Last Thursday, I promised that I would begin to share with you this week in regards to the tri-une or three parts of man..... If you've not read that post you may be saying .. Three parts of man? That's right. I said the three parts of man.
Its not that difficult to get, really. As a matter of fact, understanding how God made us makes incredible sense as you begin to study and understand it. The real cool thing is this. As you begin to really grab hold of this stuff, and study it deeper, you begin to see some clues into why and how you and others act and why you feel like you do! It has been incredible learning about "me". I can't tell you the difference it has made in me spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically.....
Well actually I can tell you the difference it has made, but just not this week.... LOL.... It will make much more sense later.
So, without any further adieu, lets get crackin'!
(If I may indulge to divulge --- A little review from last week)
God is made up of three parts:
And this is how man then appeared "triune"- just as God is "triune":
Man was formed with three distinct parts: spirit, soul, and flesh (in general - body).
Today we are going to look at each of these three parts in detail. We are going to discuss the function of each. Next week we will see how they interact together. And, maybe next week we will also be able to discuss how the functioning or non-functioning of each part impacts us on a daily basis.
Ready to learn more. Ready to go further in your quest for 'What God has next'?
Here we go........
First: the spirit (pneuma)
Second: the soul (psuchē)
Third: the flesh (sarx) - or body (soma)
It is interesting to note that many people think saying "my spirit" or "my soul" are interchangable terms for each other. As you can see above, the actual words used in the Bible to describe these parts of man are different. The word from the original language, Greek, that was used to describe the spirit is pneuma (pronounced: new-ma). That is a cool word. And the word from Greek that we translate as soul is another cool word - psuchē (pronoumced: psoo-khay')
Why are these words so cool? Well, not only are they fun to say, but we say words all the time in our language that come from these.... Like pneumatic drill, or pneumonia, psychology, or psychotic.
What does pneumatic drill and pneumonia have in common ... air or breath
What does psychology and psychotic have to do with each other .... mind or thoughts or feelings
See. Two totally different things; spirit and soul.... Of course we could see that plainly if we looked at this from the Bible:
'Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.' (taken from the first letter from Paul to the Thessalonians)
See these are three different terms and spirit and soul are listed seperately.
Why is this so important to note? Why do I seem to belabor this point before I actually discuss these two parts? You'll see.....
The spirit of a man is an incredibly special place. In this place, a man can know, really know who he is. In this place, a man can be inspired, really inspired. In this place wisdom from beyond man's own understanding or education can be revealed. In this wonderful place, God can meet us and show us and tell us the mysteries of ourselves, and others, and Him. He'll show us mysteries that keep other men baffled and helpless; mysteries that have baffled men all through the ages as they continue trying to discover their world on their own.
In this place, in his spirit, a man can really begin to discover who he is. In this place God can begin to show a man who He really is. Oh, WOW!
I'm getting ready to lay something powerful before you. It is a lot of Bible (about 4 paragraphs). But don't shut down or you are really gonna miss something.
Check this out.... (Paul of Tarsus is the guy speaking)
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
"What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him"—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. "For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.
(taken from the second part of the first letter written by Paul of Tarsus, to the people of the first church at Corinth)
I wanted to show you all of this for a reason. I mean, I could have cut out the "good" parts and pasted them here, but I really needed us to have a sense of the complete thing Paul was communicating to these guys.
You see Paul was, before he became a believer, one of the most educated men of his time. He was either a lawyer or perhaps even a judge because he was a part of the highest court in the land - the Sanhedrin.
Paul knew pretty much all there was to know in his profession. He also was a foremost "expert" on God. He would have been a great talking-head on CNN or Fox News. But Paul, like me, like you if you have received Christ, realized that all his wisdom and education was nothing compared to God's. And God is relaying to us here a very strong and very crucial piece of information that many of us have never really received. God is showing us here that we were missing "it" before we were in Christ, and how we can now "get-it" if we are in Christ.
"Get" what ......?
Everything! I don't mean have all knowledge or education, but I mean, have the opportunity for God to show us not only all the why's of our life but also the how's of our life. And also have the opportunity to prepare us for the when's of our life.
Wake up, Dadgummit! That is why most of us are so unsatisified. We either don't know what we have available to us in Christ or we have never received Him so we could know!...... Whew! Ok.... OK!
Plainly stated:
it is in the spirit of a man where a man finally KNOWS his thoughts and plans.... It is in the spirit of a man where God by His Spirit part reveals His greater thoughts and plans to that man.
- The word is pneuma.
- The definition is breath.
- Without breath there is no life.
- Without a spirit, a man is, for all practical purposes, dead to God.
Is this a problem? Watch this:
This is God speaking to Adam after Adam has disobeyed him and eaten of the tree of good an evil....
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread,till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Try to get a picture of this in your mind.... Now I am not talking a picture of a mean vengeful person as your picture of God.... I am talking about a loving God that had poured all of his love out upon a man, a disappointed God, a God, though, that had set consequences for disobedience and had to carry these consequences out...... See the picture.... Read the above again then come back to here......
God is telling Adam that he is cursed, the earth is cursed, and that unlike how His plan for man was to be, Adam was going to die. And with Adam's death, the spirit of each man born after him was dead, dormant, lifeless.
And man was left to fend alone, without God, without that incredible place where communion was had. Man was left shattered, broken, each only 2/3 whole.
A Dead spirit, empty soul, and dying flesh
So, every man and woman born after that time has walked around with a dead spirit. Walked around with only two parts of a whole trying to figure out the "hole" that was left.
How could we function?
Part two - Our soul:
Remember a few minutes ago I was talking about the word soul and I said that it comes from the Greek word - psuchē --
Each person's soul is made up of three sub-components - our intellect, our emotions, and our will.
One of my favorite teachers, Bill Gilham, describes it in a way that I can better grasp in applying this practically to my life. Bill instead of calling these "pieces of our soul", our intellect (mind), will, and emotions says instead, "your thinker, your feeler, and your chooser." Pretty descriptive way to look at it, huh?
So here are the details I promised .....
And so with our intellect (mind) or thinker, we get:
- deductive reasoning
- data collection
- receiveing of formal and informal learning and education
- processing of formal and informal learning and education
- survival instincts
with our emotions or feeler, we get:
- negative emotions - anger, fear, dread, depression, etc...
- positive emotions - happiness, excitement, passion, courage, etc...
- instinctive emotions - caution, intuitiveness, etc...
- response to physical senses- hunger, pain, amusement, etc...
with our will or chooser, we get:
- planned courses of action
- instinctive responses based on external stimuli
- "knee-jerk" reactions
Now, all of these three sub-components are somewhat dependant upon each other.
But look:
For every choice we make, we are always presented first with some type of information from either the thinker or the feeler or both.
Now, depending on the person and their back-ground, or the situation, one or the other of these two sub-components (thinker or feeler) will be the dominant component in providing the information that the chooser will most likely respond to.
In the course of most human relations, the feeler (or our feelings) screams the loudest, is the most listened to, and most unreliable component in supplying the information that the chooser must have in order to make the best decision. But, thats the punch-line for next time..... (teaser)
Can you begin to see how a person who has not received Christ (see graphic above again), or one who isn't aware of the power of the Spirit received in Christ, could find their soul to be most inefficient in problem solving. Not yet? You'll get it.
**As a lead in for next week, think about this. We were never intended to use the soul, an inferior sub-system, as the main component by which we make life's decisions.**
So, that leaves us to look briefly at the final component of man - our Flesh (or Body):
The body consists of all physical matter that is seen either inside or outside of our physical self.
The body supplies the frame-work and earthly life-support needed to carry our soul and spirit around. The body also has a processor on which our soul is dependant to be an information and systems "hardware" platform. This hunk of meat is commonly called the brain. The brain, however wonderful and complex an organ it may be, is not the mind, nor is it a component of the soul. The brain is simply one of the pieces or members (organs, limbs, etc...) of a man's body.
The brain, unlike the spirit and soul, can not have eternal life. But, it is an incredible organ within our body and upon it, and within its circuitry, resides a part of us that is most intriguing, and most dreadful at the same time; flesh.
The word body and the word flesh are two distinctive words in the Bible. As well as is the word member. Member being a word that points to "parts" of the body. Body is actually the Greek word sōma, flesh is the Greek word sarx, and members is the Greek word melos.
sōma: is defined as the whole body
sarx: is defined as the nature or, better, engrained patterns of behavior
melos: is defined as seperate organs, limbs, or maybe the skeletal system within the body
So thats the details of our God made construction - spirit, soul, and body.
And, I can't wait until next time. Next week we will talk more about how each of these pieces all work seperately. As well..... we'll begin to talk about how they interact together (big big info).
May God Bless you and keep you until then.
My prayer is that God has begun to give you some real desire to learn more about Him, how He wants to show you more of you, so you can know so much more of Him!
I love you!
~Doug out....
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