What Is the Difference Between the Human Spirit and Soul? A Biblical Guide • In Milky Way
The human spirit is like the heart, and the human soul is like the mind. The heart is most important because when it stops, life leaves instantaneously. The mind is secondarily most important because if the brain dies and yet the heart beats, the liveliness of the person leaves instantaneously, though the body can be kept alive.
To reiterate, the spirit is most important because like the heart, when the spirit leaves there is no life, and life remains even when the brain stops but then there is no aliveness. Without aliveness, there is no purpose of having life. Without the soul, the spirit cannot be transformed from being life to being alive. The spirit is life, and the soul is being alive (as having that life).
When the Bible says we are in God’s image and likeness, it is because we too are eternal spirits with the ability to think and feel through the soul.
“Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.” – Isaiah 42:1 ESV
The knowledge of evil is a possession of humanity that enables sin to come forth. But this knowledge of evil was and is not an inherent part of our being, it is merely a possession that cannot be unclaimed by this body. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness (Romans 8:10).
So, as we were not created with a single drop of evil in us, as we were made in the image and likeness of God, whatever we inherently, naturally do (outside of evil and sin), we do because God does it. As we were before we sinned, in our original form, we are a reflection of God. We think because He thinks. We feel because He feels. We are because He is. We are aware of ourselves because He is aware of Himself. And we will because He has.
We do not have to wonder what God is like, making Him distant from His creation. How we inherently are as we were in the Garden of Eden (before the fall), is how we know God to be essentially. Our only downfall was immaturity and not actually being God, as indeed that is the very sin that made Adam and Eve (mankind) fall, because they endeavoured to not only be a reflection of God but to be God. And of course, no one can be Mighty God other than Jehovah, who manifested Himself to reconcile us back to Himself.
We would have had time to mature as perfect beings but there was one who had already become alive to evil and sin, and that is the devil, who also endeavoured to be God. Because of the evil one’s presence, we had no space to grow into maturity and be more than equipped to resist the devil so he would flee from us in the Garden of Eden.
We surely were God’s perfect babies, emphasis on ‘babies’, because we were spiritual babies. Brand new from the box. God could never have made us to be mindless slaves without free will, because that would surely not be His reflection at all.
What is the Human Spirit According to the Bible?
The human spirit is born of the Spirit of God because the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Life itself. When the breath of life (Spirit of Life) was breathed into the human flesh, the soul became alive because it received life, it received the spirit from the Spirit of God.
The Function of the Human Spirit: Communion and Being Christlike
“But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding.” — Job 32:8
Reaching our human spirit is enabled by the presence of the Spirit of God, otherwise, we are like instinctive animals, mere flesh and blood controlled by emotions and thoughts. Without the Holy Spirit, in Whom we do not reach our own spirits, we do not live by the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and we are not led by the 7 Spirits of God which encapsulate the Holy Spirit as in Isaiah 11:2.
“And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” – Isaiah 11:2 ESV
It is only through our spirits by the Spirit of God that we can have wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, and all we need to have life abundantly through being the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. We cannot live as the human soul, because a soul is what we have. We must live as human spirits because spirit is what we are and who we are as God’s children.
Reaching God is having reached our human spirits, because our human spirits are of God’s Spirit. Those who die without Christ and die without eternal life, are those who have died without reaching the depths of their beings, their spirits, which are eternal and are eternally life because they belong to God and will return to Him. Our human spirits must have first driven our souls to eternal life which is in the Spirit of God, before they themselves are returned to their Maker, otherwise, our souls will remain in eternal death because they did not reach and receive eternal life.
“Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.” – 1 Corinthians 12:3 ESV
We become one spirit with the Lord because we are spirit and He is Spirit.
“But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.” – 1 Corinthians 6:17 ESV
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The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts.” — Proverbs 20:27
The Lord’s Spirit lives in us through our spirit. Christ in me, me in Christ is all because I am a spirit and so is God who is the Christ manifested. If we do not live as our human spirit but remain on the surface of our beings as souls and bodies, we miss an intimate relationship with God. Our spirit is our way of being, and our soul is our way of having life.
Meaning, our way of being; how we talk, walk, and live in this life is directed by our spirit as it’s led by the Holy Spirit. And our way of having this life is through the soul, meaning as we know what we ought to say, go, and how to live, through our souls (mind & will) those words come out of our mouths, and those actions are brought forth, and that way of being is brought to life to the physical from the spiritual.
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“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:23
It is written that the spirit will return to the God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). In this fallen body that has made mankind unspiritual (not supernatural) but mere natural, flesh and blood, it is only through the presence of the Spirit of God that we can become spiritual and reach our own spirits to be one with God’s Spirit.
If we do not position ourselves to have renewed minds for our souls through the spirit because we have not received the Spirit of Christ, then we might make our spirits indirectly to blame because they are the only way to the Spirit within us.
The spirit is still inherently good and pure and will return to the Lord, but if we do not reconnect our spirits to the Spirit of God through receiving salvation and purification, our spirits remain lost without their Source, unable to renew our souls through the living (spiritual) Word, and indirectly being made to fail as our door to intimacy with God.
Our spirits should find God now in this life so God’s Spirit can work within us, but they should not be found by God when He takes back what belongs to Him, for, then we will have lost our way to eternal life because only those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God (Romans 8:14).
For God to led us, as He is in our midst, it is through our human spirit, and this work manifests through the soul. It is this spirit that is His temple. Indeed, because of Christ’s reconciling blood, in our spirits He is home because our spirits are made by His own Spirit.
What is the Human Soul?
The soul is made by emotions and thoughts which bring forth the will. The human soul is naturally where the knowledge of evil and the fall of mankind is manifested. Because the brain brings forth the mind, and the mind is the birthplace of emotions and thoughts, from when we are young, the soul is defiled by the ever-collecting mind.
The brain collects all it sees and hears from the world and dumps it into the conscious and subconscious mind. This is why it is essential for our minds to be renewed by the Word of God because the unrenewed mind defiles the soul, which is the thoughts and emotions and what they bring us to do.
Our souls are either controlled by the world and what is external from the unrenewed mind, or they are self-controlled by the human spirit through the fruit of the Spirit of self-control and thus governed by what is internal and spiritual. The difference between what governs the soul is what makes one a believer or non-believer.
The non-believer cannot reach their spirit because it belongs to God and only He enables us to reach it and reach Him, thus as they begin and end as souls, they are living only as intellectuals, controlled by thoughts and emotions, unable to perceive and discern spiritual things.
“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” – 1 Corinthians 2:14 ESV
What are “the things of the Spirit of God” but the very Word of God authored by His Spirit and written through the human spirit and soul as led by Him?
The Function of the Soul: Awareness and Will
“The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” – 1 Corinthians 2:15-16 ESV
The Lord calls us to renew our minds and to put on the mind of Christ, so we cannot leave our souls as rotten and defiled by the world and its god, who is the devil (2 Corinthians 4:4). As Christ has reconciled our spirits back to the Spirit of God, we must reconcile our souls back to their spirits, so our souls can live through the Spirit of Christ, in whom our spirits have become one with.
Our souls are where we bring forth the reality of being Christlike as empowered by the Holy Spirit. This can only happen through knowing God’s Word, so we know how we ought to live. Growing in the knowledge of God and what He says draws us closer to Him. Growing closer to God is growing spiritually because God is Spirit. In this continual spiritual growth, we reach spiritual maturity, and the more spiritually mature we are the better and quicker we become at rejecting evil and sin.
When we are no longer enslaved to evil and sin in our soul, it is because we are led by the Holy Spirit, not led by the fallen flesh.
It is in this state of intimacy and communion with the Spirit that we must remember the grace of how God loved us while we were still sinners and filthy, how much more when He has cleansed us, pruned us, and when we are walking with Him, thus, though we might fall, we remember this grace.
This grace therefore inherently does not invite sin, it keeps it repelled away from us though we might fall. We remember grace to keep on going in righteousness.
Why Understanding the Difference Between Spirit and Soul Matters for Spiritual Growth
Just like eating physical (touchable) food is what brings forth physical growth, only spiritual food can cause us to grow spiritually. We may touch the Bible physically, but we can only consume and engage with it spiritually because it is spiritually discerned and written by the Spirit of God.
The difference between spirit and soul is essential for spiritual growth and life because without understanding the what, where, and how, we are at the mercy of what we don’t know. We grow slower and lack in spiritual maturity for longer.
We become inclined to be only hearers of the Word because we don’t understand how it is we can be doers of the Word. Indeed, at times, doing the Word seems impossible, and at times how we attempt to do the Word indeed makes it impossible. We need to know the where, the how, the what, and the why.
May your mind be renewed, your faith be strengthened, and your peace be anchored in Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
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