In this message we will continue to see the details of the parts of man as the vessel of the Lord. We have seen clearly that God’s intention is to work Himself into us to be our life and our everything. In other words, He has to be our content. For this purpose, God created us as His vessels with many parts. The word parts is not a term used only by us; rather, it is in the Word of God. Jeremiah 31:33 says, “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Jehovah: I will put My law within them and write it upon their hearts.” For the phrase within them, both the King James Version and the American Standard Version render it as “in their inward parts.” The outward parts are the members of our body, but within our body there are the inward parts. We need to know what these inward parts are. Hebrews 8:10, a quotation of Jeremiah 31:33, says, “I will impart My laws into their mind.” The inward parts in Jeremiah 31 becomes “their mind” in Hebrews 8. This indicates that the mind is one of the many inward parts.
Psalm 51:6 says, “Behold, You delight in truth in the inward parts; / And in the hidden part You would make known wisdom to me.” Here again we see the inward parts. Besides these, there is also the hidden part. Truth is in the inward parts, but wisdom is in the hidden part. We must find out what the inward parts and the hidden part are.
First Thessalonians 5:23 tells us that we are tripartite, of three parts: the spirit, the soul, and the body. This verse gives us the right order of these three parts. It says “spirit and soul and body,” not “body and soul and spirit.” The following diagram illustrates the parts of man.
Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” This shows us that the spirit and the soul can and must be divided. In order to know Christ and enter into Him as our rest and good land, we have to discern our spirit from the soul. The spirit is the very place where Christ dwells in us (2 Tim. 4:22). If we are going to know Christ in an experiential way, we must learn to divide our human spirit from our soul.
Luke 1:46 and 47 say, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has exulted in God my Savior.” Here again there is a difference between the soul and the spirit. Philippians 1:27 speaks of standing firm in one spirit and striving with one soul. This one spirit is not the Holy Spirit but our human spirit. In this verse also we see a difference between the spirit and the soul.
Hebrews 4:12 not only speaks of the dividing of spirit and soul; it also mentions the joints and the marrow. Joints and marrow are something of the body. This verse also speaks of the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Even in the heart there is also the difference between the thoughts and the intentions. Mark 12:30 says, “And you shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart and from your whole soul and from your whole mind and from your whole strength.” This verse speaks of four parts: the heart, the soul, the mind, and the strength. All these parts have to be discerned by the living Word of God. This proves that in order to know the Lord in a practical and real way, we have to discern all these items. We must know the thoughts of the heart, the intentions of the heart, and all the many parts of our heart.
The soul is of three parts, and the spirit also has three parts, or functions. We need to know the three parts of the soul and the three parts of the spirit. Moreover, we also should know what the heart is. First Thessalonians 5:23 speaks of our whole being, telling us that we are tripartite-spirit, soul, and body-but it says nothing about the heart. Therefore, we must see what the heart is, what it is composed of, and how we can locate it with respect to the inward parts and the hidden part.
If we put all these verses together, we can realize that there are many different inward parts within the many outward parts of the body. What are these parts? According to 1 Thessalonians 5:23, within the body we have a soul and a spirit. Psalm 51 tells us that we have the inward parts with the hidden part. According to Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8, the mind is one of the inward parts, and as we shall see, the mind is a part of the soul. Therefore, the inward parts must be all the parts of the soul. The hidden part must be the spirit, because our spirit is hidden within all our other parts; it is the inmost part hidden, not within the body, but within even the soul. In summary, we have the outward part of the body, the inward parts of the soul, and the spirit as the hidden part.
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