Delivered May 29, 2011
Who are we? Except for the question of God, there is no greater question. In the discipline of systematic theology it is called anthropology – not the social science of anthropology, but the theological doctrine of man. What are we? If we answer that question incorrectly, then we get everything else wrong in the spiritual life. I started to answer this question last Sunday by exploring some biblical metaphors. Humans are the creation of God, the image of God, and the words of God.
Today I am going to explore the biblical understanding of human nature as body, soul and spirit. Just as the Christian understanding of God is triune – God as one in three – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – so is man (and I am using the term man in the traditional inclusive sense) three. We are body, soul and spirit. The apostle Paul says in I Thessalonians 5:23 “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.”
We are spirit, soul, and body. This might sound a little strange. Normally we think of the Christian understanding of man as composed of body and soul. But that is not the Hebraic understanding in the Old Testament or in the New Testament. That is the Greek philosophical understanding of man articulated by Plato and developed by Aristotle. It came into Christianity through Thomas Aquinas and has dominated both the Catholic and Protestant theology ever since. But that is not what the Scriptures teach. The Scriptures understand us as three in one. We are made in the image of God, and we are a trinity like God. We are body, soul and spirit. Those are the three points of this sermon today.
I. First the body - the physical dimension of human beings. The creation story found in Genesis 2:7 says, “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.” Here are all three elements. Our bodies are formed from the dust of the ground. God breathed into this physical creation the “breath of life.” The word “breath” in both Hebrew and Greek is the same word that is translated as spirit; it can be translated either way. “And man became a living soul.” Other translations say living being, but the traditional word is soul. The three elements of man are found right here in the creation story.
So let’s look at the body with its five senses through which we experience the world. We all know that these physical bodies are temporary. The Apostle Paul says in our Epistle Lesson, “Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. 17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, 18 while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
Scripture teaches that our bodies are real, unlike some religions and philosophies that teach that they are illusory. Our bodies are real, but only relatively real; they are temporary. The apostle Paul says in I Corinthians, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption.” Our bodies are part of our temporary nature. They are part of who we for the time being, but they are not who we will be eternally. We are embodied creatures, but when it comes down to what is eternally real and important, we are not our bodies.
II. Second is the Soul. Discussion of the soul can be confusing because the word has been so distorted by Greek philosophical dualism. I hesitate to even use the word. The Greek word used in the New Testament is pusche, which is transliterated into English as psyche. We get the word psychology from it. It is our psychological self. It is our personality. The Latin word is persona from which we get the words person, personality and personal. It is who we are as a person. Biblically speaking the soul is not our spiritual essence, which is what people normally think of as the soul; the correct biblical term for that is spirit. The soul or psyche is the personal part. I like to use the word “self.” It is what we generally think of as who we are – our personal identity. Some psychologies will use the word ego to describe this.
The Bible describes this part of us as having three dimensions – thinking, feeling, and willing – the intellectual, the emotional, and the volitional – mind, emotion and will. (If you are interested in exploring this in more depth, the writings of Watchman Nee are helpful. He was a 20th century Chinese Christian, who was imprisoned by the communists in 1952 and died in prison in 1972. His major work is the three volumes “The Spiritual Man” but he has smaller books and biblical commentaries.) Our self or soul is what we normally think of as our identity – as who we really are – this conglomerate of feelings and thoughts and choices. This is what we often assume is the permanent part of us – the part that is going to survive death and reside in heaven and be in the presence of God.
But the more I study scripture, and more I experience God and examine my relationship to God, the less certain I am that this personality is the permanent part of me. The spirit is the permanent part and not the psyche or self. The self has a beginning and will have an end. It is a product of our genetic makeup, our upbringing and our environment. Our personalities change over time; they are subject to mental and physical illness. Brain injury can change a person’s personality. All sorts of mental illnesses can change a person. All sorts of chemical changes and imbalances in the brain and the body can affect the personality. Sometimes we can get caught up in the moment and do something out of character and later we say, “I was not myself.” If we were not ourselves then who were we?
There is an insight in the etymology of the word “person.” “Person” comes from the Latin word persona, which means a mask. It literally means ‘to sound through” and refers to the masks that actors wore and spoke through in Greek and Roman plays. The same actor could play different roles by wearing different masks. The masks could be changed – as in the two masks that are the symbol of the theatre – a happy mask and a sad mask. Shakespeare’s famous line in “As You Like It” has more truth then we might think, “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts….” Then there is his less famous line from the Merchant of Venice, “I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine is a sad one.”
Our personas (our personalities, our psyches, our selves, our souls) are masks. Our personas are roles we play while we are physically alive on earth, but they are not who we really are. They not permanent. They will be set aside at death like an actor sets aside his role and costume. The apostle James wrote: “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.” Much of who we think we are will not survive death. We are not who – or what - we think… or what we feel or what we will. We are not our egos; we are not this role that we have created for ourselves. We are not our selves. That brings we to the third point.
III. The Spirit. We are three – body, soul and spirit. The body is constantly changing – every cell in the body being replaced every seven years – and eventually it cannot sustain itself any longer and will die and return to the ground. God said to Adam in Genesis 3:19 “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.” But our spirits are a different matter. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 “Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed, Or the golden bowl is broken, Or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, Or the wheel broken at the well. Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, And the spirit will return to God who gave it.”
God breathed the spirit of life – the breath of life - into our bodies at our creation. The spirit is what gives these mortal frames life. When the spirit of life comes into this mortal body, then a person is born. The person lives for three score years and ten or more and then dies, and the spirit returns to God. That which is eternally real is spirit. As bodies we are temporary, as spirit we are eternal. Spirit is not born nor does it die. The traditional language is to say that we are immortal soul, but it is more biblical to say we are eternal spirit.
What is spirit? It is that spaciousness at the center of our being. It is who we sense we are and intuitively know wew are – that which does not change from childhood to adulthood. It is the deepest, fullest, indescribable sense of who we know we really are – beneath the masks, names and roles. I like the metaphor of the temple. The Bible says that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. The temple had different courts – different layers, if you will. At the heart of the temple was the Holy of Holies. The spirit is the holy of holies of our bodies. In the Holy of holies in the temple was the ark of the covenant. The lid of the ark had two cherubim facing each other with their wings outstretched. God was said to dwell in the space between the cherubim. In these temples of our bodies, the spirit is the space at the heart of our being. And God as Holy Spirit dwells in that space.
Scripture makes a distinction between Holy Spirit and human spirit. For example Paul says in Romans 8 “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” In speaking about what we normally call heaven, the Book of Hebrews describes it as “Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” and describes it as the abode of “the spirits of just men made perfect.” In essence we are spiritual beings. The French Christian philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a physical experience.”
Who are we? We are spirit embodied in a physical form and personified in a self. We are an earthen vessel (to use Paul’s language) within which is space in which dwells God as Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God dwells in/with our spirit. Through faith in Christ we are united with God in the Holy Spirit. We become one with God while still being ourselves. This is what Jesus prayed for us on Good Friday. In John 17 Jesus prayed these words:
“[I pray] for those who will believe in Me… that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” This is who we are and who we were created to be.
The meaning and purpose of our lives is to be united with God through Christ. This is not just something we wait until we die to know. This is something we are now and experience now and live now. Eternal life is not just a state called heaven that comes after the death of our bodies. Eternal life is now. We live it by submitting our bodies to the Spirit of God. Paul tells us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, which is our spiritual worship. We submit our bodies to God. We submit our selves to God – our minds, our hearts, and our wills. It is summed up by saying that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We surrender it all – every part of us - to God. Our will become one with God. Our minds become one with God. Paul tells us to “have the mind that was also in Christ Jesus.”
There is an amazing passage in I Corinthians 2 where the apostle says, “ Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” 10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. 11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. 16 For “who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”
In short he is saying that our natural human hearts and minds cannot comprehend who we are and what we were meant to be. But the Spirit of God accomplishes this in our lives by the grace of God. Who are we? We are body, soul and spirit. We are earthen vessels in which the Spirit of God lives through us. May the Spirit glorify God through our lives.
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