1 Thessalonians 5:23 “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
God created mankind with two parts, i.e. the outward man and the inward man (2 Corinthians 4:16). The outward man is the physical body of man, while the inward man is further made up of the spirit and the soul. In the above quoted passage of scripture the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul refers to our spirit, our soul and our body. And so we see that essentially mankind is a tri-part being, for as we will see in this teaching, man is a spirit being, he has a soul and he lives in a physical body.
Hebrews 4:12 “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
Because man is created in the image of God and our Lord Jesus has taught us that God is a Spirit Being (John 4:24), it is therefore clearly evident that man is also a spirit being. However, God also created man with a soul. The spirit of man and the soul of man are not the same, for as revealed to us in the above quoted passage of scripture, the word of God is able to separate the two. Therefore, because they can be separated, the spirit of man and the soul of man are not one and the same. Let it be said however, that it is only God’s word that is able to separate man’s spirit and soul, for God created them to function together as one. Nevertheless, because God is a Spirit and man has been made in God’s image, it is the spirit of man that is the real man. So if the spirit of man is the real man, what role does the soul play in the makeup of man? The answer to that question is that the soul of man is essentially the mind of man.
2 Corinthians 5:1 “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
God has decreed that in order for mankind to be able to inhabit this planet our spirits need a physical body to dwell in. In the above quoted passage of scripture the apostle Paul referred to his body as a house. And so we see that our body is not who we are, it is only the house that we reside in. In the same passage, Paul even refers to our resurrected bodies that we will receive one day, as an eternal house. And so we can see very clearly that mankind are spirit beings that currently dwell in earthly bodies.
James 2:26 “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”
In order for the physical body to have life it needs the spirit of man to be residing on the inside, for the moment man’s spirit leaves his body the body dies. That truth is confirmed to us in the above quoted passage of scripture, for in this passage the Holy Spirit shows us that everyone “alive” on the earth has their spirit residing inside their bodies. This scripture refers to everyone, both believers and unbelievers alike. In other words, it is referring to those who are spiritually dead and those who are spiritually alive. And so we see that the condition of the spirit (dead or alive) does not determine whether the body lives or not, it is the presence of the spirit that determines whether the body lives or dies. There is one further truth that is revealed to us in this passage of scripture, which is that the spirit inhabits the body from the moment of conception, for without the spirit there would be no physical life in the first place.
2 Corinthians 5:6-8 “So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. … (8) We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.”
When believers physically die their spirits leave their bodies to be present with the Lord Jesus in heaven. This truth is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit in the above quoted passage of scripture. In a similar manner, when unbelievers physically die their spirits leave their bodies to descend into hell where they suffer torment (Luke 16:22-23). And so we see that the spirits of all men on the earth are housed in their earthly bodies, while the spirits of all men leave their earthly bodies when they die, to either ascend into heaven or descend into hell, depending on whether they have been saved or not.
Michael E.B. Maher
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