This is part 1 of a series.

In the context of our internal selves the Bible uses many words such as spirit, soul, heart, mind, flesh, body, carnal nature, among others. Some of these are synonyms, some overlap others – but not all of them. Do you know which is which?

As I’ve said, Salvation is the process of changing everything about our internal selves into the likeness of God. If you don’t know what these things are, how to recognize them or how to change them… how can you have any hope of making them like God?

Psalms 77:6 (MSB) “At night I remembered my song; in my heart I mused, and my spirit pondered.”

When people read verses like this – and there are thousands of them – they tend to gloss over the details and sorta of sum up that David was pensive. Which is true enough, but he went to great length to explain exactly how and where he was pensive!

Take it slowly, and really think about it; because MY heart is something that belongs to ME. But NOT me! And likewise MY spirit is not ME! But *I* remembered my song – I, being ME! So when you listen to it carefully, there are three separate parts of the self there; the heart, the spirit, and the I.

Psalms 143:3-6 For the enemy pursues my soul… Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is desolate… I spread out my hands to you. My soul thirsts for you…

Here we see four separate entities; David’s soul, his spirit, and his heart, and finally his “I”. These are very clearly separate things, with their own feelings, problems, and attitudes. This is why Paul says “I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless” (1 Thessalonians 5:23 KJV).

God never stutters; He inspired Paul to write spirit, soul, AND body because these are separate things, and because each of these parts added together forms a YOU! And each of these must come, separately, to perfection in order for the WHOLE self to find salvation.

Thus, your whole Self is your “I”. The I is not really a separate entity so much as it is the sum of the others, so we’ll usually refer to this as the three selves, heart, spirit, and soul, or as I call them, the three fractions of the mind; or simply “the fractions” for short.

THE FRACTIONS

It is impossible to overstate how much this changes the way you see the Bible, yourself, and the world in general. As you get to know these different parts of us over the next few lessons, you’ll see them everywhere and in everyone. Which the Bible clearly told us was the point!

Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Notice how the “soul” and the “spirit” can be divided – hence are separate things. Which is why Isaiah said “With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early” (Isaiah 26:9 KJV). And the word of God exists to help us divide them!

And the heart is yet another, separate thing. Because “a glad heart makes a shining face, but by the sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken” (Proverbs 15:13, BBE). Obviously if a sad heart breaks a spirit, they are separate things, yet both are inside all of us!

The Bible is full of three-part repetitions or groupings that we’ve read over, dismissing it as poetry or just God being redundant again. But when you open your eyes – which is to say, when you read with your soul awake – you can’t not see this all over the Bible.

For example, in Matthew 23:23, Jesus condemns the Pharisees who “...have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith”. In Micah 6:8 we are told “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”

These are not an arbitrary list of three things you should do, but rather each word is an instruction for a specific one of the fractions; the soul which must judge righteously, the spirit which must show mercy, and the heart which must show faith and humility.

This is why Paul said we should “reprove, rebuke, and exhort” (2 Timothy 4:2). Why he also said there were three great things – “faith, hope, and love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). Why Solomon said that the Lord “gives wisdom. Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding” (Proverbs 2:6 WEB).

Once you see this in the Bible, you can’t unsee it; it’s literally everywhere. Because the Bible’s main purpose was to reveal the weaknesses in our three selves, and precisely how to go about fixing them so that you can “…be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2 WEB).

Why use three different synonyms for good, if not to specifically highlight the precise way in which each of the three fractions must become good? Because different parts of the “self” perform different functions. They act differently, they sin differently, and they must be changed differently.

This is why the first great commandment is to love God “with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength” (Mark 12:33).

Because these things are different parts of your self that can sin, and must be taught individually not to do so! They must, separately, learn to love God. And it’s really hard to change your self when you don’t know what your self is, or how many of your selves you’re dealing with!

Which is why Jesus listed four things which must love God; the first three corresponding to the heart, spirit, and soul, and then “strength”. Which is why Solomon told us “if a man prevails against one who is alone, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12 WEB).

Why? Because when the three fractions work together they are a STRONG self! Thus these three parts of our mind working together, as a whole, is the true SELF. A soul should be the ruler of the self, but it is not the true self without the rest of the inward parts working together to give that self STRENGTH.

But if one or two fractions oppose the other… then not much gets done. Because “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8). And this is, unfortunately, the state of pretty much everyone in the world – for who hasn’t said “I’m of two minds on the subject”, or “I went back and forth”, or “I can’t make up my mind”?

Thus salvation is about getting your fractions to work together; making them a strong, three-fold cord that loves God with all your heart, soul, spirit, and with their strength. And you can’t do that if you don’t know that what they are… and what they are like.

YOUR HEART

Our culture has a generally positive view of “the heart”, but that simply isn’t what the Creator of that heart said about it. It can be a place of love and warmth, but generally those attitudes are reserved for friends and family – those who are nice to it.

To everyone else… the Bible says “The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 WEB); “… the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth…” (Genesis 8:21 WEB); “Whoever trusts his own heart is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26 GWV).

Matthew 15:18-19 But the things which proceed out of the mouth come out of the heart, and they defile the man. For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimony, and blasphemies.

This is what you are. This is what I am, by nature. We can become something more, and may have already made progress so far in this life, but our nature, our most basic instinct, is to be selfish. Us, before them.

And being selfish is not wrong; it’s not wrong to eat, drink, sleep, mate, desire comfort, happiness and so on… PROVIDED getting those things doesn’t hurt someone else. But no animal cares about the last part. Which is when selfishness becomes wrong.

If an animal is hungry, they’ll eat you if you’re small enough. If they’re tired, they’ll sit on you if you’re in the way. This is not malicious; they aren’t angry at you – they simply don’t care about you. Not even a little bit.

And all of us have this primal, animal-like nature within us; but people don’t like the idea that a large part of their motivation is no better than that of a dumb animal; so when I tell someone they’re acting like a beast, they can get pretty upset. But that’s kind of the point:

Ecclesiastes 3:18 I said in my heart, “As for the sons of men, God tests them, so that they may see that they themselves are like animals.”

Animals are selfish, and willing to do whatever it takes to feed that selfishness. And a large part of our purpose on this Earth is to change that heart to feel the exact opposite; unselfish, prioritizing the needs of others above our own.

Philippians 2:3 Doing nothing through rivalry or through conceit, but in humility, each counting others better than himself;

This goal runs contrary to our most primal nature, and changing it is not a job that can be accomplished by listening to a lecture a few hours a week about Christian virtues. It takes concerted effort, and ideally, someone who can point it out every time your heart’s selfishness blinds you to the harm you do to others. But more on that another day.

CARNALITY

The Bible uses several words synonymously to refer to the selfish character of the heart. For instance 2 Peter 2:18 refers to the “lusts of the flesh” which makes sense because only the heart is made of flesh! The other fractions are “spiritual” (hence the name)!

Since the heart is the engine of the body in every sense of the word, and the lusts of the heart are essentially the same as the lusts of the body, sometimes the Bible simply uses the word “body” as in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, but it clearly refers to the same fraction.

You’ll also see the word “carnal” used a lot in the Bible, particularly older translations like the KJV, which is just an archaic English word that means “flesh”.

1 Corinthians 3:3 (KJV) For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?

Flesh, as you can see here, is selfish, jealous, and argumentative – just like the heart and body as described in other verses. So when Paul accused people of being “carnally minded” (Romans 8:6-7), it simply meant “having a mind led by the heart’s lust”.

Which is no different than how animals behave; they want, so they attack; they fear, so they run. Because animals or “beasts” are controlled by their hearts and led by the lusts of their flesh. And unfortunately, so are all of us – some all the time, some only some of the time, but none of us none of the time.

Which is why David, seeing how he had behaved, said to God “So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee” (Psalms 73:22). Because he had caught himself obeying that part of himself which was like a beast – his body, his flesh, his heart, his carnal nature.

How often have you done the same?

YOUR SPIRIT

The word “spirit” is translated from the Hebrew/Greek ruwach/pnuema, respectively, both of which simply mean “air, breath, wind, etc.”; as, for that matter, does the English word “spirit”, which is simply an archaic word meaning “air” – which, incidentally, is also the archaic meaning of the word “ghost”.

Every animal has a spirit, for God said each of them had the “spirit of life” in them (Genesis 6:17). We also have a spirit – and I don’t mean the spirit of God, but our own, human spirit; for Elihu said “there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding” (Job 32:8).

This spirit entered Adam when God gave him CPR, and that breath made him “a living soul”; so the spirit God put in man, the spirit which is still in man, gave Adam “understanding” or “made him sentient.”

Each of us have this spirit formed within us while we are in the womb by the Lord who “forms the spirit of man within him” (Zechariah 12:1). When we “give up the ghost”, or lose this spirit, we die – for “the body without the spirit is dead” (James 2:26).

Thus it is the spirit that makes us alive, in every sense of the word; for as the heart thinks only of itself, by nature, which leads to death; so the spirit thinks only of doing the right thing, by nature, which leads to life.

Our spirit is a counterbalance to the heart; it is your conscience, your better angel. Whenever the heart says “I want...”, the spirit is there to say “On the other hand, I really should….” It is this voice of reason which is responsible for most of the good things people do in the world today.

Galatians 5:17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, that you may not do the things that you desire.

These two parts of our nature are opposed in principle – one devoted to itself at any cost, the other devoted to doing what’s right no matter the personal cost – and so they don’t usually agree.

Romans 7:22-23 For I delight in God’s law after the inward man, but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members.

Mind is here synonymous with spirit, as it is used in Matthew 22:38; and this “law” that the flesh thinks is right reads something like “they owe me, I deserve it, they’d do it to me if they could”, etc..

This law of the fleshly heart is diametrically opposed to the law that the spirit thinks is right. The law of the spirit which says “you must do the right thing, because that’s what’s right!”

These two irreconcilable viewpoints caused Paul to have a continual “war” in his inward parts, between the spirit which loved the law of God, and the flesh which loved… well, itself.

THE SOUL

So we have two witnesses within us; a heart of flesh, which seeks to justify its selfishness; and a spirit or mind or conscience, which seeks to do the right thing. These argue and bicker back and forth among themselves until one or the other gets tired, or a third party intervenes to make a judgment.

Which is where the soul comes in. The soul is meant to be the highest authority of the three fractions and to speak for the “I”. Our soul has the ability to silence the conscience, or to silence the beast. You might say it is the soul authority (get it?).

But most people have surrendered that power to their heart or their spirit. It takes effort to make hard decisions, and it is difficult to stand alone – as a judge must do – and make a choice even though part of you is screaming that it is unfair.

Your soul is meant to judge between the fractions and speak for the “I” of the Self; but in your average person, it rarely does. Fixing this is the purpose of the Bible, the fundamental requirement for salvation, and the goal of every true Christian.

Psalms 51:16-17 For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

We are put here to finish the second half of our Genesis 1:26 creation, to be made internally into the likeness of God, just as we already bear the external likeness of God. To have His laws written on our hearts and on our spirits (Hebrews 8:8-13). And that law must be written there by our own souls, with the help of His spirit!

To do that, you must first break the heart, conquer its selfish nature, and teach it to care for others. And break your spirit, convincing it that just because Grandma said so, doesn’t mean it’s true… and that’s a surprisingly big job!

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Arising from a very different line of thinking, Sigmund Freud concluded that each of our minds had three parts; he called the most basic part the Id, the center of selfish reasoning and primal instincts; fear, lust, anger, and so on. This is what the Bible calls the heart.

Next we have what Freud called the Superego; the higher reasoning center, which the Bible calls the spirit, which we are familiar with as the conscience; and finally the Ego, Latin for “I”, which the Bible calls the soul, which ultimately makes the decisions and acts.

Neuroscientist Paul Maclean, and many others, teach that we have a Lizard brain, Mouse brain, and Ape brain within us; which the Bible would call the heart, spirit, and soul respectively.

Aristotle believed all creatures could be categorized as vegetable soul, which had a body and life but couldn’t move; an animal soul, which had life and could move and react; and a human soul which had life, could move, and could reason. Heart, spirit, soul.

St. Thomas Aquinas said “to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do”. Desire obviously correlates to want, and therefore the heart; “ought to do” is “should do”, and therefore the spirit; and “to believe”, as in how you should lead the other fractions, is therefore the soul.

Carl Jung likewise concluded we have three selves within us, the Ego corresponding to the Biblical soul, the “personal unconscious” which corresponds to the spirit, and the “collective unconscious” which he believed was a psychic field all humans shared and explained the commonalities in dreams, myths, and psychoses.

This corresponds to the heart, for although we don’t actually share an unconscious, we are all made with the same selfish heart, so naturally each heart works similarly to all others and thus is a kind of hidden collective motivation that all humans share.

Jung went on to conclude that these three work together to form a “Self”, the sum of the fractions. He believed that the goal of every person was to connect the three fractions together and integrate them into a single person; which oddly enough, is exactly what the Bible says… for a “threefold cord is not easily broken.”

Over thousands of years and in nearly every culture, whether pagan, Christian, or scientific, most people who thought about the self eventually concluded the same thing I’ve said here – that we have three very different and often disagreeing parts within us, which, at their most basic, think of WANT, SHOULD, and WILL.

The only thing new I’m doing today, is showing that the Bible has been teaching this, without anyone realizing it, from the very beginning. And knowing that… it has SO MUCH MORE TO SAY!

Continue to Part 2: The Heart