Whether you’re aware of it or not, there’s a battle raging inside you and the prize is your very soul. If your desire is to live in a way that pleases God, it’s helpful to understand how your own spirit and body play a part in this conflict.
Understanding the Spirit, Soul, Body connection
In Christian circles, we often hear things like “God spoke to my spirit” or “I felt it deep in my soul” but what do these things really mean? And what’s the difference between our spirit and our soul?
In the center of our being is our soul. We were born with it and it remains with us forever, even after we leave our earthly body. Within our soul is our mind (which is our thought life), our will (which influences the decisions we make), and our feelings and emotions.
The soul is influenced by both our spirit and our body. And that’s a problem because the soul and the body are in direct conflict with each other. They have opposite agendas for your life. You can think of them as enemies and your soul as their battleground, which is the ultimate prize they're fighting for.
The body is often referred to in the bible as the flesh or as our sinful nature and it is influenced by the world around us as well as by Satan himself. The problem comes when our priority in life is to please ourselves instead of living to please and serve God. Living to selfishly please ourselves is not only displeasing to God but, if we don’t change our ways, it can have eternal consequences.
For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.Romans 8:13Fortunately, there’s a way out of this mess. And the way out is to live by the spirit, which means that you’re cooperating with the Holy Spirit instead of living your life to satisfy your own desires.
Before we were saved, our spirit was essentially dead which means that we had no capacity to understand the things of God. We couldn’t understand because we didn’t have the Holy Spirit to teach us (John 14:26). But, after we received the Holy Spirit by putting our faith in Jesus, we became spiritually alive. God’s Spirit is now living in us and desires to guide us in our pursuit to be more like Christ.
If we cooperate with the Holy Spirit, he speaks to our spirit which in turn influences our soul to make the right decisions. The key here is that we have to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and not just listen to Him.
The problem is that the sin nature we were all born with doesn’t go away after we’re born again. It’s still there trying to influence our thoughts, emotions, decisions, and actions.
But, because we have a free will, we can choose to ignore the Holy Spirit at times and instead give into temptation. Or we can choose to live in obedience to God’s Word, with the help of the Holy Spirit. God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able to resist (1 Corinthians 10:13), but ultimately the decision to live by the Spirit or by the flesh is totally up to us.
In my next message, I discuss how you can effectively resist temptation.
God bless,
Daniel
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