Soul and Spirit, Not the Same Thing

“But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about." Romans 8:9(MSG)

Sometimes life can feel like a climb up the most treacherous terrain. You can’t see the top of the mountain, and there is so much dirt flying and pebbles falling around you that you couldn’t possibly figure out the safest place to plant your feet next. The psalmist said in Psalms 18:33 (KJV), “He maketh my feet like hinds' feet, and setteth me upon my high places.” Isn’t this a wonderful verse?! The psalmist, David, understood that the greater the difficulty, the greater God’s deliverance. David knew this to be tried, tested, and true. A hind is a female deer, and she is beyond sure-footed. I heard a story once that a mother deer treading upward on snowy, steep and rocky terrain will mark the way for the little fawns, her baby deer, that follow behind her. They place their feet in the place that hers have just marked. This is the kind of synchronicity that God has woven into the life of every believer through Christ, but we can’t begin to understand it if we don’t know the difference between the soul and the spirit.

The rear feet of the hind step in precisely the place where her front feet have just been; they are notorious for this precision. If God has created even the animals with this quality, imagine the kind of spiritual precision that He has given to the believer. God has packed us with so many extraordinary goodies that we can’t fathom the magnitude, but when it comes to the power to activate them, this is very definitely a spiritual thang.

The soul is not the spirit. The soul is the place of our hearts, minds, and wills; and the will governs the heart and mind. The heart is the feeling center and the mind is the intellectual or thinking center of our being. Our wills or free-will agency is God’s gift to every person to make independent choices. If we want to see how a soul operates, we need only take a look at Brother Adam and Sister Eve. Perfect in every way at one time, they both enjoyed spectacular communion and fellowship with God through the Holy Spirit. The bible tells us that he communed with them often, but something happened to disconnect them from this lovely existence.

The devil tricked Adam into forking over the tremendous gift of dominion and authority that God had given him. The enemy twisted God’s Word and lied to Adam and Eve, and they believed the enemy’s word more than they believed God. This was their free-will choice in operation. God could have interjected at any time and said, “Now Adam, you know that this is a lie from the pit of hell. Don’t you believe it!!! You trust what I’ve told you!” God didn’t do this. Heavenly Father doesn’t need to argue His case; it’s beneath the honor and glory that He deserves. His Word is true. It stands on it’s on. It doesn’t need a jury, a courtroom, or a lawyer. It simply is.

A lot of us go to God whining when things do not work out for us in our individual situations and circumstances. When we’re young in the Word, His grace covers this kind of immaturity, but not when we’ve gleaned some years on this journey. There will come a point in every believer’s life where you will have to stand on the Word with the kind of surefootedness of a hind. None of this whining and back-and-forth stuff. God will demand nothing short of an unyielding faith from us. Anything less and He will not be pleased.

Disobedience caused sin to enter Adam’s and Eve’s body. They died a spiritual death, and thus disobedience severed the connection and communion they once shared with the Holy Spirit. Sin entered the picture because the two of them willed to sin. They chose it. Sin tells a lie about who we are. We are God’s masterpiece, created in His own image, and disobedience isn’t a part of this equation. Once sin corrupted the soul, communion was lost. This tells us a whole lot about the link between the quality of the soul and the ability to walk in the spirit. Adam and Eve lost their holiness when they willed to sin and distrust God’s Word, and they lost all the privileges afforded by the holiness they once had.

2Corinthians 5:21 (NKJV) tells us, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” The corruption in our souls put us in quite the pickle—no way to restore that precious connection with Heavenly Father after Adam’s and Eve’s debacle. Folks back then could offer the blood sacrifice of first born animals to cover their sin, but this wasn’t a permanent fix. Jesus Christ rescued us from this horrible fate. By confessing our sins, asking for God’s forgiveness, and accepting our blessed Redeemer, Jesus Christ, as our personal Lord and Savior, we are born again!

2Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) tells us, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” This new creation inside us is not a newly created soul, but a newly created spirit. The soul remains the same after our new birth reality. Heavenly Father will not violate the free-will agency of the soul. He will not overstep our wills and start pouring new thoughts, confessions, and behaviors into us. Through the Apostle Paul, God has given us instruction for this Christ-like living. Ephesians 4:22-24 (NIV) says, "You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." You and I must surrender our old ways to the Lord, and put on the new. This isn’t a grievous process, but an extraordinary one. God will reward our efforts to align our minds, hearts, and wills with HIS Word and Will.

Romans 8:9-11(The Message) says it best: “But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!”

As you live upon this earth you are working out your soul’s salvation. If you’ve accepted Christ you are born again and you have eternal life, but it is your continuing work to align your soul with the example of Christ. The spirit is God’s gift to you. He is the Spirit of Truth and he will help you develop your soul to the point of being more like Christ. He is teaching you to walk in his nature rather than the nature of the flesh. Life on earth is your only opportunity to do this, and the condition of your soul when you transition from this life is the sum total of your commitment to either honor the gifts of God or not.

Your soul is the essence of your personality; it’s the thing that makes you uniquely you, but your spirit is from God. It can be no surprise to you, then, that your spirit is the highest part of your triune being. It is in the spirit that we live and have our being. He quickens our mortal bodies, and helps us to develop intimacy in our relationships with God through Jesus Christ. The body, soul, and spirit are all God’s masterpieces and extreme gifts from Him, but there is no question that our body is the shell, and the soul is our consciousness, and both must be led by the spirit. ■

The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.