SOUL TALK SERIES #3 - THE PLACE OF THE SOUL IN THE LIFE OF MAN

It is said, and I believe correctly, that man is a threefold being, a trinity if you please. Assuming that this is true, we may also say that I am a spirit, I have a soul and I live in a body. We are spirit beings, meant to contain the life of God. A man without God is a man who is dead to God in his Spirit. He very much alive to sin but totally unresponsive to God until the Spirit of God takes the initiative to convict the soul of sin. The soul involves the faculty of will, thought and emotion. Mere religion cannot touch the spirit but has influence over the soul and body. The Spirit of God urges man to think about the claims of Christ, feel the need of Christ and when there is the gift of faith, he decides to receive Christ. This brings about the new birth. The result? A new creation! A perfect creation? No, but an experience has occurred that has changed man at the core of his being and from the core, his spirit, now containing God’s Spirit, As all this comes about, he begins to live in a new realm with new spiritual faculties. His spirit, once dead, becomes alive and from that time the life of God in man begins to do His work. His soul develops a new identity, a new creation.

There is a real sense in which the scope of salvation is Trinitarian, a living, continuing power in man. I was saved immediately in my spirit; I am being saved gradually in my soul and will ultimately be saved in my body when it becomes a body such as Jesus possessed after His resurrection.

Now, back to the soul: Before the event of the new birth the unredeemed soul was its own center, the untouched ego. In salvation there is a new center, the spirit where God’s Spirit dwells. The soul -- our expression of authentic identity becomes a servant of the human spirit and God’s spirit in developing expressions of new creation qualities, better known as the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace and so on.

It is at the point of the soul that growth takes place under the influence of God’s Spirit in us emanating His character through our entire being. One of greatest declarations in Scripture regarding the work of God in man’s soul is 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “Now, may God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through (completely) . May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The next verse boldly derclares, “The one who calls you is faithful and He will do it.”

Now, this has been a quick run-through bringing us to the place of the soul, now under the influence of the Spirit reaching the whole man. Discipleship becomes a continuing therapy of soul training and the body happily becomes a servant of the soul which is the servant of the Spirit of God in man’s redeemed soul.

JRT