to a very interesting correlation. If you’ll look in Matthew 12:18 you’ll see a quotation from Isaiah 42:1, in which God was foretelling the coming of Jesus – and as a matter of fact, the entire Trinity was present in this Old Testament verse as God the Father would say of Jesus:

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.... "Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, my Elect One in whom My soul delights! I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles."

(Isaiah 42:1)

.... So we are seeing in this passage that God does have a soul – and there are lots of other passages in the Old and New Testaments to bring out this point. You might want to look at Psalm 11:5, Leviticus 26:30 or Job 23:13. All you have to do is pull out your concordance and look under ‘soul’ and you can see many references to God having a soul.

.... So according to Scripture, God does have a soul. Now, we’ve already matched the Spirit of God (the Holy Spirit) to our own spirit within the tripartite man. We are made in the image of God so this correlation is not surprising. A scale model should always bear a marked similarity to the original pattern. But what about the soul of God? We see a soul within the tripartite man as well so we’ve obviously formed another correlation, but is the soul of God the same thing as the person of God the Father within the Godhead?

.... I want to show you something that you must think about carefully. This is a stunning sort of thing to see. In Matthew 12:18 which we read a moment ago, the Father said "Behold My servant in whom My soul is well pleased.". But in 2 Peter 1:17, Peter makes reference to this same Scripture and equates it this way:

.... "For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

(2 Peter 1:17)

.... So here’s the correlation. Matthew says "in whom My Soul is well pleased" and Peter equated this to "God the Father" saying "in whom I am well pleased." So between these two verses there is a direct correlation between the person of God the Father and the identity of the soul of God. And that’s a very considerable thing to think about! You may want to stop for a moment and check out those two verses (Matthew 12:18 and 2 Peter 1:17).

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