Every person is a three part being, the Spirit, Soul and Flesh, the three being mutually exclusive.  The Spirit and Flesh is always fighting to capture the soul but they cannot happen at the same time.  In short, mutual exclusivity implies that at most one of the events may occur.

When we became Christians, our body and soul was in the pureness of being changed.  However, the Spirit is always struggling to walk in the path of the Lord because the flesh is always weak   I Thessalonians 5:23 “Now may God Himself, the God of Peace, make you pure, belonging only to Him.  May your whole self – Spirit, soul and body – be kept safe and without fault when our Lord Jesus Christ comes.” 

For us to win the battle and truly walk in the path that God wants us to be, we have to understand first who we are.

So Who Am I?

I am a Spirit in God’s image, a soul – which is the Spirit being with mind, will and emotions and a body or flesh.  (Hebrews 4:12 “God’s word is alive and working and is sharper than a double edged sword. It cuts all the way into us, where the soul and the Spirit are joined, to the center of our joints and bones.  And it judges the thoughts and feelings in our hearts.”) 

As a Christian, we are a new creation in the Spirit.  We were commanded by God in II Corinthians 5:17 to leave those people (the world we were leaving) and be separate.  To touch nothing that is unclean and He will accept us.  

So we are now a born again Spirit that is one Spirit in the Lord. That is why we have to live as God called us.   I Corinthians 6:17 “But in any case each one of you should continue to live the way God has given you to live, the way you were when God called you, this is a rule I make in all the churches.”  

Our body of sin has no longer power over us because we are already a new creation with in the Spirit when Christ died for us. Our old self has died for Christ and anyone who has died for Christ is made free from sin’s control. (Romans 6:6 “We know that our old life died with Christ on the cross so that our sinful selves will have no power over us and we would not be slaves to sin.”) 

We now possess an incorruptible seed in the Spirit.  (I Peter 1:23 “You have been born again, and this new life did not come from something that dies, but from something that cannot die.  You were born again through God’s living message that continues forever.”)  And if it is a seed coming from God, then it cannot sin because we have already become children of God. (I John 3:9 “Those who are God’s children do not continue sinning, because the new life from God remains in them. They are not able to go on sinning, because they have become children of God.”).  Our Spirit will always be alive and full of Jesus’ righteousness.  (Romans 8:10 “Your body will always be dead because of sin.  But if Christ is in you, then the Spirit gives you life because Christ made you right with God.”) 

We also have to understand that our soul is in the process of salvation.  When we receive the word of God in humility, it will engraft it and save (heals, restores, delivers) the soul. (James 1:21 “So put out of your life every evil thing and every kind of wrong.  Then in gentleness accept God’s teaching that is planted in your hearts, which can save you.”).  Now faith in God brings salvation to the soul.  (I Peter 1:9 “And you are receiving the goal of your faith – the salvation of your soul.”)  And for our soul to have salvation, it must be transformed. (Romans 12:2 “Do not change yourselves to be like the people of this world, but be changed with in by a new way of thinking.  Then you will be able to decide what God wants for you; you will know what is good and pleasing to Him and what is perfect.”) 

And within the three part being is the “flesh” and in the flesh abides the “no good thing”.  We all know that nothing good lives in the part of us– I mean nothing good lives in the part of us that is earthly and sinful.  We want to do the things that are good but we do not want to do them (Romans 7:18).  And this is the nature of the flesh, to sow hatred toward God.  (Romans 8:6-8 “When people’s thinking is controlled by sinful self, there is death.  But if their thinking is controlled by the Spirit, there is life and peace.  When people’s thinking is controlled by sinful self, they are against God, because they refuse to obey God’s law and really are not even able to obey God’s law.  Those people who are ruled by their sinful selves cannot please God.”)  

Battle for the Soul

Now that we know who we are, when does the battle for the soul takes place?  Every day, every minute, every second there is always a war going on within us that is cause by the flesh.   The Spirit and Flesh war against each other.  These are the “no good things” that abide in the flesh.   What are the examples of this no good things”?  A good example is when we are praying, a lot of distractions can come into our mind.

 

We know that the law is spiritual, but we are not spiritual since sin rules us as if we were its slave.  We do not understand the things we do.  We do not do what we want to do, and we do the things we hate. And if we do not want to do the hated things we do, that means we agree that the law is good.  (Romans 7:14-16) 

A bit confusing, isn’t it?  The point is, we are not really the one doing these hated things; it is the sin living in us that does them.  We want to do the things that are good, but we do not do them.  We do not do the good things we want to do, but we do the bad things we do not want to do. So if we do things that we do not want to do, then we are not the one doing them.  It is sin living in us that does those things. (Romans 7:17-20) 

That is why God tells us to live by following the Spirit so that we will not do what our sinful selves wants us to do. (Galatians 5:16)

We have to remember that we cannot walk in the Spirit and the flesh in the same area of our life at the same time.  Thus, in order for us to avoid to continually sinning, we need to know how the flesh captures the soul.

  

Ø       Deception - is the act of convincing another to believe information that is not true, or not the whole truth as in certain types of half-truths. 

Romans 7:11 “Sin found a way to fool me by using the command to make me die.” In Romans Chapter 7 we learned and understand the Law of Moses, the law rules over people only while they are alive.  It showed us the example of a woman who must stay married to her husband as long as he is alive.  Otherwise, if she married another man while her husband is living, she is guilty of adultery.  But if her husband dies, she is free from the law of marriage and is not guilty of adultery if she marries another man.   In the same way, our old selves died when we were born again in the Spirit and we became free from the law through the body of Christ.  In the past, we were ruled by our sinful selves.  The laws made us want to do sinful things that controlled our bodies, so the things we did were bringing us death and was holding us like prisoners.  But now, we are serving God in a new way with the Spirit, and not in the old way with written rules. We are not saying that sin and the law is the same thing.  But the law was the only way we could learn what sin really meant.  If the law did not say “we must not get our neighbor’s things” or “we shall not covet our neighbor’s wife”, we would never have known that it is a sin.  And so sin found a way to use this knowledge and cause us to want all kinds of things that we should not want.  Without the law, sin has no power.  We were all alive when we all knew about the law but all of us died when the law’s command came to us.  Sin began to live in us. That is why in Hebrews 3:12-13, we are told that we need to be careful that none of us should have an evil, unbelieving heart that will turn us all away from God and must encourage and help each other everyday that none of us will become hardened because sin has tricked us. 

Ø       Conscious choice – we know that it is not a good thing but still we did it. For growing teens, they know that if they don’t follow what their peers are doing even if they are aware that it is not a good thing, they will not be accepted in the group.  Other examples are smoking, lying, adultery, stealing, gossiping, etc. 

Ø       Lack of knowledge – we thought that there is nothing wrong if we do it that is why we did it.

The question now is, “Are we living for Jesus? Or, are we living in Jesus?” 

If we are living for Jesus, He who is in our spirit will do His works.  Whoever believes in Him will do the same things that He do and will even do greater things.  And if we ask for anything in Jesus’ name, He will do it for us so that the Father’s glory will be shown through his Son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “Abide in me, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:3-4).  Jesus is like a vine and we are the branches.  If we remain in Him, and He remains in us, it will produce much fruit.  But without Him, then they can do nothing.  If we do not remain in Him, we are like a branch that is thrown away and then dies (John 15:5-6).  We in the flesh will be working for our own works. 

When the soul is out of peace, the flesh brings false comfort and peace.  Examples of which is when people are burdened with problems and tries to get out of their misery by drinking alcohol, drugs, looking for sex, go for a shopping spree, gossiping and other things that they think will relieve them of their problems. It also cuts off the life of God in the spirit.  We will be like those people who do not believe whose thoughts are worth nothing.  We would not understand and know nothing because we refuse to listen.  Thus, we will not have the life that God gives.  (Ephesians 4:17-18) Lastly, it seeks to save its own life. Those who want to save their lives will give up the true life that the Lord wants to give us. 

So what the flesh offers us are short-lived comfort and peace that when it wears off, it brings you to a place lower than were you come from.  We become more addictive after knowing the pleasure it can give us.  And it makes us rebel against God and thus always produces guilt. 

So have we ever thought what moves the soul out of peace?  It is fear that does it.  Fear of death keeps us in slavery to the devil.  Refusing to listen, understand and know what the Lord wants us to do.  Doing short term fixes to our problems that almost always becomes the seed of long-term destruction. And fear is activated if we lack God’s love; if we don’t have faith – the kind of faith that works through love; if we do not have the Spirit - a person who does not have the Spirit does not accept the truths that come from the Spirit of God; and if we lie. 

There are three basic lies of the devil that produces fear and these are:

• God doesn’t love you and neither does anyone else
• You are worthless and of no value
• God won’t take care of you and your needs won’t be met

 I John 4:18 tells us “Where God’s love is, there is no fear, because God’s perfect love drives out fear.”   And if there is no fear, we will always be assured that the Spirit will always win the battle for the soul.  And if the Spirit wins the battle, we will be living as God called us.

April 27, 2008 Bible Study Lesson by Wally Cousart