Soul and Spirit
By Ryan Bridgeo
Avery County
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.” Many people think that our soul and spirit are the same thing. If this were true why would the apostle Paul, led by Holy Spirit, separate them? Failure to understand the soul and the spirit has kept many people from realizing what God did in us when we were born again. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Your soul and spirit are so closely connected that only the Word of God can separate them. In Genesis 1:26 God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” Notice it says let US make man in our image. God is a three-part being. We call His three-part nature the Trinity; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are made in their image. Therefore, we are a three-part being as well. We are a Spirit just like God, (God is Spirit. John 4:24). We have a soul which is our mind, will, and emotions and we live in a body.
Our body is the easiest for us to understand because we are in direct contact with it every day. By checking your body, you can instantly tell how you feel. You may feel tired, weak, strong, sore, etc. You can also tell instantly if the water in the shower is too hot or too cold for your body. It is the physical part of us that we see in the mirror every day.
Did you know that you have never seen your face before without the help of a mirror? Mirrors help us know what we look like. With a mirror, we can check our hair to make sure it looks nice. We can check our teeth to make sure we don’t have food stuck in them. We can look at our faces to make sure we don’t have anything on them like a milk mustache, ketchup, mustard smears from eating a hotdog, or runny mascara due to tears. All these things can be checked with the help of a mirror. Without a mirror, we can never truly know what we look like.
My wife and I have a friend who went to Haiti for mission work. While he was there, his team took pictures of the young children and placed the photographs on a table so they could keep a copy for themselves. Amazingly, the children could not identify their own pictures as they had never seen their own faces before. They had to have their friends help them get their correct photo. In the same way, we need help to know what we look like in our born-again spirits.
James 1:23-24 says, “Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” The Word of God is our spiritual mirror. In the same way that we need a mirror to tell us what our face looks like, we need the Word of God to tell us what our born-again spirit looks like.
Hebrews 10:14 (KJV) says, “For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” This verse says that by Christ’s sacrifice of Himself, He has (past tense) perfected believers forever. Forever! That is a very long time. We don’t usually feel like we are perfect. My wife loves me very much, but she wouldn’t say that I was perfect. God spends more time with us than anyone else ever could and He says we are forever perfect. That is amazing! But how can this be?
Now is this talking about our body? Not likely. Jesus’ sacrifice didn’t make us instantly skinny or pimple-free. Is this talking about our soul; our mind, will, and emotions? No, it can’t be. If we lacked intelligence before we will still lack intelligence after we are born again. If we were an emotional roller coaster before, we would be after. That is until God does a work in our emotions. So, by process of elimination, the only conclusion left is that it’s talking about our spirit.
When we were born again Jesus perfected our spirit forever. Hebrews 12:23 says that the spirits of righteous men were made perfect. Ephesians 4:24 says our born-again spirit was recreated righteous and truly Holy. 1 All things have become new in our spirit. It is our spirit that is perfected forever. It is our spirit that is recreated as righteous and truly Holy. Praise God this is where the change takes place and the only way for us to know this is by looking in the mirror of God’s Word. We won’t feel it. We won’t understand it or totally comprehend it. We must believe it because God said it.
This revelation of spirit, soul, and body which I first learned through Andrew Wommack made sense of many of the verses in the Bible that I didn’t understand before. For example, 1 John 4:17, “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.” This is saying that we are exactly like Him now, in this world. Not when we die and go to Heaven. Understanding spirit, soul, and body helped me realize that this is referring to my spirit. My spirit looks just like His, perfect forever. As He is, so am I in my born-again spirit.
1 Corinthians 6:17 says that “he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him”. I have heard people say that God can’t live in a dirty vessel, and I thought that doesn’t leave Him with many options then. To live in us, He perfected a place in us forever, called our spirit. This is the place where God lives. This is the place where we have become one spirit with Him. Praise God, because of the sacrifice of Jesus, our spirit is perfected forever, and Christ now lives in us there.
Blessings,
Pastor Ryan
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Ryan Bridgeo is the Pastor of Plumtree Church in Avery County, NC. If you would like to know more or how you might become involved in this ministry please reach out to Pastor Ryan at [email protected] or call 828-765-6919.
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