Your physical body cannot exist without a soul. It is the psychological element that makes up your personality and gives you your identity. Your soul has three basic functions:
- Your mind
- Your emotions
- Your will
Your Mind: Thinking, Reasoning, and Choosing
God gave you the ability to think, to reason, and to make decisions. Reason is related to the brain, for it is only as the brain operates that reason occurs. No other creature on earth has this ability.
Raymond C. Stedman, in his series on Understanding Man, refers to this ability as God’s supreme gift to mankind:
[quote author=\”Raymond C. Stedman\”]Our mental faculties are a tremendous gift from God. Basically they are the ability to reflect on circumstances and facts, and relate our attitude or activity to these. There is a logicality that must prevail. The question of the mind is always: Is the action about to be taken, or the attitude about to be formed, a rational one? Is it consistent with the facts? In many respects this amazing ability to reason, to exercise rationality, is God\’s supreme gift to mankind. Rationality demands that the whole man become involved, that one acts as a total being. Irrationality, or insanity, is the action of a person based on only part of his being — only his emotions, or even the direct activity of the will, apart from the exercise of mind or emotions. But rationality insists that the total man be involved, therefore the mind must come into play.
Your Emotions: Feelings and Desire for Fellowship
The emotional part of your human nature is the seat of your feelings or sentiments. God also gave you a desire for fellowship, to be with others. Just as God desires to be with each of us, God never intended for you to be alone.
18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” 19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. Genesis 2:18-22 (NIV)
In verse 18 God said “It is not good for man to be alone.” Why did He say that? Loneliness is undoubtedly the most widespread source of human misery in the world today, and is now thought to be the single greatest cause of suicide in this country.
Your Will: Ability to Decide and Choose
God gave you your will, not just an animalistic will to survive, but, a free will (volition) meaning the ability to say yes or no. The soul is the seat of your will (our power to choose) and no other creature on earth has this power.
Think of your will as the king or queen before whom all of your life’s desires must appear. The king or queen (your will) makes the decisions as to whether you will or will not do something. So in your life your will is supreme and has the power to reject the pleadings of your Spirit if you choose.
God also gave you a “moral compass” which means that you already have knowledge of what is good from God’s perspective. Have you ever felt that small voice deep down inside of you that makes you feel guilty when you go against your “moral compass”?
Your soul is eternal. That old adage that you can’t take it with you doesn’t apply to your soul. This is the one thing that goes with you when you die, and remains after your body has been placed in your grave. Every human being that has ever lived has had a soul, and all of those souls are still in existence today somewhere. And that somewhere is either in heaven or in hell.
Your Spirit
God activates the body and soul by breathing into man the very essence of Himself.
7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. Genesis 2:7 (NIV)
The spirit:
- Joins with the body to activate and electrify the inactive soul so that it begins to function.
- Provides you with the ability to comprehend and understand.
- Is the \’real you\’, the very core of your being, the essential seat of your existence.
- Is the intangible part of man that pulls all of the elements of the soul together enabling you to think, feel, love, design, create, and enjoy music, humor, and art.
- Provides us with “free will.”
In Proverbs 20:27 we find that “The human spirit is the lamp of the Lord that sheds light on one’s inmost being.”