How does scripture distinguish between the components of mankind (body, soul, and spirit of man)?

I agree with you that without the light of the spirit the soul is lost. I hope and pray this doesnt happen to anyone. a soul with no light in i have seen.
A soul lost for eternity darkened and void of light with a conscience of stupidity, with the only morality of doing good to decieve, evil in nature, and thought. A soul without light is like looking at your shadow black and dark but a real body, that has substance and depth and energy of a negative type. a soul is like looking in the mirror at your self but diffrent in colour.

I do believe we can understand the diffrence bewteen the soul and spirit by looking into scripture, there are quite a lot of scriptures just relating to the soul, which would make you think the soul has a mind of its own. but i feal it depends on how your looking at that, and it needs further examination perhaps we should examine the scriptures to discover whether the soul has a mind of its own. I feal the soul just has a blank conscience at birth when a child is born. no heart and no mind, and dependent on the mind and heart of the body to train the soul. i feal that the concience of a soul develops empathy of fealings emotions of right and wrong over a life time. and the empathy of the soul is grown like a seed over the life time of the body it belongs to.

@oyster67 has allready said here that the soul makes decisions
based on morality and ethics. but is that based on the soul having a mind of its own or the mind of our body linked to the conscience of the soul.

Man is spirit with a soul that lives in a body

1 Thes 5:23 And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole "spirit and soul and body" be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(MY NOTE: We are spirit, soul & body)

Heb 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the "dividing asunder of soul and spirit", and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart..
(MY NOTE: Man can't physically see nor separate soul or spirit, however, GOD CAN)

Your soul is your thoughts & emotions that direct the actions we take. And functions only, in relation with our body. Our spirit is the eternal part of each of us. Your body, well look into a mirror.

God is Spirit: John 4:24. A spirit doesn't have flesh and blood. Luke 24:39

God who is Spirit, Breathed (Nishmat Hayyim) His life giving spirit into mans body:
Gen 2:7. And man became a living soul.
(MY NOTE: It's only a "living soul" in relation to & in conjunction with the body. When the body dies & the two are no longer one. Yet, the spirit continues to lives on.

Matt 16:26 & Mk 8:36 What would it profit a man. To gain the whole world & lose his soul. (NOTE: A soul can be lost).

Ecc 12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Our choices in this life will determine whether our spirit spend eternity in the presents of God our creator with our soul intact. Or eternity separated from God our creator with our soul being lost.

MORE HELP:

Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words:

Topic: Soul, "nepes" noun- self, will, emotions, mind person.

Topic: Spirit, "pneuma" noun, signifies (a) "breath, the breath of life," (b) "wind," "spirit," "breath." See GHOST, LIFE, SPIRIT, WIND.

Gen 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 soul.
(My note: God "Breathed"" "Breath"" = SPIRIT into man)

I have been studying and contemplating the components of man (body, soul, and spirit of man) trying to identify and define what each component actually is according to the scripture.

The body seems pretty simple to define. Pretty evident that it is just our physical body that will perish and go back to the dust after we die.

I find defining and distinguishing between the soul and spirit much more complexing.

Previously, I viewed the soul and spirt as the same components. However, upon closers evaluation, it seems the scripture classifies them as two different components of man.

One example:

1 Thessalonians 5:23

And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I will continue with my thoughts on it in the next post.

I would greatly appreciate advice, information, and scriptural input from others on this topic to help further my understanding.

Good post. Thanks for your input.

Yes, I agree. It is terrible to thank of souls being lost forever. Would this be like the reprobated mind discussed in scripture? I have

In my understanding...
A soul is the sum of the parts of mind, body, and spirit.

Spirits in scripture aren't exactly what we tend to think of them in today's world. But sometimes they are as in "a spirit of drunkenness" or a spirit of maliciousness....

It has more to do with mood and desires mixed together on an ongoing basis than anything....

You can't have a soul without a body...
You can't have a soul without a spirit...
You can't have a soul without a mind.

All three are needed to have a soul.

We need to go back to Adam for answers. Adam was created by the breath of God. The breath of God is the spirit of man - God is Spirit, as Jesus said. The combination of spirit and body formed the soul. How do we know? It's a little complex.

Adam was made good but not complete. That was the purpose of the tree of life. If Adam had eaten from the tree of life, he would have become immortal. God warned Adam that there was death in the tree of the knowledge of good evil

We know what happened. Adam disobeyed. He did not die physically. Yet his whole attitude to God changed. He was full of fear and sought to blame Eve for the dilemma - and implying that God was at fault for creating Eve.

So what died? It was Adam's spirit. It was never activated, so to speak. But Adam could think, feel, choose, and get his body to carry out his desires. Death is not the end of existence. It is separation from God.

When I was born again, something deep inside me changed. I had no idea what had happened, but I changed immediately. It was not my thinking. That happened progressively. I had wonderful feelings but they faded after a few months. I could still make choices and decisions.

God led me to various different people who were most helpful. One of them explained spirit, soul and body to me very clearly. He founded Teen Challenge in NSW Australia. I've studied a lot more since those days (early 1970's) and I have more clarity now.

The spirit of man is the God conscious part (if we are born again). It is where Lord Jesus dwells in the Person of His Holy Spirit. It consists of conscience and intuition. It is also the realm of spiritual knowledge. For example, before I was saved, I could not read the Bible. And I read everything else. Almost the moment I was born again, the Bible became alive to me. That's because my spirit was now alive.

The soul is the means of expression. It is primarily mind, emotions and volition - the ability to choose. So, for example, God speaks to us in our spirit man. It is often called a witness because it is soundless and often wordless. We use our minds to "read" and interpret what is in our spirit. For example, I knew nothing about freemasonry. A colleague (I was in the Royal Australian Navy at the time) offered to sponsor me. He promised that Freemasons look after their own and I would prosper when I left the RAN. My inner spirit man said "NO!" So I replied to my colleague thanks but no thanks. I now know that it was Satan's temptation. So my mind "read" my spirit and formed words to give understanding. I exercised my will to reject the offer. Emotions are pretty obvious. We need emotions in order to express ourselves. Otherwise, we become robotic.

We are primarily spirit beings, who have a soul and inhabit a body. I hope this helps. Books have been written about this subject. "The Spiritual Man" by Watchman Nee goes into great detail. It will take years of study to get the most out of his book.

If anything is unclear, feel free to ask. It's hard to explain in a format like this.

Good post. Thanks for your input.

Yes, I agree. It is terrible to thank of souls being lost forever. Would this be like the reprobated mind discussed in scripture? I have always thought how sad and terrible that would be. I'm not sure I understand it correctly but it seems a reprobate mind has gone too far and doesn't even have any more chances for redemption. This is a frightening thought. I hope this is not the case for anyone, either.
It is complex but yes, I agree with you and the answer is surely in scripture. It will take more study and examination of the scriptures to understand it better.

Seems most people do still have some morals and a conscious even when they are not saved. However, those morals do seem to be more aligned with themselves. Making themselves happy or making themselves feel good. Their soul is not in line with the will of God or in connection or direct contact with him.

So if that is what is considered the soul without the spirit then it seems it would be very important to distinguish between the spirit and soul.

Scripture says that God is a Spirit and those that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. So it would be important that we are worshipping through our spirit that is in direct connection and aligned to his will, and not just our soul (for our own purposes).

Thanks again, for all the helpful information.

This troubles me greatly. I don't want any soul to be lost forever.

Yes, it is difficult to understand and sad to think about it.

Thanks so much. This is so helpful. You have listed so many good scriptures and I like the way you expounded upon and explained them. Seems you have put much thought and study into this topic. I have read through it once but I am going to put more study and concentration into this post.

If it is alright with you, I would like to copy and save this for my records.

Thanks again for the wonderfully helpful post

Your welcome, i do have my concerns, with scripture, with the many many curses there are, there is way to many curses in my opinion, and i have to question whether some of the thoughts of peoples many many different accounts of God in our bible have been decieved, or whether there is missing scripture of the enemy wispering in peoples ear for each curse written, as we know satan likes to pretend to be God, but satan also likes to miss repersent him with a cursing nature.
The problem i have with scripture is there are many people of today who tell us of satan wispering in there ear, but hardly any account of it in the bible.

When we talk about being handed over to a reprobated mind from God, you also have to add the scripture that says God will curse the conscience. We know from scripture that is the nature of satan to curse the conscience, allways wispering in peoples ears, and we hear many many stories of this right through out christianity today.

Quite sickening to be honest. to think that our God would curse a conscience for all eternity. im sure thats not the God i know. it sounds more like satan if im going to be honest i would say satan steals souls by cursing the conscience.

In another account of the conscience we have people in one religion thinking its ok to stone people to death on Gods command, what does that do for the conscience ?, and in another acount of religion we have Jesus refusing to stone some one to death. Which one fits best with your conscience ? i Have had that fealing many times in other scriptures that something isnt sitting right with my conscience here.

Good post
Yes, I agree it is the enemy who deceives. He walks about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

Yes, I'm sure he is the one that is misrepresenting and causing confusion.


So yes, I agree with you it is the enemy that is deceiving and causing the confusion because he wants to steal, kill, and destroy.

Here is a post I made recently on another thread concerning my understanding of the components:

The definition of "spirit" as I have been taught is that the spirit is the connection to God. The only way that we can truly know God or be alive in him is through the spirit.

When God told Adam that if he disobeyed him that he would surely die, as soon as he disobeyed him then the spirit that was in him died.

From my understanding, the soul or "nephesh" is the natural emotions/thoughts/personality/consciousness of a person or even could be of an animal. This is where we can form emotional bonds with people or things, but it is also where our own self-will comes in. The soul considers our own wants and needs. It is focused mainly on our own will. What we want/need/feel etc. The soul is what is sometimes referred to as the flesh (self will) in the body. It is the consciousness that drives the physical body through our own wants/needs/personality/etc. It is not in line with the will of God. The flesh on its own cannot know and understand the things of God. It is the spirit that gives us life.


The spirit is the part that connects us directly to God. It is the part that puts God's will first, and is able to understand God's ways and have a relationship with Him. When Adam sinned that is the part of us that died the spirit.

God is the only one that can regenerate the spirit, and He does this through his son Jesus Christ. It is through this regeneration of the spirit that we can have eternal life with God.

This is a very good explanation, and makes it clear. This is how I am beginning to view it, as well.

Thanks so much for the post and explanation.

If you have a cell phone then you have the perfect analogy. The body is the structural component, including the electronics and hardwiring. The soul of the phone is the battery. Our phones charge through electricity. Our bodies charge by food. The spirit of the phone is its cellular and wifi features that allow it to connect. The SIM card is the identity. Our cellular mechanism is expected to be our pineal gland, the third eye, represented by a pine cone in much art. Our emotions determine our frequency and can call upon the spiritual world. Guilt and fear vs love and joy. If we have aligned our frequency with God we can speak with Him. When we become part of His network, He promised to take our SIM card and place it into an upgraded device in the future.

the third eye is a religion associated with hinduism. its a bad doctrin, because many hindus try to open there third eye and dont experience what there elders are teaching them, they then suffer in spirit thinking there is something wrong with them, and God doesnt love them. and there elders are probaly being decieved.

For some reason people associate the third eye (the pineal gland) to this scripture The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore your eye is open, your whole body will be full of light." Matt. 6:22

This is a really bad doctrine your eye is open only by worshiping in spirit and the light of the body is the spirit not the pineal gland. the pineal glands function is to regulate chemical serotin.
I would strongly advice anyone to not believe this doctrine its an ego trip leading to a person believing more in there self rather than the spirit.
Sorry the third eye religion is a religion of zombieism. unless you can prove other wise.

lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore your eye is open, your whole body will be full of light." Matt. 6:22
But i think this scipture is related to opening the third eye is really i think with out knowing for sure and leaning on your own understanding.

perhaps more scriptures related to the soul will help here. im going to pull them all up, but this time, just training good inner silent thought commandments with them.

How one uses their internet is up to the user. I think there is more than a little information that warrants investigation to the pineal gland being a significant feature. How it has been fathomed by other religions doesn’t dismiss my claims.