9. Where the words part

Most of the time Scripture uses its inner words together, side by side, one inside another. But there are places where it deliberately draws a line between them. These places are few, and they matter. I also want to be honest about the lines that are often drawn but that the text does not draw.

The lines Scripture draws

Soul and spirit, by the word of God

"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12).

This is the one verse that sets soul and spirit apart by name, so it is worth reading slowly. Soul and spirit are paired with joints and marrow: two things that are distinct, yet lie so close together that only a very sharp blade can find the line between them. The verse does not describe two components working separately. It describes a closeness that only God's word can divide. And its end point is not soul or spirit but the heart: the word discerns "the thoughts and intentions of the heart". The division serves the discerning.

The soul-life and the Spirit-life

The clearest contrast between the two words comes in the adjectives Paul makes from them. Psychikos means "soul-ish" or natural. Pneumatikos means "spiritual".

"The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14).
"It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body … it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual" (1 Corinthians 15:44–46).
Jude speaks of "worldly people, devoid of the Spirit" (Jude 19), where worldly is the same soul-ish word.

Here soul and spirit are not parallel but set against each other as two orders of life: the life a person has by nature, and the life that comes from God's Spirit. The same chapter puts it in one line: "The first man Adam became a living being [soul]; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit" (1 Corinthians 15:45). The first receives life; the second gives it.

Spirit and mind in prayer

"If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also" (1 Corinthians 14:14–15). The spirit can pray without the understanding following. Paul wants both. Ephesians speaks of being "renewed in the spirit of your minds" (4:23), holding the two together again.

Flesh against Spirit

In the New Testament, and only there, flesh and Spirit are set against each other as powers: "the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh" (Galatians 5:17). "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). As kinds of being, too, they differ: "a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have" (Luke 24:39). Chapter 7 traced this.

Inner and outer

Scripture repeatedly separates the hidden person from the visible one.

"Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7).
"A Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter" (Romans 2:29).
"Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit" (1 Peter 3:4).
"Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day" (2 Corinthians 4:16).

Jesus draws the line in an unexpected place. Food "enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled" (Mark 7:19). What defiles comes from within, "out of the heart" (7:21). Yet elsewhere bread strengthens the heart (Psalm 104:15), and "it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods" (Hebrews 13:9). Three verses take three angles on one relationship. Food does reach the heart's strength, but not its purity.

Soul and body

"Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28). Human hands can reach the body and cannot reach the soul.

At death

Death is where the words part most clearly. Dust goes to the earth, the spirit returns to God, and the soul departs. I follow this in the next chapter.

Lines that are often drawn, but that I cannot find

Several confident distinctions are often taught. When I read the verses in their places, they did not hold up. Here they are, one by one.

"The soul sins; the human spirit never does." It is true that "the soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4), but there the soul means the person, the one who answers for the sin. And while I find no verse where "the spirit" is the subject of the verb "to sin", the spirit is plainly judged. It is "haughty" before a fall (Proverbs 16:18). It was "not faithful to God" (Psalm 78:8). It is hardened (Deuteronomy 2:30). It needs to be made "right" (Psalm 51:10). It has or lacks "deceit" (Psalm 32:2). It needs cleansing from "defilement" (2 Corinthians 7:1). If Scripture has a moral centre, it is the heart (Chapter 12). The spirit stands beside it, not above it.

"Animals have souls but not spirits." The animals are "living creatures", the same phrase as the man in Genesis 2:7. But they also have "the breath of life". The flood came on "all flesh in which is the breath of life" (Genesis 6:17; 7:15), and there the word is rûaḥ. "They all have the same breath" (Ecclesiastes 3:19). There is "the spirit of the beast" (Ecclesiastes 3:21). "When you take away their breath, they die" (Psalm 104:29). What marks the man in Genesis 2:7 is not that he has breath and they do not. It is that God himself breathed it into him.

"The soul faces the self; the spirit faces God." The soul is the part that thirsts for God, lifts itself to God, waits for him and blesses him (Chapter 5). The spirit is anxious, provoked, hot-tempered and crushed (Chapter 6). Each faces both ways.

"The soul goes to Sheol; the spirit goes to God." The verses usually cited speak of the soul being delivered from Sheol ("you will not abandon my soul to Sheol", Psalm 16:10; "you have brought up my soul from Sheol", Psalm 30:3). They are about a living person rescued from death, not about where the soul goes as opposed to the spirit. And Ecclesiastes leaves the spirit's destination as a question: "Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward?" (3:21). See Chapter 2.

"Spirit first, soul second, body third." Scripture does not rank the inner words. It lists them in different orders for different purposes (Chapter 3). It gives God a soul as readily as a spirit: "my soul shall not abhor you" (Leviticus 26:11), "my soul delights" (Isaiah 42:1). It brings a dead child's life back as soul ("the life of the child came into him again", 1 Kings 17:22) as readily as spirit ("her spirit returned", Luke 8:55).

What I take from this

The words part at the edges: at the word that divides, at the contrast between natural and Spirit-given life, at prayer beyond understanding, at the war between flesh and Spirit, at the line between hidden and seen, and at death. In the middle, where life is actually lived, they belong together. I do not think this is a weakness in Scripture's language. It is Scripture telling me that I am one person, and that God deals with me as one.