The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 6 – 3
As you well know, the beast says “I want” and the spirit says “we should”. Sometimes these agree, which makes the soul’s job easy (for instance, “I want/I should go to sleep”). But usually, they disagree. And you might be tempted to sit back and always listen to the spirit, without reservation. After all, it’s always going to be better to do “should” than “want”, right? But as you’ve seen many times, your spirit is uneducated, and while it means well, it can cause just as much damage as a selfish heart can. Because following an incorrect law just because everyone else does can do just as much as evil as breaking a law!
On the other hand, we know that the heart is selfish; and because it definitely does not mean well, you might be tempted to say “if I want it, it’s a sin”. But this, too, is wrong. There is no virtue in denying your body the things it enjoys (Colossians 2:23). But it goes deeper than that, for the heart is the source of compassion and empathy (1 John 3:17); a person completely controlled by their spirit will gladly execute a sinner for an honest mistake, thinking they do God a service; this is what led to the inquisition, among other atrocities.
It is precisely because the heart is selfish that it can provide balance to that cold, emotionless approach. Because the spirit cannot imagine what it feels like to be burnt at the stake, but the heart can! (Matthew 10:28). So the heart can intervene on behalf of those who don’t deserve to be tortured by the zealots of the law. If you always follow to the heart, or always follow your spirit, you will always be wrong. Because blindly obeying either side makes you a respecter of persons (Leviticus 19:15). Most people adopt a rather haphazard approach and choose whomever complains the loudest at that moment – but this, too, is wrong.
The soul’s job is to judge righteous judgment. Rubber stamping either opinion will always be a sin! It is the soul’s job is to hear both sides out, let them argue with one another, and cross examine as necessary, to find the truth and then make a judgment. The soul should demand of the beast “why do you think this will make you happy?” It should demand of the conscience “how do you know this is right?” A righteous soul will not listen to either voice without reservation!
And then the soul must judge, based on their answers, whether it actually will make the beast happy, and whether or not the conscience has ANY idea what it’s talking about! And if not, the judge should direct the conscience to FIND better arguments to prove that it really does speak for the truth. You are your soul, and that is why the soul is the final judge. Every thought you have is weighed in on by the beast and the spirit, but they should be thought of as parts OF you, not you. YOU are never cold. YOU are rarely angry. Your beast is cold, and your spirit is angry. But they are not YOU.
MAKING A CHOICE
When you are hiking a new trail and come to an unexpected fork in the road, you have to make a choice. Left or right? Stop here until you make up your mind, or turn around and go home? Any action, including taking no action, is a choice. If you choose to stay at the fork, paralyzed by indecision until you starve or wither away of old age, that is a choice. If you impulsively rush down one at random without thinking, that, too, is a choice – a choice to not be bothered to make a choice. And everything in your life from when you wake up to how you slice an orange is a choice.
Most of these choices are made by subconscious factors you’re not aware of – but you should be. Would you trust your dog to decide for you whom you should marry? Then why trust your heart, which is precisely as intelligent… and fickle? Yet that’s exactly what everyone does. Their choices are made by impulse, the same way a cow chooses which grass to crop. There’s no pattern, no thought, it simply eats what it sees until it’s gone, then walks to the next grass its eye falls upon, with nothing more complicated cluttering the decision-making process.
Like the cow, they walk in the same trail as they always have, never even pausing to question if it’s the best trail, or the right one; it’s simply the one they always have walked, and thus the right one. Whether that’s how you walk to the bale of hay or how you eat a kiwi or chop an onion, no actual thought is ever given to the choice. In both of these types of cases, which we’re all guilty of, your soul has made the choice to let the heart or the spirit make the choice for it.
And as I’ve made abundantly clear, neither is qualified to make good choices, and your soul is a fool for allowing them to usurp that role for so long.You have to take back that control one habit at a time, one like or dislike at a time, and force them to explain to you why you are the way you are; why you like the things you like, and why you routinely do the things you do.
HOW TO MAKE A DECISION
There are three phases in a decision making process when you come to a fork in the road, whether that’s the road that leads home or the way that leads to life:
1. Observe the facts – all the facts. What you see, what you hear, what you feel. Is one trail better trafficked than the other? Does one fork tend to lead in the direction you think you need to go? Is one trail downhill, therefore being more likely to lead back to civilization eventually?But these are not all the facts. These are only the external facts. You must also ask yourself what you want to do.
Are you getting tired? Do you want to go home? Are you getting thirsty? Is it getting dark and scary? These are also facts. You may ultimately choose to ignore these things, but how you FEEL and what you WANT is just as much a fact as how the trail looks. Therefore they must be weighed in with all the other evidence when you make a decision, BEFORE you ask yourself…
2. What should you do? Is someone waiting for you at the end of the trail? What are the odds that your choice is going to be wrong, and what are the risks if it is? How likely are your wants and fears (thirst, hunger, dark, etc.) to turn into a genuine problem (dehydration, fainting, being eaten by a bear)?
3. Finally, having asked your beast what it knows, sees, and wants, and only then having asked your spirit what it thinks you should do, only then your soul should decide what you will do. See, the soul’s primary job is not clearly expressed by the word “judge”. That is what it does, yes, but 90% of its job is simply asking questions – like any good judge trying to get all the facts so he can make a decision. And the most important question of all is…
WHY
When you’re in the supermarket and you feel a temptation to buy something, most people simply buy it; they justify it with statements like “I deserve this”, “I’ve earned a treat”, “it’s not really that expensive”, and so on. And that’s why most people are poor. What they should ask is “why do I want it? Why can’t I live without it? If it’s so important, why am I only thinking about buying it now?” If they asked these questions, they’d realize that they were only buying it because their eyes fell on it, just like the cow chooses its next mouthful of grass.
They only wanted it because it was shiny, pretty, and they were bored, or curious, or whatever. None of these things are wrong – but don’t lie about why you’re doing it. If you are buying this because you’re bored, selfish, and are buying it just to satisfy your lusts, fine – just admit that’s why you’re doing it, then buy it. It’s not wrong to feed the flesh, necessarily – but it is wrong to pretend that’s not what you’re doing. So a soul in authority, having established why the heart wants this, should hear what the spirit has to say; “do I really need this? Or is it something I merely want?” “Can I afford it? Will I actually use it?
Do I have space for it?” In short, ask your spirit… “should I buy it?” Then, and only then, are you ready to actually think about the question. If you answer, or act, before you’re done listening, that’s a choice – and making a choice before you’re done hearing the facts makes you a fool (Proverbs 18:13). And that’s why the world is foolish – because everyone does. So when you’re confronted with a question about right and wrong, first ask your heart what it would prefer to be true, and why.
Hear it out, make no judgments. This is how you FEEL. It may be selfish, and you may be ashamed of it, but let your heart speak the truth it feels (Psalms 15:2). It’s better to hear an embarrassing truth than a lie (Proverbs 27:5-6). Then ask the spirit why it believes this is wrong. Hear it out, and don’t let the heart object until it’s done. And don’t settle for the first answer – keep asking “why” until you track down the real truth. Why is that wrong, why are you so sure, why does that make you angry, why are you frustrated by this question, and so on – until you find the real truth from both. As I said, your job as a soul is mostly to ask “why”, until you feel you have all the facts you’re going to get (or all the facts you have time to get).
And when you’ve heard both cases thoroughly, before you render a judgment, imagine yourself making all possible judgments. In other words, if the choice is do or don’t fast tomorrow, before you render a verdict, imagine choosing each; and see how violently your fractions react. Because if one conclusion is unacceptable to you, then you will not be able to judge righteously. If, in the end, you absolutely will not choose one option, then you’re not judging – you’re just reacting, and justice will never be found in your mind. For it to be fair, both choices have to be equally possible, and equally acceptable, to the soul – if that’s the way the evidence points.
UNDERSTANDING THE MIND
These concepts are not new; you have certainly used the phrase “I thought about it, and I decided”, or “I asked myself…”, or “I wanted to do… but I did… instead”. These statements don’t clearly divide the “I’s”, but they do implicitly assume they are divided. Everyone knows this, which means all of these things you’ve learned in the past few series of lessons are all a part of the Golden Rule. Every successful person does this on some level, because this is absolutely necessary to be successful – because a person ruled, however imperfectly, by their soul will always wind up ahead of a person ruled by their heart.
The world’s financial, health, and relationship advice all revolves around having these sorts of internal dialogues where you discover your true feelings and your true needs, and then making an informed decision instead of simply reacting, like most people do. It’s just that what everyone does instinctively and inefficiently, you must learn to do consciously if you’re going to be a child of God. The world doesn’t realize who is speaking, or what the heart and spirit and soul are actually like, or what they are really supposed to do.
And that’s why the soul must be ruler of the self. When you don’t divide the I’s, your “self” is just a manifestation of whichever of the three fractions has wrestled themselves to the top at that moment. This is, sadly, how most of the world lives their whole lives, thinking of themselves as a complete person when in fact they are usually, at any given moment, just one third of a person trying desperately to stay on top of the other two thirds. This is what Hebrews 4:12 is talking about; when our spirit is lumped together with our soul, and they rule as a mixed up blob together, you will always be a slave to your conscience.
The word of God came specifically to break up this lump and force your soul to act independently of your spirit, so it can break your spirit and force it to behave meekly. And when your soul is not divided from your spirit, it will not be able to ask the heart why it wants these things because spirits don’t do that. “Why” is unimportant to a spirit – all they care about is “what”. What is the law, what should we do, how to do the right thing – these are what the spirit is designed to care about.
So no one who is dominated by their spirit is capable of asking their heart why it wants something; to say nothing of asking themselves why they keep these laws.That requires a soul to be freed of its spirit, so that the thoughts and intents of the heart can be made clear (Proverbs 20:5, Psalms 64:6). And that is what the Word of God is supposed to do… for when you know the truth, it should make you, all of you, free (John 8:32).
DIVIDING THE I’S
As I’ve said many times, neither your heart nor your spirit can be trusted to give you true answers. The heart may well lie to you about what it wants, and there is an excellent chance it may not even know what it wants – and it certainly doesn’t know what will make it happy!The heart is very aggressive about its wants, but if you challenge it to prove why it wants something, or why it “needs” something, it will usually give up or mumble something obviously stupid: “I just do”, “because”, and so on, which are easily judged.
Or maybe it will make a fair case; and when you give it what it asked for and it still isn’t happy, you can show it that, too. Because then your soul will have proven it cares for the life of the beast, and it will also have proven that the soul knows what the beast wants and needs better than the beast does, and that’s the most important lesson you can teach your heart. Likewise, the soul should be trained to ask the spirit questions; to demand proof that this really is a necessary and just rule. And it should keep asking “why”, until the spirit runs out of answers, leaving the facts exposed for the soul to judge objectively.
It is the soul’s job to make the spirit examine its rules and ensure that it is not living under a dead law (Galatians 4:21, 5:1). The spirit will be absolutely certain that its rules are good; and it will be absolutely certain that it’s right because it always is certain it’s right. And being unbroken, it will resent you questioning it. That’s why you have to ask “why”, over and over again, until you find the truth of the matter. See, the spirit is designed to rely on authority.
When someone says “don’t touch the stove, it’s hot”, and a child should take their word for it and not touch it. This is a good thing. It is not in the nature of the spirit to question why it shouldn’t touch the stove. It learned the rule that it should never touch the stove, and it will live by that rule until it hears a conflicting rule. But that rule was never meant to be a broad principle, never meant to apply for the rest of your life. And your soul needs to regularly question any rule that may no longer apply.
To be clear, I’m not saying we should ever disobey our consciences; on the contrary, that would be a sin all by itself (Romans 14:23). Doing something that you believe is wrong is a subjective sin, even if it isn’t an objective sin (1 Corinthians 8:7). You can trust that the motives of the spirit are usually less selfish than the motives of the beast (Matthew 26:41), because it believes it is trying to do the right thing; but once the spirit gets into a rut, it can be fully as selfish as the beast in defending its own arbitrary rules and petty traditions.
We cannot obey our consciences blindly when we know beyond a doubt that they are no better than the consciences of the people who raised us and shaped us (1 Corinthians 15:33). And yet that doesn’t excuse disobeying your conscience blindly either! If you disobey your conscience not because you doubt the quality of its laws, but just because your beast wants to do something it won’t allow, you are committing sin even if the beast happens to be right in the long run!
You should never act contrary your conscience unless you have facts on your side, because disobeying your conscience without just cause is a sin. But disobeying your conscience when your soul can demonstrate that the conscience is contrary to the law is just. Even the world knows this: “That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed” (Algernon Sidney).
PROVE ALL THINGS
The only way to be sure who is right is to systematically prove all things! Obviously, I’m quoting 1 Thessalonians 5:21, and what is the context? 1 Thessalonians 5:19-20. It is the spirit which is quenched, drowned in the spirits of other people (Revelation 17:15, Psalms 142:3). Because it trusted them, trusted their breath, their words, their spirits! (Psalms 146:3-4). Why would you trust a man “whose thoughts perish” to be the source of divine truth? No team made of people is worthy of loyalty because you can’t put your trust in men, particularly to interpret right and wrong for you! (2 Peter 1:20).
Don’t get me wrong, you can learn truth from someone; but not because they said so! Not based on accepting their authority to declare truth to you! You can only learn truth if you believe what they say because the facts support it! And you can only believe even your OWN conscience IF it can provide facts to support its rules! Your soul has the power to make a CHOICE, whether to follow the beast or the conscience; and if the soul judges that the conscience is wrong it should tell it so.
An arrogant spirit will violently resist this affront (Ecclesiastes 7:8-9); but a good spirit will realize it doesn’t have a leg to stand on and say… Proverbs 6:23 For the commandment [not me] is a lamp; and the law [not me] is light; and reproofs of instruction [to me] are the way of life: Our spirit is the light to our body (Proverbs 20:27). But if the soul can demonstrate that the spirit contradicts the very law it was created to remember, if it tarnishes the very light it was meant to reflect, it should graciously surrender, saying “reproofs of instruction are the way of life”.
The spirit’s job is to perfectly understand the law. And until it knows it doesn’t have all the answers it is not qualified to do that! Your spirit needs to know that it is flawed. To expect correction, and to delight in the reproofs of instruction that the soul brings to it. Not to get defensive and argue about semantics when it knows good and well its position is untenable.
Our conscience must be challenged, questioned, forced to provide a reason for what it does. If the soul doesn’t do that, then the spirit will grow lazy and fat, and never become the perfect witness it should be! Its job is to be right, always. But to do that, it must be wrong a million times. And in order to learn from those mistakes, it must be broken and contrite when it’s corrected. Psalms 34:11-18. Because being wrong is the only way for the spirit to find life!
JUDGING WITHOUT FACTS
Every judgment you make is a choice your soul has to make. Does it blindly obey the heart, thus becoming a selfish beast? Does it slavishly listen to the conscience, thus becoming arrogant and a slave to the letter of an arbitrary law? Does it try to strike a balance somewhere between the two? What does the beast really need and what does it really want? What does the spirit really know? Is this rule actually important? And a conscience that is challenged by its soul for answers should cheerfully go off and find them… or drop the subject.
And as the soul does this a dozen times a day, the spirit will grow in understanding, and be qualified to be a lamp to his soul, and a light to his path! And the heart will grow to trust its soul to provide for it better than it can provide for itself. I’ve emphasized how often the heart is wrong, and how the spirit has no claim to perfection either. God made them that way specifically so that you couldn’t trust either one! Because their job is not to be the guides to truth… it is merely to present their perspectives on the truth!
Their job is to present arguments that your soul must consider, which will then decide what the RIGHT thing to do is. Your soul is supposed to use them as a jumping-off point to find the TRUTH, and then do it – without caring who wants what, or how loud each voice yells. But there’s a problem. No matter how good the soul might be at this, the spirit only knows so much. The heart only knows so much. And usually, there is only so much time to make a judgment.
And that’s when it gets interesting: when the soul has to render a verdict without all the facts! See, if this were just a matter of waiting until you had all the facts to make a decision, God wouldn’t need you, He could replace you with a flowchart. But you will never have all the facts. That’s what makes the soul’s job interesting! You will never be able to be certain that the heart is telling the truth, or that the spirit has actually done its homework.
You might be 98% sure that the spirit is right; and that makes the judgment easy. But what if you’re only 70% sure? If possible, you should dig deeper, but what if you have to make a decision right now? The choice is still relatively easy. But what if you’re 55% sure the spirit is right, but the heart really really really wants to do the other thing? That’s not such an easy decision, is it? Or what if you’ve always always always done something a certain way, but you realize now there is only a 40% chance it was the right thing to do? Your spirit won’t want you to change… but shouldn’t you?
See, making a judgment is easy when you have all the facts – a computer could do it. But you never will. So you have to learn how to make the best judgment you can in situations with partial information. And just to make it more interesting, we rarely have the time to truly gather all the facts. Because when you reach a fork in the road and a bear is chasing you, stopping to determine which path is perfect will kill you.
Likewise, there are many judgments about sin you must make in a few seconds, while someone waits for an answer. You can’t just take three weeks to study up on the topic, and weigh all the variables. They need an answer now. What will it be? So the soul must learn to intuitively make the right choice even when you only have 30% of the facts. And the closer your nature is to God’s, the more like His your snap judgments should be. That is the goal of soul-growth.
THE BALANCING HEART
I’ve bashed the heart a lot in these lessons, but it’s not always wrong. In fact, it is there specifically to provide a challenge to the spirit which, left alone, is too legalistic. The beast is selfish, and will not quietly tolerate excessive rules by the spirit. Alone, a soul would struggle to overcome the unjust laws of its own spirit; but if it has an ally, it becomes easy to overturn them (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12). The heart will push against the fences, as all animals do, and the ones that are not strong enough will fall. And as the heart challenges the spirit’s more absurd rules, the soul should take notice and help the heart!
Because the laws are not there to oppress righteous men, but to correct the ungodly (1 Timothy 1:9). If the beast isn’t being bad, and yet is being punished or imprisoned unnecessarily, that’s unfair. Denying your beast food serves a purpose, but a righteous man helps his beast be as comfortable as possible even while punishing it! (Matthew 6:17). Fortunately, unless the heart has been oppressed for a long time, it will not take it quietly.
The heart will push and rage and rebel, and it will prevent the spirit from being too tyrannical; likewise, the spirit will not permit the heart’s excesses without throwing a tantrum of its own, to find a compromise they can both live with (Romans 2:15). Neither of those things are ideal; both presume the effective absence of the soul. But even in the absence of the soul, the inherently adversarial relationship of these fractions helps to keep most people from being complete monsters, whether that be from complete heart domination (think rock stars, Roman emperors, hippies) or complete spirit domination (think people with extreme OCD, inquisitors, fascists and, ironically, also communists).
BUT THE RIGHT WAY…
Obviously, as I said, that presumes the absence of the soul from active duty which is, sadly, the status quo in the world today. Yet the soul’s job is to manage these two factions, and to find, not a compromise, but a solution; not a judgment based on balance, but based on Truth. Your spirit will tell you something is wrong; and your soul should examine, and demand proof. Why is being, say, a nudist wrong? Because it is – or because that’s what society told you? Genesis 2:25. That is the opinion that your spirit garnered by absorbing the laws of other consciences around you, and it’s probably a good general principle. But it isn’t a law of God.
Your conscience is full of these types of things which may be good, or they may be meaningless, or they may be blatantly pagan. For example, most people’s conscience has a strong need to “knock on wood” after making a statement like “I’ve never been in a car crash”. But they never think back to the origin of this powerful compulsion, which is simply that you needed to touch a wooden idol after making a statement that seems to tempt God. So is this really a good rule… or simply idolatry hiding in plain sight?
A similar argument exists for the even stronger spiritual rule of saying gesundheit after someone sneezes; sneezing was believed to “let the devil in”, and wishing someone “health-hood” (the literal translation) protected the sneezer from the demonic influence. The larger issue is far less about these isolated external practices, pagan or not, than it is that these are powerful laws that our society feels very uncomfortable breaking even though they don’t know why they do them.
A good soul cannot follow such laws, or any laws, blindly. Your soul needs to demand answers, investigate the source of these so-called laws, and if it isn’t forthcoming, then it should tell your conscience that its opinion is wrong and that “law” needs deleted! And if your beast wants a treat, and your soul knows it won’t harm anyone involved, then there is no harm in giving it want it wants. I mean that literally – there is no harm because your soul already judged there would BE no harm! If there were harm, the soul should have said “no!” – so why deny your beast something fun?
THE IGNORED HEART
But as the spirit becomes better educated by the soul, the spirit will become more and more accurate. And the soul will come to trust it more and more. And in matters of righteousness and policy, the heart will be sided with less and less. And this, too, would become a problem. For all creatures, including souls, fall into ruts and habits. So knowing the heart would eventually be pushed aside once the conscience became very good, God found a way to keep it in the game: By putting His spirit there! (Ephesians 3:14-19).
See, after I understood a lot of this stuff, I realized how odd it was to have Jesus’ spirit placed in our heart, of all things. I mean, why wouldn’t His spirit be alongside our spirit? And as selfish as our heart is, I couldn’t imagine why He would choose to DWELL there (verse 17). And yet, that’s what it says – and it says it over and over again (2 Corinthians 1:22, Romans 10:6-8, Colossians 3:15-16, 2 Peter 1:19, etc.). And yet as I thought about it, I realized this makes perfect sense – because one of the things God hates most is making a judgment based on who is speaking, and not based on what is said! (Deuteronomy 1:17, 16:19).
If Christ had His own special throne in your mind, you’d have no grace for disobedience. But if He dwells in the heart, and the same heart that speaks selfishness sometimes also speaks for God… you can be forgiven for ignoring the spirit of Christ, because it spoke with the same voice as your selfish nature! (Romans 5:5). So Christ dwells in your hearts because that way you will never know whether it’s your heart speaking… or your Lord speaking! Anyone would obey a resonant baritone echoing in their head!
And anyone could learn to ignore the whiny voice of their heart! But only a wise soul can learn to judge righteous judgment! (John 7:24). This forces you not to be a respecter of the mighty or of the poor, but to judge based on the facts. An excellent example of this is in Numbers 22:22-33. Here, Balaam’s beast saw something that Balaam couldn’t – and since beasts can’t usually speak, clearly another spirit was speaking through Balaam’s beast!
Had Balaam judged his heart fairly, considered its long habit of obedience (verse 30), he would not have abused his beast when it was just doing what the spirit of Jesus was telling it to do. He would not have made a fool of himself beating up his heart for defending him from something his soul wasn’t able or willing to see! Remember in 1 John 3:19-22, our heart condemns us for things that our soul is not able or willing to look at. Our beast, for selfish reasons of its own, can sometimes see the sins we’ve committed far more clearly that our soul can. And when it condemns us, it could turn us aside off the deadly path we’re headed down, which ends in an angel with a flaming sword ready to kill us!
And even if our heart is too dumb to see all that, Jesus’ spirit dwelling in our heart isn’t. The thing is… your soul can’t tell the difference between the two, and so it’s forced to judge every word that comes from the heart not knowing whether it is the inspired words of Jesus… or the selfish arguments of an animal! (Proverbs 28:26). And by allowing your heart to criticize your soul this way, you are, in a way, setting the least esteemed member of your mind to judge you (1 Corinthians 6:4)… just as God commanded all along! 1 Corinthians 4:3-5. We are judged by the Lord through our own heart!
TWO OR THREE WITNESSES
It always bugged me; regularly the Bible requires that you use “two or three witnesses” to prove facts (2 Corinthians 13:1, etc.). This has always felt intolerably sloppy to me. If two witnesses are enough, just say “two”. If three are required, then just say “three”. Why “two OR three”?? Using the Golden Rule, how would you feel if two people’s opinion were enough to convict you wrongfully of murder; would you rather have three? Then again, looking at the Golden Rule from the victim’s point of view, wouldn’t you want the word of two witnesses to be enough to convict your rapist?
Yet every single time God mentioned the idea of witnesses like this, He was scrupulous to always say “two or three”. Even in non-crime-related contexts such as 1 Corinthians 14:27-29 and Matthew 18:20. So why the flexibility on something that would be very easy to make absolute; I mean, two clearly is enough, so why ask for three if two is enough? (Deuteronomy 17:6). Yet now we can see that there was a pattern God was showing us in that ancient law for a long-dead people. A pattern that each of us embodies to this day. As Paul pointed out, two or three should speak and one should judge.
Therefore, “one” is the soul – and judges are never allowed to testify. The “two” are clearly the heart and the spirit; who, then, is the third? The third that you may or may not be able to find? Just as clearly… it is the spirit of Christ! (1 Corinthians 5:4). If you have the spirit of Christ, you should most definitely hear all three witnesses! But if you don’t, then you are stuck with the two you do have… and that is enough to make a perfect judgment if your soul asks enough questions of the witnesses to be SURE they speak the truth!
In another sense which is equally true, those in the OC do not have the spirit of Christ; so for OC judgments, two is adequate. But ideally, even then, someone could be found to judge who had the spirit of Christ (Numbers 27:18). And so for NC justice, three witnesses are required. But often, you have to settle for the only two available under the OC.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
All truth is one. There is nothing you can learn which doesn’t illuminate everything else you already know. Our own mind is like a kingdom; with the soul as king, the spirit as counsellor, and the heart as the people of the kingdom. It is the responsibility of the soul to judge righteously, and our heart and spirit should respect their roles and obey it as a son obeys his father. But if our soul is the judge of our own self, if our soul is king of our own self, then in a manner of speaking you could say our soul is lord of our own body.
Like most words in the Bible, “lord” isn’t a fancy, holy, religious title reserved for Jesus or God. It simply means “master”. Not an absolute, all-powerful ruler – just the ruler of this region, the head of this house, the king of this castle (Matthew 18:25-26, Daniel 5:1, Ezekiel 23:23, etc.). In the OT, the word LORD (all caps in the KJV) is usually translated from yahweh, which as you learned in Series 2 is a proper name of the preincarnate Jesus. But the word “lord” is usually translated from the Hebrew adonai. In the NT, the word “Lord”, whether referring to Jesus or to a worldly ruler, is usually translated from the Greek kurios.
So when Jesus describes Himself as “Lord of Lords” (Revelation 17:14), He is describing Himself not as absolute ruler of the universe – the Father’s job (1 Corinthians 8:6, John 14:28). He is describing Himself as Lord of all other lords, King of all other kings. Yet Jesus called the Father Lord of Heaven and Earth (Matthew 11:25). Because the Father was Jesus’ Lord (Psalms 110:1), just as Jesus was David’s Lord (Matthew 22:42-45), just as the husband is Lord of the wife (1 Peter 3:6, Ephesians 5:22).
Remember: Jesus called Himself Lord of lords. Besides the most obvious physical aspects of ruling all the human and angelic lords, what is He really talking about? Revelation 5:10. Because those in the first resurrection will be lords under Jesus (Revelation 3:9). But it’s more than that, which is again a mostly external, physical thing. Because to be ruling with Jesus in the Kingdom, your soul must have established mastery of its own body (1 Corinthians 9:27)… just as Jesus is Lord of the saints, the saints are souls who are lords over their own bodies!
Thus Jesus is the Lord who rules over all those who have made themselves lords in their own mind, righteous kings of their human house (1 Timothy 3:4-5, 2 Corinthians 5:1-4). Now remember: all scripture is true in every conceivable sense. That means that if our own soul is a type of the Lord, then all scriptures about “the Lord” can be used to shed light on our own soul’s role in the mind! Because Jesus performs the same role to our soul, as our own soul does for our heart and spirit!
For example, Proverbs 16:9. God does make sure that things happen as they are supposed to, which is the obvious reading of this verse. But if we read it translating the symbols as above, then it means that your heart decides what you want, but your soul directs your steps by CHOOSING what to do! Backing up to Proverbs 16:1-6, you can see the verses that sum up this lesson if you replace Lord with our soul! Because although your heart comes up with its “wants”, and the spirit comes up with its “answers of the tongue”, the soul can manipulate them both, and is thus responsible for them both.
Everything you think is right, seems right to your heart and spirit; but it is the soul that weighs your spirit and sees if it truly IS right (Proverbs 16:2). That is why your heart and spirit should submit themselves unto their soul, to make sure their thoughts are just, so they can be established, ratified, without fear of criticism later! (Proverbs 16:3). All of the fractions of the mind exist to support the salvation of the soul (Proverbs 16:4). Even the selfish heart which causes “the day of evil”. But if the heart won’t obey the soul, it should be punished – even if it happens to be right, even if your spirit supports it by “joining hand in hand”!
Because rebellion is itself a sin, even if what the heart wanted wasn’t a sin! And finally, “by mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil” (Proverbs 16:6). The sins of the soul are purged when the spirit learns mercy and truth; and the soul departs from evil as the heart learns the fear of the Lord. See? As always, it’s always been there, you just had to listen to what it said. Of course, all these things apply to Jesus-as-Lord too. But they apply on absolutely every layer, so they apply just as well to your own Soul-as-Lord. That is… if your soul actually is lord of your body. But that’s up to you.