What did Paul mean by Spirit, Soul and Body at 1 Thessalonians 5:23?

Paul says at 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “May the very God of peace sanctify you completely. And sound in every respect may the spirit and soul and body of you brothers be preserved in a blameless manner at the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

How Adam was made

The very first book of the Bible tells us how Jehovah God made Adam. At Genesis 2:7 it says, “And Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust (body) from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life (spirit), and the man came to be a living soul (soul).

Just as electricity interacting on the filament produces light, God’s spirit interacting on the body produced the soul, the personality of Adam, his “self.” So Adam did not “have” a soul. He was the soul, a living, breathing soul; able to think, feel, and act. In his “soul’ he was aware of his self, of his own personality. It is this personality that was projected out for others to perceive and interact with. His “self” or soul, was made up of three faculties, his intellect, his emotions, and his will.

Adam's soul, that is his intellect, his emotions and his will, made him self conscious, that is, aware of his self, but it was always to be under the guidance and control of his spirit.

The spirit that God created in Adam made him aware of God, it made him God conscious. It is in his spirit that he would receive wisdom and revelation from God. It is with his spirit that he was meant to love God. It is with the power of his spirit that he was meant to serve and work for God. The spirit was to be the power behind his intellect, emotions and will.

Adams’s body made him aware of the natural world around him through his senses. It made him world conscious.

The body was meant to be the “servant” of the soul and the soul was meant to be the “servant” of the spirit. In other words, his senses would be under the control of his intellect, emotions and will, and they in turn were subject to his spirit, which would direct him.

Adam, the person, his soul was the intermediary between the spirit world and the sense world. Adam, the soul would have to make the choice as to which one to subject to. As a person with free will he would have to choose whether he wanted to be spirit guided which would lead him to God, (spirit nature) or be guided by his soul, that is by himself, (his human nature) or be guided by his senses and bodily instincts much like animals (animal nature). If he chose to be guided by himself, he would only be enslaved to his bodily instincts and/or to any other supernatural forces. Jehovah God had put him in a beautiful Garden, his invisible qualities were manifest everywhere and all the wisdom that Adam would gain should lead him to one unavoidable conclusion, the absolute surrender of his soul, his self to Jehovah God. He should arrive at his “Jordan River” moment.

And if, Adam, by his faith had surrendered himself to Jehovah, like Jesus did at the Jordan River, then Jehovah would have perfected his faith and after his faith had been perfected he would have been given the fruit from the Tree of Life to eat, that is, he would have become permanently connected to Jehovah God. This was to be the goal that Jehovah had set for man; complete union with God, so that the life-giving spirit from God would flow into him and he would be permanently connected with the living God, and have a divine nature.

Adam's Spiritual Death

However, since Adam disobeyed God, he died in spirit. He became dead in his trespass and sin. He died spiritually. (Ephesians 2:1) He had made the choice to be dominated not by his spirit but by his animal nature. He sold himself to this nature, which worked in him along with the principle of sin. He was also now “soulical,” in that he would be governed by his “self.” He became “self conscious” instead of being “God conscious,” that is, instead of being dominated by his spirit, he was now dominated by his “self,” by his intellect, emotions and will.

Then the eyes of both of them became opened (they lost their “God consciousness” and became dominated by their self) and they began to realize that they were naked (becoming “self conscious”). Hence they sewed fig leaves together and made loin coverings for themselves. (Genesis 3:7)

They were now what the Bible calls “flesh,” the body and soul cut off from the spirit. All of us are born in this condition. Therefore all of us are born fleshly, dominated by our self, our intellect, emotions and will (soulical), and/or by our senses and bodily desires. This is the nature that Adam passed on to us.

Jude 19 says: These are the ones that make separations, animalistic [lit. “soulical men”], not having spirituality (lit. “without spirit.”)

Our “self,” that is our intellect, emotions and will dominate us. Our flesh, the “self,” the nature we inherited from Adam, always looks for its own interest. Further our “flesh” is under the powerful grip of sin, that nature of Satan, which has been injected into Adam, like poison.

Without the power of the spirit, the “flesh” (body and soul) is unable to live up to God’s standards.

At Romans 7:18 Paul says, “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwells nothing good; for ability to wish is present with me, but ability to work out what is fine is not present.

This nature we have inherited from Adam is corrupt, rotten and deceptive and hence cannot be trusted.

At Ephesians 4:22 Paul says, ‘You were taught to put away the old personality which conforms to your former course of conduct and which is being corrupted according to his deceptive desire.” Yes, this nature we have inherited, is “rotten through and through.” (Ephesians 4:22 Living Bible)

David cried out in the psalms, “Look! With error I was brought forth with birth pains, and in sin my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5)

And Job lamented, “Who can produce someone clean out of someone unclean? There is not one.” (Job 14:4) We were conceived in sin, born unclean.

Paul says it emphatically, “There is not a righteous man, not even one; there is no one that has any insight, there is no one that seeks for God. All men have deflected, all of them together have become worthless; there is no one that does kindness, there is not so much as one.” (Romans 3:10-12)

With this nature that we have inherited from Adam, it is impossible to understand spiritual realities and please God.

Paul says, “The minding of the flesh means enmity with God, for it is not under subjection to the law of God, nor, in fact, can it be. So those who are in harmony with the flesh cannot please God.” (Romans 8:7, 8)

Our Soulical Worship of Jehovah

Man now uses his “soul,” that is, his intellect to learn about God, his emotions and feelings to love God and his will and efforts to serve him. Thus his worship is “soulical” and not spiritual.

But a physical (literally, ‘soulical’) man does not receive the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot get to know them, because they are examined spiritually. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

And so, brothers, I was not able to speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to fleshly men, as to babes in Christ. (1 Corinthians 3:1)

Paul had earlier said about the Corinthian brothers, “that in everything you have been enriched in him, in full ability to speak and in full knowledge.” (1 Corinthians 1:5)

And yet he said that they were “soulical” and “fleshly”. (1 Corinthians 2:14, 3:1) The “soul” can mimic everything spiritual. We can thus be deceived into thinking that our acts are “spiritual” when in reality they are “soulical.”

For example, instead of receiving knowledge and revelation in the spirit, we use our minds to analyze spiritual things. The mind was never made to be the first point of reception. Our spirit was. Our mind was supposed to be an “instrument” to be used by the spirit, not to receive spiritual things, but to understand spiritual realities after it has been revealed in our spirit. (Ephesians 1:17,18) But we use our minds the wrong way by our intellectual research and study of the Bible. We, then, think that we are being spiritual.

We also use our faculty of emotions to love Jehovah and others. This too is fleshly or “soulical,” since it emanates from the “self” that is rotten through and through. Jesus said in Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own soul, he cannot be my disciple. There has to be a total emptying of affections that emanate from our soul before a “new nature” can be created in us, with which we can love Jehovah and others in his way.

We also use our will and efforts to serve Jehovah and do his work. This too is fleshly and “soulical”. All human efforts are worthless and unacceptable no matter how noble and moral these acts are. They are all fleshly and tainted by sin. They come from the power of the soul, or self, and not the spirit. Thus we never understand spiritual realities. At the most we will be able to understand shadows of the truth, but never the truth.

So the danger is that we build our lives on the foundations of these “shadows” rather than the realities, which can only be discerned spiritually, that is with our spirit, which we as we have seen, is dead within us.

Paul had built his whole life on the “shadow” of God’s Law. So when Christ, the reality, was preached by the Christians, it shook his very foundation, because it was just a shadow, totally powerless and ineffective in producing spiritual worship in him. His worship had been “soulical” all along. All done out of his efforts, his emotions and his intellect.

Therefore, every single thing that we do for Jehovah in the power of our soul is unacceptable to him, they are all “soulical” and tainted by sin. All of them emanate from our “self” that we have inherited from Adam, which is “rotten through and through.” (Ephesians 4:22)

As we said above, our most moral and noble acts, even our worship of Jehovah done in the power of our “self” is repulsive to Jehovah. Notice how Isaiah puts it. “And we become like someone unclean, all of us, and all our acts of righteousness are like a garment for periods of menstruation; and we shall fade away like leafage, all of us, and our errors themselves will carry us away just like a wind. (Isaiah 64:6)

The lamp of the body is the eye. If, then, your eye is simple, (led by our spirit and God conscious) your whole body will be bright, but if your eye is wicked, (dominated by the self, that is, we use our intellect, emotions and will to learn about God, love him and serve him) your whole body will be dark. If in reality the light (our soulical mimicry of spiritual things) that is in you is darkness, how great that darkness is! (thinking we are spiritual when in fact we are “soulical”)

–Matthew 6:22, 23

All our works done by the power of the soul is worthless. They are called dead works. (Hebrews 6:1 and 9:14)

What is our hope?

The situation looks bleak. But we need to recognize this situation before we can receive power from God. It is very important to see our nature at it truly is, not deceiving ourselves into thinking that we are not that bad. For unless we see ourselves as we are, as Jehovah sees us, how rotten and unclean we are from birth, we will not see the need for our salvation; we will not see the need for Christ, and so remain without the power that is offered to us by God through Christ, and Christ alone.

We are all accustomed to feeling guilty when we “sin.” What we need to realize is that we do not need to “sin” in order to be guilty. We are under condemnation right from our birth because we are sinners. We are sinners right from the time we are conceived, let alone from our birth. Sin is not an act. It is our very nature, our very condition. Unless we recognize this and give up doing anything in our own efforts, with the power of our soul, with our nature that we have inherited from Adam, we have no hope for salvation. Paul said, “I do not shove aside the undeserved kindness of God; for if righteousness is through law, Christ actually died for nothing.” Galatians 2:21

Jesus said: “Nevertheless, the hour is coming, and it is now, when the true worshipers will worship the Father with spirit and truth, for, indeed, the Father is looking for suchlike ones to worship him. God is a Spirit, and those worshiping him must worship with spirit and truth.” (John 4:23, 24)

Notice Jesus said “with spirit,” not with our soul, that is, by God’s spirit working in our spirit, and “in truth” that is “in reality,” and not by mimicking “spiritual” acts with our soul.

(Romans 1:9) For God, to whom I render sacred service with my spirit in connection with the good news about his Son, is my witness of how without ceasing I always make mention of you in my prayers.

But the question is how? We will discuss this in the next article – How are we delivered from the power of sin?

How do we walk by faith and not by sight? - 2 Corinthians 5:7

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:7 “… we are walking by faith, not by sight.

At Romans 14:23 he says “Everything that is not out of faith is sin.”

What is Faith?

Faith is to believe that what God says is true and real. Not what we see around us, not what we experience in our lives; but to believe to be true what God says is true. Faith is held against the face of “evidence” to the contrary. Faith is held against the face of human reason and logic; against so called “realities” that are experienced in life; against the face of what we see “to be real.”

Satan has created a world where we see suffering and injustice everywhere. Circumstances, conditions, “reality” and “experience,” reason and logic would lead to only one unavoidable conclusion. Either God doesn’t exist or if he does, he does not care. But faith would see otherwise.

Jesus said to Jehovah in prayer, “Your word is truth.” (John 17:17) So faith walks and lives by what God has said to be true, not what is seen to be “true” in our lives, or what is “experienced” as truth in our lives.

Notice how the Amplified Bible translates Hebrews 11:1, “Now Faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things we hope for, being the proof of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact, what is not revealed to the senses].

Abraham, the Father of all those having faith

Take Abraham, the father of all those exercising faith. Jehovah God told him he would have a son through Sarah. The son was not born right away. After Jehovah gave this promise to Abraham, Abraham continued to grow older. Sarah continued to grow older.

Now if you applied human reasoning and logic, what Jehovah had said simply could not be true. According to circumstances and conditions that Abraham saw around him in life, what God said to Abraham could not happen. And most of all, in the very experience of his body and of Sarah’s body God’s promise was a “blatant” lie.

But Abraham did not go by what he saw or experienced. He believed God’s word to be true and factual. When God said there would be a son, as far as God was concerned there was a son, immediately. The son existed right away in God's eyes.

Faith lived by those words of God and not by so called “reality” and “experience.”

Talking about Abraham, Paul says in Romans 4:17, “This was in the sight of the One in whom he had faith, even of God, who makes the dead alive and calls the things that are not as though they were.”

Things that are not seen as already in existence. Things that were not experienced as already experiencing. Why? Because a thing has a reality the moment it is called into existence by God. It does not need to have a material existence for us to live by. Reality is created by God’s word. If he says it, we live as if it exists. And here is the main point. When we live as if it exists, because God has said so, then it will get a material existence based on our faith. Let us repeat that again, When we live by what God says is true in spirit, then it will become true in our case in flesh.

No matter how much reason or experience may contradict it, we do not waver in a lack of faith. And when we continue to persist in our faith, then what God has said will become “real” in our lives. By our continued persistence we will make what God has said to be real in our lives.

Hebrews 6: 12 “But be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

This is exactly what Abraham did. Through faith and patience he inherited the promise.

Romans 4:18 “Although beyond hope, yet based on hope he had faith.”

Faith is not stoic resignation. It is confident expectation.

Romans 4:19-21 “And, although he did not grow weak in faith, he considered his own body, now already deadened, [experience] as he was about one hundred years old, also the deadness of the womb of Sarah. [“so called reality”] ²⁰But because of the promise of God he did not waver in a lack of faith, but became powerful by his faith, giving God glory ²¹and being fully convinced that what he had promised he was also able to do.”

Because he went against the face of so called reality and his own experience and persisted in believing God’s word as fact, a tremendous switch took place in his and Sarah’s body. His reproductive powers were resurrected. Sarah’s deadened womb was renewed. His faith made God’s word a reality in flesh. Isaac, God's word and promise became flesh and blood. By faith in God's word Abraham inherited the promise.

Believing is not changing God’s word into reality. It is believing that what God has said is real. That is why Jesus said, “You will know the truth (reality) and the truth (reality) will set you free.” (John 8:32) If we KNOW the truth or reality, (what God has said to be true and not what we experience or see) then that truth will become a reality in our lives. But if we think what we experience or see is what reality is, then we will stumble and forever remain in the control of flesh. That is how we walk by faith and not by sight. That is why Jesus said “All the things you pray and ask for have faith that you have practically received, and you will have them. (Mark 11:24)

How do we walk by faith today?

Now let us apply this to Romans 6:6. In Jehovah's eyes our Adamic nature is impaled with Christ. That is a fact in his eyes. I Corinthians 5:14 says “One man died so all have died.” When Christ died all mankind was put to death with him. That is a fact. It is reality in God's eyes. Now if we believe that we died with Christ then God's spirit will make that real in our lives. If we reckon ourselves as dead, since Christ died and we died with him, then our “self” would be made dead and inactive and sin would lose its power over us. We would no longer be slaves to sin. Why? Because that is a fact. God says so at Romans 6:6: “Because we know that our old personality was impaled with [him], that our sinful body might be made inactive, that we should no longer go on being slaves to sin.” Do you know this truth. If you know this truth, the truth will set you free.

Now just like Abraham we have to hold this faith in spite of what we experience. Sin is a powerful force in our body and soul. In spite of experiencing sin in our bodies, we need to exercise faith in the fact that we are dead and therefore delivered from the power of sin.

And as we walk by faith we will experience a victorious life. Just like with Abraham and Sarah, a tremendous thing will happen in our bodies. God’s spirit will slowly crush our “self,” our sinful nature, (because we believe that we are impaled with Christ, the spirit will make that real in our lives) and sin will lose its power over us. God's spirit will make God's word (in this case Romans 6:6) a reality in our lives. Faith in what God has said, against the face of the “reality” of sin in our lives, is what will make sin lose its power over us completely. Our faith makes God’s word a reality in flesh. Through faith and patience we too can inherit the promise.

In us we can experience the fulfilment of the promise of Genesis 3:15, the crushing of our sinful, corrupt self, the serpent nature that we inherited from Adam, by Christ’s spirit (the seed of the woman) within. When we believe that we died when Christ was put to death on the torture stake then God's spirit will make that death a reality in our body.

As we said above we need to reckon that we are dead with Christ, impaled with him. What does that mean? Just as a man impaled on a torture stake has no control over his life, cannot even scratch his bum, we need to completely relinquish control over our lives. We can no longer live. We do not plan or order our life. We leave it in Christ's hand. Then Christ’s spirit takes over, takes complete control of our body and soul. He will begin to rule and order our lives. Once our “self” is dethroned and “put to death,” Christ will sit on the throne of our lives. We need to always keep obeying the Good News, so that our self will remain impaled. We keep submitting to Christ. Our prayer always is the prayer of Christ at Gethsemane. “Let, not my will, but yours take place.” (Luke 22:42) And as God's sovereign will takes control of our lives through Christ we will live a victorious life. As we relinquish control completely, Christ will take complete control. And as Romans 10:11 says “None that rests his faith on him will be disappointed.”