I’m just drifting off to sleep when I feel a set of tiny fingers gently pull my upper left eyelid open. As the world comes into focus, I hear my daughter’s voice say, “Come on daddy, I know you’re in there.”
My daughter Kirsten is three years old and wants to play. Children are amazing. First, Kirsten recognizes that her father is more than just a body. Kirsten believed that ‘in there’ was a faculty that could animate my body, enabling it to interact with her. Second, she understood that an individual existed, within my dormant frame, that was uniquely her father – not some other person. Kirsten recognized that I have a soul.
As the great Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius said, “To them that ask, where have you seen the Gods, or how do you know for certain there are Gods, that you are so devout in their worship? I answer: Neither have I ever seen my own soul, and yet I respect and honor it.”
Beyond our human bodies, the Bible tells us that we have a soul and a spirit. 1 Thessalonians 5:23 states, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Our bodies, the material portion of our composition, is obvious. These vessels are well suited to interfacing our souls to the world we live in and to one another. Wonderful as our earthly bodies are, they are temporary entities subject to degradation.
Our souls and spirits, the immaterial portion of our composition, aren’t as easy to understand. These elements aren’t readily perceptible by our physical senses.
Two common ways of partitioning our human makeup are body-spirit and body-soul-spirit. In the body-spirit representation, the soul-spirit is lumped into a single entity – spirit. Soul and spirit are immaterial and closely connected, so it is common to put them under the heading spirit. Consider Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” It takes the very word of God to divide our soul and spirit. Put another way, God’s word is active and alive, capable of penetrating the very core of who we are.
For this blog series, we model human composition as body-soul-spirit. Dividing the human makeup into three parts enables us to focus more directly on the spiritual. For an extended discussion of body-soul versus body-soul-spirit, please see the Appendix blog.
With this representation, our souls are made up of our mind, will, and emotion. The soul is that portion of our existence that animates our bodies enabling us to learn, express ourselves, and interact with our children.
Finally, the spirit. Spirit is the component that enables us to have a relationship with God. God’s fundamental nature is spirit. John 4:24. The spirit is at our core guiding our souls and bodies.
To be a Christian is to have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This Spirit-to-spirit connection, or relationship, is access to God, making us the most fortunate individuals on the planet.
This series will examine our connection with the Holy Spirit and how we can grow that relationship.