News and Updates

September 1, 2020

David Copeland · September 1, 2020

Newsletter · Volume: 20 Issue: 9

“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  1 Thes. 5:23
One of the greatest days of my life came when I began to understand that there is a difference between spirit, soul and body. I had already been saved and had been preaching for many years when God led me to study this subject.

Man is a spirit being. Adam was nothing more than a pile of dirt when God breathed in him the breath of life.

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

The KJV reads this way:

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

Part of the reason we haven’t grasped the difference between the spirit & the soul is the King James language here in Genesis 2.  The word soul here is the Hebrew word “nephesh”. Nephesh is used thirteen times in Genesis; ten of those thirteen times it is used of the lower animals. We could reason then that the soulish nature of man that is unrenewed has a tendency to tap into that animal nature that satan and our flesh wants us to live in. It’s that part of us that is of the lower nature. Our flesh loves to be angry, be in strife, be jealous, lustful, envious and full of pride. We don’t have a problem walking in those attributes; the challenge is learning to hear His voice, understand what the Spirit is saying and follow Him and not our fleshly appetites.

When God created Adam in the Garden of Eden, He made Adam in the likeness of Himself. In His own image. Jesus said in John 4:24 God is a Spirit. So, if God is a Spirit and man was created in the image of God, then we are a spirit as well. The breath that we breath without even thinking about it is directly connected to and has ancestry with the Spirit of God that was breathed into Adam on the day in the Garden of Eden.

Man is a spirit, that has a soul and he lives in a body. The body will one day die and be lowered into a grave. As Solomon said we will go back to the dust. The soul of man is the mind, will and emotional part of our being. It’s the “human nature” part of our being. It is in the process of being saved. That is why Paul taught us over and over in his writing to renew our minds.

Ephesians 4:23 “And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;”

The part of our being that is born again is our spirits. For most of my life when people were saved in our church services we would hear people say, “five souls were saved today!” No, when a person is born again, their spirit is born again or saved. Not their soul. In my lifetime I’ve never heard many people distinguish the difference between the spirit and the soul. And by not doing that, it has brought a great number of people into bondage thinking every time they sinned after they were born again, they lost their salvation and had to become born again…again.

Let me emphasize this right now: I do believe we can be secure in our walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. But I DO also believe you CAN lose your salvation. This is not the avenue to pursue a complete discussion on unconditional eternal security, but I do believe you CAN walk away from God and lose your relationship with God. But it is NOT as easy as we have led people to believe. You do not lose your salvation every time you have a bad thought or do something you know is a sin in the eyes of God. You may lose some of your reward (1 Corinthians 3) but you do not lose your salvation for that. You have to make a conscious decision to renounce God, faith in God, and attribute all the works God has done in your life and for your life to be of the devil in order to lose you salvation. That is also called blaspheming the Holy Spirit. When you reach that point, your conscience has been seared beyond belief and you have lost all ability to think clearly about the love and forgiveness of God.

One of the major reasons we need the Word of God pouring into our lives on a regular basis is it’s the Word of God that separates the spirit and the soul. The more of the Bible you get into your spirit and into your mind, the Word will begin to teach you the difference between what is from the spirit and what is from the soulish realm. It’s also the Word that separates the words that come from Holy Spirit and those that come from your mind, will & emotions.

Hebrews 4:12. “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.”
May we become more Spirit conscious than soul conscious in the days to come. I have a felling our lives are going to depend on it!