God made man of three components. “Spirit, soul and body.” Our spirit has a voice which we call conscience. Conscience is the voice of our spirit. Our spirit is not conscience, conscience is the organ that discerns; distinguishes the good and the bad. However, it does not do so through the influence of knowledge stored in the mind, but with a spontaneous direct judgment. The work of conscience is independent and direct, since it does not submit to opinions from outside. Conscience corrects us and He rebukes us so that we are restless when we do not do God’s will.“I will bless the Lord who advises me; Even at night my conscience teaches me.”Psalm 16:7… Our conscience admonishes us, corrects us, rebukes us, instructs us, and teaches us.
Spirit, soul and body.
Intuition is the sensitive organ of the human spirit. Our intuition is trained to distinguish the good from the bad without any external help. When we say:“There is something inside of me that tells me not to go to that place.” “There is something inside of me that tells me not to trust that person.” “There is something inside of me that tells me not to get into this business.” “There is something inside of me that tells me that they are not telling me the truth.”It is intuition that gives us that internal feeling. Consciousness gives us an internal message and intuition gives us an internal feeling. We must pay attention to the voice and feeling of our spirit.
The believer knows the things of God by the intuition of his spirit. The mind can understand, but it cannot know. The Holy Spirit enables our spirit to know and our spirit instructs the mind to understand. Knowing things by intuition is what the Bible calls revelation. The revelation takes place in the intuition. Only the revelation in the spirit provides a true knowledge of God. Only what is received in the spirit is spiritual knowledge, the rest is only mental knowledge.
Communion: We communicate with the material world through the body. With the spiritual world we communicate through the spirit. We cannot perceive God with our thoughts, nor with our feelings; we can only perceive God with our spirits. Animals cannot have communion with God because they do not have a spirit, although they do have a soul. The natural man is not qualified to know God (1 Cor. 2:14). Our worship of God and God’s communications with us take place directly in the spirit.
The soul of man: In the soul is our personality, through the soul man is aware of himself. The soul is the meeting point of the spirit and the body. The soul is linked to the spiritual world through the spirit and to the material world through the body. In the original of the Bible there are numerous cases in which the word “soul” is used instead of “man”. This is because the seat and essence of our personality is the soul. “The soul is made up of: the mind, the will, and the emotions.
The mind: (I think – I reason – I know): Our mind expresses what we think. Our thoughts and reasoning take place in the mind. The will: (I want – desire – longing), The will expresses what we want. The will of man can be considered his true self. When we declare: “I want” it is, in reality, our will that wants. When we say: “I decide” it is our will that decides. The emotions: (I feel), What we think, what we want and what we feel affects our body. Many times it is emphasized that we must take care of what we think, but our emotions are also very important, in fact, what we feel affects the decisions we make. Our emotions can be influenced by God or by the devil. Careful!
Spirit, soul and body Recognize the voices!
The voice of our spirit and the voice of our soul. It is not very difficult to know how to differentiate the voice of our spirit from the voice of our soul:
-The voice of our spirit: It is in agreement with the Word of God, It is influenced by the Word and the Holy Spirit, It produces faith and trust, Its motivation is love, It patiently persuades us, It brings peace, It glorifies God.
The voice of our soul: It is not in agreement with the Word of God, it is influenced by the world and the devil. It produces doubt and fear, Its motivation is selfishness, It forces us to hurry, It brings confusion, It seeks its own glory.
“Let’s pay attention to the voice of our spirit because our spirit knows more than our soul, let’s pay close attention to the internal voice of our spirit, our conscience.”
I also tried to read: What do you know about life and death?…
The body of man.
The body is called: -our “outer man” in II Corinthians 4:16. -our “terrestrial abode” and “tabernacle” in II Corinthians 5:1. In the body are our physical senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. With the body we get in touch with the world around us, the physical world.“Therefore, let sin not reign in your mortal body so that you do not obey its lusts; Do not present the members of your body to sin as instruments of iniquity, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness.”Romans 6:12 and 13. The Bible teaches us that we are to present our bodies to God.
Spirit, soul and body; “When our body dies.”
For the apostle Paul death did not mean a state of unconsciousness as some teach, for him death was not a loss, it was a gain, it was not a stop, it was a trip to the Presence of God, he saw death as time of his expected departure to be with his beloved Yeshua / Jesus.“Because for me to live is Christ – the Messiah, and to die is gain. But if living in the flesh turns out for me to benefit the work, then I don’t know what to choose. Because of both things I am placed in strait, having a desire to leave and be with Christ-the Messiah, which is much better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.”Philippians 1:21-24.
Jesus when he dies commends his spirit to God.“And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said: Father, into Your Hands I commend My Spirit. And having said this, he breathed his last.” Luke 23:46
When Jesus resurrects the daughter of Jairus, what happened?“Then his spirit returned to him, and he arose instantly, and He commanded that they give him something to eat.”Luke 8:55 The girl comes back to life when her spirit returns to her body. The body was dead without the spirit of her.“… the body without the spirit is dead…” James 2:26..
Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and some messianic groups believe in the “sleep of souls”, they affirm that the dead are asleep, however, this is not what the Bible teaches us, Jesus himself affirmed that the soul is immortal :“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. . .”Matthew 10:28.
When the Bible speaks of those who “sleep” it does not refer to the spirits or souls of men, it refers to the physical body of men.“And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will be awakened, some to eternal life, and others to shame and perpetual confusion.”Daniel 12:2 In the verse that we are going to see next we can read that whether we are awake (alive) or asleep (dead) we live for the Lord!“. . . whether we are awake or asleep, let us live together with Him.” (1 Thessalonians 5:10).
The Daily Bible version has translated this verse in this way: “He died for us so that, in life or in death, we may live with him.” We must remember that God is not a God of the dead, but of the living:“For God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all live.” Luke 20:38…
a house divided “And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”Mark 3:25“… a house divided against itself, collapses.” Luke 11:17. In II Corinthians 5:1 the body is called “House”Therefore, the body is the dwelling place where the spirit and the soul live. Taking this into account, we can affirm that if my spirit and my soul are divided I will not be able to remain and I will collapse.
Our spirit and our soul must agree if we want to walk the same path.“Do two men walk together if they have not agreed?” Amos 3:3… In James 1:8 we can read that “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” The double-minded man is the one whose house is divided. On the one hand, his spirit wants to submit to God and act in faith, but on the other, his soul is full of disbelief and fear. In the Bible we find the solution when our house is divided: -Deny ourselves.
Self-denial means not allowing our soul to get away with having wrong emotions, wrong thoughts, and making wrong decisions. We deny ourselves when we don’t do what our own thoughts and feelings suggest. The carnal Christian is the one who allows his soul (thoughts, emotions, will) to control his life. The spiritual Christian is the one who is directed by the Holy Spirit. We must be spiritual, we must pray in the Spirit, worship in the Spirit, walk in the Spirit and live in the Spirit.
Spirit, soul and body – In God’s order!
Who should be in control? Jesus Christ did not allow his soul to control his life, which is why he said in Luke 22:42:“Not my will but yours be done.” “When we say our will not be done we are denying ourselves.”
There is a very interesting verse in Psalm 131:2, let’s see: “Truly I have behaved and have silenced my soul, like a child weaned from its mother; like a weaned child is my soul.” David silenced his soul… like a weaned child was David’s soul… Why? Because he didn’t give him the food he used to take: criticism, judgments, excuses, accusations, bad thoughts… We must not allow our soul to get away with it.
We must take up our cross every day, the cross is a symbol of death, our old man (non-renewed soul) must die, Paul said:“I assure you, brothers, for the glory that I have of you in our Lord Jesus Christ, that every day I die.” 1 Corinthians 15:31…
Paul took up his cross every day, as the Lord taught us, he died every day. Paul also stated: “I have been crucified with Christ the Messiah, and I no longer live, but Christ the Messiah lives in me; and what I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”Galatians 2:20… Paul had taken up his cross, had been crucified with Jesus Christ, and now the life of Jesus was manifested in him. Then Jesus lived in him… in the scriptures we find: In John 12:24,“Truly, truly, I say to you, that if the grain of wheat does not fall into the ground and die, it remains…