Man's Essential Makeup

Tonight we're actually at the halfway point of our study on biblical anthropology. If you don't mind, go ahead and flip over your sheet to the back. I want to review where we've been. In week one, we looked at man as a creation of God. We discussed how man is uniquely created. God created man as a creature, meaning that we're wholly dependent on God for life, for breath, for everything. But He also created us as persons in His personal image, meaning that we have a rational soul and the ability to think and contemplate. And we have the ability to act upon those contemplations, so we're resolute and we can be relational as well. That separates us from the mere brute of the field.

In week three, we looked at man as a child of God. And Caleb taught us how, in a natural sense, we're all children of God in the sense that He originated us and created us. But we can become His special children of God through regeneration, right? When we're born again and born from above and adopted into His family, we then have the right to call upon Him as our Father and Christ as our elder brother when we're united to Christ.

Tonight we're on man in his essential makeup. If you look at any good systematic theology book, it'll have a chapter on man's essential makeup. If you Google the term, you'll get something quite different. You'll learn about bronzer and concealer and guyliner. They have a different definition of man's essential makeup. That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about men's cosmetics. We're talking about what makes up humanity. What are our parts? What are our pieces, if you will? If you have ever put together a piece of furniture that came in a box, like something you buy at Walmart, you know normally you have a parts list, right? Then you have a diagram of how you put all these parts together. Well, that's what we're talking about tonight. What makes up humanity? What parts did God create us with? Let's begin by looking at Bible point number one.

Mankind has a twofold nature. The very first blank is two. Mankind has a twofold nature, both material and immaterial. The material part of man is referred to as his body. God created our bodies first and then breathed life into them. Our bodies must not be depreciated because they are material, but instead revered, for they were created by God.

All throughout the history of Christian belief, there has been a denigration of the body, because people assumed that since it's material, it's lowly. It's earthly. It must be the seed of sin. It must be something that is not of value.

And that is one of the things that we see even reflected in the New Testament when we see Paul's epistles. He often faced an early form of Gnosticism. And the Gnostics were these Greek philosophers who had this secret knowledge that they infiltrated the church with, and they said that the body was a prison house for the soul. In other words, the soul is eternal. The soul is immortal, but not the body. And so it really didn't matter what one did with the body. You could be as corrupt and vile as you wanted to with the body. It didn't matter because that's material and it's going to pass away, but the soul is what is most important.

That's not the witness of Scripture. Scripture says that God created our bodies and that's part of the constituency of humanity. That's one of our pieces, if you will. We are created with a body. Look at Genesis 2:7: "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 being" — both body and spirit. Those are our two parts. Genesis 1:31 says, "Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good." And that includes the body, right? This is after the sixth day of creation that God says this. He created the body very good. There's nothing evil about our bodies. God wonderfully designed and crafted our bodies.

"Very good, so evening and morning were the sixth day." Flip over on the back. Let's look at reference number one. This is from Psalm 139.

This is such a beautiful Psalm. In verses 13 through 15, we often read this on a Sanctity of Life Sunday when we're talking about the special nature of humanity that God created so wonderfully. It says, "For You formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." Now the word fearful doesn't mean that you're scared. It means awful — in the sense that you're in awe of God. God made us in an awesome manner, awesome and wonderfully made. "Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth."

The human body is an amazing thing, right? If you've studied science and biology, especially with your kids in homeschool — I know many of you have — all the functions of our body just totally blow you away. There's no way we evolved from slime. There's no way that we came about by chance. We were fearfully and wonderfully made by God Himself, right?

Let's look back on the front. The application for number one is this — is it important to care for physical needs? And I'm going to ask you that: is it important to care for physical needs? Yes. Exactly right. Can you think of some examples where Christ Jesus in His earthly ministry cared for people's physical needs? He healed people. He healed people, exactly right. People who were sick, He made them well, right? He fed the 5,000. Yes, He fed the 5,000. Then again, He fed 4,000 — and we know from Scripture that that was probably just the men, not including the women and children. And remember the 5,000 were with Him all day long. He had been teaching them and didn't want to send them away hungry, right? He cared for their body as well as their soul.

I'll never forget a man who, when I was a boy, was a missionary to the British West Indies. By this time he was getting advanced in his age, and when he'd come stateside, he came to our church and would raise money and speak at other churches. At this point he had some health problems, and I had just turned 16. And so I was his Miss Daisy driver, so to speak. I'd drive him wherever he needed to go. One day he needed to pick up some things at Kroger's. Right next to Kroger's was a Subway, and there was a homeless man out front. The man said, "Please, can I have some money to buy me some food?"

This man, this godly man, he says, "Sure." He says, "Are you hungry? When's the last time that you ate?" He says, "It's been a while." He says, "I'll be glad to buy you a sandwich and a meal, because I care about your body. But I also care about your soul. Let's talk about that first." And he proceeded to give the gospel to this man. This man was a Christian, or claimed to be a Christian, and had fallen on some hard times, right? But he claimed to have placed his faith in Christ.

He got a sandwich and we had some conversation, and we prayed with him, because that's being Christlike, right? To care not just about their soul, but to care about their body as well.

What are some other examples in Scripture where you see this? Yes, Hannah? Raising people from the dead. Oh yes, Lazarus — raising people from the dead, right? Not just for Lazarus' sake, but for Mary and Martha's sake. And for Christ's own sake, right? Because remember, Christ wept because He loved Lazarus, right? And that speaks to the human need for community. We have loved ones, people that we care about. So we see all throughout Scripture physical needs being prioritized, right? Even our Lord Jesus in His model prayer — remember when His disciples said, "Teach us how to pray," He says, "Give us this day our daily bread." It's something that we need. And the Lord knows that. Jesus said, "Which of you, being evil as fathers, if your child asks for bread, are you going to give him a stone? If he asks for a fish, are you going to give him a serpent or a scorpion? No. How much more is your heavenly Father going to provide for you?" So our physical needs are very important.

As Christians, how can we model Christ and care for people's physical needs? How about when someone's sick, right? When someone is not well — I know many of you here in the church, because I've seen it — you've brought people food, right? That can be a great comfort, a great assistance. Sometimes you don't even feel like cooking when you're sick, right? When someone's grieving, isn't it nice to have comfort from food, a home-baked meal? That's definitely a way that you can provide for people's needs, right? Here in our church, we have our audiovisual department and we have headphones for the service if you can't hear very well, so you can hear God's Word. And we have those available to our congregation. There are so many different ways that we can meet people's physical needs, and it's never to be denigrated, because God made the body fearfully and wonderfully, and that's part of who we are as human beings.

Let's look at Bible point number two.

Mankind has a twofold nature, both material and immaterial. The immaterial part of man is referred to as his soul or spirit. These two words are used interchangeably in Scripture. The term soul and spirit are used interchangeably in Scripture, and Scripture never defines soul and spirit separately, okay? In other words, the way that the Bible uses the word soul and the way that the Bible uses the word spirit — they're interchangeable, okay? There's not a distinction made in Scripture's doctrinal teaching between the two.

The spirit is that immaterial part of humanity, right? The part that you can't see. We can see the body, but we can't see the spirit, right? Ecclesiastes 12:7 says, "Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it." God fashioned man originally out of the clay, the dust, and He breathed life into it, and one day our body will dissipate if we die before Jesus comes, right? And our spirit will return to God — that's the immaterial part of humanity.

Luke 23:43 — this is Jesus on the cross after the thief said, "Remember me, have mercy on me." He was essentially calling out to Christ to be his Savior, and Jesus said to him, "Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in paradise." Well, that day, the thief's body was still hanging on the cross. If they gave him a burial, it would have been buried. But how could he be with Christ in paradise? Through his soul, right — his soul, his spirit, that immaterial part of man.

Flip over on the back. Genesis 35:18 is talking about Rachel, of course: "And so it was, as her soul was departing, for she died, that she called his name Ben-Oni, but his father called him Benjamin."

When we die, our soul departs from our body — that's physical death, right? The separation of our body from our soul. I have over the years done quite a few funerals. I've preached at least 30 funerals, and many of them open caskets, and when you look at a loved one who's died, the soul's not there anymore, right? The body doesn't look animated. It doesn't even look like the same person. It has a vague resemblance to them, but the soul has left, right?

1 Kings 17:21 — remember when Elijah had prophesied that there would be no water in the land, and King Ahab was out to kill him, and he went and God protected him and provided for him by a brook, and He sent ravens to do what? To feed him, because God cared about his physical body, right? Eventually that brook dried up, and God sent him to who? To a widow, right? And the widow was living with her son, and all she had was a little bit of oil, a little bit of meal or flour. She says, "I have enough just to make one meal, and we're going to eat it. My son and I, we're going to die. We're starving to death." And what did God tell her through Elijah? He said, "Don't worry. God's going to provide." And sure enough, God provided. There was always enough food in that household, but then her son died.

As a widow, you would be dependent on your son for a man to rise up and provide for you when he matured, right? To take care of her. And here she was saying, "God, what have You done? You sent this man Elijah, and now You've taken my son." And Elijah was grieved by this, of course, and the Spirit of God moved him. We see this in 1 Kings 17:21 through 22. And he stretched himself out on the child three times, almost as if he was trying to trade his own life for this child's, right? Taking his body and pressing up against the body of this dead child. And he cried out to the Lord. There was no magic in his stretching out of his body, but he was calling out to the Lord, the one who is the ground of all existence — all being and all life is in Christ. And he said, "Oh Lord, my God, I pray, let this child's soul come back to him."

Then the Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child came back to him, and he revived, right? Because we're not just a body — we're a body and a soul, right? James 2:26 says, "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." The body and the spirit belong together. The two parts make up humanity.

Now I mentioned that spirit and soul are used interchangeably in Scripture. Whenever someone tells you something, you should say, "Chapter and verse — show me. Show me from the Scripture where that's so." Genesis 41 says, "Now it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled." This is someone being troubled in spirit. I believe this is Pharaoh, if I recall correctly. Psalm 42:6 is David saying, "Oh my God, my soul is cast down within me." His soul was troubled. Spirit and soul are used interchangeably. They are speaking of the same immaterial substance of man. In the New Testament, John 12:27, our Lord and Savior says, "Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour? But for this purpose I came to this hour." So Jesus said, "My soul is troubled," because He knew that He would be facing the cross, right?

Matthew 20:28 says, "Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life" — the word life there in the Greek is the word for soul, okay? It's psyche. It's just translated as life here. "Give His life" — or give His soul — "as a ransom for many."

Then we see Matthew 27:50: "When Jesus had cried out again with a loud voice, He yielded up His spirit."

Again, spirit and soul are being used interchangeably in the Scriptures to describe the same immaterial part of man.

Application for number two: Is it important to care for spiritual needs? We asked earlier, "Is it important to care for physical needs?" Is it important to care for spiritual needs? Yes. Can you give any examples from Scripture that you can think of where Christ tended to people's spiritual needs?

Amen. That's the best example right there. When Christ died, He died to save our souls, right? Our greatest spiritual need — to reconcile us to God, to remove our sin and our guilt from us, to impart to us a new life, to share His very life with us, the life of Christ. That's a great example.

What are some other examples where Christ cared for people's spiritual needs? Well, He preached and taught to many people. Amen. He gave people the gospel. He told people in the Beatitudes how to live a life pleasing to God, right? Those are things that our soul needs, right. How about us? How can we care for one another's souls?

Praying for souls. Amen. Praying is a great way to care for their soul — to pray for their encouragement, to pray for their attitude, to pray for their inner strength.

Evangelize. There you go. You have an opportunity to participate in this tomorrow and Friday and Saturday with Dr. Anthony. This will be a chance for you to go and learn from a seasoned evangelist how to share your faith, not just in the classroom, but practically, too, by experience. And again, if you've never done this before, it's not something that you have to be proficient at. You can go and watch. And it's something that catches on — it's contagious as you do it.

Give other people Bibles to spread God's Word — yes, to make disciples of people, right? When you are teaching someone how to follow Christ from the Scripture, teaching them good biblical doctrine, aren't you ministering to their soul? Exactly right. Read the Bible and sing. And give yourself in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in your hearts to the Lord.

Hand out tracts. There you go. This past weekend, you ladies gave a beautiful example of ministering to people's souls by having a ladies' conference, right? All the work that went into facilitating that — from registrations to name tags, to providing food, to greeting, and all the planning, picking up people at the airport, shuttling them back and forth. Those are all things that minister to people's souls. And we wouldn't be able to do what happened this past weekend without the individual work and effort of each and every person, right?

Let's look at Bible point number three.

Scripture is careful to distinguish the spirit of man from the spirit of God. Man's spirit is a distinct entity from God's spirit. Mankind and God are always distinguished in their persons. So the first blank is man, the second blank is God, the third blank is persons.

Christians — when we receive Christ, when we confess our sins, turn from our sins, and put our trust in Jesus Christ, we are born again. We are born from above. We are made new. We are regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit seals us. He comes in to live within us, right?

But we're still separate persons. We are united to Christ through faith by His Spirit, but we're not absorbed by the Holy Spirit, right? The Holy Spirit is always going to be Creator, and we are always going to be the creature, right?

So the Bible distinguishes between God's Spirit and man's spirit. Much confusion can take place when you obliterate that distinction. There's always a distinction between the infinite and the finite, right? Numbers 16:22 says, "Oh God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin and You be angry with all the congregation?" This is Moses and Aaron when there was the rebellion of the sons of Korah — they fall on their face before God and intercede for the people, asking for mercy. And they call upon Him as the God of all spirits because He is the one who created us, right? And we are both body and spirit, but He's distinct from us. We do not believe in pantheism — that all is God, right? — that I'm God, you're God, the trees are God, and we're happy-go-lucky. That's not what Scripture teaches.

Flip over on the back. Verse number three on the back is Zechariah 12:1: "The burden of the word of the Lord against Israel. Thus says the Lord, who stretches out the heavens and lays the foundation of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him." Just as God created our bodies, He forms our spirits, right? And God is not created — He's not talking about Himself. God is the unmoved mover. He is the fount of all being. So He's not talking about Himself; He's talking about us. We are created creatures. Hebrews 12:9: "Furthermore, we have human fathers who corrected us and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?"

So God's Spirit is distinct from the human spirit. The application is this: how do you know God and relate to Him? If God is a personal being and we are personal beings, that means that we are both relational, right?

Because we are separate persons, God's Spirit is distinct from ours. How do we know God and how do we relate to Him?

Scripture — you're right. The Scripture tells us by faith, right? We comprehend that the things were made by things which are unseen, right? God made this world and everything in it. Scripture says that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by what? The Word of God — exactly right. So we can know God through His Word. But also, how can we know God?

Through the Holy Spirit. Both the Word and the Spirit always work together. Just as I am conversing with you right now and we can have a conversation, in a very real sense the Holy Spirit can speak to our hearts, right? He witnesses within us that we are indeed the children of God. But His words will always align with Holy Scripture, okay? If you say that the Holy Spirit put some blasphemous action or thought into your head, that is not from the Holy Spirit, right?

The old maxim from the Reformation is still true today: never the Word without the Spirit, never the Spirit without the Word, right? We're sanctified by the Holy Spirit, right? He's the one who makes us more and more Christlike. But what did Jesus also say? "Sanctify them by Your truth; Your Word is truth." Word and Spirit work together.

Bible point number four.

Mankind's twofold nature, consisting of body and soul, exists as a vital and organic unity. The first blank is vital — V-I-T-A-L — which means necessary, living. The second blank is organic — O-R-G-A-N-I-C. Man was made to exist and act as a unity — that's the third blank. Man is held accountable to God for both his body and soul.

First of all, man exists with body and soul together as a vital union. What I mean by that is this: we were created by God to walk this earth with a body and a soul, right? As I mentioned earlier, if you separate the body from the soul, that's physical death, right?

Hollywood has an active imagination, and if you've ever seen a zombie movie, what is that? That's a body without a soul, right? Goes around eating brains or whatever, right? Totally fictional and absurd, because a body can't be animated — a body can't live without a soul, right?

Likewise, you'll see Hollywood movies about ghosts, which they say are disembodied spirits — the spirits or ghosts roaming around because they've lost their body. How nuts that is, right? Scripture never teaches that. The body and soul are one unit, okay? They exist in a vital unity.

They also exist together in an organic unity. That may not be a word that we use a lot, but in theology it's used quite a lot, and this is what it means. Something that's an organism, or something that's organic, is one whole — one whole that's comprised of individual parts that function reciprocally.

For example, I have a body, right? My body is one whole body, right? But it has a lot of parts. I don't know if they still sell it or not, but I remember for a long time Unilever, the household product company, had a soap called Dove — and they called it for your 2,000 body parts. I don't know if we have 2,000 body parts or not; I've never counted. But don't all the parts of our bodies function together reciprocally, right?

Our church is an organic entity, right? We are one spiritual body, the church in Christ. But yet don't we have individual members? And don't we all serve to edify one another? Some are prophets, some apostles. We all have different gifts, and those gifts are given for the edification, for the building up of the church. It's what marriage is supposed to be, right? To become one — it's an organic unity, but the husband lives for the wife. He lives to wash her, to edify her, to protect her, to provide for her. And the wife lives for the husband, to be his helpmate, right? And the two together form one organic whole.

Well, the same is true of the soul and the body. To try to think of the soul and body as separate — that's never what God intended it to be. Death, the separation of the body from the soul, only came about because of what? Sin. Sin, exactly right. And we're going to study that in a few weeks when we get to hamartiology, the fall of man, the doctrine of sin.

Because we are referred to as a vital and organic unity — both body and soul — we are never, ever, ever addressed as separate parts in our culpability for sin. In other words, you can't say, "Well, my body sinned, but my spirit didn't sin. I'm all right," you know?

Or the other way around — you can't say, "Well, my spirit is wicked, but my body — yeah, I sinned in my spirit, but not in my body." No, when you sin, every part of you is involved in that sin, right?

Think about how this works even in the very function of our bodies. Can your soul affect your body? Yeah. What happens when you carry around bitterness and anger? Yeah. Dr. Anthony, have you ever seen teeth ground from bitterness? Yeah, exactly. People carry anger and bitterness and tension, right? You know, if you are anxious about things all the time, you know what it can do to your heart? All kinds of physical stressors, right?

So definitely your soul can affect your body. Have you ever been embarrassed and your face gets flushed, right? That's your soul acting upon your body, right? Because they are one.

How about the other way around? Can your body affect your soul? Yeah. Have you ever been in great pain? Have you ever felt — you know, like Job's wife saying, "Why don't you just curse God and die?" — you know, it can lead you to be out of your mind. I have a friend, he's a godly man, loves the Lord, huge man, very large, physically imposing in size — looks like a football player. And he deals with horrible, debilitating migraines. And when he gets those, he just wishes he could crawl into a dark place and die sometimes. Your body can affect your soul as well, right? Because we exist in a vital organic unity.

Genesis 2:16 through 17 says, "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'"

When Adam and Eve ate of that fruit, was that not their bodies physically sinning against the Lord? But was it also not their soul — their soul that animates the body, putting that body to wicked purposes, to mistrust God, and to rebel against Him? You can't separate the culpability between the body and the soul.

Flip over on the back. Matthew 10:28, our Lord Jesus says, "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear Him" — speaking of God — "who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

Right? At the last judgment, the sea is going to cast forth her dead. All those who have died and exist as spirits in heaven will be reunited with their bodies, both the just and the unjust, and they will stand before God. The wicked will be cast with body and soul — both their body and their soul will be punished for all eternity. Right?

Those of us who are in Christ, our body will be regenerated, renewed, and perfected, along with our soul, and we'll be able to experience all the heavenly bliss of the new creation in our bodies, right? Just as Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection. Right? So we cannot separate the body from the soul. That's not the way that man was meant to relate to God or to this universe.

Application for number four: How are you the temple of the Lord? The Spirit of God lives within us. Yes, the Spirit of God lives within you. So wherever you go as a Christian, are you not carrying the Holy Spirit with you?

Paul talks about this in Corinthians. He says, "God forbid that you should go in to a harlot," because you're one spirit with God. You're united to Christ. So in doing so, you're dragging God along with your debauchery. How awful that is to think about that way. But it's very, very real. As a Christian, you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, right? So we exist as God's dwelling place. So all we do should be holy. All we do should be reverential. All that we do should be to reconcile men to God, right? Because God has provided the reconciliation for man to come to Him through Jesus Christ.

Bible point number five.

This is a big word here: the trichotomous view. You've probably never used that word before. When we talk about man having two parts, body and soul, we mean man has a dichotomous makeup, meaning two. But there is a view that's been in Christianity called the trichotomous view of mankind. It teaches that man has a threefold nature — so that's the first blank — a threefold nature consisting of body, soul, and spirit.

The trichotomous view makes a distinction that Scripture does not make between soul and spirit, and treats them as separate entities, just as the body is a separate entity. This teaching has its roots in Greek philosophy. If you've ever studied Plato, you know this is where that originated. And Christianity arose from a Greco-Roman culture, right? With a common language — Koine Greek during the time of Jesus — and Plato had great influence. He still has great influence today, right? If you've studied anything in philosophy or geometry, you will have encountered the influence of Plato, of Socrates, of Aristotle — these men who have long been dead. The teaching has its roots — that's the second blank — in Greek philosophy, and had some adherence among the early church fathers. There were a few of the early church fathers — these were essentially the disciples of the disciples, those who lived within the first 300 years of Christ.

It was refuted — that's the third blank — very early, due to its lack of biblical support and its prevalence in undergirding heretical doctrines. Heretical doctrines means doctrines that are against orthodoxy, that are against the accepted teachings of Christianity. It has — fourth blank — regained influence today in the charismatic movement. And it has actually seeped into evangelicalism broadly through the charismatic movement.

I have some bullet points here. Trichotomy teaches that man has three distinct parts: body, which is called soma. I don't know if any of y'all go to malls anymore — I haven't been to a mall in years, I order everything online. I remember when the kids were little, we used to go, and there was a ladies' undergarment store called Soma. Soma is Greek for body. All the husbands would be sitting outside looking at their phones waiting for their wives to get out of Soma. That's what the body is referred to in Greek — soma. Also, soul — the Greek word is psyche for soul. It's where we get psychology from. And then spirit is pneuma.

Now, soul and spirit — we've already looked at these; they're interchangeable. They're used interchangeably for the same immaterial substance of man throughout Scripture. But trichotomy holds that they make a distinction.

They say that the body is the material part of man — it's the flesh. They say that the soul is a principle of animal life in man, senses and thoughts — basically, how we deal with the world and interact with worldly things, our senses, our rationality, our thoughts, how we deal with one another as people. And then they make the distinction that the spirit is solely our relation to God, our faith, our higher thinking, and mankind.

Problem is, Scripture doesn't support that, right? But this goes back to Plato, and that's where it has its roots. Have you studied Esoteric religions? Because I think that they have a lot of this in there too. Yeah, they do. And where that came about and how it was influenced — we can only assume it was through perhaps the expansion, the clans as they moved westward, maybe they picked up some of that. I don't know. Also, of course, false doctrine always has its source in the enemy too, you know.

Trichotomy is refuted on the interchangeable usage of soul and spirit in Scripture — we've already looked at several examples of that. Soul and spirit are also both used of animals in Ecclesiastes and in Revelation. Revelation refers to the souls of fishes, right? And we know that that's not talking about some higher relation reserved between man and God, if it's referring to the soul in connection with the fish of the sea, right?

We see soul is used of God. Well, God doesn't have parts, right? That's one of the things we learned about when we discussed the character and nature and attributes of God — that God is indivisible. He doesn't have parts. He doesn't have a body and a soul and a spirit. He is Spirit. But soul is used of God, and there are some references for you to look up a little bit later on.

The disembodied dead are called souls. Again, if soul is supposed to be the lower part of human nature and the spirit in the trichotomy view is the higher part that relates to God — well, people up in heaven are referred to as souls, you know. So that's the lower part — which again, the distinction they make is erroneous.

The higher exercise of our spirituality is attributed to the soul. And let me read these to you from Luke. First of all, Luke 10:27 is a passage that I know you're all very familiar with.

"He said to him, 'What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?'" Christ asked a man this. And the man answered and said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself."

And He said to him, "You have answered rightly. Do this and you will live."

Jesus there is referring to the highest thing that you can do — to love God with all your soul. And that's not what trichotomy teaches. It holds that soul is the lower part of humanity that deals just with earthly things. Right.

We also see in the same gospel of Luke — remember in Luke chapter one, I'm not going to read it to you, but the Magnificat of Mary. When Mary learns that she is to bear the Christ child, she gives one of the most beautiful ascriptions of praise to God in all of Scripture. She says, "My soul magnifies the Lord." Right. So the trichotomous view that the soul is only earthly and deals with our senses and thoughts here on earth — that doesn't accord with Scripture. Right.

To lose your soul is to lose everything. Mark chapter 8, 36 through 37: Jesus says, "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" So your soul is not just relegated to the lower part of your earthly existence like the animals.

Your soul and spirit are the same entity, right? And trichotomy does not teach that.

Now you say, "Well, what's the big deal? I mean, potato, potato — some people believe dichotomy, some people believe trichotomy. What real difference does it make?" It makes so much difference in the heresies of the past. Let me show you some examples.

The Gnostic heresy: the pneuma — they held that the spirit is the divine part of man. The pneuma is incapable of sin and is the immortal element in man. So they'd say man has a body, and man has a soul — being an animalistic soul — but his pneuma, his spirit, is sinless and it's divine. Does such a person need salvation? No, they haven't fallen, have they? They can relate to God just fine. So they don't need a Savior. It's the heresy of Gnosticism.

The Apollinarian heresy: this took place in the fourth century. It was refuted by the entire early church and the First Council of Constantinople, which is where all these churches got together around 380 AD. But what Apollinarius said is this: Christ was only human in His body and soul, but not in His spirit. That trichotomy view — they said that part of His humanity was actually replaced by the divine Logos. And so therefore He wasn't really fully human. He appeared to be human. He had on a human skin costume, if you will, and a lower nature common with humans, but that part that's related to God — He wasn't human at all.

And of course, what does that do? That removes the identification of Christ with humanity, His solidarity with man. How can He die in the place of man if He wasn't fully man? Right? So therefore it was roundly refuted — including not just Apollinarianism, but trichotomy in the third or fourth century.

The Semipelagian heresy: Pelagians believe that mankind isn't touched by depravity. And then the Semipelagians — they were their children, so to speak. And the Semipelagians believe that mankind's spirit is not fallen. His soul, his lower animal part, is fallen; his body is fallen; but his spirit is not fallen in the sense that it has any depravity. So it can choose God. It can initiate salvation. It can save the rest of him. Man can save himself because he can go to God as an equal, because he's not fallen in that regard. But is that what Scripture teaches?

And why would you ever fall on God's mercy if you didn't think that your higher nature was depraved to begin with, right?

We also see the annihilationist heresy. Annihilationism — which we'll study when we study the doctrine of last things, that'll be in Unit 10 — some people believe that when the unforgiven, the unrepentant, the rebellious against God die, that they don't go to hell. The worm doesn't really eat at them and the fire is not really unquenched for all eternity. They cease to exist, because they believe that just like the animals, you have your body and you have your lower existence, your senses and your thoughts there. But they believe that your spirit ceases to exist if it's not regenerated — see it just fade away. So the Christians, their spirit is renewed and they get to have fellowship with God in heaven. But those who aren't saved — it's not so bad because they just go into blackness and oblivion.

That is a heresy. Jesus had the most fearsome words about hell of anyone in Scripture. Hell is as real as I am standing here. And it is a fate for every rebel against God. And if you believe the trichotomous view, you're wrong.

That's why it is rejected as heretical against orthodoxy.

And then last, we see the charismatic heresy. This is where trichotomy began to regain traction in Christianity in the early 1900s, and it has taken great root. Man can commune with God in his spirit apart from his rational mind and soul. Thus the hindrances of the lower elements of human nature and language are disposed of. They say that we don't need to communicate with God with our rational mind or even with our bodies. We don't have to understand language. We can have a special spiritual prayer language called tongues, which they say is a spiritual, angelic language — not an understandable language that all humans speak, which is what we see in the Book of Acts at Pentecost. Over 16 different nations — their languages were heard when the Spirit was outpoured on the day of Pentecost. Everybody heard the gospel in their own language, right?

Well, they believe, "Hey, I can go to God through this spirit gibberish, this vocalization that bypasses my rationality, bypasses my senses, and I can be edified through a feeling rather than being edified through my rational soul." That's heretical. You must come to God by faith, right? And to bypass that, saying unintelligible things and claiming that you're having communion with God — that is not Orthodox Christianity.

So the application is this: does doctrine really matter in our lives? Yes. So many times you'll hear people say, "Doctrine divides. We don't need that. You don't need doctrine. You just need more of the Holy Ghost." Well, what Holy Ghost? Right. "You need more Jesus." Well, what Jesus? As soon as you start answering those questions, you're dealing with doctrine, right? Doctrine matters. Even the small things here at the very beginning — when we talk about the constitution of man — have great implications down the road, whether it's your view of man in eternity, right, through annihilationism, or your view of man's depravity. Right. It all starts with how you believe what the Scriptures testify about man and his makeup, that we are created body and soul.

Flip over on the back. I do want to be fair.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 is one passage that those who believe in a trichotomy often point to, and they'll say, "Oh, no, no, no — the body and the soul and the spirit are distinct." And let me read it to you: "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 the Lord Jesus Christ."

All three are mentioned. So is that making a distinction between them? Not at all. He's talking about the entirety — may your whole being, everything that makes you up — sometimes Scripture uses the word spirit to refer to man's immaterial being, sometimes it refers to his soul. This no more speaks of three entities within man than does our Lord Jesus when He says in Mark 12:30, "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength." Is Christ teaching us that we have four parts in our makeup — heart, soul, mind, and strength? No, but He's talking about the totality of man, everything that makes us human. Right.

This is the first commandment. Hebrews 4:12 is another — it is the second verse that they have pointed to: "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." It says a division of soul and spirit, so it seems like they're dividable, as if they're separate parts.

Well, the word there for division, every time it's used in the New Testament, is never talking about dividing different substances. It's talking about dividing the same substance — distributing the same substance. For example, Matthew 27:35: "Then they crucified Him, and they divided His garments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet: 'They divided My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.'"

So that's not defining the soul and spirit as separate. It's just saying that God pierces so deep into you, penetrates the very essence of your being — that's what God is saying there through the author of Hebrews.

So that's why we always look to Scripture, right? When we discussed the interpretation of Scripture in our last unit, we studied the doctrine of Scripture. We talked about the interpretation of Scripture, and you always let the clear passages explain the less clear passages, right? We have a plethora of passages that define soul and spirit interchangeably, and they're never defined or even explained as separate entities, but both are the same part of our human nature — our immaterial nature.

Last point, number six: our soul is renewed at regeneration or conversion. Regeneration is the Holy Spirit regenerating us, making us born again, right? When we look at it from the human side, we call it conversion, right? "This person is converted. He exercised his faith. He repented and believed in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." That's something that we speak of man doing. But the same act, from God's point of view, is regeneration. But when that takes place, we are born again. Our soul is made new. It's regenerated. We become a new creature in Jesus Christ. But what about our body?

Not yet. Right. Our body will be renewed in the resurrection.

We live this life with a renewed spirit — a spirit that's been saved, that's been made new, that's being conformed to the image of Christ — in a body that's fallen. Right. A body that, because of sin, is going to experience pain. It's going to experience suffering. We're going to get older. Things aren't going to work the way that they used to work. Right.

But one day that body will be made new. If Jesus tarries and we die, we will go to heaven in our spirit. But one day there'll be a trumpet sound. And in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, our bodies are going to be risen from the dead — after the manner of Christ. We don't even know what it's going to look like, but we know that it's going to be after the pattern of His glorious resurrected body. You're not going to wake up with a crick in your neck anymore. Right. Your eyes are no longer going to be dim. You're not going to need glasses. You're not going to need contacts. Right.

It's going to be a beautiful, glorious day. We will have a body fit for the new creation, right — a body made in pattern after our resurrected Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It's not just for our soul, but for body and soul. God originally created us as body and soul. Sin comes and brings death and separates the body from the soul. So in the new creation, our bodies will be made new as well. What a glorious day that will be.

1 Corinthians 15:20 says, "But now Christ has risen from the dead and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." He's the first to rise from the dead. When He was risen from the dead, He appeared to His disciples in a fleshly body, right. He said, "Touch the wound in My side. Look at My palms." He ate with them. They knew that He was risen in a physical body. He arose to heaven. He sits on the very throne of God with a physical body now — that makes heaven. That tells us that we too are going to inherit heaven in a physical body, because Christ is the firstfruits. After that, we're going to follow suit, right. He's the very first of a new harvest, if you will.

Application: how is Christ's resurrection your hope? How does it give you hope? Does it give you hope that you're going to see your loved ones again one day in heaven — those who are dead in Christ? My father walked with God. He died when I was just about to turn 10 — back in '82. It's been a long time. I can't wait to hug his neck in heaven. What a glorious day that's going to be. I know many godly saints that I just can't wait to see and be reunited with, because I miss them. Right. So that gives us hope that we're going to see our loved ones in heaven, right. And it gives us hope in this life too. What about our physical bodies when we suffer? Don't we know that our suffering is temporary?

This too shall pass. Exactly right. One day that's going to be gone, right. And "the present sufferings are not worthy to be compared with what will be revealed in us," right. So we have hope in this life and in the world to come. And that's the doctrine of man's essential makeup.