In the previous chapters we saw what life is, what the real experience of life is, the first experience of life, the sense of life, the law of life, and the fellowship of life. These are simply the preparation for the practical dealings in the experience of life. In this message, we will consider another preparatory item, the knowledge, discernment, or distinguishing of the spirit and the soul. This is something which has been neglected by believers today. In order to realize the spiritual experiences of life, we need to know the difference between the spirit and the soul.
Both in the Western and Eastern worlds, many people have had the thought that man is of two parts, an outward part and an inward part. The outward part is the physical part, the body, and the inward part is the psychological part. Christians call the psychological part the soul or the spirit. The Chinese have a strange-sounding term, spirit-soul. The unbelievers know nothing about the spirit. They say that man has only a body and a soul. Whether people call it the soul or the spirit, it is the same to them because they do not know that we have three parts.
It is regrettable that not only the unbelievers but even many Christians today argue that man has only the outward, physical part and the inward, psychological or spiritual part. They believe that the soul and the spirit are synonymous terms in the Scriptures, that the soul is the spirit and the spirit is the soul. To them, the psychological part is the same as the spiritual part. It is as if they consider that to be spiritual is to be psychological, and to be psychological is to be spiritual. This is ridiculous.
The Scriptures clearly tell us that man is of three parts, not only two. In the New Testament teachings there is a great difference between the spirit and the soul. In this regard, we must never forget 1 Thessalonians 5:23. This verse clearly adjusts the wrong concept that man is of two parts. This verse says, “And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This verse says clearly that God sanctifies us wholly, in not merely one part of our being but in all the parts, in our spirit and soul and body. In the Greek text, spirit and soul and body consists of three nouns and two occurrences of the conjunction kai, meaning and. This proves that these three nouns denote three different items. Therefore, the spirit is not the soul, and the soul is not the body. The soul is something different from the body, and the spirit is something different from the soul.
In this verse we have the full, clear revelation that we humans are of three parts, being tripartite, having a spirit, a soul, and a body. Here, the Holy Spirit gives us the proper order of these three items. The spirit is first, the soul is second, and the body is last. The inmost part is the spirit, the outer part is the body, and the medium between these two parts is the soul. Genesis 2:7 shows us how God created man in three parts. First, God formed man’s body from the dust of the ground. Then He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. The first material used in the creation of man was the dust, and the second item was the breath of life. God used the dust to form a body, and He used the breath of life to form a spirit within the body. Then, when the spirit within the body mingled with the body, a living soul as a third item came into being.
Man is neither merely a body nor a spirit. Angels are spirits, but we humans are not angels. Likewise, it is ridiculous to call ourselves merely a body. Because man was made a soul, the Scriptures often refer to humans as souls. Exodus 1:5 says, “And all the souls who came forth from the loins of Jacob were seventy souls” (lit.). First Corinthians 15:45a says, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” We humans were made in three parts. We were made as a soul with two additional parts. We have an outward body and an inward spirit, and we are the soul as the medium between them. We should spend our time and energy to study this. In some matters we should be simple, but in knowing these things we should not be simple; we should be detailed.
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