Quote:
Originally Posted by Dedicated Mind
My understanding right now is that spirit is consciousness and that soul is mind. I understand that heart is the seat of emotion. God is love and God is spirit. So we can say love is spirit. Are all feelings and emotions spirit? i don't see equating feelings with consciousness.
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DM, I think [and this is just me, others may or may not agree] that we often look at such things and
right off the bat, begin to entertain thoughts that
"Oh, this surely must be something mysterious and complicated," when it is actually much simplier than that. Because we adults must take things and
filter them through all of the accumulated bits of information we've stored in our mind's
memory banks over an extended period of time, we often become confused when it comes to trying to distinquish between what is truth and what is error.
Jesus' words best helps us to understand the manner in which we must look at and consider all things -
"...except ye become as little children." Simply stated, we must learn to set aside, at least temporarily, all of that knowledge we've amassed about a matter, so that we might think as a young child [who has no such hinderances] is able to
objectively consider things. We must learn to think like a child; recognizing and acknowledging our inherent ignorance of all things, and then seek God's guidance to help us to determine the truth. He did tell us to
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." (
Matthew 7:7-8)
Therefore to determine a proper answer to your question, I believe one must begin by learning some basic facts; what do the words
soul and spirit mean? Are they synonymous? Where should one look to determine the answers? The Bible, of course!
When Jesus responded to the scribe who inquired of Him concerning the greatest commandment, He said,
"...thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength" (
Mark 12:30) Was Jesus referring to three distinctively different things when he used the words
heart, soul, and mind? Of course not! He was simply, and only, using these words to refer to the
same thing; the actual
"seat" of one's emotional and spiritual being - his eternal invisible
soul. [Please note: Jesus never used the word
spirit here, however, He did so in another passage where He advises us
how we must worship God - see
John 4:24 - so what is the difference?]
When we examine what the word
spirit means or implies in both Hebrew and Greek Lexicons, we discover that they each tell us that it is referring to the
"breath," that element which God
gives each person as they inhale that first gulp of oxygen after emerging from their mother's womb. Thus we discover that when Jesus [in the words of
John 4:24] tells us that we
"must worship him in spirit and in truth," what He is telling us is that we must worship God by the words of our mouth. This also aids in our understanding that when the language of the Bible speaks of the
spirit of man, it is referring to his
breath. There are also many instances wherein this word is also used to refer to one's
zeal, zest or enthusiasm [i.e., he was
mean-spirited]. This is simply God's way of concealing the understanding of things, and only allowing the "elect" to be privileged of recognizing it's inherent meaning.
The words of
Ecclesiastes 12:7 advises us that at the moment of one's death,
"Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." Did God
give man a
body? Of course not... He formed it from the
dust of the earth, therefore it is to that place it must return at it's death. But God did
give man a
spirit [i.e., breath] when He breathes into his nostrils at the moment of birth, at which time his eternal invisible
soul becomes a
living thing, and when He removes it from our bodies, it will return once again to Him.
With these things being stated, then it is my belief that the words
soul and
spirit are NOT synonymous; the
soul being the seat of man's eternal invisible emotional and spiritual self; and at death, the
soul returns to it's former condition of reality - inanimate - and remains present in the
dust of the earth until it is restored to
life again at the coming resurrection; while his
spirit [i.e., the
breath] which previously enabled both
soul and
body to co-exist in an animated,
living condition, must
"return to God who gave it" it to man at his birth.
I hope that this will be of some help to you.
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