The Structure of Man
1 Thessalonians 5:23 Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely (wholly); and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
SPIRIT (pnuema)
The literal meaning of pnuema comes from a word meaning breath or wind. We get the modern word pneumatic from it.
John 4:24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
God is a Spirit. We were created in the image of God, so a human being is also a spirit. It is the essential, core part of our makeup, and is eternal.
SOUL (psuche)
The soul represents another essential part of a human being. It is our mind, will, emotions, and intellect. The word pychology comes from psuche. It is the seat of our personality. It is also eternal.
Sometimes the Bible uses the word soul almost interchangeably with spirit, although they are not the same thing. They always go together. There are some groups that think they are one and the same. But Hebrews 4:12 talks about the division between soul and spirit (more about this later).
BODY (soma)
The physical body is our earth suit; as spirits, without it we could not contact this physical world.
The Hebrew language has three words that correspond exactly to these three Greek words:
- Spirit: Gr. pnuema, Heb. ruwach
- Soul: Gr. psuche, Heb. nephesh
- Body: Gr. soma, Heb. Chay
Genesis 1:26-27 26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
We see man’s three part being in his creation in Genesis 2:7.
God formed man (Hebrew adam) from the dust of the ground. What was made here? His physical body, created from the same essential ingredients and elements you find in the dirt. But the body was just a hunk of meat, bone, and skin. It had no life in it.
God breathed the breath of life into it. Remember the root of the word spirit in both Hebrew and Greek means breath or wind. And God is a Spirit. He exhaled something from within Himself into the Man.
And the Man became a living being, or soul (KJV).
Priority
There is a priority in our structure. You are a spirit. You possess a soul. You live in a body.
You are a trinity: man in 3D.
It is with the spirit that we communicate with God, since He is a Spirit.
But, in a sense we “live” in our souls. That’s where the seat of our consciousness is. The soul controls our actions.
Human beings are naturally more aware of the physical than the spiritual. Whether it was always meant to be this way since we were created, or whether it was an effect of the Fall, I don’t know. But we need to train ourselves to be sensitive to the things of the spirit, like hearing God’s voice, or even the voice of our own human spirit.
That is the goal of this lesson; to understand the three parts of our makeup, and to bring them into the proper alignment and priority.
You’ll hear some people talk about “body, soul, and spirit”. That is the wrong order. The emphasis should always be “spirit, soul, and body”.
So the spirit is most important, but that does not mean the other parts are not significant. You will always have a soul. It is you just as much as your spirit is you. When you die and leave this earth, you will still have the same personality. Now you will lose the negative qualities that were a product of the flesh (thank God), but you will still be you with the same likes and desires.
The physical body is the least significant part of us; it is possible to “live” without it (although not on the earth). But God has eternal plans for our bodies also: the resurrection.
The Spirit
So we have seen that the spirit is the core of a human being. It is the essence and image of God that was breathed into Adam. But it became corrupted when Adam sinned, and it took on the nature of its new master, Satan. But through the new birth, which takes place when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, our spirits are regenerated and made new, and our natures turned back to eternal life. Note that “eternal life” does not just mean that we live forever – all humans will live forever, whether born again or not, because we are eternal beings. But it refers more to the quality of the life – zoe, life as God has.
Other Terms for Spirit
1 Peter 3:3-4 3 Do not let your adornment be merely outward–arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel–
4 rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.
2 Corinthians 4:16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.
Nobody can see your spirit, but it is the real you. What people see on the outside – the physical man – changes and shows signs of decay as we age. But the spirit man grows stronger and stronger. Paul goes on to say
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,
18 while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
The Flesh
Does it mean that people who are spiritually dead do not have a spirit? No. Both eternal life and spiritual death refer to the nature of the spirit, but there is a spirit there in both cases.
The Bible calls someone who is not born again, who is spiritually dead, the natural man.
1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Have you ever tried to explain something spiritual to someone that is not born again? They just don’t get it. It’s because there is a piece of them that is dead to the things of God.
Can someone who is spiritually dead have a relationship with God? Yes. If you think of it, every single person in the Old Testament, all those heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, were not born again. The new birth was not available to them at that time. God will draw near to anyone who sincerely wants to draw near to Him.
So there is this term that comes up frequently in the Bible – the flesh. What is the flesh? It is associated with the body, but it is not your physical body.
The flesh is actually the leftovers of your unregenerate nature, of spiritual death. Before we were born again, it was our spiritual nature. It took a lot of its input from the desires of the physical body, hence the name, the flesh.
Ephesians 2:1-3 1 And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,
2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,
3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.
When we are born again, our spirit is made new and once again takes on the nature of life of God. So the source of the flesh nature is no longer in our spirits. So where does it come from? It is actually a function of the soul. It is our old programming – thought habits, beliefs.
The flesh is what happens when put the priority as body, soul, and spirit rather than spirit, soul, and body.
A computer program is a set of instructions that tells the computer what to do – how to behave, based on inputs it receives.
Romans 8:1-10 1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.
3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,
4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
6 For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.
8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.
10 And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
Carnally minded. In Spanish, meat is carne. Meat is flesh.
1 Peter 2:11 Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.
Galatians 5:16-17 16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.
“Lusts against”? What’s that mean?
The word “lust” actually means a strong desire. It could be a desire for something good, although we normally think of lust as being negative. Wuest says it this way:
…for the evil nature constantly has a strong desire to suppress the Spirit, and the Spirit constantly has a strong desire to suppress the evil nature.
There is battle going on between your spirit and your flesh; and the thing they are battling for is the soul – because whoever controls your soul, controls you.
The Soul
The soul we have said is our mind, will, and emotions, our intellect. It is the seat of our reason and where our consciousness dwells. By that I mean it is where our awareness lives. It takes input from both the spirit, and from the physical.
Think of it this way – both your spirit and your flesh have voices that speak to you, trying to influence what you do. Like the cartoons where you see the little angel and the little devil perched on someone’s shoulders? That’s actually a pretty accurate picture. And you get to choose which voice you are going to listen to. The soul is what is in control.
While we live in our physical bodies, we are more aware of the physical realm than of the spiritual realm.
A huge part of spiritual growth is learning to hear and obey the voice of our own spirit, and the Spirit of God speaking to our spirit.
What to do with your Soul
Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Our spirit was made new when we were born again. That was accomplished by the Holy Spirit. This verse says what we should do with our souls.
First, we are exhorted not to be conformed to this world. But that we should be transformed (don’t be conformed, be transformed). How? By renewing your mind.
Ephesians 4:22-24 22 that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,
23 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
24 and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
The old man – that’s the flesh. The new man – that’s your new recreated spirit. And what needs to happen to do this? Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.
What is the Heart?
Another term the Bible uses over and over is the heart. What is the heart? The world associates it with emotions and feelings.
Dictionary definition (not including the physical organ or the card suit):
- The center or innermost part
- The essential or most vital part of something
- One’s innermost character, feelings, or inclinations
- The emotional or moral as opposed to the intellectual nature. Intuition
- Love or affection (he won her heart)
- Courage (don’t lose heart)
When we talk about the heart, we are talking about going deep. Not on the superficial or on the surface.
Let’s take a look at some of the things the Bible attributes to the heart.
Proverbs 4:23 AMP Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life.
The heart is important and must be guarded! Just as the physical heart is vital, and pumps the blood which supports our life, the spiritual heart is also vital; out of it come the things that support and control your life. And the fact that it needs to be guarded means it is vulnerable.
Luke 6:45 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
TEV: For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
Is it possible for a Christian to have “evil” in their hearts? Apparently so, because the Bible warns us against it in Hebrews:
Hebrews 3:12-13 12 Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God;
13 but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
The context is when the spies gave Israel the bad report and the whole nation started crying that they couldn’t do what God said and that He just wanted to kill them. So this is some serious unbelief and rebellion.
Proverbs 23:7 For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. “Eat and drink!” he says to you, But his heart is not with you.
What is in your heart is what defines you.
Romans 10:9-10 9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Belief and faith are functions of the heart. These are some of those “issues of life” Proverbs talks about.
Psalms 37:4 Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
We all have things we enjoy or would like to have. But then we also have the desires of our heart – deep longings. God is interested in giving you those things.
In the diagram above we see the three-fold structure of man starting at the outside world, and moving deeper into our core. At each boundary, there is an interface or bridge from one level to the next.
For example, the interface between our bodies and the outside world is our senses. The sense organs – eyes, nose, tongue, ears, and the nerve endings in our skin – are transducers which the outside world interacts with, and they convert it into patterns in electrical signals which are transmitted to the brain via the nervous system.
The brain is the interface between our physical body and our minds, which is part of the soul. If the brain gets messed up, we still have a mind, but it might not be able to control the physical body like it is supposed to.
Going deeper, we see that the interface between the soul and the spirit is the heart. I get this from Heb 4:12:
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.
Although I’ve drawn the boundaries as solid lines, it’s more like there is a smooth blending from one level to another (except at the Body / Outside World boundary). The heart is the boundary between soul and spirit, and contains characteristics of both.
Feelings
In some Christians circles we often downplay the role of our feelings and emotions – “You can’t be led by your feelings”. “I’m not moved by what I feel, I am moved by what I believe”. This is true, but this does not mean we should be like Mr. Spock and emotion should have no influence on us.
We are emotional beings. God created us that way, it is part of our nature. It is part of what makes us human. But, there are different levels of feelings. There is a shallow level that is influenced by just about everything – how you feel physically, the circumstances around you, the weather, how people treat you. And those emotions fluctuate wildly.
Then there is a deep level of emotion that is necessary for strong belief – passion. When you make life changing decisions, it will have deep emotion tied to it. That passion gives strength and endurance to the decision. It motivates us. How many of us, when we accepted Jesus, did it as a purely intellectual decision?
Another related word is compassion. Com – passion. It often says Jesus saw hurting people and was moved with compassion. This is not just pity or sympathy or feeling sorry for someone. Compassion is true empathy – you feel for the person as if their circumstance was yours, and it moves you to do something about it.
Passion and compassion are functions of the heart.
Conscience
Another function of the heart that was alluded to in the dictionary definition is our morality – our sense of right and wrong, our values. Our conscience.
- The inner sense of what is right or wrong in one’s conduct or motives, impelling one toward right action
- The complex of ethical and moral principles that controls or inhibits the actions or thoughts of an individual
- An inhibiting sense of what is prudent
We all have an internal rule book of right and wrongs. Those rules are called scruples. We don’t always obey our scruples. What is the result of that? We feel guilt.
The conscience is formed by our training, upbringing, and experiences. That is the part of the conscience that is governed in the soul.
There is another part of the conscience, and that is the voice of our spirit. In the case of the natural man, the spirit is corrupt, so that voice of conscience is also corrupt. In the born again person, our spirits are re-created in God’s image and holiness, and we have God’s Spirit living inside us who talks to our spirit. Therefore that voice is a safe guide.
The Bible describes a number of different types, or perhaps states, of the conscience:
Good/Pure Conscience
Acts 24:16 This being so, I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men.
A good conscience toward men would mean living within the acceptable as far as the society you live in is concerned. A good/pure conscience is also one that has not been violated. What is acceptable in some societies is not in others. A good conscience toward God means living our lives according to the Word of God – a much stricter code than the world’s. But the world expects us to live up to God’s standards, even if they don’t.
Weak Conscience
1 Corinthians 8:7 However, there is not in everyone that knowledge; for some, with consciousness of the idol, until now eat it as a thing offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.
A weak conscience is an overly sensitive conscience. This person can hardly do anything without feeling guilty. Usually this is because the person has had a legalistic upbringing, or just has a bad self image.
Defiled Conscience
When you violate your conscience and go against its warnings, it will become defiled. It produces guilt, which makes you feel “dirty”. Picture a pool of water with a muddy bottom: as long as you don’t disturb it, it looks clean and pure. But if you stir up the bottom, it becomes clouded and dirty looking – defiled.
Seared Conscience
1 Timothy 4:1-2 1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons,
2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron,
The guilt produced by a violated conscience is like a punishment to ourselves, to keep us from repeating the act that triggered it. If a person continues to violate his conscience in the same area, he will build up a resistance to the guilt. Like flesh that has been burned and healed over with scar tissue, the feeling in that scar tissue is not as sensitive. The feelings of guilt become less and less until there are none.
Evil Conscience
Hebrews 10:22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Someone with an evil conscience doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong according to God’s word. They sin and don’t even know they are sinning (and probably don’t care). Their conscience isn’t bothering them, and allows them to do things which are evil in God’s sight (although not necessarily evil in man’s sight).
The Body
We saw that God told us to do something with our minds/soul – to be renewed. But He also tells us to do something with our bodies.
Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
Over the years Christians have gotten the idea that the body is bad, because of the association with the flesh. It has its roots in some beliefs that the early church had to deal with. There was a group called the gnostics (from the Greek word that means knowledge), that believed only the spiritual was good and the physical was inherently evil or unholy.
As such, they did not believe that Jesus was born physically as a human being – that He was somehow only here in spirit. John is dealing with this heresy when he said
1 John 4:1-3 1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God,
3 and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.
The Gnostics were also aesthetics – i.e., they believed in treating the body harshly and giving it no comforts. Paul addressed this.
Colossians 2:20-23 20 Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations–
21 “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,”
22 which all concern things which perish with the using–according to the commandments and doctrines of men?
23 These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.
God does not view the physical as sinful or unholy – remember He was the one that created this physical universe. But what happened was that the use of the physical has been perverted and corrupted. But if the use of the physical, including our bodies, is sanctified, then it becomes holy and acceptable to God.
A living sacrifice. If you’ve got a picture of a priest cutting a sheep’s throat and throwing it on a fire to be burnt, you’ve got the wrong picture of this sacrifice, because that sheep is dead. If you’re thinking of giving up your hopes and dreams to do what God calls you to, and that those hopes and dreams are destroyed, you’re still thinking of the wrong kind of sacrifice.
Yielding your body as a living sacrifice to God – which will involve denying desires of your flesh, and seeking the purposes of God in your life – is delighting yourself in the Lord. And He said that when we do that, He will give us the desires of our heart – the deep desires, that ones that will bring fulfillment to our lives.
Healing and Resurrection
Our bodies have been redeemed as well as our spirit and soul. “Redeemed” means that we are bought with a price.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?
20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
Our body is the temple or dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. Do you think He wants His temple to be poor and sickly? Is that glorifying to Him?
The Lord is our Shepherd. The condition of the sheep is a reflection on the shepherd. If you see sheep that are well fed, protected from predators, healthy and strong, what could you conclude about their shepherd? They have a Good Shepherd.
But if you see sheep that are skinny, their wool is matted and mangy, there’s one dragging a broken leg, and every once in a while a wolf comes and snatches a few of them, what could you conclude then? They do not have a good shepherd, he’s not doing his job.
The Lord Jesus came to undo the works of the devil (1 John 3:8).
Acts 10:38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.
He redeemed us spirit, soul, and body. We have been redeemed from the curse of the Law (Galatians 3:13), which could be summarized as Poverty, Sickness, and Death (spiritual and physical).
Therefore, healing of the physical body is part and parcel of our redemption. But, as wonderful as that is, it is not the ultimate redemption of our bodies. It is only a taste, a down payment.
The ultimate redemption of our body is the resurrection.
1 Corinthians 15:51-55 51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed–
52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
54 So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
55 “O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?”
After the resurrection, our bodies will no longer be subject to sickness or death – those will have been done away with!
