Neglecting the Soul

The following article appeared in Issue 491–2 of The Banner of Truth Magazine (August–September 2004).

How many times does the Bible tell us to watch our own hearts! Yet how often do Christians slip and fall for want of diligence in this very basic duty! Not for nothing does the Bible say: ‘He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city’ (Prov. 16:32).

Many men have served their countries as president or prime minister yet have not been able to guard their own hearts and lives from simple lusts and common temptations. Many distinguished leaders have commanded armies on land and fleets at sea but have not been able to resist one or two besetting sins. The fiercest battles are not so much those outside of us but those within. This is the Bible’s view of the matter. For this reason God’s Word tells us: ‘Keep thy heart with all diligence: for out of it are the issues of life’ (Prov. 4:23).

Keeping the heart is not a work for which men will give us much praise or recognition. It is a secret activity of the soul, unnoticed by all but God. It will not confer on us an honorary D.D., nor will it advance us to some position of academic prestige. It is tempting, therefore, to dismiss this secret duty of watching over the soul as a task too mean to engage our attention.

We are apt, especially as young Christians, to gauge the importance of our duties by the measure to which they bring us into public notice. This may not be wholly wrong, but it is an attitude which has its dangers. Satan’s ladders to rapid fame and importance usually have a few rotten rungs in them which men do not notice at first.

We are all very immature when it comes to assessing our spiritual priorities. We may prepare diligently to perform our outward duties but hasten through our secret preparations. Our sermons are ready; but our hearts are unready. Our outward lives are impressive, but our private lives may be in disarray. Sin is preached against orthodoxly enough but not mourned over enough in the secret place. How else can we explain the ministerial falls that shock and horrify us? How else can we account for sudden scandals and tragic apostasies? The hidden man of the heart was forgotten in the hurry and bustle of attending to more public duties.

The Bible corrects this unbalanced approach to spiritual priorities. It teaches us to look to our own souls before we put the whole world right. It commands us to make sure of the root before we concern ourselves with the branch or the bud. If the root is healthy there will be good fruit in due season. But premature fruits may wither and die in a little while where the roots of our souls are neglected. ‘Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away’ (John 15:2).

The soul is the greatest treasure which we possess. To guard and to look to the health of the soul is therefore our highest wisdom. Yet how seldom do men do so! If society reflects men’s secret view of life, how small a place the soul has in our day! Our fathers built churches, but we build supermarkets and sports halls. Our fathers read Bibles and studied theology, but we read – if we read at all – of fantasy, fiction and folly. Our fathers watched over souls – their own and those of their children – but our age thinks only of the body and its appetites. The world outside may be expected to follow its own pagan view of life. But the Christian must never lose his biblical priorities. The soul must come first, if God is to receive his glory from our lives.

The Christian should care for his soul as ‘God’s acre’ within him. After all, the soul is that which distinguishes a man from a beast. It is that part of us which originally bore God’s image. Our souls are immortal, eternal, deathless. Though sin has so tragically marred the image of God within the soul, yet regeneration has, in the true Christian, restored this lost image. If we knew the value of the soul we should keep it like the crown jewels and set every faculty we have on the alert to protect it.

Let one reason for caring for our souls be this: that one slip may erase at a stroke all the good we ever did. Let a man be a faithful preacher or missionary for a score of years. Yet, if he slips and spoils his reputation by some thoughtless fall, all his good deeds done over twenty years will be buried in men’s minds under this one fall, which lasted perhaps but for a day. Such is the precarious nature of the life which we live as spiritual persons. We walk on a moral tight-rope all our way till we get safely to the ‘other side’.

Let a second reason for keeping watch over our souls be this: the stealth of our enemy. Did we but remember it as we should; we have an adversary who will stop at nothing to bring about our fall, if only he can. He well knows our frailty and our love of ease. He can match his bait to our taste.

He can give us, as he gave to Peter, a fire at which to warm ourselves. He can find for us, as for Samson, a Delilah to lure us into fatal sleep. He can still mix his cup with such cunning that the drinker will not wake up till his soul is in the flame of hell. Let him who doubts all this consider Balaam, or Saul, or Judas Iscariot.

If we need a third warning not to neglect our souls let it be the extreme care which our blessed Lord took over his. At the age of twelve, he was more concerned to acquire knowledge of the truth than afraid to upset his parents. This is a lesson on how a perfect man values the means of grace and hungers to do the will of God. Loved ones must, if needs be, suffer a little sorrow, but no hindrance must keep him from being about his ‘Father’s business’ (Luke 2:49). Then watch our Lord in his wilderness temptations as he repulses the enemy at every turn and vanquishes his every assault. Watch Christ too as he puts Simon Peter in his place: ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’ (Matt. 16:23). Friendship is precious, but it must not come between Christ and his mission to go to the Cross.

To keep watch over our souls, as Christ here shows us, means to keep fierce and jealous guard over our sense of obligation to God. It is to put the will of God first in our every action. It is to prefer the course of duty to the path of pleasure. It is to hate all influences and all suggestions which might weaken our devotion to the will of God, or which might unsettle our resolve as Christians to put the glory of God before every other consideration whatever.

It is so very possible, our hearts being corrupt, to lose our ‘first love’ (Rev. 2:4). Either through bad example, or through self-deception, or merely because of declining resolve, the Christian can learn to lower the standard of his obedience. What began in his life as gold has over the years become silver – then brass, and at last is only iron and rust. He once ‘lived’; now he has only a ‘name to live’ (Rev. 3:1). His silver is now dross, and his wine mixed with water. In the true believer this is never completely the case. But it may to a fearful extent become so. What has gone wrong? He neglected his soul.

When a house suffers from subsidence, it is all affected, from the roof to the foundation. So, when a Christian neglects his soul, all aspects of his spiritual life undergo a visible decline. He once believed in an infallible Bible; now he smiles at this as youthful fancy. He once rose up early enough to pray and to prepare his heart for the day ahead; now he tumbles out of bed with scarcely a minute for prayer or meditation. Once he kept his place in the house of God and was never late; now he drags himself to church and is never on time. What went wrong? He neglected his soul.

As a camp-fire in the jungle dies down, the wild beasts creep closer. Similarly, as a Christian neglects his soul, his indwelling sins stare him in the face with more menace. Old sins return to haunt him. Youthful lusts, formerly felt to be dead, rise up again with new vigour. Strange languor and disabling torpor make it well-nigh impossible for the once-active believer to fight off his spiritual enemies. His witness dies down. His worship cools off. His love for fellowship diminishes. He invents excuses for absenting himself from godly company. He is but a pale shadow of the man he was. What has gone wrong? He has neglected his soul.

The souls of preachers and ministers are as fully open to the kinds of decay here spoken of as are the souls of other Christians. Let no man deceive himself. When the battle to keep up our spiritual lives is lost in the secret place, it will not save men from the downward slide that we are called ‘Reverend’ or that we wear clerical garments. The neglected soul will not long retain its love of pure doctrine or evangelical worship.

The minister who begins by neglecting his soul will end, if he does not repent and recover in time, by secretly (and then openly) denying central doctrines of the faith. The need for a New Birth is now no longer taken seriously by him. Bare assent to some Creed is all that he now asks of his church members. Bit by bit the whole message of the Bible slips from him. The Atonement, the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth, the wrath of God, the Second Coming, the Judgment to come – all these articles of the faith slip from his personal creed, even if he has not yet got the courage, or rather the moral integrity, to say so. How did this preacher change from being evangelical to becoming a sceptic? He neglected his soul.

Strange to say, neglect of soul is all too often a feature of the mature, rather than of the young Christian. It was in his maturity that good Noah was overcome with wine. It was a mature, not a young, David who – sad to relate – looked at Bathsheba with such tragic consequences. It was a mature Solomon who multiplied wives and clouded his good reputation by tolerating their divinities. It was a mature, not a teenage Hezekiah who showed off his treasures to the foreign ambassadors. These things were written for our learning.

There are snares and pitfalls for the old Christian, just as there are for the young. Perhaps it is because he fancies himself to have passed the danger-zone of life that the older believer may relax his concentration. So much is now behind him of the conflict of his pilgrimage. He is almost in sight of the golden shore. But the veteran pilgrim must fight on to a finish. To relax too soon may be to get a stain on his good record and lose a portion of his great reward.

The way back from all neglect of soul is given us, as all good counsels are given us, in the Word of God: ‘Be zealous and repent’ (Rev. 3:19). Appoint a time for prayer and fasting. Afflict your soul. Weep for your past sins. Cry mightily to God for pardon and a fresh sense of his love. Hate the sinful coldness which dampened your first ardour for Christ. Recall the price paid for your soul in his precious blood. Beseech the Almighty for a new baptism of his Spirit to rekindle the altar-flame. Perhaps more of us need this repentance than we have realized.

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