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Spirit, Soul, Body
By
James R. Graham
1505 South Westmoreland Avenue
Los Angeles 6, California
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SPIRIT, SOUL, BODY
Genesis 1:26, 27; Job. 32:8; Luke 1:47; 10:21; Romans 1:9;
1 Corinthians 2:11; 14:14, 15; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Hebrews 4:12;
Mark 2:8
The word “spirit” as used in the scriptures has
more than one meaning. We shall mention four which we believe will
adequately cover the ground. First, the word used with a capital
letter refers to the Spirit of the Living God. Second, the word used
with a small s refers to the spirit of man which is as definite a
part of the tripartite nature of man as the Spirit of God is one
Person of the trinity of the Godhead. Third, the word “spirit” is
used to denote an agent of the Evil One, a member of the host of
wickedness that inhabits “the heavenly places.” Fourth, it is used
on rare occasions in scripture as it is almost exclusively used in
modern parlance, to denote a mental attitude, energy or temperament.
That its meaning in popular language of the present day is so vague
and broad and indeterminative is indicative of the fact that the
basic meanings of the word from which it is derived have not been
explained.
The English word “spirit” comes from the Latin spiritus,
which is the counterpart of the Greek pneuma, which in turn
is the counterpart of the Old Testament ruach. We are to be
primarily concerned in this study with the word “spirit” as related
to the Greek word pneuma, and in distinction to the Greek
word meaning “soul,” psuche.
We feel that there has been a great lack in the teaching concerning
the tripartite nature of man, in the United States, and the
respective functions of the three parts, spirit, soul, and body, as
taught in Scripture or deduced therefrom. We deplore the fact that
dicotomy or the dual nature of man is widely taught and the distinct
function of the spirit minimized or ignored, with the result that
there is the greatest confusion in the minds of God’s people with
regard to those things that are really spiritual and those things
that merely claim to be.
“For the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and
spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the
thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).
If the joints and marrow are one then are the soul and spirit one,
but since the joints and marrow are not one, even though one be
imbedded in the other, neither are the soul and spirit one. As it
takes a delicate blade to separate the marrow from the bones or
joints so it takes the sharp blade of the Sword of the Spirit to
separate between that which is soul and that which is spirit. By
this instrument alone can the thoughts and intents of the heart be
discerned and understood.
Man’s image relationship to God has never been fully understood and
probably never will be while we continue to “see through a glass
darkly,” but we believe it is safe to say that the fact that he was
created a trinity of spirit, soul and body as God is Himself a
trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, is an essential part of the
image relationship. There are other aspects of the image which we
shall not tarry to discuss here.
The main purposes in the creation of man, God’s image creature, as
set forth in Scripture are (1) for His glory and the reflection of
His attributes (Isaiah 43:7), and (2) for communion and fellowship
with Himself (Exodus 25:22).
In order for either one of these results to be obtained, it was
necessary for God to impart to His image creature, man, His Holy
Spirit to dwell in him. We believe that it is in the spirit of man
that the Spirit of God dwells. The spirit of man is that part of his
nature through which he holds fellowship with God and through which
he knows and worships God. The Lord Jesus said to the woman of
Samaria, “They that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in
truth” and this fact is predicated upon the statement that “God is
(Himself) a Spirit.” The difference between the capital P in
pneuma and the small p comes out in the Greek text; the capital
letter of course refers to the Spirit of God and the small letter to
the spirit of man.
Plainly then the spirit of man is that part of his nature through
which God is worshipped. Paul makes the statement “...God is my
witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son”
(Romans 1 :9). True service toward God was not through his soul but
through his spirit. A careful check of the scriptures listed at the
head of this chapter or of a concordance under the word “spirit”
will bear out the fact that the functions of the spirit are Godward
and include God-consciousness, spiritual intuition, faith and
conscience.
It is the spirit of man in which regeneration takes place. “That
which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit.” It is certainly not the body that is transformed
when regeneration takes place. The same old body moves over into the
new government of the Spirit. Its habits and practices will
inevitably be altered but it is still the same body. Nor yet is the
soul regenerated, though its functions are differently motivated and
directed.
This brings us to the question, “What, then, are the functions of
the soul?” It is found that the psuche or soul is the seat of
the mind, the emotions, and the will. Psychology is the study of the
reactions of the mind to various stimuli and under differing
conditions, the contributing causes of emotional excitement and the
explanations of behavior and volition.
The sciences of philosophy and psychology as taught in human
institutions of learning are theoretical and descriptive sciences
rather than mathematical. Physics, chemistry biology, mathematics
and others are known as the mathematical sciences, and their
findings are eminently trustworthy because they are demonstrable.
Worldly students of psychology and those who have delved into
philosophy have recorded their observations and conclusions. Some of
them are unquestionably correct, but are little more than
selfevident truisms and patent platitudes. One hears of “schools” of
philosophy and psychology but never of “schools of thought” with
respect to mathematics, chemistry or physics. The reason is obvious.
The latter deal with things material—measurable, weighable,
countable, testable, provable—the results are unquestionable and
undeniable. The former deal with things metaphysical, beyond the
power of any laboratory to test or prove, impinging upon the field
where only revelation from an omniscient God can do us any good.
Short of that it simply breaks off into the nebulae of human opinion
and speculation where one man’s guess is as good as another’s. Paul
gives us a good word on this, the weight and connotation of which is
too little recognized. Here it is: “...Eye hath not seen nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which
God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them
unto us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the
deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man save
the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God
knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have not received the
spirit of the world but the spirit which is from God; that we might
know the things which are freely given to us of God" (1 Corinthians
2:9-12).
This is a deeply significant scripture. It is telling us that no
power of human perception has gotten the remotest glimpse of the
things that God has prepared for them that love Him. It is going to
be one of the rewards of simple, unquestioning, unsuspecting faith
that the mysteries which are now hid are going to be one day
revealed. The contemplative and investigative mind which is yet
tranquil and devoted under its present limitations will one day
revel in the intellectual satisfactions drawn from the storehouse of
the King’s wisdom, and in its own vastly augmented capacity to
apprehend it. The Agent of this divine illumination will be the same
One who “garnished the heavens” (Job 26:13), The Holy Spirit.
Then the apostle goes on to make a proposition the weight of which
is enhanced by its being in the form of a question: “What man
knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him?”
The plain implication is that it is not possible for any man really
to know the things of man aside from the operation of “the spirit of
man” which is in him. Now we know that while the spirit or pneuma
is a part of the nature of every man that is born into the world, it
is yet dormant and requires the spark of regeneration before it
springs into vitality and fulfills its intended function of making
contact with the Spirit of God. Since then it is possible for man to
know the things concerning himself only through the normal operation
of his spirit, and his spirit functions normally only when
regeneration has taken place, it follows that the unregenerate man
does not and cannot understand man, or arrive at correct conclusions
concerning his performance and behavior.
The very first realization that comes to the person who experiences
regeneration of spirit, is that he is lost and undone, twisted,
perverted, condemned in his natural condition and that the race at
large is similarly afflicted. The regenerate Christian is therefore
very little mystified at the contradictory antics of humanity,
because he knows that into a mechanism that was originally well
constructed there has entered a foreign substance that has caused
derangement. The worldly psychologist refuses to believe in the
depravity of man and denies that there is any basic derangement of
his makeup. He therefore tries to plot a graph for normality where
there is nothing but abnormality. The result is nothing but a
hodge-podge of confusion.
It is as though a hunchbacked son of hunchbacked parents living on a
desert isle and never having seen another person were to write a
textbook on human anatomy based upon the supposition that the
hunched back was the normal human form. An erect man coming along
one day would have great difficulty in persuading him that the
hunched back was an abnormal and not the normal form of the human
anatomy.
An admission of the philosopher Confucius is interesting in this
connection. He was asked by one of his disciples, Tz Lu, “How should
we propitiate the evil spirits and the gods?” The Sage replied, “I
do not even know the proper treatment of man, less still how to
propitiate the evil spirits and the gods.” We know that it is true
not only from revelation but from our own experience and observation
that “no man knoweth the things of man save the spirit of man which
is in him”; how much more impossible is it for the natural man to
know the things of God!
If we are to “know the things which are freely given to us of God,”
we cannot do so through “the spirit of the world” for that is the
spirit of Satan, but through the spirit that is from God. The spirit
of man came from God in the first place and is only restored to its
original function through the working of the Spirit of God in the
regenerative act.
Then the apostle goes on (verse 13-15): “Which things also we speak,
not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy
Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the
natural (soulish) man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are foolishness to him and he cannot know them because they
are spiritually inquired into. But the spiritual man examines all
things...”
Let us summarize what the passage teaches directly or by inference:
(1) The soulish man (the man dominated by his mind, his emotions,
his will) cannot know the things of God; (2) he cannot even
understand himself or know the real facts concerning man; (3) it is
only through the awakened and enlightened spirit of man that God or
man can be known; (4) the awakening and enlightening are from the
active operation of the Spirit of God in the spirit of man and (5)
the apostle’s teaching (and that of the other inspired writers) is
not derived from any sources of human wisdom that reside in the soul
of man, but from the Spirit of God.
In the trinity of man we conclude that the spirit is the sphere of
God-consciousness, the soul the sphere of self-consciousness and the
body through the senses the sphere of world-consciousness. The
spirit functions toward God, the soul with its complexities of mind,
emotions, will and intuition, constitutes the ego, while the body is
the residence of soul and spirit, and through its communication
facilities provides a medium of contact between the ego of the soul
with the world outside.
There has been a popular idea that it is in the possession of a soul
that man differs from the lower animal creation. Such is not
actually the case. The lower animals have a self-conscious ego and
are possessed of mind, emotions and will of their own, all of which
are the functions of the soul. We are driven to the conclusion that
they possess a soul, even though it is a very much cruder mechanism
than the soul of man. The highest and most intelligent animal,
however, never shows the slightest trace of God-consciousness, while
the conviction that there is a Superior Being to propitiate, is
persistent and universal among all races of men. It is the spirit
of man which places him in distinction to the animal creation.
Paul prayed for the Ephesian Christians “that He would grant you
according to the riches of His Glory, to be strengthened with might
by His Spirit in the inner man.” In Romans 7:22, the same
writer says, “For I delight in the law of God after the inward
man;” and again, “...though our outward man is decaying, yet the
inward man is renewed day by day.” The older theologians used
to assume that “the outward man” was the body and “the inward man”
was the soul. This assumption conflicts with the New Testament
distinction between “the natural man” or “the soulical man” (the
psuchikos man) and the spiritual man (the pneumatikos
man).
The spirit of man is the inner sanctum in which the Spirit of God
resides and from which He exercises control over “the outward man,”
the soul and body.
“The Spirit of God beareth witness
with our spirit.”
We are not denying that the Spirit of God can
and does move upon the soul of man directly. We are sure that He
does draw man through his mental processes, his emotions, his
volition, all of which are functions of the soul, to the acceptance
of Christ as Lord and Savior, following which act of the human will,
regeneration immediately takes place. We are merely asserting that
the main theatre of the Spirit’s activity in man and the part of
man’s nature with which He has peculiar affinity, is the spirit
of man.
May we use as an illustration the head executive of a large
corporation as he enters his place of business. He first passes
through the outer office where there are the stenographers busily
pecking away on their typewriters. There is nothing to prevent the
president from stopping and giving a personal instruction to one or
more of the stenographers. He passes on in through a smaller office
where the minor executives have their desks. He may stop and give
some orders there before passing into the inner sanctum of his
private office, where he spends the bulk, of his time, and from
which issues orders through his personal secretary.
At this point it would be well to quote from the book entitled
What Is Man? by Mr. T. Austin-Sparks, pp. 19, 20:
“In the New Testament there are very many occurrences of both ‘soul’
and ‘spirit,’ and inasmuch as our present and first purpose is to
distinguish between these, or to note that they are distinguished by
the Word of God, we must define a general rule by which they are
divided.
“This general division can be marked in this way: the soul (often
translated ‘life’) relates to man in his own conscious life here in
this world; his good or evil; his power to do, to achieve, to enjoy,
to profit, to know and acquire what is of this world; to live as a
responsible, self-conscious being, answering to God for himself and
his life, and so taking account of his life as to include the
reality of a divinely intended higher destiny and intention than
just to live to himself and for the brief span of this life. The
soul can be affected, by and responsive to something higher,
but its immediate relationship is not with God. Such
relationship is indirect and secondary.
“The spirit is that by which—given the necessary ‘renewing’—man is
directly related to things divine. He is thereby constituted
to be capable of relationship with spiritual beings and spiritual
things. This is a broad and general rule, and if some passages seem
to contradict it, the difficulty will usually disappear if we
remember the promise that, on the one hand God holds man responsible
as an intelligent, self-conscious being who can at least choose and
seek; and on the other hand, when the spirit has been renewed and
brought into living touch with God, the soul is affected thereby,
and both receives from God and gives to God by way of the
spirit....”
It develops then that the spirit of man is the
sphere of activity of the Spirit of God, the seat of the operation
of the divine government. The other government is “the course of
this world” which is “according to the Prince of the Power of the
air, the spirit which now worketh in the children of disobedience:
among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the
lusts of our flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the
mind...” (Ephesians 2:2, 3). We learn some deeply significant facts
from these verses: (l) that the course and government of this world
is under the direction of Satan, the Prince of the Power of the air;
(2) that this “spirit” controls “the children of disobedience.” We
deduce from this that the whole course and government is one of
disobedience and defiance of the divine will and government. (3)
that all were once subject to this government; (4) that this
contrary, disobedient, Satan-controlled government is rooted in “the
lusts of the flesh” and has as its motivating principle the
fulfilling of the desires of the flesh and the mind and (5) that
“the children of disobedience” are “the children of wrath,” and we
deduce that if there is not a change in the government under which
they live, they will inevitably be the victims of the divine
punishment.
The first Adam in sinlessness lived under the Spirit government. He
was in a state of full faith and obedience toward God. The purposes
for which he was created were being fulfilled. He glorified his
Creator in his every thought and act, and the Creator held communion
with him. There was no tendency to sin in him. He had a soul and he
had a body, as well as a spirit, and yet there was no inclination in
him to gratify any desire of body or soul—flesh or mind—at the
expense of the will of God.
We get two lights on sin from the book of Romans. “All have sinned
and come short of the glory of God”—“Whatsoever is not of
faith is sin.” (Romans 3:23; 14:23). The full glory of God can only
be achieved by total conformity to His will and government. To
depart in the slightest particular from the provisions of this
government is to short change the Almighty on the glory that is due
to His name. Faith, likewise, is the expression as well as being
both cause and effect of man’s relation to God. It is a function of
the spirit and is in the vertical plane of things. “Whatsoever is
not faith is sin” is equivalent to saying “Whatever does not come of
man’s relationship to his Creator, whatever is not Godward, is sin!”
The temptation to which the first Adam was subjected in Eden was not
only an effort to get him to disobey God, but involved a change of
government of the most radical sort.
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasant
to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise....”
The appeal is obviously one of gratification of the desires of the
flesh and mind—a shift in the whole basis of conduct. When Adam and
Eve sinned they endorsed and accepted this working principle, and in
effect repudiated the divine government. The government of the
Spirit and by the Spirit was overthrown and that of the soul, the
fulfilling of the desires of the flesh and the mind was installed.
It is the government under which every son of Adam has been born and
in which “we all had our conversation in time past.” The only
exception is the Last Adam, who in His capacity as the God-man
provided all that man needs from God and supplied toward God, all
that God requires of man. By virtue of His identification with the
race He assumed in His infinite person all the demerits of nature
and atoned for them in the blood of His cross.
He alone was subject in thought, word and deed to the will and word
of God. When the adversary thrice attempted to divert Him from His
course of full obedience and bring Him, to action independent of the
will of God and dictated by the desires of the flesh and the mind,
He steadfastly repelled him by the “it is written” formula. In His
life Christ unerringly vindicated the divine government. He alone at
the end of His earthly walk could say, “I have glorified Thee upon
the earth.” He alone could say of His unbroken communion with the
Father, “I know that Thou hearest Me always.”
In His death He absorbed and gathered up the accumulated iniquity,
rebellion, sinfulness of nature under an alien government and atoned
for it by His shed blood. In His resurrection He became the Author
of an endless life and the Head of a new dynasty of government. In
the shedding forth of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost He provided the
means whereby believers might become part of His person and
the enablement whereby the divine government might be actualized in
them.
The Last Adam retrieved all that the first Adam lost. Everything
that was wrought by the Last Adam was logically on a grander scale
than anything that was or could be done by the first Adam. By reason
of the very infinity of His person all that He did must vastly
transcend and overflow all that the first Adam undid. His
righteousness greatly transcended Adam’s sin. It can be truly sung
of the redeemed multitudes who have been “translated from the
kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love”—
"In Him the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than the father lost."
In the first Adam in sinlessness there was an
undiluted bias toward good. The Spirit-guided walk was the principle
of his life. In Adam fallen and in his fallen race the
Satan-dominated flesh-government operates in unchallenged supremacy.
The inner man of the spirit is not dead in the human use of the
term, which means destitute of all conscious existence, immobile,
impotent, senseless as a stone. The human idea of death is derived
from the character of a corpse after spirit and soul have departed.
The body has never been the real ego or the real personality,
the real personality has simply resided in the body and utilized its
facilities for communication with the world without. When the
physical and sensory system ceases to operate the real personality
of the spirit and soul are withdrawn and committed either to glory
or perdition. There is no cessation of the conscious existence of
the ego. When Christ spoke of what had happened to the body
of Lazarus He first said, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth.” This is the
divine terminology. But they failed to understand it so for the sake
of clarity to their minds “...Jesus said unto them plainly,
Lazarus is dead.”
In the divine sense of the word, “death,” it means separation.
It means a reversal of that condition in which man was originally
created and for which he was created—fellowship and
communion with his Maker. It means a state of being cut asunder or
segregated from the life of God. The expression which occurs in
Ephesians 2:1, “dead in trespasses and sins,” is explained by what
follows. It is shown to be a state of subjection to the Prince of
the Power of the air and his government of disobedience, the
soul-government which seeks merely to fulfill the desires of the
flesh and the mind. “The inner man of the spirit” even in fallen and
unregenerate man is in no sense nonexistent or even entirely
quiescent. He is securely locked in his inner apartment. He is the
personal secretary of the head of the corporation who understands
and would like to communicate the plans and principles to the
subordinate executives, but the latter with the office force in the
outer office have seized the reins of authority and refused to
permit the head of the corporation to come in and keep His secretary
a prisoner in the inner office. The secretary on occasion protests
against the way the executives are doing things by beating violently
on the door and shouting through a little window to them that their
course will inevitably lead to disaster.
Usually they pay him no heed but occasionally they are disturbed and
try to pacify him by passing him some food through the window.
The parable, I think will be easily understood. Unregenerate man is
governed by the executives, mind, emotion, will, with the connivance
of the office force of the senses and urges of the body. Conscience
and spiritual intuition in the inner office protest against unmoral
conduct and warn of impending disaster unless the Founder and former
Head of the corporation is invited back in to resume His place of
authority in the inner office. The executives and the office force
are disinclined to surrender their freedom of action so they attempt
to pacify the spirit-secretary with “good works” and “religion,”
still without prevailing upon him to abate his protests and
warnings. There was never a man who was without qualms of conscience
or who does not have occasional serious forebodings concerning
eternity.
In exceptional cases the executives realize that they have made a
mess of things and are constrained to heed the clamor of the
secretary from the inner apartment to invite the Former Executive
Head in to lay before them His plans for retiring the indebtedness
and reorganizing the corporation. The terms of the reorganization
are so drastic that they may refuse to accept them. But if they do
decide to accept His plans and Himself as Head, the door to the
inner office is opened and He passes in and resumes His
administration through the medium of His personal secretary, and the
executives and office force begin to take orders. From long habits
of bad administration and unrestrained freedom of action there may
be occasional lapses into insubordination, but the seat of authority
never leaves the inner office. This is, of course, when regeneration
has taken place.
* * *
* *
We are persuaded that failure to differentiate
between the divine view of what constitutes death and the popular
human idea has been productive of a great deal of error.
The Calvinistic theology is excellent in its theocentric emphasis,
but that whole school has been lamentably weak on the distinction
between the functions of soul and spirit, and indeed for the most
part deny that such distinction exists. They rightly teach the great
facts of the sovereignty of God and the depravity of fallen nature,
but in their zeal to establish the former they deprive fallen human
nature of any free agency whatever. At least this is the effect of
it. Salvation becomes an arbitrary act of God entirely independent
of any will on the part of the individual to accept or reject it. To
be sure the person who is saved must have faith, but this also is
arbitrarily imparted by the Deity as He desires. It is a bald
statement of it, but according to this teaching eternal life is
thrust upon some and withheld from others on the sole ground of the
whim of the Almighty. It makes God a capricious tyrant and man a
complete automaton. It resolves itself into the sheerest fatalism.
We rebel at such a caricature of the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
“Does not the scripture teach that unregenerate man is dead
in trespasses and in sins?” The answer is obviously in the
affirmative. “Well how can one who is dead exercise any will power
to receive or reject the gospel?” The answer is almost equally
obvious from our foregoing considerations, that man is dead in the
divine reckoning, since his spirit is severed from its ordained
fusion into the Spirit of God and from that wonderful intercourse
between the Creator and the creature which God originally intended,
and his whole nature is engulfed in the souland-flesh system,
defiant of God and dictated by Satan, the outworking of which is a
debauch of trespasses and sins. He is not “dead” in the popular use
of the word, in body, soul or spirit, for none have ceased to
function.
We are quite aware that “It is God who worketh in...to will and to
do of His good pleasure” and that “none can call Him Lord save by
the Holy Spirit.” Except the soul of man is moved upon by the Spirit
in the Word it can never will to do other than carry on in the
government to which it is accustomed. The Spirit-in-the-Word
comes in through body-door ear or eye, and then moves
in to the desk of the Third Vice-President emotion and speaks
to the Secretary sobriety who in turn refers him to the
Second Vice-President mind, who finally introduces Him to
First Vice-President will who is required to make the
momentous decision as to whether he is going to agree to this august
Spirit-in-the-Word visitor moving immediately into the inner office
and taking control of everything. If he agrees, the whole
corporation becomes immediately transformed, but if he refuses and
the honored visitor takes His departure the corporation shortly ends
in the bankrupt court of perdition. The allegory is almost too plain
to need explanation, but we will say just this word. The Word of God
comes in by hearing or reading and induces a state of sobriety,
which is a distinct aid to attention and comprehension of the mind.
Having been comprehended in the mind the decision must be
made by the will. If it is favorable, The Spirit-in-the-Word is
apprehended and becomes the governing force of the whole
personality. A sovereign does not have to be either a tyrant or a
dictator, who regiments everything within his domain. It is
consistent with the love, grace, truth and justice of our sovereign
God that He permits, yea, demands the exercise of the human
will with respect to Himself. “If any man willeth to do His will he
shall know....” This is the ginosko of apprehension, not the
oida of comprehension! We can comprehend Him in the mind of
the soul, but we can apprehend Him in the spirit only.
The theologian who teaches that because man in his natural condition
is “dead in trespasses and sins” he can have no power of free will
and that he has no susceptibility toward God whatever should
logically and consistently teach that the renewed man is sinlessly
perfect and devoid of all susceptibility to sin, because the apostle
Paul uses the same word in Romans 6:11 when he says that believers
are to reckon themselves “dead to sin,” as he uses for the
expression “dead in sin.”
The great strength of the Calvinistic theology lies in its
theocentric emphasis. But we have tried to show that it is possible
for even such a mighty doctrine as that of the sovereignty of God to
be carried to an unwarranted extreme and to become essentially
fatalistic. The Arminian teaching, on the other hand, while properly
contending for human free agency, is hopelessly weak in that it is
homocentric. It grants that God is the Author, but, in effect, makes
the man the finisher. We contend that the correct view is that God
is the Author and the Finisher, but He has limited His finishing
work to those who have accepted His initial proposition. “...Whom He
did foreknow (that they would receive His Son) He also did
predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son.” Someone has
thus beautifully illustrated it: “Beside the crowded ways of life
stands a gate ajar. It is the gate of salvation. Over it are
inscribed the words, ‘I am the door of the sheep, by me if any man
enter in he shall be saved’ and ‘Whosoever will may come.’ A
passerby stands and reads and considers. He resolves to enter in.
When he gets through the door he turns and sees written over the
door on the inside, but invisible from the outside, ‘Chosen...in Him
before the foundation of the world.’”
THE
DISTINCTION BETWEEN
SOUL AND SPIRIT
Before closing this study the question must
certainly arise: “How are we to distinguish between that which is
truly spiritual and that which is merely soulical?”
There must be a criterion for judgment, and it is not far to seek.
We must remind ourselves first of all that that which is spiritual
is that which is wrought and taught by the Spirit of God in the
spirit of man. When we turn to the sixteenth chapter of John’s
Gospel where Christ sets forth Himself the work of the Holy Spirit
we find that the activities of the Third Person of the Godhead are
all directed toward the Second Person of the Godhead. What God the
Holy Spirit speaks does not originate with Himself nor does it
primarily concern Himself. When He convicts the world of sin it will
be the sin of rejecting the Person and the work of Christ. When He
teaches of righteousness it will be predicated upon the fact that
Christ has gone unto the Father and presented the credentials of His
redemptive work and established before the Father the righteousness
of all who believe in Him. When He convicts of judgment He proves it
by the fact that the “Prince of this world” has been judged by
Christ on the cross. There He destroyed him who had the power of
death and all his works and decreed the death of all who remain
subject to his government.
In leading men into all truth, the Holy Spirit speaks of Him Who is
the Truth and takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto all
who will heed. Every work of the Holy Spirit is to exalt Christ. He
is the author of scripture and we find that scripture never exalts
man. One Bible writer never goes into raptures over another. The
thesis of scripture is “Cease from man whose breath is in his
nostrils, for what is he to be accounted of?” “All flesh is grass
and all the glory thereof is as the flower of grass,” but “it hath
pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell...(and
that) in all things He might have the preeminence.” Christ’s is the
name which is above every name; He is the One who is above all
principalities and powers, the Altogether Lovely One, the Chiefest
among ten thousand, the Rose of Sharon, the Lily of the valley. The
touchstone of that which is spirit in any thought, word,
deed, activity, performance, viewpoint, estimate, is: “Is Christ and
His glory preeminent in this?” As the soul of man in his
unregenerate condition is under the control of Satan, even when he
is regenerated the adversary still has access to the soul and is
able to fashion from mind, emotions and will a counterfeit of that
which is spiritual, which is well enough simulated to deceive the
very elect.
We have found that the sphere of activity of the Holy Spirit within
man is the spirit of man. We have also found that the sphere of
activity of Satan is the soul-body. We have found that in the
unregenerate man, the latter completely dominates him though the
spirit is not extinct. We have found that in the renewed man the
seat of government has changed. The Spirit of God rules the whole
personality from “the inner man of the spirit (or heart).” Yet we
find that “the motions of sin,” the urges of the soul-body system
are anything but extinct, and that in the experience of us all “the
flesh (the phrase used to include the whole of the soul-body
principle of government) lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit
against the flesh” (Galatians 5:17).
Satan knows full well that in the renewed man he can never finally
overthrow the Spirit-government and restore his flesh-government
into the saddle of control. He knows, moreover, that the work and
testimony of God that He desires to accomplish through His children
are to be by spiritual means. Satan only fears that which is really
spiritual. It is only that which has the Spirit-touch of life
that can do the slightest damage to his kingdom and government or
present any real threat to his strongholds. Religious activity is
soulish from center to circumference in both method and appeal, and
because it is a counterfeit or substitute for that which is truly
spiritual, the adversary takes more delight in it than he does in
that which is blatantly and apparently sinful and unmoral. He likes
a church where there is a false worship—modernism or cold
ritualism—much better than he does a beer garden or a brothel house.
The latter have no counterfeit value whatever, but show sin in its
naked ugliness. But the church where there is an air of sanctimony,
where there is a “dim, religious light” where the interior is
beautifully appointed with expensive stained glass windows, carpets
and pews, the choicest singers and the most famous organ in the
city, the most scholarly minister and the most successful business
men in town as officers, is the church in which the unregenerate
heart revels.
It has been said that man is incurably religious. We believe this is
true in the light of the allegory of the great business corporation
wherein the spirit of man imprisoned in the inner office beats on
the door enough to make the three vice-presidents, Will, Mind, and
Emotion, who sit in the soul-office a little uncomfortable, so they
bestir themselves to pacify him with religious observances that are
pleasing to themselves and to the junior executives, the senses, in
the outer office.
The very fact of having “come to church” gives First Vice-President
Will a feeling of deepest self-righteousness and piety. The
philosophical discourse of the “scholarly minister” is a delight to
Second Vice-President Mind and the feelings of solemnity induced by
the thunderous rumblings of the organ and the exhilaration
occasioned by the rendition of some intricate anthem are eminently
satisfying to Third Vice-President Emotion.
Yes, human nature may be incurably religious but aside from the
supernatural remedy of regeneration, it is incurably unspiritual.
“They that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in
truth.... Reckon yourselves dead unto sin and alive
unto God.... Yield your members as instruments of righteousness unto
God. For sin shall not have dominion over you....Ye are dead and
your life is hid with Christ in God...Walk in the Spirit....” It is
only when such scriptures are laid hold of by the hearing of faith,
that the Spirit government begins to be actualized in the born-again
Christian and the insubordination of the flesh begins to be quelled.
It is then that one can distinguish immediately between that which
is merely soul-satisfaction in religious observance or that which is
real Spirit-worship. It is possible for the natural tendencies of
the soul to be so subordinated to the spirit that it cries out, “My
soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God
my Savior...Bless the Lord, o my soul, and all that is within me,
bless His holy name....As the heart panteth after the water brooks
so panteth my soul after thee O God.” To such an one, Christ
and His glory are the things that are paramount. If He is not given
the central place of prominence he becomes a little impatient. He is
irked at the long introduction given to some man, that palavers at
length upon his education, travel and accomplishment and says in his
heart, “Have done with all of that man exaltation and let us get to
the business of hearing about the attributes, works and purposes of
God as revealed in His word. Let us be reminded of the nothing of
man and let us meditate upon the glories of Christ, His eternal
being, His condescension, His power, His dying love, His
resurrection, His ascension, His coming again.
What a vast amount of church activity will be seen to be the
sheerest soulishness when put to the acid test of whether it is
really to the exaltation of Christ and His Word or whether to make
someone feel good! How often is this man or that asked to preach or
pray because “it would never do to leave him out.” So-and-so must be
asked to sing a solo or the family will be displeased. Or if
such-and-such a person is recognized to have a good voice are they
asked to sing because of the quality of their spiritual life and the
message that they bring to the heart in song or is it simply because
of the pleasing tone quality of their vocal instrument?
In all of the fever of celebrations of festivals, is not the
devotional aspect of things almost forgotten in the bustle of seeing
that everyone puts on a good performance and due credit will accrue
to directors and performers? Even though the words rendered are
words of scripture and the occasion is to commemorate the birth or
resurrection of Christ, and an air of sanctity is given to the
proceedings by a perfunctory prayer, is there anything essentially
different in it all from a secular theatrical? When a charming
little child is featured in recitation of scripture or other
performance on such occasions is the Christ of whom the words speak
occupying the thoughts and admiration of the audience or is it the
beauty and charm of the child?
Any sensible person knows the answer to all of these questions. On
most such “religious occasions” the blessed Lord Jesus Christ has no
preeminence at all. The things of Christ are merely taken as a
pretext to call attention to the talent, the eloquence, the
cleverness, the charm of people. It is a great fabric of
soulishness and vanity, as any honest person will be compelled to
admit, and it is a little more profane than the ordinary soulishness
of the world, because it is taking the very things of God and making
them a springboard for the glorification of humanity, when it is
specifically enjoined that “no flesh shall glory in His sight.”
In the fundamentalist churches there has been a reaction from the
formalism of the ritualistic churches, but the resulting clap-trap
sensationalism, chattering irreverence, syncopated chorus-singing,
and shallow preaching that runs the gamut from cheap comedy to
sobbing sentimentalism and plays upon every string of sense and
emotion, is even worse, and generates an atmosphere of flippancy and
frivolity more hostile to the sober working of the Spirit than the
refrigerating plants of ecclesiasticism.
We believe that hymns of testimony to some aspect of the grace of
God have a very definite place in real spiritual worship and that
spiritual songs that are sung in praise to God out of a heart full
of love have been part of the exercise of spiritual saints of God in
all ages. The use of musical instruments dates back to Old Testament
times and their use was not only permitted but commanded. We have,
however, felt that a great deal of the song leading which we have
witnessed, savored very much more of the technique of a cheer leader
at an athletic contest than of the reverence and sobriety that
should characterize those assembled in the presence of the King of
kings, whose presence can be approached through “the new and living
way” of His rent body and shed blood, alone.
May God grant to us, Beloved, that we shall know spiritual
sensitiveness and be able to distinguish it from religious fervor or
exhilaration. The first is truly wrought of God, while the second is
Satan’s counterfeit of soulishness.
Probably the most extreme form of religious soulishness which is
current today, and is at the opposite extreme from the cold,
worldly-intellectual formality of ecclesiastical Christendom, is
what is known as Pentecostalism. It is the logical terminal
condition of the soul-excitement that is generated in some
fundamentalist circles (as indicated above) where the people are fed
on lurid sensationalism allegedly based on scriptural prophecy which
plays upon the emotion of fear. It is a strange characteristic of
humanity that it likes to be scared up to a point. Children enjoy
the sensation of ghost stories and the stage and screen have long
played upon the tendency by presenting an occasional plot that is
weird and blood-curdling. They are wise enough however not to play
on the same key too long, so they switch it off to light comedy.
Likewise the “wide awake” fundamentalist preacher or evangelist must
change the needle from the predictive prognostications with a stream
of anecdotes, some designed to produce laughter and others to bring
tears, but none having more than a remote relation to Christ and His
glory.
From such a soulish cocktail some of the people will go over in the
taproom where soulish intoxication and debauchery are in full swing,
where they roll on the floor and babble in tongues, see visions and
dream dreams, and rush around in a froth shouting that they have got
“IT,” which they declare to be “the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” The
leader of one such assembly in China came to hear us preach the Word
of God. After the service which was signally honored of the Spirit
of God in the quiet conviction of many, this Chinese Pentecostal
preacher remarked to a friend concerning the message, “Same old
stuff, cross, burial, resurrection, coming again. There is nothing
stirring. Over in our church we do not need any benches, we just
read a word of scripture and then there is lots going on, and a lot
of people get the Holy Spirit!”
In the light of the fourfold work of the Holy Spirit spoken of
previously in this study, we see that the blessed Holy Spirit does
not speak much of Himself, but leads men to Christ and “takes of the
things of Christ and reveals them unto us.” But in the midst of such
meetings there is no sober desire for the Word of God. In fact it is
distasteful to them. They must have an orgy of activity, there must
be emotional excitement, noise, manifestations. The apostolic
injunction, “Study to be quiet !” has no place in such a program. We
are sure that in such extravaganzas there is supernatural power that
grips both the bodies and souls of men and women but are persuaded
that it is to a large degree that sinister power whose normal sphere
of operation in man is the body and the soul.
Satan is feverishly busy in deceiving men and women in this latter
end of the age in every conceivable way. May God give us strength to
stay on our knees and claim the victory of Calvary’s cross and the
covering power of the blood lest we ourselves be deceived. Let us
pray that we shall have such a knowledge of the Word of God and such
deep fellowship with our God and Savior in prayer that we shall know
to distinguish between soul and spirit; that we shall daily reckon
ourselves dead to the soul-system and alive to the spirit-system,
ever yielding our members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
The true worship of God is “in spirit and in truth.” Any other kind
of worship is not merely distasteful but abominable to Him. It is a
kind of spiritual harlotry.
The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah represent to our minds a type of
depravity and moral degeneracy that is the very lowest. Yet years
and centuries after the cities of the plain were no more Jehovah
looked down and saw the people chosen for His testimony in a state
of spiritual depravity that paralleled the moral turpitude of Sodom
and Gomorrah. So much so that He calls them by those very names when
speaking through Isaiah and shortly before their dispersion and
captivity to Babylon:
“Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the
law of our God ye people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the
multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of
the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I
delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.
When ye come before me who hath required this at your hand, to
trample my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an
abomination unto me; the new moons and the sabbath, the calling of
assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn
meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth:
they are a trouble unto me, I am weary to bear them. And when ye
spread forth your hands I will hide my eyes from you: yea when ye
make many prayers, I will not hear...” (Isaiah 1:10-15).
If God spared not the natural branches, will He
spare us if we serve Him with will-worship?
“GOD IS A SPIRIT AND THEY THAT WORSHIP HIM MUST WORSHIP HIM IN
SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH.” |