As human beings, made up of body, soul, and spirit, we need to understand more about our person. The body is not our person, but a vessel containing it. The spirit is not our person either, but an organ through which God may be contacted. It is the soul which is our person. In order for us to adequately know our spirit, we must first distinguish these different parts of which we are comprised.
In referring to people, the Bible calls them souls. “All the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls” (Exo. 1:5) means that there were seventy people. “There were added unto them about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41) means there were three thousand more persons with them. Every person is a soul. From this we may infer that the soul is the person. When the rich man in Luke 16 died, his body was buried, but his person still existed in Hades (vv. 22-31).
Our human life, the self, is in the soul. The body is the seat of bios, the physical life. Psuche, our person, is in our soul.
When we are regenerated, this picture of the soul as our person and the spirit as the organ by which we contact God, changes. With the divine life coming into our spirit, another Person is within us. Our existence becomes complicated, because the natural person in our soul is not in agreement with the Person in our spirit. In a way regeneration is like getting married. When you are single, you make all the decisions according to your preference. But once you have a husband, he may want the window open when you want it shut, or he may want you to go out with him when you want to stay home. This same complication, of two persons with conflicting ways, arises in us as Christians.
Our soul is the natural man. Our spirit, regenerated and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, is the inner man. It is this second Person, the inner man, that is the object of God’s good pleasure. In actuality, this Person is Jesus Christ, mingled with you. He is God’s delight. The person in your soul is offensive and displeasing to God, but the One in your spirit is a sweet fragrance to Him.
This mingling of the Holy Spirit with the human spirit is a mingling of divinity with humanity. The life that has come into us is divine and eternal.
How shall we take care of these two lives? Is the person in the soul to be nourished and beautified? The Bible calls him our old man and says that he has been crucified with Christ (Rom. 6:6). What we must do with this first person is to disregard him. In the words of the Lord Jesus, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matt. 16:24). To take up the cross means to stay there, where Christ has put us. Declare to the old man in the soul that he is on the cross. Then deny him by disregarding him.
Does this mean that the soul is nullified? The natural life in our soul has been crucified, but the functions of the soul still remain and are still useful. Our soul still thinks and decides, loves and hates. It is not our mind, emotion, and will which have been crucified, but rather the old man in the soul. What has happened is that the soul is no longer the person, but an organ. Now the spirit is the person, no longer only an organ.
In our daily experience we find that part of the time we are persons in the soul and other times our person is in the spirit. While we are attending the meeting, we may be a person in the spirit, listening to God’s Word, praying, and worshipping. But after we get home, something our spouse does may annoy us, and again we become persons in our soul. Our irritation may last most of the night, making us sleepless. When we get up the next morning, we say to the Lord, “Forgive me, Lord, for my failure last night. Cleanse me by Your blood.” Once again we enjoy the Lord’s presence and become a person in the spirit.
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