Who People Are

Man is unique among all creatures, and God created us in His image (Genesis 1:26-27).

  • We were designed to have a continuing relationship with God.

Animals and plants, in a sense, also possess a type of soul, but not like people (Genesis 1:30).

The reflection of His image gives us a type of inherent value, irrespective of what we think of ourselves and others.

We are uniquely special compared to all other created beings (Genesis 9:6, 2 Peter 2:12).

  • The Bible never indicates people are angels, spirit beings, or a part of God.

Every person is a tripartite being with a body, a soul, and a spirit.

To attain fullness in Christ, we must manage all three components of ourselves (Romans 12:1-2, 1 Thessalonians 5:23).

  1. Our spirit must be directed to God’s will to recognize spiritual truths.
  2. We must submit our soul to our spirit in understanding and applying spiritual truths.
  3. We must discipline our body to perform the action our soul has directed us to perform.

The exact nature of these domains is at least somewhat expressed via Christian tradition.

  • The finer details of how this becomes practical are very up for debate.
    • Most Protestants demarcate body and soul, but some of them conflate the spirit with the soul.
    • As an official stance, Roman Catholicism holds a relatively vague view on the domains of the soul.
    • Eastern Orthodoxy groups us as “nous”/soul, word, and spirit, which has layers of nous/word/spirit inside each domain as well.
  • Technically, fully understanding our souls or spirits isn’t worth the effort, since we will only see everything dimly in this life (1 Corinthians 13:12).
  • The domains of the soul become relatively clear for each person as they develop their identity in Christ.
    • In fact, it’s entirely possible that each soul was designed differently enough that we can’t completely analyze them to build a reliable general case.

The Body

The body itself has three major functions, though they have been largely corrupted to expand beyond their initial domain:

A. Nourishment: consuming something for the purpose of survival:

  • When perverted, we submit to “mammon” (the endless consumer), which represents by a person devouring or taking another’s things, all the way down the spectrum to cannibalism (Luke 16:9-13).
  • We can also pervert nourishment into reliance on an idol or addiction.

B. Reproduction: copulation for the purpose of carrying one’s essence onward:

  • When perverted, we desire further expansion beyond the seasonal nature of our existence (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).
  • Reproduction can also be perverted toward desires to reproduce one’s power and methods upon others, attain a great name that persists for millennia, or polygamy.

C. Defense: protection from bad things:

  • When perverted, the interests of self-preservation advance to destroying others, sometimes merely from anticipation of what we imagine they could do.

We can be scientifically precise about all aspects of the body’s functions, including the brain.

The body itself has absolutely no connection with the unknown, but is the only way we do things.

On an action-by-action basis, the body’s morality is not evil all the time.

  • If presented with only good options, the body is perfectly capable of doing good things (that is, things that create good consequences), but will sinfully revert to immediate gratification if presented with a choice.
  • The only way to fight our tendencies toward impulse it through habits programmed against those impulses (Romans 13:14).
  • People around us may be pleased with bodily actions, but God doesn’t care for it (Romans 8:8).

There are a few traits of “fleshly” living:

  • Excessive talking — even when a person knows they should be more brief with their words, they’ll start the habit of speaking and lose all self-regulation.
  • Excessive consumption or activity — someone can live within the realm of extremes, such as too much food or too much exercise.
  • Self-indulgence — someone can find tremendous value by living “in the moment” with a high-quality experience such as art, food, or experiencing media.

We must treat our bodies like a wild beast that requires God’s effort to tame, not like a despicable monster that deserves all condemnation (Romans 8:1-15).

  • The flesh itself was crucified in Christ, so we do have control over it, but must act on that knowledge.

The Soul

The soul is also known as “sentience”, and is the part of us that give us power and make us “human”.

  • It’s a hybrid existence between the body and spirit, and is uniquely separate from all other living beings.
    • Our souls aren’t really “natural” like the body because they’re non-habitual, but aren’t “spiritual” because they don’t directly interact with God.
    • Our souls contain all our non-spiritual meditation and decision-making, and we’re able to logically weigh and process information from experiences along with emotional stimuli that influence a value system.
  • Our souls are where our inner conflicts take place.
  • While many sins express as habits within the body, the soul is necessary for crafting any sins that aren’t immediate gratification.

Christian tradition has demarcated the soul as having emotions, mind, and volition or will.

  • Emotions are narrowly contrasted from feelings, but it’s very difficult to define (i.e., the “spirit” in Eastern Orthodoxy).
  • The mind is where we understand information, but it’s very difficult to differentiate it between the brain (i.e., the “word” in Eastern Orthodoxy).
  • The will is where we make conscious, non-habitual decisions (i.e., the “nous” in Eastern Orthodoxy).

A. Emotions are feelings that detect experiences from our body and soul.

  • God’s ideal design was for our emotions to motivate consistent, stable behavior.
    • God wants us to feel excitement, enthusiasm, and determination about His plans.
    • He also wants us righteously angry and indignant at the enemies of goodness.
  • However, unrestrained emotions cause tremendous instability and kill our faith (Colossians 3:5).
  • While the body’s feelings are the domain of hormonal triggers in the brain, the emotions can be deduced as the domain of feelings that can’t be scientifically measured.

B. Mind is our capacity to understand via imagining and remembering toward a defined purpose (though there’s much more to how it works).

  • He created us to understand and internalize His word, His plans, and recognize His power.
  • Without any spiritual direction, we’ll dwell on something that affects the quality of our lives, which can cause most of our sins if we’re not careful.
  • While the brain’s thoughts are the domain of electrical impulses in the brain, the mind’s thoughts are the elements that can’t be scientifically measured.

C. Our will uses the information from our mind to make decisions.

  • Purpose is the foundation of consistent decision-making and behavior, and lasts far longer than emotion.
  • We develop our purposes from consistent and steady focus, not one-time circumstances.
  • More than anything else, God judges our moral decisions by our will’s involvement in it.

There are a few traits of living by the soul:

  • Prioritizing calculating over praying, even when it’s something we have zero control over.
  • When living through the soul, a person will make quick judgments (since they were likely analyzing things already).
  • Living within the soul will often express as a type of action-based hastiness or severe passion for something.

Profoundly talented people use their soul for most things in their life.

  • Most creative endeavors are the product of our souls, and highly gifted people tend to sharpen those skills to mastery.
  • A person with a well-developed soul frequently has a profound influence on themselves and others, at least for a season.
  • Further, soul-oriented people will naturally pursue leadership roles.
    • In large Christian groups, most leaders consist of soul-oriented believers who are not spiritually ready for their roles.

The soul itself is infinite.

  • This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s eternal, but more that God built souls to last forever, which is likely a portion of how we’re made in His image.
  • God requires a corrupted soul to exist separate from everything else to protect the rest of creation, which is why hell needs to exist (Revelation 21:8, 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10).

Generally, meditation and release come through separating our mind and will far enough that our spirit and body can send signals to us.

The Spirit

Most of the world is unaware of the spirit, so they tend to simply demarcate mind/body/soul.

The spirit is close to, but distinct from, the soul (Hebrews 4:12).

  • The spirit is how we connect with God, and He speaks through our spirit far more than our souls (Ephesians 1:17).

Our fallen state makes our spirits dead, though Christ can revive them (Colossians 2:13).

  • The only way to accurately guess if someone has a reborn spirit (and therefore follows Jesus) is to observe their decisions in their private life over a long time.

Even a dead spirit extends its influence outward from that person into the environment.

  • Generally, when people mention an “aura”, they’re referring to the presence of either a person’s spirit or an evil spirit.
  • Even while dead, outward life circumstances can stir a non-Christian’s spirit, though it only moves through that person’s soul (i.e., the reverse from what it’s designed to do).
    • A dead spirit can still be controlled by a soul, which is why art can still express the unknown.
  • The greatest source of meaning we can ever find comes through direct connection with God and indirect connection with others’ spirits.

Mature Christians have internalized so much of God’s word that their spirit determines most of their conscious decisions (1 Corinthians 2:9-3:2).

Christian tradition has demarcated the spirit into intuition, conscience, and communion.

A. Intuition is spiritual information the mind couldn’t have acquired or inferred by outside events (Hebrews 11:1).

  • Intuitive thinking doesn’t learn from sensory data or the senses.
  • Intuition is God’s direct way of leading people, and comes through long periods of following God.
  • We can only understand God’s will and desires through our intuition.
  • Most spiritual gifts operate through our intuition.

B. Conscience is a strong conviction we hold about something, and connects to our capacity to maintain our ethics via clear decisions.

  • Our conscience is the basis of how we ought to act toward God and other people (1 Peter 3:21, Acts 24:16).
  • Everyone can choose to act with or against their conscience, but performing against it is “walking in the body” (Romans 8:5).
  • While our conscience is at least somewhat functional from birth, believing lies or sinning long enough will cauterize the conscience and make us numb to God’s moral direction (1 Timothy 4:2).

C. Communion, also known as worship, is the close personal connection we make with God and the rest of the Church.

  • We only experience communion with both our spirits and truth (John 4:24).
  • We can only perceive God and His thoughts through our prayer with Him.

Living by the spirit is a relatively mundane experience of acting/walking according to intuition, regulated by conscience, in fellowship with God and others in communion.

It’s a logical consequence that, if we will live forever and grow in a relationship with God, there are many more attributes of the spirit that won’t be explored until after this life.

Body/Soul/Spirit Interactions

As we grow, we transition from body to soul, then to spirit:

  1. The dominant force for a newborn baby is their body because their soul and spirit hasn’t developed yet, which also happens to be the way most animals function.
  2. To the degree we’re not acting out of habit, we use our souls, and most adults heavily use their souls to understand and think.
  3. When a person sacrifices everything before Christ, their spirit is reborn (John 12:24-26).
  4. Once a person has had a reborn spirit, they value things differently than when they operated heavily on their soul’s understanding (2 Corinthians 5:17, Ezekiel 36:24-30).
  5. Post-Christ, God is constantly battling with our old nature, the devil, and the corrupting influences of the world to convert our nature to a spirit-led soul that controls the body’s impulses.
  6. A soul may mostly direct the body right now, but will eventually interact more with the spirit later (1 Corinthians 15:42-44).

Our bodies can only react, and anything that requires more elaborate thought or consideration requires our soul (e.g., sins like envy, jealousy, vengeance).

  • For example, if you cross into an animal’s territory it’ll attack you, but won’t follow you endlessly or seek to destroy you like a person in their soul would.
  • The flesh is often the original inspiration for many sins, but we can often invent worse sins beyond it within our souls.

Our body/soul distinction is relatively easy to identify, but observing the soul versus the spirit is much harder:

  • The soul is more easily distracted than the spirit, and tends to swerve into being too rational or too emotional for the time and place.
  • The soul desires understanding, but the spirit desires to be in the moment.
  • Most of the soul’s behaviors are impulsive, while the spirit’s are more sustained and patient.
  • The soul is capable of being “weighed down” by various struggles, but the spirit can never be subdued (though it can be misled).
  • Our spirits have much more strength to accomplish without outside involvement than our souls (e.g., spiritual gifts).
  • The spirit concerns itself exclusively with “why” we do things (typically focused more on motivation), but the soul is concerned with both “what” and “why”.
  • In general, we can usually find where our motivations sit if we strip away all self-interest, which requires Bible study and prayer for the Holy Spirit to show us (Hebrews 4:12).
  • We can directly build skills within the soul, but only God can build our spirits (Ephesians 3:16).

Very frequently, a righteous spiritual motivation will drift from its original basis:

  1. We may desire something through the pure simplicity of loving another person like ourselves in the service of God’s will.
  2. After we start receiving positive feedback (which is typically a natural product of moral actions), we start desiring that feedback when we do good things, which is only the domain of the soul.
  3. Eventually, we can focus heavily on the logistics of the work we do and lose sight of why we do it.
  4. Sometimes, we can do something so frequently that it becomes purely habitual, which at that point is strictly a bodily activity.

There’s a strong chance that integration of our shadow persona is highly connected to the interactions between our soul and spirit.

  • The believer who integrates their shadow becomes profoundly powerful for the Kingdom, but non-believers who integrate their shadow can often become a significantly malevolent force.

The following is a general chart that demonstrates the relationship and interactions between the body, soul, spirit, and outside elements that affect us.

Problems

The devil can work to malign our body, soul, and spirit:

  • His general plan is to prevent us from using our spirit in relationship with God and instead trust the understanding within our souls (Proverbs 3:5-6).
  • He typically spends most of his time stirring up our fears, distracting our purpose within our soul, and attaching the soul’s shame to our conscience.
  • However, he has the power to manifest all types of hallucinations and visions that our body can perceive.
  • If a person submits themselves willingly to the devil, he can grant them an intuition (e.g., fortune-telling), though it’s filled with lies. This can also happen when people don’t test the spirits against God’s wisdom (1 John 4:1-2).

Some people have erroneously imagined that we must separate out the spirit or spirit/soul from the rest of us.

When our body is fatigued or suffering, or when our soul is distracted or overwhelmed, it will definitely affect our spirit.

  • Simple awareness of our bodily sensations and the thoughts passing through our mind is enough to improve our spirituality.

No matter what, we must do everything in love if we really want to follow God.