To be quite honest, I could tackle this issue in two paragraphs with ease. The most used Scriptures to defend this erroneous belief are easily debunked for deliberate misinterpretation. The only other Scripture that could be used to defend this idea comes from a one-line statement about Jonathan and David in 1 Samuel and is also deliberately misinterpreted, just like it is by the crowd that uses it to defend homosexual relationships.

Where Does the Idea of a Soul Tie Come From?

But I won’t do that. Instead, let’s go to the source of this current that is gaining quite a lot of steam today, especially among women and young girls looking to be married, like a number of other poor beliefs about relationships that likely spawned from a misappropriated purity culture, which, in itself has numerous issues. A lot of sources also contribute this belief to the New Age Spirituality that is running rampant through the Church. New Age Spirituality is a combination of numerous belief systems, which essentially means that those who practice it believe whatever makes their own lives and inner thoughts easier, although it largely combines eastern religions like Buddhism with metaphysical thought practices and esotericism. I liken it to Gnosticism, but to give an example, it’s the same belief system that gives us statements like manifesting and asking the universe things, which is to say it’s prayer to self and rampant idolatry.

Another basis for this belief comes from an innate human desire to believe things that make life easier on us in combination with very real physiological processes. The fact of the matter is there are physiological and emotional processes that cause people to come together;  a number of hormones create connections in the brain and cause pleasure from physical and emotional acts that two people perform when they’re together: sharing fears, desires, planning a future, hugging, kissing, and sexual intercourse. You can go find the studies that prove these things. They’re literally all over the place.

 My point is that, knowing this, it’s easier to believe that you’re permanently tied to a person in a way you can’t touch/influence than it is to do the work of detaching yourself from someone who did not choose to love you. It’s easier to believe your soul is attached to someone who made you happy than it is to believe that, eventually, you’ll be able to move on to love and be loved again. It’s easier to live in a fantasy, a knight’s tale, than it is to believe life doesn’t work out like the princess stories all the time, and sometimes you have to grieve and move on.

What Does Scripture say?

I won’t touch the passage on Jonathan and David in 1 Samuel 18:1. It’s clear to me that you have to apply Scripture incredibly liberally, such that you must conclude a falsity about homosexuality being approved by Scripture before you ever append that passage to the soul tie argument, and that’s not a can of something incredibly straightforward and simplistic I’m going to open.

Instead, let’s look at the other two passages: one in the Old Testament and one in the New. Genesis 2:24 says, “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.” Proponents of the soul tie will argue this passage explicitly states that the two become one while conveniently ignoring the very next word, “flesh.” This passage is repeated in 1 Corinthians 6:16. In both cases, the operative word here is “flesh.” And in the original languages of Hebrew and Greek, both verses also clearly state “flesh,” and there is no way to mistake the words for “soul,” “spirit,” or any approximation of something that is not bodily in nature.

The Scripture, actually, is quite clear abut this in other places, too. For the Pharisees once confronted Jesus, attempting to trap Him, and He told us exactly why souls cannot be tied to each other in Matthew 22:20, which says, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven.” If soul ties are legitimate, then marriage should be an insitution in heaven simply because it is the soul, the spirit, that resides there until we receive new bodies. Furthermore, it should be an institution in the new heaven and new earth, but this is also not the case so far as Scripture determines by Jesus’s own statement. This is because it is not the soul of two who are tied together but the flesh, the bodies, and we will receive new bodies in the resurrection.

If it were the case that souls are tied, then, effectively, God would have to divorce each believing couple (or, even worse, a believer and non-believer couple) upon their deaths in order for this Scripture to remain true. And not only do we know that God hates divorce (Matthew 19:8-9) and only allowed it because of the hardness of human hearts, but we also know that he’s not going to allow His people to be tied and sealed by Spirit to any but Himself. If that were the case, then He would allow room in a saved person, sealed by the Holy Spirit, for other spirits to reside, and the Scripture is also clear that this is not the case.

So How are People Tied?

There is a reason death parts the married couple; it is because they will no longer be tied together after death. It is the flesh of this body that is tied to the flesh of another body because the two are to become one entity. As Paul writes, the mystery of marriage is of Christ and the Church, the bride and bridegroom becoming one in work and purpose (Ephesians 5:31-32). So just as our relationship with Christ is a covenant as His bride, so, too is marriage a covenant; a promise. We are held together by the idea that our yes should be yes and our no should be no.

As we reside as spirit in heaven until the resurrection and then gain new bodies as well as a clear understanding of Christ and the Church as His bride, we no longer need the institution given to us to procreate and understand how the Son relates to us. So, no, soul ties are not a real thing. Rest in that truth. Your sin and mistakes will not haunt you for this life, nor ever, unless you let them. You are forgiven and whole in Christ, not half tied to a man or woman you once slept with.