Body, Soul, and Spirit
Since we are eternal beings created by God to inhabit physical bodies, we are to offer
our total beings to God in order to glorify Him.
Here's Gene:
Now notice, let's go back to Genesis chapter 1, verse 26, beginning with the latter part
of that verse. This is now His ultimate creation.
He created the earth, and the heavens, and all those things that we talked about and
that are described there in the first chapter of Genesis. The seas and the sky.
And the sun and the moon and the stars. And the creatures that swarm through the seas.
And animal life of all kinds.
But then God said-- this is His ultimate creation.
Then God said,
Let Us... Now notice. What does it say?
...Let Us make man in...What?
Our image, according to Our likeness.
Who's God talking about?
Have you ever heard someone say that the Bible never teaches the Trinity?
The Trinity is right there in Genesis 1:26. Because God is referring to Himself:
God the Father. God the Son. And God the Holy Spirit.
And all three persons of the Godhead-- three persons, one God--
are referred to here in the opening chapters of Genesis.
And so the Holy Trinity created man.
And then the Lord said this:
So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God;
He created them male and female.
Because He's now generalizing and Eve has
yet to be created.
Then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust from the ground, breathed the breath
of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
A living being.
Some say a living soul, a living spirit.
I remember in the early days of my ministry, of teaching. I was doing a great deal of work
in relationship to integrating what we can learn from science about man and what we can
learn from the Bible. And one of the interesting things is that we are unique.
We are unique from animals.
We did not evolve from animals. And one of the great problems with evolution is they
cannot figure out how animals have instinct and incredible patterns of complex behavior.
They've never had to learn anything.
It's just there.
Such as a bird that flies from the north pole to south pole and never been there. And goes
to the exact location where he's supposed to be.
They didn't go to school to learn that.
If you study man, we have no complex patterns of behavior.
We have to learn everything.
The only instincts we have is sort of a startle response from birth. But we have to learn everything.
There's a gap there that science has never bridged. And the reason is that God created
man in His image to be a living soul.
We are made in the image of God.
Animals are not made in the image of God.
We are made in the image of God.
We are body, soul, and spirit.
The interesting thing is that one of the statements that really grabbed my attention
as I was researching that is-- and applying to me personally--
I am not a body with a soul.
I am a soul living in a body.
There's a big difference. And one of the things that is very encouraging when you conduct
a funeral. And I've conducted many of them, including my own dad's. Is to be able to say:
my dad is not in this casket.
It's only the house he lived in for 78 years.
My dad is with the Lord.
How do I know that?
Paul said, absent from the body is to be present with the Lord [2Co 5:8].
That means that we are both material and immaterial as human beings.
We are both physical and nonphysical as human beings.
And so when God created man from the dust of the earth, He created a body and then breathed
into that body the breath of life. And man became a living soul made in His image.
And that's uniquely different from animal life.
We have body, soul, and spirit.
Now, there's some discussion as to whether we're just material and immaterial.
If the body and the spirit--let's say the soul and the spirit--are the same or uniquely different.
And we can't explain all that because the immaterial part of man--there's various words
used such as spirit. Such as soul. And sometimes they're used interchangeably.
Sometimes they seem to be used separately.
Other words are used like heart, mind-- to refer to the immaterial part of man and woman.
It really doesn't matter.
Now Paul, if you go to the New Testament and you take a look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 5.
Paul seemingly distinguished here between soul and spirit when he said:
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely. ...
That is, make you holy completely.
...And may your spirit, soul, and body be kept sound and blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
May your spirit, soul, and body.
By the way, the author of Hebrews seems to differentiate that when he says:
The Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword,
dividing even asunder the joints and marrow, the soul and the spirit [Heb 4:12].
So evidently God is able to distinguish that even though we may not be able to.
But it's a very practical trilogy, as it were, in view of man and how man is made.
Now, there was a principle. If you go into the New Testament. There's a very practical principle.
And this is principle 12 in 1 Thessalonians related to that passage.
And this is the principle:
As spiritual leaders, we are to help all Christians live balanced
and integrated lives that please God.
We're to be integrated.
Now, when we die we will be separated from the body.
Absent from the body, present with the Lord, Paul said. But down here you can't separate
body and spirit or soul.
You can separate them in terms of function, but you cannot separate them in terms of totality.
And we must not compartmentalize these dimensions of our life. The body--the physical.
The psychological, which may refer to the soul.
Or the spiritual, which may relate to the spirit-- though it seems
that the spiritual relates to both soul and spirit.
Again, it's not easy to differentiate that, and I think that's one reason why it says
the Word of God can divide even to the asunder of soul and spirit in ways that we can't even do that.
So, body, soul, and spirit is very, very important.
Now, let me share with you again the principle and then a question.
Since we are eternal beings created by God to inhabit physical bodies--and that's important
the way that's worded. We are to offer our total beings--body, soul, and spirit--
to God in order to glorify Him.
And that's what Paul is teaching us there in 1 Thessalonians.
Now, the question is: How can we grow effectively
in all dimensions of our lives--
physically, psychologically (which could be
intellectually and emotionally) and then spiritually?
Let me read that again
because I want you to get hold of that.
How can we grow effectively in all dimensions
of our lives--because Paul says your whole
body, soul, and spirit should be preserved blameless until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
How can we grow effectively in all of those dimensions?
Well, one thing is to understand it.
We need to understand the interrelationships between the physical,
the psychological and the spiritual.
And functionally we can see the results of the fact that we are an integrated being.
For example, Elijah.
If you study Elijah, remember we had that great battle with the prophets of Baal.
Had this great victory.
It was a horrible victory in some respects, in terms of taking a lot of energy and a lot of faith.
And Elijah then was threatened by Jezebel and he ran off into the wilderness
and he wanted to die.
And one of the reasons he wanted to die was he was so depressed from all of this energy
that he had exerted. And you know how God took care of him?
Put him to sleep. Gave him a good meal.
Woke him up. Gave him another meal.
Put him to sleep. And it says he went in the strength of that for 40 days.
The physical deterioration, the physical exertion had left him in a state where he wanted to die.
That's what you call depression that is caused by overexertion.
And in that case, God dealt with the physical, which helped to restore the psychological and the spiritual.
Now, you have other situations.
For example, I know of a pastor here in this area. Very well known man who conducted a
lot of seminars.
He's very open about this. But he went into a very significant state of depression,
and a good meal and lots of sleep did not take care of it.
In fact, he couldn't sleep because he was clinically depressed.
He was so clinically depressed that he couldn't function.
And he had to deal with those issues. Not only of rest but dealing with the clinical
aspect of this depression.
And thankfully, today we know there are medications that can help restore the balances in our
body when we get chemically depressed.
As far as he knew he didn't have any particular sins in his life, any more than any of us.
We certainly fall short of God's glory by making mistakes and sinning.
But he was clinically depressed. And he had to go through a time of therapy and help and encouragement.
In fact, I heard him speaking on a very well known Christian radio program where he shared his story.
If he were here tonight he'd tell you all about it.
And he was restored. But it took a process of time.
So there you have the focus of the problem in the psychological before it could help
him with the physical and with his spiritual.
Now, if you go to the book of James, you have people that are sick and James says call for
the elders of the church to pray over them.
And in that very passage it says if you've sinned you should confess your sins and God
will forgive you. And prayer will help heal you in relationship to the sin problem that
has created the problems in your life.
So, if we're deliberately walking out of harmony with God's will and we're covered over with
guilt, we've got a sin problem. And that's going to affect our emotions. It's going to
affect our body. It's going to affect everything.
The important thing is we need to understand where the focus of the problem is because
we're an integrated being.
I love the verse in Proverbs that talks about pleasant words are like a honeycomb,
sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. Or a happy heart is like good medicine.
And there, the Proverbs are understanding that we are psycho-physical-spiritual beings.
It's interesting, by the way, in the Greek text the word "psuche" refers to the soul. Psuche.
The word "soma" refers to the body.
And in English we put those two together, "psuche" and "soma."
What is the English word? Psychosomatic.
Why do we put those two together?
Because the body and the soul are integrated, interrelated beings.
And so consequently, we need to understand that in relationship to our own spiritual growth
in terms of what God is saying here with this principle.
So let me just restate principle #2:
Since we are eternal beings created by God to inhabit
physical bodies, we are to offer our total beings to God in order to glorify Him.