Body, Soul and Spirit

For us to have a clear understanding of how things work in the spiritual realm and how it interacts with our physical realm and how to lead a victorious life we must understand the existence and the workings of body, soul and spirit.

Maybe some of you are wondering why this is important. But believe me when I tell you, understanding this concept will revolutionize your understanding of spiritual things! I’m serious! So many people want to group the soul and spirit together as synonymous of the same thing. But we are a tripartite being. For us to have a clear understanding of how things work in the spiritual realm and how it interacts with our physical realm and how to lead a victorious life we must understand the existence and the workings of body, soul and spirit. We are spirit beings that have a soul and that live in a body. We must understand that human beings are composed of body, soul and spirit and how they operate. Even the Holy Bible teaches this distinction. Look at 1 Thessalonians 5:23: “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless”. You cannot grow spiritually if you do not make this distinction between spirit and soul. To not understand it is fatal to spiritual growth and maturity.
SOUL
Hebrews 4:12 is another verse frequently quoted but I think  there is something it teaches that is missed and glazed over by most reading it. “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Here again, the distinction is made between soul and spirit. This scripture is also telling us that if we study the Holy Bible as the Word of God it will divide asunder the soul and spirit. In other words, we will know when something is soul and when something is spirit. We should pray for and desire that God divide our soul and spirit. Why? Because The soul is the seat of our emotions. It is our mind and our will. It is where we make choices good or bad. It also serves as a bridge between the body and the spirit. The more choices we make that give in to what the body wants the more selfish and physically bound we become. The soul is our self-consciousness. We would not even be conscious of our existence except for the soul. The soul is the seat of our personality and all the elements that make us human. It is in the soul that our intellect, thoughts, ideals, love, emotions, choices and a whole range of human experiences dwell. It is in the soul that the spirit and body merge. That is why man is often called a living soul (Gen. 12:5, 46:27). So, the soul is the bridge between our body and spirit. It is where we decide who we will listen to.
The soul is the seat of man’s volition, mind and emotion. Volition is our ability to make decisions, our power to choose. This is important otherwise man is nothing but a puppet, an automaton. The mind, of course, is the instrument of our thoughts and our intellect. From our thoughts also arise wisdom, knowledge and reasoning or our foolishness. And since the soul is the seat of the emotions we do not want to be led by it for life decisions should never be emotionally driven.

SPIRIT
The spirit is where our conscience and intuition dwell. It is the part of us that connects us to the spiritual dimension. It is the part of us that looks at things deeper and considers things like the meaning of life and the importance of making the right choices. The more choices we make that give in to what the spirit wants the more balanced a being we become even to the affecting of the body and soul to be all they can be. If a person doesn’t learn to discern his own spirit he will never know how to commune with God in spirit and will be easily deceived. He may even substitute the thoughts and emotions of the soul for the works of the spirit. This will confine them to the outer realm, unable to ever reach the spiritual realm.
Conscience should never be confused or convoluted by reason. Reasoning can justify things our conscience says is wrong. The conscience is independent and direct, it does not bend to outside opinions. If you ignore your conscience long enough its voice becomes like white noise. Apostle Paul called it “having their conscience seared with a hot iron” in 1 Timothy 4:2.
Intuition is the sensing organ of the human spirit. Intuition involves a direct sensing independent of any outside influence. What we know that we know that we know comes through our intuition. Our mind may help us understand and interpret it but what we ‘know’ comes from our intuition. A person should always listen to their conscience and intuition over their emotions and that part of us that seeks instant gratification.
Here’s the thing though. Our soul calls the shots. It is where we choose what ‘voices’ we are listening to. There is a natural conflict going on from the day we are born to make choices that benefit us spiritually or benefit us bodily. There are a lot of voices out there screaming for your attention. Advertisers screaming at you from TV, radio, computer, billboards and more. Every cause in the world wants your attention, support and especially your money. Even when you try to escape and get some solitude, still, those voices are rolling around inside your head: things you need to do, things that happened at work today, bills that need to be paid. It is an epidemic to the point that some cannot even sleep at night because their mind won’t be quiet.
But then there are those voices in our heads that are leading our moral choices in life. Our own voice in our head trying to sort things out and make decisions and choices that, in some cases, could change our lives forever. If you are like most people, it can be very confusing sometimes. There used to be an old comic strip called Pogo. There was a line in one of the comic strips that stuck with me. Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and they is us!” That would be funny if it weren’t so true. We are our own worst enemy. Years of programming in our brains from television—from abusive, cruel parents, teachers and friends—books, magazines—and so much more, scream for our attention. They scream for control and lordship over our lives. They dictate to us every day who they say we are. Most of the voices are pretty cruel and negative. Some of those voices are telling us how pretty we are, how much better we are than so and so. These voices can build us up to be something we aren’t and cause us to look down on others and be conceited. Or just the opposite and most common, they tell us how we are no good, ugly and will never amount to anything.
BODY
The body is obvious, it is the part of us that is physical. It is where our five senses operate. It is how we interact with the physical world. It also has another function that is often played down. That function is the desire to gratify those five senses in increasingly physically satisfying ways and if not disciplined can lead us down a potentially damaging path. It is the eyegate to the soul and spirit. People who are ‘soul-driven’ have accepted a purely physical, pleasurable experience for something that is meant to be so much deeper, even to the level of being a spirit and soul-touching experience. Even sex was meant to engage body, soul and spirit but most have settled for only purely physical pleasure. I say ‘purely physical pleasure’ but on even its most degraded imitation of what it is meant to be it still touches the soul and spirit on some level for multiple sex partners has the effect of ripping us apart and it is as if our soul and spirit becomes scattered around in pieces and we wander around in this fog of disunity and don’t know why. Ann Voskamp put it well when she said “Our bodies are our souls with skin on them.” Very profound.. It is the way we were designed.

“Our bodies are our souls with skin on them.”
Ann Voskamp

The longer I live as a rational being and observer of life it becomes irrefutably clear that there is a design in place for all living things and if there is a design there is a designer. We are not just products of a ‘Big Bang’ or some primordial soup. Harmony and balance are no more than living within that design. No one would argue that a gas combustion engine runs on gas and that is how it was designed. Defy its design and put water in the gas tank and it will break down and will not run. Treat it as designed by keeping it well lubricated and using the right fuel and it will run well for its life expectancy. Yet we as humans constantly defy our design or even deny we are designed and as a result treat our body, soul, spirit and other living things as we desire and the results are what we have today; a disjointed, self-serving society with no respect or regard for what is left of this creation or respect for future generations and the planet they will inherit.
This should not be! I am 100% convinced that body, soul and spirit can live in harmony and balance with one another. To do so though will require we turn most of our thinking upside down and realize we are not just fleshly beings that happen to have a soul and a body. Thinking like this leads to a lifetime of trying to extinguish all those voices that primarily are saying ‘our instant gratification is most important’ and its sister voice ‘it’s all about me’. If we truly want to know satisfaction mentally, physically, spiritually and socially we have to be spirit beings that live in a body and have a soul. Our spirit is our higher true self. We MUST listen more to our spirit voice and not fear it will make us unbalanced toward spiritual things. It is just the opposite. Following our spirit voice will make sure our body and soul needs are met on a scale we could never accomplish walking around as fleshly-led beings.This is a subject I ponder and write about quite often, I have even wrote a couple of books about. I hope this helps you on your spiritual journey.