Question:
What is the difference between soul and spirit?

Answer:
We cannot distinguish between our soul and spirit for they make up our person. Only by the Scriptures do we know that God has divided “asunder the soul and spirit” (Hebrews 4:12). Body, soul, and spirit were created by God in Genesis chapter 1. In verse 1 God created matter, “the heaven and the earth,” which is where our bodies come from. In verse 21 God created “every living creature [soul] that moveth.” In verses 26 and 27 God created man in His “image” and “likeness.” God created a spirit for man like Himself for “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24).

Angels are merely spirit beings. Plants only have bodies. Animals and everything that moves have bodies and souls, but man has a body, soul, and spirit and thus He is the “image” (Genesis 1:27) or representative of the Triune God–God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Unlike the soul of an animal, God “breathed into [man’s] nostrils the breath of life and he became a “living [never-dying] soul” (Genesis 2:7). Christians living today have a second Spirit in their bodies, the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13).
Jesus was a real man when He walked on this earth for He had a “body…prepared” for Him (Hebrews 10:5), and since He rose from the dead He has a body fit for glory (Philippians 3:21). In the Garden of Gethsemane He said His “soul [was] exceeding sorrowful” (Matthew 26:38). Before He died He cried with a loud voice: “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit, and having said thus, He gave up the ghost [spirit]” (Luke 23:46). And at the same time He was and ever will be the second Person of the Godhead, God the Son.”The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). The spirit is the intelligence and seat of God-consciousness, the soul is the seat of the emotions (love, hate, etc.), and the body is the seat of the five senses (seeing, smelling, etc.).