Man a Tripartite Being
A. Introduction
The Bible which is the Word of God expressly reveals that man is a tripartite being. There are many passages in both the Old and New Testament that clearly substantiate that man is of three parts.
In the biblical account of the three-step creation of man in Genesis 2:7 we read, "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". This corroborates the view.
Ø Genesis 2:7a "the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground." (KJV) - With this act, God formed man's body.
Ø Genesis 2:7b "and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." (KJV) With this act, God created man's spirit.
"Breath" is derived from the Hebrew word "neshamah" which means "spirit". God's breathing into man the breath of life produced man's spirit. Zechariah 12:1 tells us that just as Jehovah stretched forth the heavens and laid the foundation of the earth, He also formed the spirit of man within him.
Ø Genesis 2:7c "and the man became a living soul." (KJV)
The soul (man's intrinsic person) was the issue of the breath of God entering into the nostrils of the body of dust.
Coming to the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians 5:23 says, "May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Again Hebrews 4:12 specifies "The word of God is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow." All three parts are once again articulated: the joints and marrow pertain to the body, and the soul is explicitly stated separate from the spirit.
God used two kinds of materials to make man—the dust for making man's body and the breath of life for producing man's spirit. When these two things came together, man became a living soul. That means the soul is the issue of the breath of life getting into the physical body of man.
The Word of God points out in 1 Cor. 3:16 that we are God's temple. The three parts of man can thus be compared to the three parts of the temple - the
B. Three Parts of Man
The three parts of man, namely, the spirit, soul, and body functions in different spheres. Of the three parts, the first and most crucial is the spirit. The spirit enables man to communicate with God. With his human spirit, man can worship, serve, and know God intuitively. The soul of a man is that part which forms his personality. Finally, the physical body with its five senses enables man to relate to the physical world.
I) The Human Spirit
Our human spirit is also composed of three parts: the conscience, fellowship, and intuition. The conscience enables us to perceive right from wrong and as a result it either condemns or justifies us. Through the fellowship, we are able to contact God and commune with Him. Finally, through the intuition God imparts within us a particular sense or knowledge that is independent of reason, circumstance or precedent. These three faculties of the spirit: conscience, fellowship, and intuition are clearly described in Scripture.
i. Conscience
The primary or leading part of the spirit is the conscience. In Romans 9:1 Paul testifies, "My conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit." In Romans 8:16 it is, "The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit". The Spirit of God witnesses with our human spirit, yet at the same time our conscience witnesses with the Holy Spirit. Thus we can see by association that the conscience must be part of the human spirit.
ii. Fellowship
In John 4:24 Christ Himself says, "God is Spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth". Worshipping God is altogether a matter of contacting God in fellowship. Ephesians 6:18 speaks of another form of fellowship with God, "pray in the spirit on all occasions…,". These verses help us conclude that fellowship is a component of the human spirit.
iii. Intuition
Let us search the Scriptures about intuition being also a part of the spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:11 says, "For who among men knows the things of man, except the spirit of man which is in him?" This verse shows us that there are things which only the spirit of man knows, and which the soul is unable to know. Intuition has the capacity to know and discern apart from human reason or experience. For example, in the gospel of Mark the scribes were silently reasoning within their hearts about the Lord's statement, "Child, your sins are forgiven." How does Jesus respond to the reasoning within their hearts? "Immediately Jesus, knowing fully in His spirit that they were reasoning this way within themselves, said to them, Why are you reasoning about these things in your hearts?" (Mark 2:8). The spirit can have an inner sense and knowledge independent of reason or outward circumstances upon which the soul relies.
II) The Soul
The soul or the "person" of man, is similarly composed of three parts: the mind, the will and the emotion. God's Word proves this clearly and definitively.
i. The mind
In Ps.139:14 the Psalmist exults, "I will praise You, ……… Your works are wonderful, and my soul knows it well". Knowledge pertains to the mind. In addition, Lamentations 3:20 says, "My soul remembers them well and is bowed down within me." To remember is another function of the mind. These verses clearly indicate that there is a part of the soul that knows and remembers; this part is the mind.
ii. The will
The will is also part of the soul. Job says, "So that my soul would choose strangulation and death rather than my bones" (Job 7:15). He also said, "My soul refuses to touch them…" (6:7). Choosing and refusing are functions of the will, a part of the soul.
iii. Emotion
In Song of Songs 1:7, the Shulamite speaks to her beloved, "Tell me, you whom my soul loves." In 2 Samuel 5:8 David says, "………..who are hated by David's soul…." Later in Psalm 86:4, David with a different feeling exclaims: "Cause the soul of Your servant to rejoice…" Since love, hate and rejoicing are clearly expressions of the emotions, it is obvious that the emotion is part of the soul.
III) The Body
The body of man with its five senses is that part which contacts the physical world. God provided man the body for his existence in the physical realm. Originally created as a pure and undefiled body it changed nature after the fall. It became the fallen flesh full of lust. Hence, Paul bemoans in Romans 7:18, "For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, nothing good dwells"
v The Heart – Soul plus the Conscience (The Leading Part of the Spirit)
Man's heart, according to the Scripture, is a composition of all the parts of the soul plus the primary part of the spirit, namely the conscience.
§ The Mind - part of the heart
Genesis 6:5 reads, "And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Furthermore, Matthew 9:4 reports, "Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Why are you thinking evil things in your hearts?" Both "thoughts" and "thinking" relate to the mind as a part of the soul, while simultaneously a part of the heart.
§ The Will - part of the heart
Acts 11:23: "Who, when he arrived and saw the grace of God, rejoiced and encouraged them all to remain with the Lord with purpose of heart."
Hebrews 4:12 speaks of the Word's ability to discern, "the thoughts and intentions of the heart." Both "purpose" and "intentions" are functions of the will, indicating that the will is part of the heart.
§ The Emotion - part of the heart
In John 16:6, Jesus tells His disciples, "But because I have spoken these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart." The Lord continues, "Therefore you also now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and no one takes your joy away from you." Since "sorrow" and "rejoicing" are human emotions, it indicates that man's emotional faculty is also part of the heart. Thus we can see that the soul (mind, will, and emotion) is part of the heart of a man.
§ The Conscience - part of the heart
The leading part of the spirit, the conscience, according to the Word is also integrally related to the heart. Hebrews 10:22 strongly links these two: "Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience." Additionally, 1 John 3:20 warns, "Because if our heart blames us, it is because God is greater than our heart and knows all things." Blame and condemnation are the primary functions of the conscience, proving that our conscience is part of our heart. Therefore we can safely conclude from all the above scripture references that a man's heart consists of the conscience, in addition to the three parts of the soul.
C. Function of the different parts of man
Genesis 1:26 clearly indicates that God created man in His own image and likeness with the intention of being expressed and represented through man. Therefore, each part of man (spirit, soul and body) was created for a specific function in relation to God's purpose and plan.
I) Function of the spirit
i. To contact God
Jesus exhorts in John 4:24, "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness." To worship God is to actually contact Him. The Greek word used here literally means, "to come forward and kiss." To kiss is to make intimate contact with another person. So in John 4:24 Jesus is actually telling us that we are to make intimate contact with God through our human spirit.
ii. To Receive God
We initially receive God when we are born anew. According to John 3:6 this new birth takes place in our spirit, "…that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Not only does our spirit function to receive God initially; it continues to function to receive God as the Spirit for the rest of our Christian walk. Ezekiel 36:26 says, "I will also give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you." God gives us a new heart to love Him as well as a new spirit to receive Him.
iii. To Contain God
Finally, our spirit functions to contain God. 2 Timothy 4:22 says, "The Lord be with your spirit." The Lord makes His abode within our spirit. Therefore we can see that our spirit functions as a container of God.
II) The Function of the Soul
The primary function of the soul of man is to express and reflect the Lord. We can see this expressed in the Gospel of Luke. In response to
2 Corinthians 3:18 says, "But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit." Our soul is like a mirror designed to behold and reflect Christ.
III) The Function of the Body
Man's physical body is God's provision for his existence within the physical realm. It is the organ for man's existence.
D. The Three Parts of Man flawed by the Fall of Man
Created with a spirit to receive God, a soul to express God, and a body to maintain his existence, Adam before his fall possessed a tremendous potential to express and represent God. However, Satan came in to picture damaging and ultimately annulling the proper function of each of man's three parts. The disobedience and transgression of Adam resulted in the corruption of all three parts of his being, thereby preventing man from fulfilling God's purpose.
All three parts of man were adversely affected by the fall: First, his soul was contaminated; second, his body was transmuted into the sinful flesh; and third, his spirit was deadened. We must be aware of the tactics employed by God's enemy to corrupt man's soul (mind, emotion, and will) so that we may be well equipped to discern the strategies he continues to employ to keep man from receiving and enjoying God and thereby expressing and representing Him.
I) The Human Soul contaminated by Satan's thought, feeling and will
In Genesis 3:1 Satan in the form of a serpent began the process of contaminating man's soul by injecting the human mind with doubt: "Did God really say, You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?" By responding Eve opened the door of her soul to the serpent. The serpent went on to assure Eve, "You shall not surely die!" By this time poison had infiltrated her mind, causing her to doubt God's Word.
Secondly man's emotion came under attack. The contamination of man's emotion led man to begin to dislike God. In this stage, the serpent sowed a seed of resentment into Eve by lying to her about God's motive: "God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil" - Genesis 3:5. This incited Eve's emotions. She felt that God was withholding something good from her. Thus, the human emotion that was created to love God was poisoned instead with an actual dislike for God.
The third stage of the contamination of man's soul took place in his will, enticing man to choose the satanic tree of knowledge of good and evil rather than the divine tree of life. Genesis 3:6 records, "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make oneself wise, she took of its fruit and ate." This consummated the contamination of the human soul.
II) The Human Body Transmuted into the Flesh
The body as originally created by God was a pure vessel created in God's image and likeness. However, this pure body changed in nature into the fallen flesh when a foreign element called Sin was introduced through the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This indwelling sin, now resides in man's flesh. This is why Paul says in Romans 7:5,17, " For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. ………Now then it is no longer I that work it out, but sin that dwells in me." (KJV)
III) The Spirit Deadened
The ultimate consequence of man's fall was that his spirit was deadened. Thus man become insulated from God and the God-contacting function of our spirit was deadened. Therefore, Ephesians 2:1 says, "And you, though dead in your offenses and sins," refers to our fallen, deadened, state before we are saved. Since our body and soul are alive, this verse must certainly refer to our human spirit.
Thus, we can see that each of the three parts of man was damaged by the fall. The entire soul (mind, emotion, and will) was contaminated, the body changed in nature, and the spirit was deadened. This hopeless state of man set the stage for God's salvation to restore man in all of the three parts!
E. God's Salvation for the Three Parts of Man
The three-fold contamination of man is counteracted by God's three-fold purification. God's complete salvation encompasses man's entire being and restores the three parts of man to their proper function. God starts from man's innermost part (the human spirit) and spreads outward through the soul to the body until every effect of the fall is reversed, every trace of the fall is erased, and man is filled with the life of God in each of his three parts.
I) Regeneration in our Spirit
As the first step of God's salvation, He regenerates man's spirit. When we first repent of our sins and receive Christ as our savior, our deadened spirit is made alive. Ephesians 2:5 explains, "Even when we were dead in offenses, [God] made us alive together with Christ." Our new enlivened spirit then begins to sense God and to contact God. Through this contact, not only is our spirit's function restored, but the divine life of God is also added to it (Romans 8:10).
II) Transformation in our Soul
As a result of regeneration in our spirit, a change in life begins to take place in our being. God's life with its divine nature has been added to our human spirit. Following this, God desires that this change of life would continue by gradually spreading into our mind, emotion, and will. It is often found that we may have Christ in our spirit, yet our mind, emotion, and will remain the same. For this reason, we need Christ to grow and expand continually from our spirit into our soul, a process the Bible calls transformation.
Christ carries out this transforming work through the indwelling Holy Spirit, beginning with the renewing of our mind mentioned in Romans 12:2: "be transformed by the renewing of the mind." As a result of this daily renewing process, we begin to think as God thinks, love as He loves, and choose as He chooses. Eventually we will resemble God; that is, we will be conformed to the image of God. This is why 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, "we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit." Thus, through God's salvation of our soul, not only is the contamination of Satan negated, but we are transformed into the glorious image of Christ. This is a lifelong process.
III) Transfiguration of our Body
The culmination of God's salvation process will be the transfiguring of our mortal body, as described in 1 Corinthians 15:52-53: " In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…we will be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." Philippians 3:21 also speaks of our transfiguration: "Who will transfigure the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of His glory.
F. Conclusion
Thus we see that in His salvation, God first regenerated our spirit (John 3:6), now is transforming our soul (
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