The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 6 – 5
You have five senses. Yet of these five senses, some are far more useful than others. Given the choice of losing your hearing or your eyesight, few would choose to keep their hearing. You can always read if you’re deaf; but if you’re blind, just walking across a room is a challenge. But who would choose to keep their sense of smell, taste, or touch over their eyesight or hearing? No one, because when it comes to acquiring new information and communicating it, nothing can compete with sight and sound.
You can’t read a smell or taste a piece of understanding. But in the absence of sight and sound, touch is the best way to interact with the world around us. We could do without the sense of taste or smell, but not being able to tell if things are hot or cold, or to feel when you have a grip on something or not would be debilitating. Which means there are three meaningful ways that we take in information; the best is sight, a picture is better than a thousand spoken words.
If a person is blind, their next best way to take in knowledge is by hearing. But if they are blind and deaf, they learn, and “see”, through touch. That’s three senses that can be used to learn things. Three. You know where I’m going, right? 1 Corinthians 2:9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
Remember what spirit is – spirit is wind, it is breath, it is air. So anything heard or said is automatically spiritual! For it is, by definition, made of spirit! (2 Samuel 23:2). Where does the spirit come from? 2 Thessalonians 2:8. When you speak to God, where is that coming from? 1 Corinthians 14:14. And when your tongue is evil, what exactly is that? Proverbs 15:4.
So if your spirit is full of truth, it’s a tree of life; and if your tongue is evil, it’s because of a flaw in your spirit! So clearly it is the spirit that has understanding, and it is the words that the spirit creates with the tongue which show that understanding!
This is why the tongue, mouth, and lips are constantly referred to in the same verse as words like truth, lies, words, understanding, spirit, and so on (Proverbs 12:19, Proverbs 17:27, Job 20:3, Psalms 119:172, Psalms 106:33, etc.).
Do you see how God hides these things right in front of us – easily understandable for those whose who are willing to listen, yet locked up tight, totally incomprehensible those who have an unbroken spirit?
THE GREATER SPIRIT
Psalms 31:9 specifically connects the eye and soul in typical Biblical style with “my eye… yea, my soul”, showing that eye and soul are the same to the author. In Psalms 116:8 we see three things connected specifically about the soul; for our soul is pictured by our eyes, and it is our soul’s job to keep our feet walking straight on the way of truth! (See also Numbers 11:6, Deuteronomy 4:6, etc.).
Lamentations 3:51 (WEB) My eye affects my soul, because of all the daughters of my city. So as the ear represents the spirit, the eye represents the soul.
The other three senses – taste, touch, and smell – all involve physical interaction with the world around you; microscopic particles of food enter your nose when you smell bread, the particles of the bread actually enter tiny receptors on your tongue when you taste it, and of course you physically grab it to put it into your mouth. Thus these are all physical senses of the beast, and can be treated (for now), as symbols of the heart.
(Disclaimer: I said “for now”, because although what I said there is true, smell is carried on the air (by the spirit), and taste is done through liquification (another kind of spirit), so there is more to these than meets the eye (so to speak). But for the purposes of this lesson, we’re going to treat them as purely beast senses.) So taste, smell, and particularly touch are sensations of the beast.
But sight and sound are different; you do not physically take in atoms of color to see; you do not physically absorb units of sound. These senses receive information via waves of information carried on the air or via energetic rays of light… both of which are types of spirit, or energy! As you’ll recall from Lesson 2-6, light, sound, water, fire, and other symbols of spirit all point to a much deeper truth that spirit is simply energy.
These physical things are the best way God could explain to a very ignorant people what spirit really is. But while light and sound are both symbols of spirit, they’re not symbols of the same kind of spirit. The ears process spiritual information carried on sound waves; the eyes process information carried on waves of light.
But these organs are not created equal. The eye can process far more information at the same time than the ear; each ear is a single drum and can differentiate a few dozen sounds at a time, although your brain couldn’t even process that many.
Yet a single eye has 127 million rods and cones of the eye, each of which picks up and processes light independently. According to some estimates, the eye sees in a resolution of 576 megapixels (compare to your smartphone at around 10, or the highest-end DSLR cameras at a mere 50 megapixels).
The eye sees at a frame rate of about 1,000 frames per second, although our brains can only really tell the difference up to about 150-200 fps. Compare to HD video at 60 fps. What’s more, the speed of light is almost exactly a million times faster than the speed of sound.
So not only can the eye see a million times more at one time, it can also see things a million times faster than information can possibly be delivered to the ear. So to say that the eye is above the ear “…as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9), is no exaggeration.
And if you take the idea of the Lord as the symbol of your soul, your soul’s capacity for thinking is as high above your spirit as your eye is above your ear! And so, as you’d expect, the ears process the lesser symbol of spirit, air, and the greater symbol of spirit, light, is processed by the eyes! And as the lesser spirit represents our own spirit, the greater spirit represents our own soul!
EYES AND HEARING
Knowing this, a lot of scriptures make more sense. James 1:19 is now obviously talking to their spirits; they need to be swift to hear (broken), slow to speak (meek) and slow to wrath (merciful). All spirit things. And for those who don’t have a broken spirit, Psalms 120 goes out to you; for the lying lips and deceitful tongue are an unbroken and evil spirit, that only the lord/soul can fix! (James 1:1-3). Either your own soul, or God’s, someone else acting as your Lord must break it!
Lamentations 3:27. Lamentations 3:6-7 show that this tongue/spirit is the companion of your soul, and the spirit hates peace. Why? Because it is quick to wrath! Because it wants justice, and when the soul speaks of peace, they – plural, the spirit and the heart – want war! Romans 10:9 (Williams) For if with your lips you acknowledge the fact that Jesus is Lord, and in your hearts you believe that God raised Him from the dead, you [your soul] will be saved.
In this favorite Protestant scripture, long abused to show that you need only say these magic words to be saved, you can see that God is actually saying that your spirit must be broken and accept that it isn’t always right!
Your spirit must accept that Jesus is your Lord, and in meekness acknowledge that! Romans 10:10 (Williams) For in their hearts people exercise the faith that leads to right standing, and with their lips they make the acknowledgment which means salvation. Likewise, your heart has to show faith in Jesus’ soul’s goodness to become righteous, just as your spirit must show faith in that soul’s rightness and competence to be saved! (Verse 10).
And it is your soul’s job to break the spirit and heart, and argue, beat, and persuade them into acknowledging this! Something that saying magic words will never do! Scriptures across the Bible open up when you know this rather obvious key – that hearing and speaking are symbols of the spirit, just as seeing and walking are symbols of the soul. In Isaiah 42:16 the first two things, “blind” and “way” are soul symbols; and the last two, “darkness/light” and “crooked/straight”, are spirit things.
Likewise, Romans 2:19 shows the soul as “guide of the blind” and the spirit as a “light of those in darkness”. Remember, being a guide of the blind is the job of a soul, a leader! And being a counsellor to tell that soul the truth so it can SEE the path is the job of the spirit!
And knowing all these things, Matthew 11:5 makes a lot more sense; the first three things are all soul problems – not seeing and not walking straight down the “narrow way” are the same fundamental problem (you’ll study lepers in a distant future lesson but they, too, are a related symbol).
The second three things are all spirit problems; the deaf hear, the dead are raised because they were sleeping, and their spirit had left (Luke 23:46), and the poor hear the gospel. The beast is ignored here, because saving the beast wasn’t Jesus’ mission – He came to free the soul and spirit from their bondage to the heart (Hebrews 2:15).
1 John 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh [heart], and the lust of the eyes [soul], and the pride of life [spirit], is not of the Father, but is of the world. While it is usually the heart which is proud, the spirit can also be proud (Ecclesiastes 7:8), and it is the spirit which should be life (Romans 8:10).
So this just a simple list of the ways in which the three fractions behave badly. Again in Mark 7:6, “This people [their souls] honoureth me with their lips [spirits], but their heart is far from me.” Because their statutes were made to honor themselves, not God’s law; they didn’t make up rules about washing and public prayers and so on to honor God, but to be noticed by men to feed their hearts’ lust for attention! (Matthew 6:1-5).
Psalms 146:8 The LORD openeth the eyes of the blind: the LORD raiseth them that are bowed down: the LORD loveth the righteous: As you’ve seen, it is the spirit which records righteousness; it is the beasts which sag in exhaustion (Isaiah 46:1-2). And it is the eyes of the soul which must be opened, representing the best and most powerful of the three senses. Thus all references to eyes, seeing, blindness, light, darkness, vision, and so on, are veiled references to the soul!
This is in addition to all the references about the way, path, feet, steps, judge, leader, and so on. Likewise all references to ears, hearing, tongues, speaking, words, truth, mercy and so on are veiled references to our spirit! And finally, all the references to the “beast senses” of touch, feeling, and taste (Colossians 2:20-23), all the words like handling, feeling, groping, reaching, and so on are references to the beast!
And that explains why Moses anointed Aaron’s ear, thumb, and big toe (Exodus 29:20). The ear represented the hearing, the spirit; the toe represented the foot, the walking along the path, the soul; and the thumb represented the doing, the beast. All three of these things must be cleansed with blood for their sins before a man can become a priest of God!
GROPING IN THE DARK
God has hidden these things from billions for thousands of years… yet is it really fair to call these things hidden, if they are this obvious? Job, who had heard of God (through his spirit, Job 32:8), was only able to see God after his trial when his soul was anointed king of his body. God tried to introduce Himself on Sinai so that they could see Him, as Moses and Job did (Exodus 24:9-11). But they refused to act like souls, so God sent an angel – a spirit – with them instead.
This spirit would give their spirit rules to control their hearts, since their souls were unwilling to manage them. Israel would memorize these rules from God, and use them – without needing to understand them.
This was the equivalent of hearing God from behind a curtain (or a veil) where He could not be seen. And yet it was enough… if they would do it. Because the information was there. It was possible for them to use their hearing to learn about Him, and teach their hearts based on that (2 Corinthians 3:13-16).
And if they had done that properly, their heart and spirit would ultimately have demanded their own soul take charge again, prompting their entering into the NC, as David, Caleb, Joshua, and so on did.
The law they heard from Sinai (Deuteronomy 4:33-36) taught them all that, and could have done the same for any Israelite who was willing (Galatians 3:12). Yet the rest of the world is in darkness (1 John 2:11). They never even heard God, much less saw Him (Amos 3:2).
So in a very real sense, the rest of the world is deaf and blind, left to grope after the truth! (Acts 17:27). This is why the few people in the world who actually think say things like “theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn’t there” (Robert A. Heinlein).
This is literally what the world is doing – trying to find God in a dark cellar at midnight by touch alone! (Job 12:20-25). God didn’t reveal himself to the Greeks. They never witnessed a mountain on fire, heard the voice of the Almighty speaking to them.
And so they are left with the most basic of the three senses – touch. And as Paul admitted, occasionally they do indeed grasp a fleeting touch of God (Acts 17:28-29). And yet, if they had truly been honest with themselves, there was more than enough evidence of God in the things they could touch to show them what the Godhead was like (Romans 1:19-21, 25). Seeing God would save so much time; hearing God, even through the Bible, gives us a huge leg up over the world.
And yet any blind person can get a sense of what someone looks like by feeling their face, and the world could have done precisely that in the dark basement that is religion… but more often than not they stumbled into each other in that dark cellar, and wound up worshiping the other men they brushed against!
So desperate were they to find God, that anything they tripped over down there was enough to puff up their heart and make them boast of the minuscule fact they had found about God!
Rather than see a bull and ponder its two horns and realize they represent two righteous angels; Rather than figure out how it can be such a powerful and strong animal, yet be so benevolent it need not kill other animals for its food, or to establish that power; rather than “feel after” these things and “haply find Him”, they made a golden calf and worshiped it.
Matthew 13:15 For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed;… See how obvious these things are? Jesus was accusing not just one, but all three fractions of His audience of failing at their job! They could have seen with their eyes, their souls.
They could have listened with their spirits. But they wouldn’t even try to grope with their beasts! Because their beasts had grown fat and lazy and couldn’t be bothered to try to find Him!
BLIND LEADING THE BLIND
The Bible uses a lot of imagery involving the blind, deaf, lame, and so on. And remember: those are true on every level. For example, Deuteronomy 27:18. Sure, in a strictly OC sense this is telling people not to trick blind people and make them trip or get them lost for sport (Leviticus 19:14).
But now that you know that the blind can’t find the way, it’s saying that those who make would-be righteous people get lost and fall away from the truth are cursed; thus, this verse is identical with Matthew 18:6 and Matthew 5:19. Of course, it’s not entirely their fault, as Matthew 15:14 says the leaders themselves are blind.
And yet, the fact that they say they aren’t blind makes God judge them as if they weren’t (John 9:41). Thus, an arrogant blind man who is certain he knows how to lead others is treated as if he had sight – since that’s exactly how he wants to be treated! Isn’t that the Golden Rule, after all? But remember: this is true at every level. Sure, this is talking about bad leaders, but what about your own bad leader?
What if your soul is blind, leading your blind beast (the beast has no eyes, remember), and so you both fall into the ditch? Will it not be cursed? If your soul, spirit, and heart realized they were blind, and acted accordingly, this wouldn’t count against you, Jesus said; that’s why grace exists, after all.
Yet that’s not how beasts and spirits typically behave (Revelation 3:17). Yet there is, again, another level; for your soul and your preachers are not the only leaders this applies to – see Matthew 12:22.
Can devils, who by definition don’t understand or follow God’s way, teach the blind to see? John 10:21. And can David – a type of Jesus – tolerate the people they misled in his kingdom? 2 Samuel 5:8. What does a lame person do, exactly? They limp. That makes them incapable of walking on a STRAIGHT and narrow way! Psalms 125:5. How did David, and therefore Jesus, feel about limpers? Psalms 101:2-6. Does God feel the same way? Leviticus 21:18-21, Malachi 1:8.
Thus the lame, blind, and deaf shall not enter the Kingdom of God. And yet… if that were true, it would be a very quiet, empty place. That is why Jesus came, in fact: Isaiah 42:7. To release the prisoners from Ecclesiastes 4; to free the souls which are blind prisoners of the beast; and to free the spirits which are in darkness in their house/body/prison! (Zechariah 9:11). Which, in yet another verse true on all levels, is precisely what the Bible said in 1 Peter 3:19.
Yes, this speaks of the angels whom Jesus preached to, who were bound on this Earth (Jude 1:6). But it is just as true that Jesus came to preach to our spirits to free them from bondage to our heart’s false laws!
A surprising connection to this is in Proverbs 6:16-19. Remember, read what it says! It doesn’t say God hates seven things. It says He hates six things, and – oh yeah, a seventh (Proverbs 6:16). The seventh is separate, tacked on to a list of things which are an abomination to Him!
Proverbs 6:17-19 A proud look [eyes, soul], a lying tongue [spirit], and hands that shed innocent blood [beast], An heart [beast] that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet [soul] that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies [spirit], and he that soweth discord among [these three!] brethren. The first two sets of three sins are inherent to what we are. The seventh is an after thought, because who sowed discord among these three brethren? Genesis 3:1-7.
They got along just fine, until the heart saw that it was good for food, and that it would make their soul wise, and their eyes were opened! So it was the devil who sowed discord among these three fractions; as do any of his servants that teach the abolition of the law!
They turn the just out of the way (Isaiah 29:18-21) to follow a “thing of naught” – their own heart! So those who sowed discord among brethren started a war in our members, and Jesus came to start the very same war (Luke 12:49-51), and found it already raging!
The difference is, Jesus came to energize our souls to conquer our rebellious fractions; and their discord came to stoke the rebellion even further! But both sides want a war in our members!
The devil believes the human heart is unconquerable, and God asked the impossible of him; so he wants our hearts to win to prove to Jesus that it was unreasonable to expect us to rule it.But Jesus believes our soul can conquer, even though it’s only one against two, because He knows how much more powerful our soul is, if it only will be.
EYELIDS
You learned in the lessons on prophecy that God spoke in symbols, and that things like “star” and “eye” and “flame” really mean angel; and that was true, but as always, there are more levels to add to that.
What we’re doing here is lumping larger and larger groups of layers together, so you can instantly understand more and more verses in their core essence.You shouldn’t get confused in the superficial layers of God condemning feet and eyes; you should see these immediately as condemnations of the soul. When you hear ears and deaf and dumb, don’t get sidetracked by the shallow layers that are all the world can see; look deeper and see how this verse applies to the spirit.
And so on. But these are not just symbols God arbitrarily assigned to mean certain things. These are alike because they are actually alike. For example, angels are eyes because their job is to watch over us; just as our soul is supposed to watch over our fractions. Angels are stars because their job is to guide us; just as our soul is supposed to guide our steps. Angels are spirits, just as our soul is made of spirit.
Angels receive their light from God, just as our souls should (2 Samuel 22:29). Angels are flames because they are supposed to be a source of light; just as our eyes are supposed to be our source of light – eyes are, after all, how light enters our bodies (Luke 11:34-36). Our spirits are light (or rather, should be), but our souls allow light to enter from outside. Our spirits then record that light for us; but it is our souls that let the light enter, for they represent the judge!
Without the judge to decide that yes, this is light, and the spirit should record it, no light can enter! One of my main complaints about the design of the human body is that we don’t have earlids. I would love to be able to simply close off my earlids to block out noise. Yet the spirit shouldn’t be able to block out the spirits; it should hear, and listen, and pay attention, to all it hears (Job 34:3).
How can the soul try the spirits, if your own spirit has not first heard them? But the soul on the other hand is supposed to decide what is light, and what is darkness (1 John 1:6-7). We should put no evil thing before our eyes (Psalms 101:3), and like Him, we should be of “of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity” (Habakkuk 1:13). And that is why we need eyelids. Because our soul can judge what it will not look at, what is darkness and need not be seen; Psalms 11:4.
His eyes look at us, but when He hides His eyes from us, it is His eyelids that test us! (Isaiah 1:15-16). God “blinks” so that we can bear our sins without Him (Ezekiel 39:23-29). So the very fact that we have eyelids and not earlids or noselids tells us that the soul is the one who should make the judgments.
But that’s not all; as I said, these things are true on every possible level! God created the sun to do the same thing, to rule over the day and “divide the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:18). Why that’s interesting is that Job 41:18 calls that division a blink!
(The same word is also used in Job 3:9, where the word meaning “eyelid” is translated as “dawn”.) As you know, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years. And in a thousand years (a God-day), there are 365,000 solar days. When the sun hides its face from us, it is, in a sense, “closing its eyelids”.
Thus, if we consider each day as a single blink, then each one lasts 1/365,000th of a day. Now here’s the cool part: a human blink takes about 100-400 milliseconds depending on who you ask and how it’s calculated.
If we apply the math of a solar blink from a God-day to a human day, then God blinks at us (the sun rises and sets) every 1/365,000th of 24 hours – or about 237 milliseconds. So not only the fact that our soul is pictured by the eye, but the fact that the eye has a lid, and how fast that lid blinks reveals the plan of God!
THE BEAST, THE BOAT, AND THE BODY
So you see, all of these symbols really are the same thing. So when God speaks of any one of these things, He speaks of all of these things. That is why they are true on all levels, and there is not the tiniest detail of any of them that doesn’t connect to all of the other layers. So all we’re really doing is learning what things are connected, and how, and why, so we can read them as God really meant them to be read.
This is why the Bible is so full of similes and metaphors; they aren’t simply abstractions, these things are like one another because they are literally like one another. For example, in James 3:2-5, James connects the bits in the mouth of a beast, the rudder of a ship, and the tongue of a human. That means, in a very real sense, God designed all these things to be actually like each other.
This means that the body of the horse which is turned by the bit is the same as the body of the ship which is turned by the rudder, which in turn is the same as our beast which is turned by our spirit! The bit in the horse’s mouth is a rule, which forces the beast to go in certain directions, just like the rudder does. Just like the statutes of our own spirit hem in our own beast.
Thus, the bit represents the spirit of the horse, just as the rudder represents the spirit of the ship – it is the fence which guides the lumbering boat through the water, and forces it into a certain path against its will. And yet the rudder doesn’t decide where to go; the rudder is moved by a person! The ship is steered by the captain of the ship, just as a bit is moved by the rider, just as our own spirit should make rules at the behest of its soul!
What happens when a horse gallops without guidance? What happens when a ship runs before the wind without someone at the helm? The same thing that happens to you when your soul doesn’t take charge! But these metaphors cannot be broken (John 10:35b).
Thus, the fact that a ship is moved by wind means it is pushed about by the spirits of other people! And the stronger that wind blows, the harder it is for our tiny rudder and our exhausted, wind-bitten, half-drowned captain to control the way our beast is pushed about by every WIND of doctrine (Ephesians 4:14).
Think about what that means for every mention of storms and wind and so on in the Bible; Luke 8:22-25, for example, we can now see is really just another way of saying Matthew 22:46, or 1 Peter 2:15 and Titus 1:9. Then again, the ship is also carried about by the currents of the water of the ocean (Revelation 17:15). The nations, these particular nations in fact, are BEASTS! (Revelation 17:1-3).
Thus your beast lives among, and is jostled by, other beasts. These currents affect you, and your spirit guides you among them. But the rudder is of little use against other spirits, for it works well in water, but not wind! That’s why the greatest forces in your life are not other hearts, but other spirits. Which is, basically, what Isaiah 17:12-13 and Job 30:14-16 say.
Yet in all but the most terrifying storms of spirit, a strong soul with a dogged, hardy captain can hold onto the spirit and guide the beast through; because it is the soul which must try other spirits, and choose which winds to tack with, and which to steer against! And eventually all storms, spiritual and otherwise, die down and leave calm behind (Psalms 107:23-30).
Because God is watching all these spirits, and all of these beasts, and will not let them overwhelm us, as long as our soul clings to the rudder; which is pretty much the same symbol as Luke 9:62, and certainly the same promise as 1 Corinthians 10:13.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Yet back in James 3:5-8, James tells us this rudder – the spirit, the tongue – cannot be tamed. How can that be true? He just said that the governor does indeed control it; in fact, he said we had to tame it in James 1:26! He then compares our tongue to a spring of water – again a clear symbol of the spirit – but says the same spring/tongue/spirit should not be a source of blessing and cursing, good and evil, truth and falsehood (James 3:9-12). But as always… go back and look closely at what exactly he said. In verses 7-8 he said all these beasts are tamed by mankind.
But that no MAN can tame his tongue! No MAN can tame his own spirit… but a soul can! James’ whole point is that man can’t put a bit on the tongue; yet what does Psalms 39:1-2 say? David was committed to bridling his tongue. How did that work out?Psalms 39:3-6.
Did David’s tongue get bridled? How? Psalms 39:7-9. See, philosophers and religious types have figured out how to rule their beasts for thousands of years. If people couldn’t tame their hearts, there would be no civilizations; no innovations; no buildings; they would just be animals.
So all people have figured out how to win a battle with their beast occasionally; some have managed to rule it completely. And yet that’s not rule by their soul, but rule by their spirit; it’s the rule of a ship by the rudder, while the captain sleeps in his berth. The rule of a horse by the reins which flap at his neck after the rider fell off. This is the rule of a man by his loud mouth which decides what his beast will do, and not his soul. Remember the rule, two can always overpower a third.
Once a man lets his spirit get in charge, and his beast gets used to following it, on his own he cannot overcome them. As long as men grope in darkness, they cannot see enough of the truth to conquer their own spirit once it becomes arrogant. A Protestant can’t just pick up the Bible and rule his spirit because his soul simply wouldn’t know where to start. He could have, if he hadn’t let it get arrogant first; but to go back then and tame the adult, clever, stubborn spirit is something that no man can do… alone.
Your spirit will never be interested in unlearning its own statues and traditions; and without a spirit to guide your soul it won’t know how to change it! Which is why Jesus came to be a LIGHT to the blind – the light their own spirits wouldn’t be! Which levels the playing field to 2 against 2! And with His Father’s spirit too (Romans 8:10-11), it becomes 3 against 2. Which, interestingly, is exactly what Jesus prophesied: Luke 12:51-52!
If you can’t resolve this war in this life, your house will fall down (Matthew 12:25), because a temple of God, which your bodies are, cannot stand if it is divided against itself! So no man is able to bridle the tongue; yet James had just finished saying… James 3:2 For in many things we offend [with] all [our fractions]. If any man offend not in word [the spirit], the same is a perfect man [soul], and able also to bridle the whole body [beast].
We cannot re-establish the control of our lives that we were born to have by ourselves. We have to have the spirit of God and Christ to help us wrestle back the authority we gave away for a bowl of soup. And yet it is just such people whom God prefers to save. The passage I think sums up this lesson best is in Job 33:22-30. Your soul cannot get out of the pit on your own.
But if there is a spirit, one to explain to him the truth, to show him what uprightness really is… then God will say yes, save him, the spirit of Christ can be a ransom for him. And he shall be resurrected like the days of his youth; and God will not hide His eyes from him anymore… if the man’s spirit is willing to say “I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not”, then God “will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light”.
This is what God does; this is whom God chooses. Not the wise, not those who believe they see, nor even those who almost see the truth (1 Corinthians 1:26-31). But those who aren’t even close to the truth; the deaf and blind: Isaiah 42:6-8, 16-23, Isaiah 43:1-13. I’ll let you figure out most of that yourself; just don’t miss the importance of Isaiah 42:18-20 and Isaiah 43:4, 8, 10. Translate these verses in your head into soul-spirit-heart terms, and you’ll see how easy it is to understand the Bible if you just see what you look at, and listen to what you hear.