You are a soul, a spirit and a body. The soul is really who you are. It is that discrete entity created by God as a being and equipped with intellect (mind) and the spirit. Your soul is the you God conceived, created and let loose to articulate and function at will, accumulating the experience and sophistication that cumulates into that which ultimately manifests itself as your character and conviction.
The Bible says, “For every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the son — both alike belong to me. The soul who sin is the one who will die.” (Ezekiel 18:4).
Note that in this quotation, God refers to the soul as “the father” and “the son”, because the soul is really who you are. The soul is you and is eternal. It is your soul that lives this life and it is your soul that continues into the next one — the eternal life. The soul is discrete and equipped with distinctive characteristics that are unique and unlike no other. There is no two souls that are created alike; each is unique and peculiar (which is the individual that God created you to be).
Your parents may have conceived you nine months before your birth, but God may have conceived you hundreds of years before you were put into your mother’s womb. (Isaiah chapter 45 concerning Cyrus, King of Persian who God promised to raise to rebuild Jerusalem way before He destroyed the Jewish state and sent its people into exile in Babylon, and way before Cyrus was actually born, became king and led the Persians to victory over Babylon). The soul is a product of God’s mind and is incorporated by God into the biological composition that results at human conception.
And because no two souls are created alike, each and every one of us approaches and responds to things in life differently. The soul is given a body and a mind and an access to God (man’s spirit). The spirit gives life to the soul, the body and the mind. The body carries out the will of the soul. The mind, with input from the spirit, decides for the soul, but it is the mind that ultimately dictates to the body what to do.
Whereas the soul is discrete and peculiar, the spirit on the other hand is one and the same and emanates from one central source — God. The spirit in each and every one of us is the same Spirit that is God (The Holy Spirit). Unlike the soul, it is not personalized but has the capacity and the power to work, freely and at will, in every one, all of the time, and to the capacity desired by God for the spirit to work in any one individual at any particular point in time. The Spirit is God’s and His only and no one else has control over it. It is the spirit inside of man that gives life to man and allows him to power through everything he chooses to engage in in life. The spirit fuels the soul and the body.
The body consists of all the organic parts of man (including the heart, the brain, the blood and all others). The body is organic and perishes once the soul is removed from it. And that is why when Job’s skin was wasting away it did not matter to God because He has the power to make everything new.
The heart is the engine block for the spirit (which is extended from God to man) and dispersed throughout our body through the blood. The Bible tells us that life is in the blood. And we know, through science, that the blood is circulated throughout the body by the heart, thereby putting life into every cell and tissue in the body.
And the spirit in us has discerning power that allows us to understand things that are beyond the capacity of our mind. So the spirit in us sees things apart from our mind and often is conflicted with the mind over the issues in our lives. And why is the spirit this superior over the mind?
It is simple! The spirit belongs to God and since it is continually extended to us from God, it is our lifeline to God’s perfect knowledge; which is only given to us out of His immense love to keep us on straight path “lest we’ll be snared”. In essence, the spirit is a being within us because the spirit is ‘God in us’.
Although we rarely give any thoughts to this, it is the spirit that drives the man, not the mind. The spirit has a much larger access to our world than the mind has. The spirit is broad and far reaching whereas the mind is restricted to our body and draws only from its immediate surroundings and its limited experience. But the spirit draws to us a renewed will and purpose. It gives us fresh expectations and hope and optimism. And when we nurture it, it brings to us fresh thoughts and revelations, and confidence about our place on this earth and in God.
Our Maker designed our mind and our spirit to work in perfect synergy in the coordination of our thoughts and the pursuits of life for the fulfillment of our destiny. And that is why even when we are failing, as long as we keep getting up and trying, we ultimately get to the desired result. The spirit is designed to lead the mind and when this is the dynamics in our personal life, we are winners more than we are losers.
As a matter of fact, we win so much that people around us begin to look at us as ‘super lucky’. We get this way when we tone down the mind and allow our spirit (God in us) to lead the way. God knows best and He always leads us to the right result in every one of our endeavors, because everyone of us has a destiny to fulfill. The Bible says: “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9).
The brain is the powerhouse for the mind which controls our intellect. The brain takes the information gathered by all the different sensing parts of our body and churns it over and produces a plan of action. When it is ready, the spirit comes in and weighs in on the plan and directs one way or another. It pronounces its rule on the matter in a definite and consistent way as it is that part of the man that maintains a constant objective.
The mind on the other hand is excitable and may respond to one influence now, and another, a little while later, in the course of the same thought. But the spirit is always consistent because it is from God and responds to God always. However, the spirit does not carry out any actions, nor does it impose “its” will on the soul. The body carries out all the actions, powered by the mind. And the mind could overrule the spirit and assert its wishes on the body; and the body would perform as the mind commanded, drawing the soul with it (but not the spirit because the spirit cannot be tainted by the mind because the spirit is God in us).
And when this happens, the spirit begins to convict your conscience, producing in you remorse and regrets. But if the mind continuously rejects the recommendations of the spirit, the spirit will still convict, but the mind will cause a shield to develop around it so it could no longer feel the bite of the conviction, thereby preventing the soul from feeling any remorse or regrets. When a person reaches this stage, the person has developed “seared spirit”.
And to be seared is to become callused. It is not the spirit that is callused because the spirit is “God in us” and God can never be callused. It is the mind that is callused because the mind will no longer feel the conviction of the spirit. And it is not the mind that builds the callus, it is God’s design that the callus develops just like we experience on our physical body when a hard object rubs against any part of our body for a prolonged period of time.
It is God’s design that any such friction, whether it is in the physical world or in the supernatural world, would lead to that type of hardening which eventually separates the two entities that are in friction; simply for their own preservation, lest one (or both) would waste away. A direct consequence of this phenomenon is that the recipient would end up being cut off from the source (if they exist in that kind of relationship, as is the case with the mind and the spirit). And that is why the mind goes wild and self-destroys eventually if this hardening is prolonged.
The spirit is the source of life inside the soul and is not harmed by the “madness” of the mind. When the mind goes wild, the spirit is still in the body but the soul does not have the benefit of the it anymore. The spirit lingers in the body to keep the body alive because the spirit is the only reason why the soul and the body live and thrive.
Consider what Christ is saying to the apostles in the following passage. “Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”(John 14:19-20).
Here is another passage in the same chapter of the Gospel of John to consider. “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’.”
We go against God’s commandment when the mind refuses the guide of the spirit and does as it desires. Remember what the Apostle Paul told us in the book of the Romans: “(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)” (Romans 2:14-15).
God gave His written Law to the Israelites through Moses, and not to the rest of the world (the Gentiles). Yet the Gentiles know that they have to follow certain rules in living their lives otherwise there will be consequences. The Gentiles know this because of this spirit that God has put in every person created. And this spirit belongs to God, stays with God, inseparable, and controlled by God and God alone. It is through this spirit that He feeds every person the “requirements of the law”.
When the mind constantly overrules the spirit, the spirit is not withdrawn to God (even though it is not of us but is extended to us from God). It lingers on and continues to work on the soul to convince it to change course and return to God and draw from God’s infinite wisdom. God loves every one He created and would not want anyone to end up in the eternal fire. The Bible says, “The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.” (Psalms 145:9).
And a couple of verses later, the Scriptures added “… The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made.”(Psalms 145:13).
He loves “all He has made” without exception. He loves the righteous and He loves the sinners, but He wants the sinners to repent while they have the chance.
That is why Jesus Christ did not condemn sinners. Rather, He showed them mercy and gave them the opportunity to repent and be saved. But to repent, the soul has to reduce the dominance of the mind and allow the counsel of the spirit to determine the soul’s actions. The Holy Spirit is the fullness of God’s Spirit and is given to us at repentance to strengthen our spirit so we could receive the fullness of Christ in directing our lives. The Holy Spirit intensifies the spirit that is already in us as in a surge. And this “surge” overcomes any barriers that may have cropped up in us, and fills us with power to take on the things of life and prevail.
To withdraw the spirit from the body is to essentially terminate someone’s life. The Bible says, “If it were his intention and he withdraws his spirit and breath, all mankind would perish together and man would return to the dust.” (Job 34:14-15).
In this quotation, it sounds like the Spirit of God is one thing, and the breath of God is another thing that is extended to us from God. They are not two separate things; they are one and the same. It is evident in this next quotation: “But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding.” (Job 32:8).
The writer uses the singular verb “gives” because he is describing the same thing. The spirit of God is the breath of God which He gave to man when He created man. So it is the same Spirit of God that gives us life that also gives us understanding. In essence, when we reject the understanding that comes from the spirit of God, He does not withdraw the Spirit from us because we need the spirit to stay alive; and since God does not want any of us to perish, He maintains that spirit in us to allow us time to repent. What a loving God!
And the Book of Genesis told us that after God made man, He gave him His breath and we have seen that the breath man received from God is one and the same as the spirit that resides in all human beings. And we have seen how that breath (spirit of man) we receive from God is not local to us but is rather an extension of that which is in God, and is controlled by God and God alone.
The Bible says: ” The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ (Acts 17:24-28).
“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:29-31).
God through His Son Jesus Christ was going to provide these resources- and would later impart light and heat onto stars, sun, quasi, etc. (Genesis 1:14-19).
The Light that dawned on the earth the first day—which on the fourth day was dispersed throughout the universe—produced the necessary ionization that produced all the necessary gases. And the earth, its gases and its waters were encapsulated, capped by the ionosphere and contained by its gravity. The earth was primed for life whereas the rest of the universe was not. That explains why the earth is filled with life supporting gases that are not found elsewhere in the universe.
So any attempt by humans to start another world outside of the earth would unfailingly lead to a catastrophic ending for whatever lives humans would established in that world, because humans will not be able to sustain life there; they are not authorized to, rather, they will be doing something like that to spite God.
Life in the form of vegetation (grass, shrubs, fruit trees, non-fruit trees and other green vegetation) was created on the earth on Day 3 following the creation of land out of the water on the same Day 3—Genesis 1:9-13—meaning that the earth’s atmosphere (gases) had been completed to support plant growth.
The Bible says that the Spirit of God was hovering over the water. The Spirit of God encased the earth, its waters and its atmosphere before the Big Bang was set off, thereby protecting the fragile earth assembly from being incinerated. The Bible says that the Spirit of God was over the water. And the Bible does not say that at any point during creation that the Spirit of God lifted off from the water.
Therefore, it makes perfect sense to believe that the Spirit of God maintained His presence over the earth and the water throughout the creation process; and by so doing, protected the earth and everything it encased within its atmosphere. And for that reason, the earth stayed intact during the Big Bang that gave rise to the universe.
That God created plant life on the earth even before He created the Big Bang through which the universe was formed is a sign of unfathomable skill and immeasurable confidence on His part. He protected the plants and the fragile atmosphere of the earth from the explosive force whose outcome is the universe we know today! This is one engineering feat that was designed to showcase the power of God. Nothing like it would ever be imitated or duplicated; except by God at His own choosing.
Jesus Christ, the light of humanity (John 1:4-5), cast enough light and radiation on the earth from Day 1 through Day 3—even though He packed more intensity than that— and produced the right gases that support life on the earth; and sealed off the earth’s atmosphere.
Then on Day 4, at God’s command—“Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth”(Genesis 1:14-15)—His light increased in intensity to the point that was necessary to light up the entire universe and set ablaze the stars, the quasi and the sun, so that God’s purpose would be achieved.
And about the Spirit of God, right after He created the universe in the Big Bang through His Son Jesus Christ, He was at hand to create more life on the earth: aquatic life, terrestrial life and then human beings. The Bible says of man: “The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”(Job 33:4).
The air and all the gases on the earth came from ionization energies supplied by the original source of light from Day 1 to Day 3 (Jesus Christ). The earth’s atmosphere was completed and blocked off—protected by the Spirit of God who was hovering over the water from the very beginning (Genesis 1:2).
The Big Bang further generated more gases and the sun, the stars and the quasi continue to generate more gases in their respective orbital systems as designed by the Creator and set in motion when the Creator ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe: “He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.” (Ephesians 4:10).