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Scripture Reading: Rom. 7:8, 11, 17, 20, 23; Matt. 16:21-26; Eph. 2:1, 5; Col. 2:13; 1 Cor. 2:14-15; 2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 3:16; 4:22-24; Col. 3:9-10; Rom. 6:6; Gal. 5:24; Heb. 2:14
In the Bible, the word soul may be understood in several ways. First, man himself is a soul. Genesis 2:7 says, “Jehovah God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” God formed a body for man from the dust of the ground, but the breath of life that God breathed into man’s body became the spirit of man, the human spirit (Job 32:8; Prov. 20:27). As a result, man became a living soul. First Corinthians 15:45a says, “So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul,’” and referring to the seventy persons in the house of Jacob, Deuteronomy 10:22 says, “Your fathers went down into Egypt as seventy souls” (cf. Gen. 46:27; Exo. 1:5). All these verses tell us that man himself is a soul. In addition, soul in the Bible refers to the soulish part of the human being and also to the soulish functions of man.
Soul also refers to the soulish life of man, because the soulish part of man is the place where his human life is. In the New Testament, the Greek word for soul is psuche, which is also translated as soul-life, as in Matthew 16:25-26, which says, “Whoever wants to save his soul-life shall lose it; but whoever loses his soul-life for My sake shall find it. For what shall a man be profited if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul-life? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul-life?” Similarly, John 12:25 says, “He who loves his soul-life loses it; and he who hates his soul-life in this world shall keep it unto eternal life.” Thus, in various verses of the Bible soul denotes man himself, the soulish part of man, the soulish functions, and the soulish life.
The person of fallen man is his soul, having an outward and inward organ. The physical body, which was made from the dust of the ground, is the outward organ to contact the physical, material world. The spirit, which came from the spiritual breath of life, is the inward organ to contact the Lord in the spiritual realm. We should not consider that the person of the natural man is either his body or his spirit. Both of these are simply organs; the soul is the person. Because the soul is the being, the person, of man, within the soul is man’s self, his personality. Likewise, within every being there is a life. The life of the natural man is neither in his body nor in his spirit. The human life is in the soul.
At the time of the fall, Satan as sin came into man’s body through man’s eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:1-6). Romans 7:17 says, “Now then it is no longer I that work it out but sin that dwells in me.” According to this verse and verses 8, 11, and 20, sin dwells in us and operates in us, and according to 6:12 and 14, sin reigns in our mortal body and lords it over us. These verses indicate that sin is a person, the embodiment of Satan with his evil nature. In the New Testament Satan is called “the evil one” (Matt. 13:19, 38; John 17:15; 1 John 2:13-14; 5:18-19). In Greek this phrase is literally “the evil.” Sin and the evil are Satan himself.
Romans 7:23 tells us where this sin dwells: “I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and making me a captive to the law of sin which is in my members.” Sin dwells in the members of our body. This means that Satan entered into fallen man through his body. Every kind of lust is in the body because the source of lust — Satan, the evil one — is in the body, that is, in the flesh. Originally, the body was something good and pure, but since Satan came into it and damaged it, the body was changed in nature to become the flesh. Genesis 6:3 says, “Jehovah said, My Spirit will not strive with man forever, for he indeed is flesh.” The body is the flesh because it was corrupted and ruined when Satan entered into it.
Moreover, when man — the being, the soul — came under the influence and control of the flesh, the soul too was damaged. Just as the body became the flesh, the soul became the self. Because the soul came under the control of the flesh and was influenced by the flesh, the person of the soul became self-centered, the self. Because Satan took our body as his base in order to invade our soul, sin is in our body, the ruined body became the flesh, and the soul was damaged, influenced, and led into captivity to become the self. All these terms — Satan, sin, flesh, and self — are very negative.
Matthew 16:21 through 26 illustrates the ground that Satan has in the human soul. These verses say, “From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, God be merciful to You, Lord! This shall by no means happen to You! But He turned and said to Peter, Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of men. Then 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. For what shall a man be profited if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul-life? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul-life?”
In verse 23 the Lord rebuked Satan, but in verse 24 He did not tell the disciples to deny Satan; He told them to deny the self. Then in verses 25 and 26 He went on to speak of the soul-life. Satan, the self, and the soul-life are used here interchangeably. Satan is mingled with the self, and the satanic self is the embodiment of the soul-life. In other words, the soul has a life, and the embodiment of the soulish life is the satanic self. Therefore, we may say that the soulish life is mingled with Satan.
What then happened to the spirit? On one hand, the spirit was deadened because of the fall. Ephesians 2:1 and 5 and Colossians 2:13 tell us that we were dead in offenses and sins. This does not mean that man is dead in his body or in his soul. Rather, man is very active in the body and soul, but the worldly people, the unbelievers, are deadened and dormant in their spirit. They have a human spirit, but it is deadened and out of function. On the other hand, God has preserved man’s human spirit so that Satan can never come into it. Although Satan took the physical body as his base to invade the soul, he was not able to enter into the spirit and take it over. Ephesians 2 tells us that Satan, the evil one, operated in the sons of disobedience, but it does not indicate that he invaded their spirit. As we have shown, Satan took the body as his base, invaded the soul, and even mingled himself with the soul, but he has no ground in the human spirit. It is as if God drew a boundary around the human spirit and told Satan, “For the time being, you have gained man’s body as your base, and you have even invaded his soul and mingled yourself with it. However, you must stop here.”
Man with the soul as his person has a body as an outward organ and a spirit as an inward organ. The body was taken over and ruined by Satan as sin to become the flesh, the soul was mingled with Satan to become the self, and the spirit was deadened. Satan, sin, flesh, self, and death all became the real situation and condition of fallen man. However, when we believed in the Lord Jesus as our Savior and in His death for us, we were forgiven, justified, and reconciled to God. All the problems between us and God were solved. At this point, the Lord Jesus as life came into our deadened spirit. Our spirit was made alive, and death was swallowed up. Now in our spirit we have another life, not psuche, the soulish life, but zoe, the divine life (Rom. 8:10). In this way we were not only enlivened but born again. We became a new person, a new being, not in the soul but in the spirit (John 3:6).
However, there is now a problem. Before we were born again, we were only one man in the soul, but now we have two men, one in the soul and the other in the spirit. The first is the soulish man, the old man, the outer man, and the other is the spiritual man, the new man, the inner man. First Corinthians 2:14 and 15 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.” In these two verses we have the soulish man and the spiritual man. We must be clear that the soulish man cannot know or receive the things of God, but the spiritual man discerns them. Second Corinthians 4:16 says, “Therefore we do not lose heart; but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.” In this verse there is the outer man and the inner man. The outer man is the man in the soul, and the inner man is the man in the spirit. Ephesians 3:16 also speaks of the inner man, saying, “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man.”
Formerly we were the soulish man, and we could live only by the life of this man because we did not have another life. However, Christ has come into us to be our life, regenerated us, and brought us forth as the new man. Since we have another person and another life, we must live by this spiritual man, this new man, this inner man, and no longer by the old man, the soulish man. Romans 6:6 says, “Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin as slaves.” Similarly, Galatians 5:24 tells us that the flesh also has been crucified. Moreover, Hebrews 2:14 says, “Since therefore the children have shared in blood and flesh, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death He might destroy him who has the might of death, that is, the devil.” Therefore, our old man, the soul-life, the self, and Satan have all been crucified. Now our only problem is that although the Lord has “crossed out” all these negative items, we may still treasure them and live by the old man. We need to live by the new man, the spiritual man, which is our regenerated spirit indwelt by Christ. This is the reason that our soul as the outer man is being consumed and our spirit as the inner man is being renewed day by day.
The soulish life is different from the function of the soul. Originally, our soul was our person, and our spirit was the organ. Now there has been a great change — our spirit has become our person, and our soul is the organ. The soulish life, nature, and self have been crucified but not the function of the soul. The function of the soul in thinking, loving, and deciding remains with us in order to be renewed. This is the reason that Romans 12:2 tells us to be transformed by the renewing of the mind. When the mind is renewed, the emotion and will also follow to be renewed.
An organ does not have the right or ground to live or make a decision, but a person has every right and ground. Today we must live not by the soul but by the spirit as our person, using the soul as the organ. Our soul must simply be the organ for our spirit as the person. We should not give our soul the ground and right within us. If our soul decides to go somewhere, we should tell it, “Do not propose anything to me; you have no right. You are merely an organ to me. When I want to go somewhere, I will tell you, and you must come with me to be my organ.” Our spirit as our person has the right and ground to propose something but not our soul. We should not treat our soul as our life, person, or being. Rather, we must realize that the soul is simply an organ for our spirit as our person.
Our soul has no more right or ground because it is no longer our life, being, and person. It is simply an organ. Therefore, we must live not by the soul but by the spirit. We should love things not according to the soul but according to the spirit. Formerly the soul was our person, but today our person is our regenerated spirit indwelt by Christ. Sometimes our soul may demand that we hate a certain person, but we should tell it, “Be silent! You have no right to say this. When I need to use you as my organ to hate something, I will tell you. You are only the organ. My being, person, and life today is my regenerated spirit indwelt by Christ.” When we live in the soul, we are living in the self and are involved with Satan, sin, and the flesh, but when we deny the soul, telling it that it has no more right or ground within us, we are delivered from Satan, sin, the flesh, and the self. When we learn to live, walk, and do things in the spirit, we are delivered from many negative matters.
