Bible Text:
1 Thessalonians 5:23
“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”
The human being consists of three parts – body, soul, and spirit.
In other words, Man is a spirit who have a soul and dwells in a body.
The body is that physical part of us referred to in the Bible as “the flesh” (Galatians 5:16) and our “earthly tent”
(II Corinthians 5:1). It is our temporary home, and is not the real “us” – it is only the place in which the real person lives while on earth.
At death it will return to the dust and rot in the ground.
The soul is the “living” part of us. It is the soul which sees, feels, hears, and thinks – forever!
The soul includes the mind, will, and emotions. Therefore, we contact the intellectual and emotional realms with the soul.
Physical death is the separation of the soul from the body (see Acts 2:27). Though the body is dead – though the eyes no longer see, for example – the soul continues to see in Hades (the temporary resting place for the souls of the dead). In Luke 16:23 the rich man is described as “in Hades he lifted up his eyes”- a figure of speech meaning that he continued to see.
The soul is the life of the human being. When the soul leaves, the eyes no longer see and the ears no longer hear. The eyes and ears were merely physical means through which the soul operated while on earth.
The spirit is the deep inner part of a person. When God made man in His image (Genesis 1:26), He made him a spirit being. Since God is Spirit (John 4:24), neither the physical part of man, nor his soul, is in the image of God. It is in being a spirit that man is made in God’s image.
In being a spirit, man is a moral being. He is not to operate by instinct (see II Peter 2:12), but he has a choice of doing right or wrong.
It’s easy to define what our body is, because it’s the part of us that’s visible. It contacts the physical realm—the realm we can touch and observe.
It’s more difficult to distinguish between our soul and spirit. We can’t see or touch either of them physically. But it’s important to understand the difference between them. If we don’t, we won’t be led by the Holy Spirit. Instead, we’ll be led by our soul in the situations of life.
We see that the soul and spirit can be separated by God’s Word: “For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow” (Heb. 4:12 NLT).
The Word of God can “cut between,” or separate, the soul and spirit of man because they are different.
It is the spirit that God uses to communicate to our soul.