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Scripture Reading: 1 Thes. 5:23; Gen. 2:7; Exo. 1:5; 1 Cor. 15:45; Heb. 4:12; Matt. 16:24-25
In the previous chapters we saw what life is, what the real experience of life is, the first experience of life, the sense of life, the law of life, and the fellowship of life. These are simply the preparation for the practical dealings in the experience of life. In this chapter we will consider another preparatory item — the knowledge, discernment, or distinguishing of the spirit and the soul. This is something that has been neglected by believers today. In order to realize the spiritual experiences of life, we need to know the difference between the spirit and the soul.
Both in the Western and Eastern worlds, many people have had the thought that man is of two parts, an outward part and an inward part. The outward part is the physical part, the body, and the inward part is the psychological part. Christians call the psychological part the soul or the spirit. The Chinese have a strange-sounding term, spirit-soul. The unbelievers know nothing about the spirit. They say that man has only a body and a soul. Whether people call it the soul or the spirit, it is the same to them because they do not know that we have three parts.
It is regrettable that not only the unbelievers but even many Christians today argue that man has only the outward, physical part and the inward, psychological or spiritual part. They believe that the soul and the spirit are synonymous terms in the Scriptures, that the soul is the spirit and the spirit is the soul. To them, the psychological part is the same as the spiritual part. It is as if they consider that to be spiritual is to be psychological, and to be psychological is to be spiritual. This is ridiculous.
The Scriptures clearly tell us that man is of three parts, not only two. In the New Testament teachings there is a great difference between the spirit and the soul. In this regard, we must never forget 1 Thessalonians 5:23. This verse clearly adjusts the wrong concept that man is of two parts. This verse says, “The God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This verse says clearly that God sanctifies us wholly, in not merely one part of our being but in all the parts, in our spirit and soul and body. In the Greek text spirit and soul and body consists of three nouns and two occurrences of the conjunction kai, meaning “and.” This proves that these three nouns denote three different items. Therefore, the spirit is not the soul, and the soul is not the body. The soul is something different from the body, and the spirit is something different from the soul.
In this verse we have the full, clear revelation that we humans are of three parts, being tripartite, having a spirit, a soul, and a body. Here the Holy Spirit gives us the proper order of these three items. The spirit is first, the soul is second, and the body is last. The inmost part is the spirit, the outer part is the body, and the medium between these two parts is the soul. Genesis 2:7 shows us how God created man in three parts. First, God formed man’s body from the dust of the ground. Then He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. The first material used in the creation of man was the dust, and the second item was the breath of life. God used the dust to form a body, and He used the breath of life to form a spirit within the body. Then, when the spirit within the body mingled with the body, a living soul as a third item came into being.
Man is neither merely a body nor a spirit. Angels are spirits, but we humans are not angels. Likewise, it is ridiculous to call ourselves merely a body. Because man was made a soul, the Scriptures often refer to humans as souls. Exodus 1:5 says, “All the souls who came forth from the loins of Jacob were seventy souls” (lit.). First Corinthians 15:45a says, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” We humans were made in three parts. We were made as a soul with two additional parts. We have an outward body and an inward spirit, and we are the soul as the medium between them. We should spend our time and energy to study this. In some matters we should be simple, but in knowing these things we should not be simple; we should be detailed.
Because we humans are of three parts, we can contact three worlds — the physical world, the psychological world, and the spiritual world. In our body we have a seeing sense, a hearing sense, a smelling sense, a tasting sense, and a touching sense. With these five senses we contact the material things in the physical world. Besides the physical world, there is also the psychological world. The psychological world includes joy and sorrow. We cannot touch or contact the psychological world with our five senses. We may be full of joy, but we cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or feel joy. It is something psychological, not physical. The English word psychological comes from the Greek word psuche, meaning “soul.” Some Christian teachers use the word soulish as the adjective form of the noun soul. The psychological world is simply the soulish world, the world of the soul.
Besides the physical world and the psychological world there is a third world, which is the spiritual world. God and the angels do not belong to the physical world or even to the psychological world. God is a spirit, not a soul, so He belongs to the spiritual world.
We contact, or touch, the physical world by the physical part of our human being, the five senses of the body. Likewise, we contact the psychological world by the psychological part of our being, which is our soul. We realize that someone has joy or sorrow by our mind and emotion, which are parts of the soul. Similarly, we contact the third world, the spiritual world, by our spirit. John 4:24 says, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.” It is clear that we worship not by the body or the soul, with the mind and emotion, but by the spirit. Because God is the divine Spirit, we must contact this divine Spirit by or in our human spirit. This is our spiritual part, by which or through which we contact the spiritual world.
We may illustrate the three different kinds of contacts — physical contact, psychological contact, and spiritual contact — by the way we contact a brother. When we come together, we shake hands; this is to contact the physical world by our physical part, our body. However, we contact the brother not only by our physical part but also by our psychological part. The brother may have had some problems at home, so while we shake his hand, he appears to not be happy. This may cause us to suspect that he is not happy with us. This kind of suspicion is not in the hand, that is, in the body, but in the mind of our soul. Then when we two kneel down to pray, he may utter something from his deepest part, his inward part. At that time we sense what is in his deepest, inmost part; we sense in our spirit what is in his spirit. In this way, we come to realize that he was not actually unhappy with us. First, we shake hands with the brother; this is the physical contact. Then we suspect something about him; this is the psychological contact. Finally, we pray together and sense something in our deepest part about what is in his deepest part; this is the spiritual contact.
Now we can discern the three different parts of our being — spirit, soul, and body. The spirit is absolutely different from the soul, just as the soul is absolutely different from the body. Sometimes we have only physical contact with a brother with no psychological contact and, even the more, no spiritual contact. At other times we may have physical contact and some sort of psychological contact as well, and sometimes we may have too much psychological contact with nearly no spiritual contact. I have been taught by the Lord very much for many years; so many times when I contact the brothers and sisters, I simply do not like to contact them much by the psychological part. I mostly contact them by the spiritual part. When we contact the saints, we should try our best not to contact them by our psychology, by our soul — our mind, emotion, and will. Rather, we should try to contact them by our spirit, although we may contact them a little by our body. If a brother says, “Let me shake your hand,” we should not refuse him, saying, “I do not want to contact you by the body. I will contact you only in the spirit.” We should contact people a little physically, but we must try to contact them mostly in the spirit. We must learn the lesson to exercise our spirit to contact others’ spirit.
There is a great difference between the soul and the spirit. As we have seen, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, supported by Genesis 2:7, shows us that we are tripartite, of three parts — spirit, soul, and body. Hebrews 4:12 shows us clearly that the spirit and the soul need to be divided and distinguished one from the other. It says, “The word of God is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” In this verse we see that the spirit and the soul can be divided.
There is the need to divide our spirit from the soul and our soul from the spirit. Hebrews 4 begins to deal with the service of Christ the High Priest. When a priest offered sacrifices to God, he always used a cutting instrument to divide the parts of the sacrifice. We are the sacrifice to God, and the Lord Jesus is the High Priest. He has the word of God as the sharp two-edged sword, which can divide the human soul from the human spirit. To be sure, if we are with the Lord and in His word, the Holy Spirit will divide our soul from our spirit by the word. He will show us through the word of God what is of our soul and not of the spirit. Through the word of God the Holy Spirit always reveals to us the difference between the soul and the spirit.
We may illustrate this by the way we love the brothers. A brother may pray, serve, work, and travel together with two other brothers, but he may love one brother more than the other. The first brother loves the second, and they are dear to one another; when they meet, they seem to touch something together and they inwardly stand with one another. However, this is not real love. If the first brother is with the Lord in the spirit and in the word, the Holy Spirit will show him that his love is not something in the spirit. It is something in the human life; it is something of the soul, the self, and not something in the spirit. When he realizes this, he will even condemn his love. When he is with the Lord in the morning, he will say, “Lord, forgive me. I have a love in my self, from my self, and for my self. It is a false love, a love in my human self and soul and not from the spirit.”
Sometimes when a brother ministers in a meeting, he may notice someone shaking his head in disagreement and may become disgusted with him. In 1942 there was a church in one of the biggest seaports in northern China, and one of the leading ones sometimes ministered to the people there. His high-school-aged son was saved, but he was still very naughty. Once when the father was ministering in the meeting, his son sat in a corner expressing his disagreement with him. The father simply had no patience with this. He stopped ministering, turned to his son, and said, “I will deal with you at home!” This was not something from the spirit. It was something from the father’s human life, his human soul and human self.
If we are in fellowship with the Lord, the Holy Spirit many times will show us that we have something which is good, about which there is nothing wrong, but it is not of the spirit but from the self, in the self, and out of the self. As we have illustrated, we may love a brother and stand with him, yet we love him by our soul, by our self, and out of our self. Human love is good, yet often it is merely human, soulish, and of the self. While we are in fellowship with the Lord, many times, even all the time, the Holy Spirit will show us what is from our self, what is good yet merely human. He will show us that it is something in the soul and of the soul but not in the spirit.
There is a great difference between the soul and the spirit, and the soul can be divided and should be divided from the spirit. Moreover, 1 Corinthians 2:14-15 shows us that unless the soul is subdued by the spirit and submissive to the spirit, the soul is against the spirit and contradicts the spirit. These verses say, “A soulish man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he is not able to know them because they are discerned spiritually. But the spiritual man discerns all things, but he himself is discerned by no one.” Soulish implies the meaning of “natural” or “psychological.” A soulish man is a natural man, a man living in the soul. The soul is absolutely impotent in spiritual matters.
In these two verses we can see two kinds of persons: the soulish man and the spiritual man. The soulish man, and the soul itself, cannot understand or receive the spiritual things and even considers the spiritual things foolish. The spiritual man, however, discerns the spiritual things and likes to receive the spiritual things. It is by the spirit that we understand and discern the spiritual things, and it is in the spirit that we desire to have the spiritual things. If we are soulish, we simply cannot understand the spiritual things, we do not like anything spiritual, and we even think that the spiritual things are foolish. Thus, the soul itself is a contradiction to the spirit. We can realize this by our experience.
Within our body we have two parts, the soul and the spirit. The soul in itself does not desire anything spiritual, it cannot receive or understand the spiritual things, and it is very much contradictory to the spirit. Moreover, Matthew 16:24-25 shows us that the soul is the self. These verses say, “Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his soul-life shall lose it; but whoever loses his soul-life for My sake shall find it.” Verse 24 says, “Deny himself,” and verse 25 says, “Loses his soul-life.” The soul-life in verse 25 is the very self in verse 24. We may say that our soul contradicts our human spirit, the inmost part of our whole being, where the Holy Spirit dwells, or for the sake of further understanding, we may say that it is our self that contradicts our spirit.
The self, that is, the soul, the soulish life, is comprised of three parts — the emotions, the mind, and the will. The emotions include matters such as love and hatred. The mind is the mentality with its thoughts, considerations, opinions, ideas, and concepts. In the self there is also the will to make a decision, choice, or determination. If we realize that these three parts — the emotions, the mind, and the will — are the three parts of the self, the soul, then we will realize that to deny our self is simply to deny these three things. Many times we say that we need to deny our self; to deny our self is simply to deny either our emotions, our mind, or our will.
What is it to be soulish? It is simply to be in the emotions, in the mind, or in the will. Therefore, to deny the self is simply to deny the emotions, the mind, or the will. Sometimes we say that a certain man is very strong in his will. No one can convince him because he is so strong-willed. Sometimes we may also say that a brother is too deep in his opinions and thoughts, or that a sister is too emotional. What then is a soulish person? A soulish person is either an emotional person, a mental person, or a strong-willed person. The more emotional we are, the more we are soulish. To be in our mind too much and to exercise our mind first, or to be too much in our will is also soulish. Therefore, for a strong-willed person to deny his self is to deny his will. For a brother who is too deep in his thoughts to deny his self is to deny his mind, his mentality; it is to “lose his head.” Likewise, for an emotional sister to deny her self is to deny her emotions.
If we pay attention to these matters and spend time to consider them, we will see that many persons are of three categories. Some, especially the sisters, are emotional. I sometimes tell people that in order to convince a sister, you should not argue with her; that does not work. You simply need to drop two tears; that is the best weapon to fight the battle. If you drop some tears, all the sisters are captured because they are mostly emotional. When something happens to a sister, she will most often exercise her emotions first. What then is a spiritual person? A spiritual person is an emotional sister who has been delivered from her self. Whenever something happens to her, she first exercises not her emotions but her inmost part. When someone comes to her with tears, she is not moved by the tears. Even as a sister, she does not exercise her emotions. Rather, she exercises her inmost part and denies her emotions even in the presence of tears. She does not regard the tears but exercises her spirit, in which the Lord dwells. This is a spiritual sister, not an emotional sister. However, to say this is easy, but to practice it is very difficult for the sisters. The sisters should take the brothers as their head, but nearly all the sisters take their emotions as their head. If the sisters would put their emotions under their feet and exercise their spirit, making their spirit the head of their being, they will be spiritual.
With the sisters the problem is emotions, but with the brothers the problem is the mentality. Most of the brothers have a big head, always thinking and considering. Many brothers are great teachers in their own opinion. The brothers have many thoughts, opinions, considerations, and ideas. When anything happens to a brother, the first thing he spontaneously does is exercise his mind. If we ask a brother to pray for the meeting, he may ask, “Do you think we need to?” Sisters often have weeping eyes, but brothers have rolling eyes. While their eyes are rolling, their minds are exercising, thinking, and considering. It is difficult to convince the brothers in their thoughts and considerations, so we often must reason and argue with them. They need a strong reason to be convinced, because they are more in the mind.
A small number among the saints are persons of will. Such persons do not understand emotions or considerations. They simply know to set their will, and once their will is set, no one can change them. It would be wonderful if this kind of strong will could be connected to the spirit. These strong persons can be very faithful because they have a strong will, but there is the need to submit their strong will to their spirit. We will see more concerning the spirit and the soul in the following chapter.
