Year A
1 Corinthians 2;10b-16
Psalm 145:8-9.10-11.12-13ab.13cd-14 (R.17a)
Luke 4:31-37
God's Spirit and the True Man
Man is tripartite; spirit, soul and body.
1 Thessalonians 5:23I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Of these three parts, man's spirit is the Holy of Holies. Man became a living soul precisely because the spirit reacted with the body. However the soul is not supposed to be in control of the spirit and body, but the spirit is rather supposed to control the soul and body just as the actives in the Holy of Holies control the other two parts (porch and the sanctuary) of the temple for our body is the temple of God (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
The confusion is that the soul and the spirit are one and the same, but this ideology came about when man's nature became corrupted. Thus reason became the sole ruler of man to the extent that man was seen only as the being who thinks or reason. This ruther shows how man seeking knowledge has made the soul his ruler, and the spirit has become dormant.
Interestingly, as Aristotle in his Metaphysics proofs that because by our nature we seek to know and hence delight in our senses, the danger is that our senses can deceive us and eventually we will become carnal beings. Thus the body will turn to control the soul. The structure must be as follows, the body must submit to the soul and the Soul to the spirit and the spirit to God who lies there in.
However with our nature corrupt we don't even regard the spirit, and even when we do, we see it as the same as the soul. The only way to solve this problem was to reconstruct the temple and so Jesus Christ came and said when the temple is destroyed he will raise it up three days after and He who is the Truth and whose body was the temple he was talking about (cf. John 2: 21), did exactly what he said.
After the reconstruction, the Spirit of God which God said will not be indefinitely responsible for humans who are only flesh (cf. Genesis 6:3), and hence departed from the temple (Ezekiel 11:22ff), returned to the (cf. Ezekiel 43, John 20:22, Acts 2).
Now because of the Word of God, who is sharp like a double-edged sword, and has brought the distinction between our spirit and soul (cf.Hebrews 4:12) we are to allow the spirit to rule the soul and body. It is when we become spiritual men that we receive the gifts of the Spirit of God.
Today, as Jesus silence the demon and cast it out of the man, let us invite him who is the Word of God into our lives, for it is only with him that we can become spiritual and allow the Spirit of God rule our soul and body through our spirit, the Holy of Holies.
John 4:23But the hour is coming, indeed is already here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth: that is the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.
Yes the time is now, God who is Spirit dwells in your spirit, allow him to transform your mind or soul and help you make your life a living sacrifice unto God.
By
Sylvester Amakye-Quayson
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