We have seen that Satan is in our flesh, that the Lord Jesus is in our spirit, and that we ourselves are in our soul. Whether Satan or the Lord Jesus would gain the victory depends on the attitude we take. If our attitude is one with Satan, he will be victorious. If our attitude is one with the Lord Jesus, He will be victorious.
In the four Gospels the Lord mentions the soul several times. Many people have studied the verses in the four Gospels in which the Lord Jesus speaks about the soul, but they have not seen that these verses are linked to the kingdom. We must realize that our soul is closely related to the kingdom.
In the last chapter we pointed out that our mind is the battlefield between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. The mind is the leading part of the soul. The second and third parts comprising the soul are the emotion, the loving organ, and the will, the organ of intention and decision. Besides the mind, emotion, and will, there is another thing, very hidden and very strong in our soul—the self.
Our soul is also related to the world. The thing which most hinders our Christian life is not sin, but the world. Sin is dreadful and must be condemned. However, the world is even more destructive and damaging to our Christian life. More Christians are hindered from going on with the Lord by the world than by sin. Sin is related to our flesh; the world is related to our soul. Romans 6:6 tells us that because our old man has been crucified with Christ, the body of sin is unemployed. Our body has become jobless. Therefore, the matter of sin is related to our body, to our flesh. The world, on the contrary, is connected to our soul. This connection is proved by Matthew 16:26 where the Lord Jesus asked what it would profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul.
In the Greek language the words "soul" and "soulish life" are the same word. It is difficult for the translators to decide which English word to use. In some verses the Greek word, psuche, is translated into soul; in other verses it is translated into life—soul-life. In many instances the King James Version renders this word as "life." This makes the matter quite complicated and may give us the impression that the word "life" in such a case is the same as eternal life. But the soulish life is absolutely different from eternal life.