In subsequent lessons in this course, you will learn that the Old Covenant laws of God – summarized in the ten commandments – must apply not only externally, but internally. That God won’t settle for having the laws written on stones or doorposts; He needs them to be written in your heart as well.
He needs you to be able to say, “With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early” (Isaiah 26:9).
These – heart, soul and spirit– are all internal things, which must change to be more like God... But these are not all the SAME internal thing!
Our job is to learn to “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). And so when we have only a hazy understanding of the difference, if any, between heart, mind, soul, spirit, nature, self, conscience and so on... when we treat these as more-or-less-synonyms... we miss the point!
When Paul says “I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless” (1 Thessalonians 5:23), it was because these three things are different parts of your self that can sin, and must be taught individually not to do so!
God used different words because He meant different things. Each of these things are inside all of us; and each of these parts must come, separately, to perfection in order for the whole self to find salvation. Because different parts of the “self” perform different functions. They act differently, they sin differently, and they must be changed differently.
In the next few dozen lessons you will learn what it really means to keep the law internally.
The Old Covenant laws of God teach us to act like God... But before that we must learn to think like God. To, in short, learn to love Him “with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength” (Mark 12:33).
You are taking these lessons because you’re trying to change yourself. But to REALLY change who you are is hard when you don’t know what your self is, or how many of your selves you’re dealing with.
WHAT ARE YOU?
We are more complex than it seems at first. We are not just one person, one voice. We have many voices inside of us. Otherwise, why do we argue with ourselves? Romans 2:15. Why else would lusts war in our members? James 4:1. What does your flesh – your members – war against? Romans 7:23.
In the context of our internal selves the Bible uses many words; spirit, soul, heart, mind, flesh, body, nature, etc. Some of these overlap – but not all of them. For example, if spirit and soul were the same, how could you divide one from another? Hebrews 4:12. In the same way, is the heart the same as the spirit? Proverbs 15:13.
Another overlap is the fact that “spirit” is simply a word that means “breath” or “wind” in Hebrew and Greek, which is used as both a thing (such as the spirit in man (Job 32:8) and the substance of which that thing is created (John 4:24, John 3:6-8, etc.).
It’s rather like we say “a paper”, as in reading or writing a paper. What is a paper made of? Paper. Likewise, your spirit is made of spirit – the confusing thing is, so is your soul. In Genesis 2:7 God formed a clay statue. It didn’t become a man until God breathed the “breath of life” – the spirit – into him, at which point he became a living soul. So first came the breath – the spirit – entering the man. Then the spirit made the man into a living SOUL.
Think of it like assembling a toy and then installing the battery. The spirit gave it life, and formed one part of the finished man, but while the man now had a spirit, the spirit was not the man. The man was a living soul. The word “soul” therefore referred to the whole, complete self of Adam, which INCLUDED a spirit as well as other things.
This is why people often substitute the word “soul” for “self” in the Bible. For example, did David say “rescue me”? Psalms 35:17, Psalms 40:14. He wasn’t talking about spiritual life there, not primarily anyway – he meant simply staying alive. There are many similar examples of soul referring to a person’s whole self, such as 1 Samuel 25:29 and Psalms 3:2.
What is it that goes down to the grave? Psalms 89:48. What is it that God brings up from the grave? Psalms 49:15. Notice that the soul WOULD be in the power of the grave forever if God did not redeem it, that is, pay for it to buy it back from the power of the law. Is it possible to destroy the soul? Matthew 10:28, Luke 12:4-5.
If men kill the body, the soul leaves it and goes somewhere. What happens to the soul when the body is killed? Genesis 35:18. Her soul was departing – to go somewhere, which explains why men cannot kill the soul. Can that soul come back? 1 Kings 17:21-22. This proves that the body is not part of the soul, since the soul can leave the body behind. The soul is inside of the body, the body being merely a “temple” or “home” for our soul.
Since God must redeem the soul, the implication is that if He didn’t, the soul would be destroyed automatically. There is nothing that explicitly says where the soul would go, but there is something that tells us where the spirit goes – and it’s reasonable to assume they go together to the same place. So where does the spirit go? Ecclesiastes 3:21. What would happen if God didn’t grab the spirit (breath)? Psalms 146:4.
The spirit of man goes upwards because God has a use for it – God is redeeming it from the grave. This is not true of the animals, whose spirits – and presumably souls – are allowed to go “downward to the Earth”. But if – and when – God no longer has a future plan for a human soul, it, too, will be allowed to go downward and return to the Earth!
Notice that word “return”? Where did our soul come from? Psalms 139:14-15. I won’t attempt to fully explain this verse, but it is clear that “the lowest parts of the Earth” were involved in our creation before we were born. And where do we go when we die – if God doesn’t save us? Psalms 63:9, Job 34:14-15. What are we like? 2 Samuel 14:14, Deuteronomy 12:24. Where does water that is poured out on the ground go? Mostly down, into the depths of the Earth, where we were “curiously wrought”!
Did God gave animals souls as well? Genesis 1:24. Most Bibles translate the word “soul” as “living creature”, but it’s the same word nephesh used in Genesis 2:7.
For humans ...it is appointed unto US once to die and AFTERWARDS to be judged (Hebrews 9:27), but unto animals there is no afterwards – their first life is all they have, and they shall be as though they had not been after that (Obadiah 1:15-16). What is the normal end of “natural beasts”? 2 Peter 2:12.
So you ARE a living soul. Your soul is the lord of your body, the ruler of your self. It is the judge, the final say in all things you do. But the soul is not alone in your body – for it must rule over, among other things... your body.
YOUR CARNAL HEART
What comes from the heart? Genesis 6:5, Genesis 8:21. What makes us who we are? Proverbs 23:7. What is our heart like? Jeremiah 17:9. Where do the bad things men do originate? Matthew 15:18-19. Can you ever trust your heart? Proverbs 28:26.
So it is our hearts that is the source of our lust; our selfish desires; when David said “So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee” (Psalms 73:22). It is because he was obeying that part of himself which was as a beast – his physical body.
To put it in computer terms, the heart is like the BIOS on a computer; it controls all the basic functions, the fan, the hard drive, the power. But it does most of this unconsciously – it simply sends you signals when it’s hungry because the battery is low, or when it’s hot, and has to shut down.
It doesn’t care if you’re in the middle of writing a paper – if it gets hungry, it shuts down. Period. So it is utterly and purely selfish. But that’s not necessarily wrong; wanting to eat, wanting to mate, wanting to sleep – these are normal things.
Our bodies need food and sleep and without a warning that we were hungry or tired we would simply pass out while working. Without a warning about pain, we would do serious injury to our bodies every time we touched something hot or sharp.
So the body’s selfishness is a good thing. Being selfish is not wrong... as long as getting those things doesn’t hurt someone else. But no beast cares about the golden rule – they understand it, for no beast likes to be hurt, stolen from, or lied to – but none are inclined to obey it.
So if they’re hungry, they’ll eat you if you’re small enough. If they’re tired, they’ll sit on you if you’re in the way. This is not malicious – they simply don’t care about you. Not even a little bit. And all of us have this nature within us, that leads to murder, theft, rape, war, and so on – all of these things which come from the heart.
The Bible uses several words synonymously to refer to the same “character” in our self – the heart. The body, mentioned above in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, refers to the same thing because the heart “speaks” for the whole body. Likewise, since the body is the only part of us made of flesh, God often uses that term instead (2 Peter 2:18, for instance). And “fleshly” is a synonym for “carnal” (in English, actually).
God uses different symbols for the heart – beast, flesh, carnal, natural man, body, etc. – for the same reason He has different symbols for angels; so that people will not understand without putting forth the effort; and so that once they do, they will understand it even better as they merge all the subtly different symbols together.
I’ll lump all of these symbols together under the idea of the “beast” for now. This Biblically-approved symbol is my favorite because it sums up best what we are like, at our most basic: selfish animals. Which of us, backed into a corner, doesn’t throw away the law to survive?
Our culture has a generally positive view of “the heart”, a place of love and warmth; we have very churchified ideas about what fleshly and carnal mean; but the beast gives us exactly the right meaning; we have a nature in us that is literally identical to the nature we see dominant in a cow, a dog, or a lizard.
People don’t like the idea that a large part of their motivation is no better than that of a dumb animal; so when I tell someone they’re acting like a beast, they can get pretty upset. But that’s kind of the point: Ecclesiastes 3:18 (BBE) …It is because of the sons of men, so that God may put them to the test and that they may see themselves as beasts. [KJV says “that they might see that they themselves are beasts.”]
We’ll revisit this verse thoroughly in the coming lessons, suffice it to say – you are ruled by your beast most of the time. This is why you act the way you do, and do the things you know you shouldn’t do (Romans 7:14-18).
YOUR SPIRIT
Are the spirit and heart the same thing? Psalms 77:6. So the spirit “made a diligent search”, presumably within the heart – within the beast part of you. What does the spirit of man do? Proverbs 20:27. God uses the spirit as a candle, a flashlight to see the darkness elsewhere in the heart of the beast.
What does God’s spirit do? 1 Corinthians 2:10-11. God’s spirit “knows the things of God”, just as our spirit knows all about us. So if the beast is the BIOS, the spirit is the Operating System (OS), like Windows. It is a far more complex program, consisting of millions of lines of code, and it interacts much more consciously with the operator, even though it still does a great deal automatically.
The heart is selfish, thinking only and incessantly of itself. It has no concept of right and wrong. What is its opposite? Romans 8:4-6. What wars against the heart? Romans 2:15. These verses, merged and harmonized as always, show that the conscience is another word for the spirit!
Note the struggle between the conscience and the heart; between selfishness and a desire to do the right thing, between the spirit and the beast! And this is even among the Gentiles (verse 14). So when you think “I want one more slice of cake”, and then you think “but I really shouldn’t”, you can recognize these speakers as the heart and the spirit, respectively.
We are not trained to recognize the voices in our head, but you can learn to hear them very plainly. For one thing, any thought that begins “I want”, is from the beast. It doesn’t matter what it says – it’s a beast thought. And remember, that’s not necessarily wrong! Wanting things can be OK. You just need to know where the idea is coming from.
On the other hand, any thought that begins “I should” is from the conscience. The beast doesn’t care about “should”. So if you’re thinking that something is right or wrong, it’s coming from your spirit. But that’s not necessarily right!
Because just as the heart is not inherently bad, merely selfish, so the conscience is not inherently good, it merely reflects the morals it has learned. The job of our spirit is to put the heart’s desires in contrast with an objective viewpoint of good and evil. Unfortunately, it’s not objective by nature.
For example, if I were to offer you a dogburger, or a horse steak, you would be horrified. Why? Objectively, why is horse any more offensive than beef? It isn’t, which is why most of Eurasia eats horses. You can buy horse meat in most European supermarkets. So why are you so disgusted with the idea? Because you were told to be!
Since your earliest memories you were taught that certain foods were good to eat – chicken, beef, pig, etc. – and certain foods were not – dog, cat, horse, etc. You may have been taught (depending on your background) that eating chicken feet and heads were “gross”, as were fish heads, beef brains, and so on.
These very strong opinions are something your conscience acquired based on your surroundings – parents, teachers, heroes, actors, etc. But that doesn’t make them correct! It simply means that part of your mind is TRYING to do the right thing.
That’s definitely a good place to start – but that doesn’t necessarily make you good. It’s only objectively good if it is patterned after the law of God, which is NOT what you learned from your society!
When we are born we know neither good nor evil – but we DO know what we like people to do to us. No baby likes to be hurt, starved, ignored, its toys taken away, etc. As you’ve studied before, every creature is born innately knowing the law of God as it applies to other people! This is the strength of the golden rule!
What this means is that we are born with a perfect conscience; a perfect record we can compare our actions against. It knows right and wrong – it doesn’t do right or wrong, but it knows what they ARE, and it tells us.
Read Psalms 51:10 again; while the heart had to be CREATED clean, the spirit merely needed “renewed” to be clean again. This means it is something that was once right and had only to be repaired. The heart is selfish, from birth. By comparison, the spirit is clean – it understands that you should treat others as you want to be treated.
But as we are raised, that conscience is educated – or miseducated – by the beliefs of those around you. So we are taught to lie from a young age (Jeremiah 9:5). Children are brutally honest; but society teaches them not to ask why that woman is fat, not to tell adults they are wrong, not to fight with other children if they’re being mean.
And so the golden rule is lost amid the rules of our tribe; and so our spirit must be cleansed of these un-laws, and restored to the purity of the golden rule. There is no objective reason why eating sheep’s heads is wrong. But they are “gross” and “disgusting” because little children are taught that by their parents IN OUR CULTURE.
In other cultures, chicken feet are a delicacy. Because their spirits have been educated differently! So the purpose of the spirit within a man, the purpose of our conscience, is to tell us right and wrong. The problem is, it doesn’t necessarily know right and wrong. And the greater problem is that it doesn't realize that.
Your spirit was probably sure, absolutely certain, that baptism washes your sins away and that eternal salvation is unconditional. Letting go of this cannot have been easy for you, because it means that your personal benchmark of truth, your spirit, was wrong.
So the law of your spirit had to be broken because it wasn’t a law at all! Most people, when confronted with the truth, arrogantly say “I don’t know where the verse is, but I know I’m right!” Because their spirit is not broken, not willing to humble itself before the spirit of anyone else, including the Bible!
But with whom does God dwell? Isaiah 66:2. God dwells in people whose spirit has been broken, and is ashamed of being wrong before and ready to learn the truth so it will never be wrong again! Ready to become worthy of trust again, which God will give it – as long as both the spirit and the beast are humbled: Isaiah 57:15.
But how do they get humbled? What breaks the spirit? We let these fractions of our self speak as if they represent our whole self, but in fact the true self, our true person, is neither of these things; our true self is a living soul.
THE SOUL
The soul is effectively synonymous with the “I” or the self in most usages in the Bible, for example in Job 10:1, Psalms 55:18, John 12:27. In each of these cases, and almost all the others in the Bible, we could replace “soul” with “self” or “I”, and it would work just fine.
So we have two witnesses within us; a heart, which seeks to justify its selfishness; and a spirit or conscience, which seeks to do the right thing. These argue and bicker back and forth among themselves until one or the other gets tired... or a third party intervenes to make a judgment.
The soul must be the judge of these inner voices. It is considered our “self” because it is the highest authority in our self and therefore is responsible for all the rest of our “inward parts”. Our soul has the ability to silence the conscience, or to silence the beast – it has absolute power. You might say it is the soul authority (get it?).
But most people do not exercise that power. Adam had absolute power over Eve and the Devil, but chose to give in to both. It takes effort to make hard decisions, and it is difficult to stand alone – as a judge must do – and make a choice even though part of you is screaming that it is unfair.
As a judge you must be impartial; your conscience is born pure, but definitions of right and wrong that don’t fit the Bible have been fed into your conscience your entire life and so while your conscience is always well-intentioned, it isn’t always right. So how do you make judgments? Deuteronomy 19:15.
You have two witnesses – your heart and your spirit. Most of the time that’s enough, but sometimes you simply don’t have enough information from either witness, so you need to bring in a third. Ideally, the third “guest” witness is the spirit of God.
But even without that third witness, your soul can demand more facts from the conscience; for example, not long ago I was at the beach for awhile – maybe an hour, I thought – and then someone checked their phone and it said we’d been there two hours. On the one hand, I had every reason to trust this usually-reliable source.
But my soul said “mmm... I don’t know. This doesn’t add up to me.” So I asked the “conscience” for more facts. Upon further investigation, it turned out the phone had switched to the nearby time zone ahead of us and was showing the wrong time. So even if the conscience gives you bad information, the soul has a responsibility to weigh that information and see if it adds up.
Likewise, the soul should demand more information from the beast; if you’re in Rome and the beast says “I want see the Colosseum, the Forum, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain and the Sistine Chapel and then go to Florence tonight”, your soul should remind the beast of how it felt when it tried a similar itinerary in Jerusalem.
Your soul should ask the beast if it realizes how much walking that means, how hot it is today, how tired it is from the flight over, and how even if you see everything on the list, it wouldn’t really make the beast happy!
Because you know how grumpy and irritable that same beast will be later that day, halfway through its own plan, as it faces the inevitable consequences of “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16).
Going to all these places just to “be there” is the lust of the flesh; having to see everything is the lust of the eyes; and taking a photo in front of every monument, going “just to say you’ve been there” is the definition of the pride of life. What will REALLY make your beast happy?
Figure that out and make the beast do it, whether it likes it or not at first... and you’ll be a good soul.
WAR IN YOUR MEMBERS
The beast, spirit, and soul are the three characters of the self. The heart exists to tell us “I want”. The spirit exists to tell us “I should”. And the soul exists to tell us “I will”.
Put differently, the heart is the prosecution (I want), the spirit is the defense (but I should) and the soul is the judge (I will). But what is the name of the courtroom? Romans 14:5. It is in your MIND that you must be fully persuaded – by these two advocates, with the soul as arbiter.
What happens in the mind? 1 Corinthians 1:10. If we are joined “in the same mind”, then we are joined “in the same judgment”, because judgment happens in the mind. Where do thoughts and dreams happen? Daniel 2:29, Ezekiel 11:5.
One trick you can sometimes use to explain difficult words is to compare how they are translated in the OT to the NT. For example, read Hebrews 8:10. Notice the word “mind” there. This was quoted from Jeremiah 31:33. Look how it is translated there – not as mind, but as “inward parts”. So rather than a distinct, singular thing, it is a place with other things inside of it – a courtroom with a heart, conscience, and a judge.
What goes on in our minds? Romans 2:15. What happens if the judge can’t make up his mind, or goes back and forth between decisions? James 1:8. Is this a common problem? 1 Kings 18:21. Can your higher reasoning ignore the advice of the spirit? 1 Thessalonians 5:19. Can you choose to be led by the spirit, or led by the carnal nature (the heart)? Galatians 5:16-18.
One part of your nature is the “lusts of the flesh” – your heart. When that has rule over your mind, it is a “carnal mind” that leads to death (Romans 8:4), the “fleshly mind” of Colossians 2:18; all of these are best visualized as a beast; say, a cow.
The other part is ruled by the spirit – your conscience. This is the spiritual mind that leads to life IF it’s properly educated by a true knowledge of right and wrong – which is why we need Jesus’ spirit, so we can compare our conscience with His. But whether or not we have His spirit, our beast and spirit will be at odds with one another most of the time.
And as long as that state of war exists, we will be “double minded”, “halting between two opinions”, and therefore “unstable in all our ways”. If you are going to get anything done, you have to either get them to agree – not always possible – or you have to choose to follow one or the other. So do you choose to please the beast? Or please the conscience? Romans 8:5-6.
We are also born with a heart that doesn’t care about right and wrong. And that heart usually out-complains, out-argues, or simply out-shouts our conscience. “Who cares if it’s wrong,” our heart argues, “they’d do the same to me!” Or “if I don’t steal it, someone else will – so why not me?” That sort of reasoning comes from our heart and can drown out our conscience... if we let it.
It’s a choice, every day, whether to give into your beast or to give into your conscience. Most people make the decision arbitrarily based on which one nags them the most. And so because there is never a clear victor, there is a constant struggle between them – neither is tamed by the other. And so they are “unstable in all their ways” (James 1:6-8, Ephesians 4:14).
Either one of these advocates can eventually be wearied to silence. You can rule your heart well enough that it mostly stops objecting to doing the right thing (1 Corinthians 9:27). Or the heart can break the will of your conscience (1 Timothy 4:2). If you quench your own spirit often enough, it will eventually give up, just as God’s spirit will. How do most people handle this conflict? Ephesians 4:17-19. And how SHOULD you handle this conflict? Verses 20-32.
All of that rather long passage is devoted to doing the OPPOSITE of things your beast would have you do (lying, stealing, being angry, speaking without thinking, holding grudges, etc.). So you have to make a choice whether to listen to the beast or the conscience.
THE NEUTRAL SOUL
We saw above a reasoning process, of thoughts accusing one another – but that accusation process is nothing more than a shouting match unless there is a judge of your thoughts. And so the soul chooses between the desire to please the self and the desire to please the morals your conscience has absorbed.
It seeks to negotiate a compromise between “I want” and “I should”. Again, it is neither good nor evil – the soul desires certain things, based on some factors which we’ll get to in another lesson, but mostly it just wants peace in its “home”.
Most people’s souls habitually negotiate unjust “compromises” that so heavily favor their heart that the conscience is about as useful as a public defender in a courtroom. This would be an evil soul, since unchecked selfishness leads to evil inevitably. For all practical purposes, this soul is just a mouth for the beast, who operates virtually unchecked.
Who can’t remember something like the following happening; back to the “one more piece of cake” argument above, when your soul decides “Ok, just a small piece”, that is the soul negotiating between “I want” and “I should”. Trying to find a compromise that both sides can live with.
But what happens in most people is they say that, then the body (the beast) cuts the biggest piece that could possibly be imagined as “a small piece”, swallows it whole, then starts to renegotiate for another piece, repeating the cycle.
And if the soul lets it whine and beg and scream its way into getting another one, the soul is not really in charge at all; the whiny brat of a beast is who really runs that person, thus that person is literally “as a beast before thee”. Once you’ve made a judgement like that, and made an agreement with your beast, you have to make the beast live with it no matter what it says.
The job of the soul is to stop this sort of spoiled selfishness by comparing the heart to the conscience, and weighing the beast’s needs (“I haven’t eaten in 5 days, I NEED to eat”) with its wants (“I haven’t had cake in 5 minutes, I need some more cake”).
Oh, the beast is going to push you and make your life miserable as you fight with it on these things. And it takes a strong soul to stand its ground against the endless onslaught of an untamed heart. It’s like having a spoiled child living in your mind 24 hours a day.
But it can be tamed, and it will get easier... if you treat it like ANY OTHER ANIMAL and be consistent, firm, and fair. Punish its disobedience but don’t beat it just because it speaks. Reward its obedience but don’t bribe it to obey you!
EARNING THE TRUST OF YOUR MIND
As a judge, you will make a mistake now and again – and your beast will joyously use that as an excuse to keep you from making decisions it doesn’t like in the future. But you are in charge, not it. You don’t have to let it – when you mess up, apologize, make it right, and move on.
A mistake doesn’t change the fact that you are in charge, your soul is responsible, and you MUST rule your own spirit and heart and body. Will your soul take on the character of the voice you follow? Romans 8:5-9. Your mind will be dominated by one or the other voice, depending on what your soul chooses. What happens if you aren’t clear enough in your judgments? Romans 7:18.
The whole problem Paul was complaining about was that he knew the right thing – his spirit told him – but he did not have the strength to follow that path. What was he fighting against? Verses 22-24. It was the carnal nature, the heart, that was warring against him. So what did his mind choose to follow? Verse 25.
Regardless of the size of the fight in your mind, how will you be judged? Romans 8:1. It is the choice you make in your mind, how you actually walk which determines whether you will be condemned or not. Why? 1 Samuel 16:7, Romans 8:27. And after your soul spends a lifetime judging between your heart and spirit, what is the goal? Romans 12:2.
As I mentioned earlier, your spirit means well, but it is not educated. Likewise, the heart is selfish and spoiled but not uncontrollable – it simply needs to be trained, like a dog or a horse. And the soul has no experience choosing right and wrong, and it must also have experience. And the result of this process will create a clean mind that God will be able to turn into an incorruptible spirit.
The goal is not to oppress your heart, just as it is not your goal to take a spirited horse and whip him into a broken nag who just doesn’t care anymore. The goal is to rule him well, make him happy, but to make him serve you – for his own good, not just your own.
Because a happy beast makes it easier to educate your spirit (Proverbs 15:13). After all, the spirit can be willing – but if the flesh is weak, little happens (Matthew 26:41). Likewise, the spirit is vital to the process of training the beast, in finding out why it acts the way it acts and how to correct it (Proverbs 20:5).
If you’re doing your job well, your servants should be happy (1 Kings 10:8), and your whole self should work together as one blameless whole (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Arising from a very different line of thinking, Sigmund Freud concluded that each of our minds had three parts; he called the most basic part the Id, the center of selfish reasoning and primal instincts; fear, lust, anger, and so on. This is what the Bible most commonly calls the heart.
Next we have what Freud called the Superego; the higher reasoning center, which the Bible calls the spirit, which is better understood as the conscience; and finally the Ego, Latin for “I”, which the Bible calls the Soul, which ultimately makes the decisions and acts.
While I disagree with much of what psychology teaches, I consider this independent observational evidence to be a second witness for the fact that we are composed of three different I’s, and learning to separate these and teach them each what they need to know is why we are here.
There is much more to say about this subject, in fact we will be spending dozens of lessons talking about the details. But just to give you a peek under the hood of what sort of things this reveals, take a look at these patterns.
In the temple, the “body of God”, God’s “mind” is shielded behind the veil in the most holy place (2 Corinthians 3:14), with the judgment throne of God in the middle (God’s soul), and two angels on either side (the heart and the spirit);
Or another layer inside the ark itself, the three contents of the ark represent God’s basic nature (the law, the heart), Jesus’ educated conscience (the manna, the spirit), and the right of the priesthood to determine which to follow (the rod of Aaron, the soul);
Romans 11:33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!
Finally, to show you just how built into the fabric of our universe these patterns are, remember that the spirits of men and God are represented as water (Revelation 17:15, John 7:38-39)... and then think about how a water molecule has two hydrogen atoms (heart and spirit) and one much larger oxygen atom (judge/soul), making one whole water molecule (mind)...
But this is enough for today. For now, go humble your beast and break your spirit.
Psalms 51:16-17 For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
