Body, Soul and Spirit

We need to dissect the body, the soul, and the spirit to understand what is happening in each:

• The body is what holds us on the planet.  It is just a shell in which God breathed the breath of life and man became a living soul (Gen. 2:7; 1 Cor. 15:45).  It is used to interact with our environment.  So the body is not the problem.
• This living soul is the seat of our mind, will, and emotions.  It is the purveyor of our thoughts, our decision making, and our feelings. Without the soul, we would be robots without free choice.  God wants man to be free to choose Him over everything else every time.  This living soul is what has caused man problems since Adam.  Because it is free to move between the body and the spirit, it determines whether we are carnal and lean to our own understanding or whether we receive the things of God and become spirit beings. God never intended for born again believers to operate in the flesh or according to the world's system or way of doing things.  Because of the soul, man became stuck in the fleshly realm and allowed his religiosity to rule his thinking.  Religiosity is not bad as long as it doesn't supersede God's plan. The living soul is a renegade if it is not corralled.  It can be corralled two ways. (1) If it is influenced by the body, man will reject the things of God and choose the world every time. (2) If it is influenced by the spirit of God, man will walk in the spirit and the blessings of God will overtake him.  The living soul causes man to be double minded and unstable in all his ways.  This is where the problem lies.
• The spirit of God in man must be brought to power before it can coral the soul.  It's always two against one and not a fair fight. If the body is allowed to dominate the soul, they gang up on the spirit, and it will be powerless as long as they dominate it.  Even though we have the spirit of God in us, He is a gentleman and will not overpower us or make us do anything.  The only way for the spirit to come to power is through the Word of God.  It is the energy, the dynamite, that empowers the spirit to overwhelm the soul and bring it into obedience into the knowledge of Christ.  The spirit has no effect on the body but when it is brought to power, it will overwhelm the soul and in turn they both overwhelm the body and make us putty in God's hands.  The soul is actually the heart of man for lack of a better definition. It is the core of man's being that must be brought into subjection to the Word of God.  It is still that two against one theory now operating for the better and our own good. If God gets our heart, He has us. We were sealed with the Holy Spirit when we were born again.  Therefore, the spirit cannot be corrupted by the body or the soul (Eph. 1:13, Eph. 4:30).  The Word of God is the only mechanism that can change man effortlessly and bring out what is sealed in our born again spirits.  In Hebrew it is called the arrabon; i.e. the promise.  It is a part of God Himself in man, and that's what He is coming back for.  It translates into this:  The eyes of man were enlightened (Eph. 1:17-19).  He woke up to God.  He took off the old man of the flesh and put on the new man which after God was created in true holiness and righteousness and renewed in knowledge after the spirit of Him (Eph. 4:24, Col. 3:10).  

Subjection of the soul is important because it becomes the valve through which the spirit of God flows through the body and makes us complete and out toward others.