Day 290 Body, Soul, Spirit?

Here is the thinking that goes into the body, soul, spirit idea that we talked about tonight (from my group leader's email):

The Body-Soul-Spirit is actually foundational in the understanding of who we are in Christ.

We relate to one another through the body and often define ourselves by our physical being. This was always my point of reference as we are most often taught we have a soul and spirit and many times these are used interchangeably.

To understand that we are actually a Spiritual Being first who has a Personality-Soul unique to us and dwells in a body may at first seem like a chicken or egg kind of discussion.  But to understand this concept helps make sense of many scriptures that frankly don’t make sense the other way around.  For example…. In the Beginning when Adam died—what died?  His body kept ticking for about 900 more years, but his spirit died and he was separated from God at the time of the fall.  We are told in John 3 about being born again.  Here Jesus talks to Nicodemus about not being physically re-born but having a new spirit…..That is what we term born again.  We are told we were crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me and the life I live in the body I live by faith in the son of God….Gal 2:20.  How could our physical body be crucified with Christ??  If this is true what was crucified??  Our spirit was crucified as our physical body hasn’t changed (ok it is getting older :).

The importance of our new Spiritual identity is huge because again we often relate to ourselves based on what we see and not on who Christ says we are in spirit.  The My Identity hand out often refers to that.

The Soul is important.  That is our personality—Mind, Will and Emotions.  Did you get the hand outs where we went further into the positively and negatively programmed flesh?  I will attach them to this e-mail.  The Soul is being renewed.  The Bible says to renew our mind.  We do spiritual battle here.  We discussed how Satan often attacks us by sending us messages that are contrary to the truth in our mind.  Ex. “I feel worthless” may be a negative message or “I am a success” may be a positive message that the main emphasis is on the “I” where we operate in the flesh doing life independent from God.  As we realize the truth of our new identity, we can begin to challenge these false messages and say “I am dead to that thought, and I am a new creation, I am a child of God, I have value, my heavenly father loves me…..etc.”  As we don’t buy into the “Lie” and focus on the truth we can begin to see maturity in the day to day areas of life.  We begin to see the world a bit different and God begins to heal the wounds or false ideas about ourselves and replaces them with His truth and gives us His desires and they become our desires as we embrace our relationship with him.  

What think you?