By Talemoh Wycliffe Dah, MD
Besides the agnostics, atheists and probably the Jewish sect of the Sadducees, most belief systems, including Christians, various African Traditional Religions, Eastern religions, cults, etc, do not only know the physical realm but believe and relate with some spiritual realm. This piece attempts to explain the two realms in relation to questions as to which is the real one, which is superior or which controls the other, using the tripartite nature of man. Further discussions will use the Christian concepts like what part of man gets born again and which part makes man to be inclined to selfishness, greed and other evils, earning it the name ‘The Flesh’ in the Bible. The communication is for everybody, including those who do not believe in two existential realms.
From the basics, we know that man (i.e the human being) is a tripartite being consisting of spirit, soul and body (1). It is not difficult to explain that the body consists of that which was formed after the male and female gametes fuse at fertilisation, nurtured in the womb for nine months, born as a baby and grows to be an adult. The physical body is your real identity in the physical world. Parts of it can be used for your sole identity like thumb prints, retina, gait and even genes. Every part of it is the human flesh and it perceives things from the environment (the natural world) through its senses of sight, smell, touch/feeling, taste and hearing. For lesser animals like the worm, response will be avoidance of noxious things or getting towards pleasant things or stimuli. Your body started in this physical world and will end either when it putrefies in the grave or when it is dropped for a spiritual one at the translation of rapture, because flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (2).
The human flesh responds to the environment also, but in doing that it gets more complex as it needs signals or instructions originating from the mind which processed the stimuli and decides the line of action. Again, it is getting close to pleasant things or avoiding unpleasant ones, generally. But because the processing may lead to other desires or purposes, you may be hungry and smell or see good food but you will not eat it because you are fasting, shy or it is prohibited by your culture or religion. You may be hurt by fire but can still jump into it because you need to save someone burning inside it. Your mind, intellect, desires and reasoning come to play; they are parts of your soul. If we were to say which of the three (spirit, soul and body) is the real you, it will be your soul. According to the Bible, your soul has been there before your conception (3) and will be there for eternity.
Your spirit connects you to the spiritual realm and gives identity to you there. It determines the real you in the spiritual realm, together with your soul. It has capacity to influence the soul which in turn can influence the physical body. Influence can follow the reverse direction. In its ‘neuter’ form the spirit is supposed to be innocent according to human reasoning; thus we allude to age of accountability. But the fall of man imbues every person (soul) with a guilt (sin) status, separating him/her from God. So your spirit is faulty, guilty, from birth. As you grow, it increasingly becomes more influenced by evil because it is in its nature to be so influenced, causing you to sin and live in sin. The addition of sin to it makes it have more control over your soul which decides what your body does.
The devil is evil, and his influence over the soul is complete, such that the soul (you) are a slave to it, often made to do terrible things and endure harsh treatment and frequent punishment. You often love to sin, and even when you hate it you must engage in it. So the scriptures describe it as desperately wicked and incapable of changing/helping itself (4). Incessant ill treatment and assignments (burden) has battered the soul and placed it under a difficult yoke. It is miserable! Its subservience to the (evil) spirit is so intimate and inseparable that they are one. In this state we are doomed and destined to eternal separation from God. Some evil spirits can even control/occupy your soul through your spirit. It is such spirit that, when driven (cast) out from you, according to Jesus Christ, comes back with seven others more wicked than itself if it finds the place is empty (5). It is pertinent to note here that the spirit whose presence would have rendered the place occupied and not vacant is the Holy Spirit.
When scriptures describe man and make promises, exhortation, warnings, deliverance, atonement, redemption, etc, they may refer to the whole man or to one specific part (spirit, soul or body). This may bring confusion sometimes but a deeper look may make it clearer.
We can now attempt a brief explanation of Christ’s work on the cross for you. You deserved to die, He was substituted for you (6). ‘You’ here is the eternal you, your eternal identity which is the soul and the spirit. You were the devil’s property but He paid to redeem you (soul). Your sick, battered and overburdened soul was healed by His stripes (7). The healing part of this promise first concerned your soul before your body. He took away your heavy burden and harsh yoke and gave you his light burden and easy yoke (8). Your sins were too much and you were irredeemable but His blood atoned for you (9), for without the shedding of the blood, there is no atonement/remission of sin (10). All these have been done, but the reality only comes when you are born again.
Born again (11) refers to being given birth to a second time. The first is the physical birth. The second birth is for human beings on this earthly part of eternity and is their only means of belonging back to God. We have said that your soul was there before you (your physical body) were formed and born physically into this world on earth. When your soul in this physical body realises its sin and helplessness, believes and accepts (that is, using the will, the intellect) that Christ was raised from the dead and then instructs the physical body (mouth) to voice out (confess) Him as Lord, it is a direct rebellion to the lordship and ownership of evil (the devil) (12). Like marrow from bone (13) your spirit is taken out and replaced completely by God’s Spirit, the Holy Ghost.
When you are born again, Christ’s work on the cross becomes your reality. The Spirit in you is completely new; thus you are a new creature, and all things (pertaining to your spirit and the ownership, control (voluntary) and state of affairs of your soul) have become new (14). The soul is still your old self – what changes is the ownership, healing it got, designation, and its potential destiny. It is like a poor, sick and malnourished child adopted by a very wealthy person. He is still that child, but he is wealthy and not poor. He is still the same, but has a new parent. His future was bleak, but now he will eat the best food, go to the best school, live in a good house and have a good future and inheritance. He will no longer be hit and forced to labour but he is given lighter chores which he takes pleasure in doing.
It is the soul that develops faith, which comes by hearing God’s word (15) and lives and grows by it. That is, as food, water and oxygen are necessary for the physical body, so is faith necessary for the soul. It is of the soul that the Bible says the sincere milk of the word should be desired for growth because the newly born again spirit in union with the soul is young, even though the soul has been there (16). More and deeper knowledge of this word and experience in the leading of the spirit brings maturity (17). It is also of the soul that the Bible says to put off anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication, etc, and put on the new man (18). When the Bible talks of fleshly desires (19), it means the soul’s earthly desires that are achievable through the physical body, often not in tandem with what God wants for you, thereby constituting or leading to sin. But when the Bible talks about the flesh, it refers to the soul, including a redeemed soul because it has the tendency of remembering fleeting pleasures of sin or any ungodliness. Concerning these, the Christian is advised to abstain from them or, in case of fornication, to flee (20).
Certain things war against the soul (21). The soul is eternal, and dies when it is eternally separated from God, the so called second death (22), which will happen if the physical body dies without you accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, or when you renege your pledge of loyalty to Him as a Christian (23). The soul on earth can get dirty by sin and will need purging again by the blood of Christ shed on the cross, which you can have when you genuinely repent because grace still abounds (24). Living in this state of uncleanliness (sin) is dangerous because when death of the physical body comes, the soul cannot get to heaven in an unrepentant state. There is no grace after the death of the physical body. It is like you have a green card but you cannot enter a country because of a crime you committed that earned you a ban or its withdrawal.
The physical body (colour, tribal marks, height, physical disability if any, stammering, etc) does not change as such. However, it gains from the change in the soul by not being abused by alcohol, drugs, consequence of fighting, etc. It also gains by divine protection, provision and guidance you receive. It is the physical body of a redeemed soul controlled by an entirely new spirit. It is an asset to the soul and spirit because it is their housing and vehicle to achieve God’s purpose on earth and needs to be nourished for that. When at death it falls off, it is gain to the believer (soul and spirit) and something precious to God (25). But, conversely, it can be a liability to the believer when you have to use much resources to cater for it in sickness or when it acts, through the senses, to tempt and occasion disobedience to God. The body needs air, food and water for nourishment. It is programmed to exist for a specific length of time, but can be damaged and ‘killed’ before that time by violence, disease or hunger. It exists by the rules of the physical realm which may sometimes be altered by divine interference through grace and prayer, but this is not an inalienable right and certainly not invariable.
For a physically living child of God, that is, a Christian on earth, the Bible says that we are ambassadors (26) and pilgrims (27) whose citizenship is heaven (28). That is, the world we live in (earth, physical realm) is a real realm for us and heaven (spiritual realm) is also a real realm, but the latter is our home and ‘country’. We operate in both realms. Even juju men operate in two realms (physical and spiritual) in their own right and often understand this reality more than many Christians. Majorly, the happenings on earth are determined from the spiritual realm but men can instruct the spiritual to change course on earth, the juju men doing that to harm others or for selfish reasons while the Christians doing that for the good of mankind, for God’s will to be done on earth and so that God will be glorified. For the Christian, it is a heritage privilege (what you bind or decree on earth is that good in heaven (29), and it is free. For the juju men, it is attainable at a price which on the surface may be an animal sacrifice or the loss of a loved one or body function, but in reality it is the person’s soul. For a Christian, it is pleasing to God but for juju men, it is sin against God.
In conclusion, man has a tripartite nature and there are really two realms, for the Christian as well as for every living individual. The spirit world is the puppeteer of the physical world. When there is a discordance between the two realities or realms, the spiritual reality is the right one for anybody, believer or unbeliever! For the believer, the physical body sees the fact (science), but the spirit man sees the truth (faith). They should align, but when they don’t, he must choose the spiritual reality. Science and truth are not opposed; it is just that the former is yet to have probes that will discover the latter.
REFERENCES
1. Gen 2:7, 1Cor 12:12-16, 1Thess. 5:2
2. 1Cor 15:50-52
3. Jer 1:5
4. Jer 17:9
5. Matt 12:43-45
6. Heb 9:28
7. 1Pet 2:24
8. Matt 11:28
9. Isaiah 53:6
10. Heb 9:12, 22
11. John 3:3
12. Rom10:9-10
13. Heb 4:12
14. 2Cor 5:17
15. Rom 10:17
16. 1Pet 2:2-4
17. 1Cor 14:20
18. Col 3:8-10
19. Gal 5:16
20. 1Cor 6:18
21. 1Pet 2:11
22. Rev 21:8
23. 2Pet 2:21, Heb 10:39
24. 1John 2:1
25. Psalm 116:15
26. 2Cor 5:20
27. Heb 11:13
28. Phil 3:20
29. Matt 18:18
● Dah, a consultant gynaecologist lives in Abuja, and sent this via talemohwdah@ yahoo.com
● Reactions to this article are welcome. Please send to WhatsApp on +234 802 219 8060 or e-mail to info@everyday.ng
●Featured image is courtesy of perfectingofthesaints.com
