It is important to understand how Spirit, Soul and Body operate in relation to one another. Your soul, often described as your personality, has three principal functions;
1. Your mind or intellect, giving you the ability to reason and understand.
2. Your emotions or feelings which are affected considerably by your thinking.
3. Your Will; your ability to make choices or decisions. In the soul life this ability is influenced greatly by both your thinking and feelings.
Before your new birth you were spiritually dead. It was as if your human spirit was in a coma waiting to be brought to life by God’s Spirit. This happened when you were born again.
God’s is Spirit and therefore He makes direct contact with us through our human spirits. It was not possible for you to have a spiritual relationship with Him until your new birth. At that moment His Spirit came to live in your spirit.
Jesus made it clear that a person must be born again of the Spirit if he/she is to see God’s Kingdom. He knew that it was possible to serve God, love Him even, with the Soul; but this did not make a person spiritually alive.
Among many Christians here is considerable confusion between the Soul and the spirit; some even erroneously equate the two. Paul says:
May your spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and He will do it. (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)
Clearly Paul sees a distinction between the Soul and spirit and asserts firmly that God Himself will ensure both are kept blameless! In Hebrews we read:
In dividing for us the Soul and spirit, the Word shows us what is of self. (the Soul) and what is truly of God, working through the Spirit.
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