Spirit – Soul - Body
Hebrews 4:12 Genesis 2:7/8 1 Thessalonians 5:23
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom He had formed.”
“For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thought and intents of the heart.”
This passage of scripture makes us aware that the spirit and the soul are not the same, because they can be divided by the Word of God. So what is the difference between the spirit and the soul?
Before we answer that question, let’s add one more component to the mix, the body or the house that we live in. With my body I contact the physical realm, and with my soul I contact the realm of the mind and with my spirit I contact the spiritual realm. Someone has stated, “I am a spirit, I have a soul and I live in a body.”
When we think of the body or the house we live in, we view it as touching the material world through the five senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch.
The soul uses the five senses as it agents to express and communicate with the outside world. The gates of the soul are imagination, conscience, memory, reason and the affections. The gate of imagination corresponds to the gate of sight by which the soul sees. The gate of conscience corresponds to the gate of smell that detects the presence of good and evil.
The gate of memory corresponds to the gate of hearing, by which the soul recalls what is heard. The gate of reason corresponds to the taste allowing the soul to check facts. The gate of affections corresponds to the touch, being the hand by which the soul feels the person of the one it loves.
Now the spirit of man receives information into the gate of the spirit and there is faith, hope, reverence, prayer and worship. When God placed man in the Garden of Eden his life was illuminated by the Spirit of God, but when Adam sinned God withdrew his presence and the spirit of man became a death chamber.
It remains a death chamber until the Life giving power of the Holy Sprit floods that chamber with new life through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. The spirit of the natural man has not only bend darkened, but his will stands at the door as a guard, preventing the entrance of the Holy Spirit, so the will of man must be broken.
No man comes to the Father, except the Holy Spirit draws him. When the Spirit draws the will must make a decision to allow the Holy Spirit to enter and take up his abode in mans spirit.
When God created man and placed him in the garden, he was given a will, a will to choose good or evil and we know the choice that Adam and Eve made. That choice has affected the human race, so the battle field of good and evil is in the soul/mind of man.
Man must accept the ransom that was paid at Calvary to be reunited with the Father. It is not enough that the Spirit of God takes up residence in the heart of man; He must have access to the soul and body, and only than can a man become sanctified and ready for service in the Kingdom of God.
Paul talks about the natural man, and the things that are in the heart of man. Murder, envy, variance, uncleanness, drunkenness fornication, witchcraft, idolatry and the list goes on. These things must be dealt with through repentance.
Now in the carnal man or the realm of the soul we have jealousy the cares of the world, pride, worldliness, criticism and the lust of the flesh. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit for man to become an over comer and cut these things out of his/her life.
I mentioned the natural man, the body and also the carnal man, referring to the soul and then there is the spirit of man. And when the spirit of man is filled with the Spirit of God the fruit of the spirit will be manifested. Those fruits are longsuffering, gentleness, faith, love, joy, peace goodness and meekness.
We were born into this world by nature as “Children of wrath,” David expressed this as truth when he said “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” And Jesus told us that “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness and blasphemies.”
The Apostle Paul talked about our bodies being the temple of God and the value of keeping the body clean before God. Our body is house where we live and it houses the soul and the spirit. Proverbs twenty and verse twenty-seven says, “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly.”
When we seek guidance by means other than through God we get into trouble. Nowhere does God say that He will guide us through our physical senses. The bible does not say that the body of man is the candle of the Lord, or that the mind is the candle of the Lord. It says that the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.
God will guide us; He will enlighten us, through our spirits. We must understand that man is a spirit, he has a soul, and he lives in a body. Man is a spirit being. He is made in the likeness and the image of God. Jesus said that God is a Spirit. So man must of a necessity be a spirit.
When the physical body of man is dead and in the grave, the spirit lives on, the part of man that is eternal is his spirit, and it will never die. Whether in the body or out of the body, we are going to live on. The part of man that is born again is his spirit. His spirit receives eternal life – the Life of God, the Nature of God.
Everything that is evil lurks in the soul of man. It takes the power of God to change the heart of man. We were dead, all of us; and yet we were all different needing the touch of the Holy Spirit. When we are touched by the power of the Holy Spirit it becomes our responsibly to bring our mind and bodies under subjection to the word of God.
In the book of Romans chapter twelve and verses one and two, “I beseech you therefore, brethren by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of you mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.”
By the renewing of the mind we are able to bring the body into subjection. We renew the mind/soul by the reading and hearing of the Word of God. As we study the word of God our thought process begins to change, and we begin to fulfill this passage of scripture, “Whatsoever things are good, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely and whatsoever things are of a good report; those are the things we think on.
