Where does the Bible say the soul that sins shall surely die?
The declaration appears in Ezekiel: "the soul that sinneth shall surely die." The same law was first given to Adam and Eve concerning the tree, where God said, "the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." This establishes the same principle.
Les explains that Ezekiel comes along many years later and puts the principle in a little different language, but it is still the same law: "the soul that sinneth shall surely die." Les points back to the first law God gave Adam and Eve concerning the tree—"the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die"—and says there is no escaping it. Because the human race is born in sin, it faces no alternative but death. Yet Les notes there is a loophole: we can die in the person of Christ on the cross by identification, by faith, by trust, that when He died, I died and you died. This connects to the seed analogy of death, burial, and resurrection.
Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.