I would like for you to read these articles I have written taken from the Bible and dealing with the topic of the Spirit. As Christains Jesus Christ is our source. If we are going to grow up in Him, if we are going to live the Christian life at its potential then we must develop our relationship with our Lord in spirit because God is a Spirit and those that worship Him must worship in Spirit (John 4: 24)

If you have any questions please e-mail Jerrie at jmvhewlett@bellsouth.net

© 1997 jmvhewlett@bellsouth.net

"Separation of Soul and Spirit" and "The Knowledge of Good and Evil" are articles I have written concerning a very neglected subject in the Body of Christ in regard to the Soul of Man and the Spirit of Man.

Basically these articles deal with the subject of the separation of soul and spirit.

Heb. 4: 12 says "For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

When God made man originally he was flesh (formed of the dust of the earth), spirit (breathed into his nostrils the breath of life), and soul (and man became a living soul) Gen. 2: 7

When Adam sinned in eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil spiritual death occured. Now if you were brain dead your natural body could do nothing, right. So look at man as spiritually dead and his spirit not capable of functioning in any way. Jesus provides the means for a rebirth of that dead spirit and it now becomes capable of functioning again.

There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body - I Cor. 15:44

God had told Adam in the day that he ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil he would surely die. When Adam ate of the forbidden fruit his natural body did not die immediately but his spiritual body did. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body, once deadened but brought back to life through the rebirth given by Jesus (John 3: 1-8). When you read through the Bible you see many references to the word spirit. Sometimes it is capitalized and sometimes it is not. When capitalized it is referring to God's Holy Spirit but when not capitalized it is referring to man's spirit. (see Romans 8:16)

Now I will get into these articles themselves.

Separation of Soul and Spirit

Introduction

If we are to reach the potential God has given us through Jesus the distinction of and separation of soul and spirit is of paramount importance. The Word of God is quick and powerful and separates soul from spirit. (Heb 4:12) In the present article I intend to delve deeply into this subject the Lord willing. I must say I write this very humbled at the possibility that the Lord may indeed empower me to be able to treat this subject adequately. I will begin this article with definitions and proceed from there to specific Biblical incidents and personal experience. In doing this I hope to enlighten my readers to an understanding of this lost spiritual knowledge.

Definitions

Now just what is this spirit we are referring to here? And how is it different from the soul?

Gen. 2: 7

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

The flesh of man is formed by God then the spirit is given to him by God and at that point man becomes who he is, a living soul. So in the original creation man will experience the natural world via his soul, that is through his mind, and will experience the spiritual world of God also via his soul, however not by the mind this time but rather by what the Bible refers to as the heart or spirit.

I Cor. 15: 44 ...There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body

John 3: 6 That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of Spirit is spirit

The scriptures indicate two distinct bodies, one spiritual and one the natural body. We of course are conscious of our natural body but we also have a once deadened spiritual body which was brought to life again by Jesus, but we have no natural consciousness of this spirit of ours.

Eph. 2: 1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.

The dead here is talking about your dead spirit. In the original creation the spirit is a vital part of who you are as mankind. But now there is a dormant spirit body that we have no consciousness of, which becomes quickened again through Jesus. We still don't gain a consciousness of it, but it becomes alive again, it is reborn.

John 3: 7-8

Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh, and wither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

The reality of the reborn spirit can be sensed (thou hearest the sound thereof) but it can not be consciously observed (but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth).

So our spirit body is once again alive by Jesus despite our lack of consciousness of it. And we can again operate in this world as Adam did prior to his sin but by faith this time and not by sight. II Cor. 5: 7

So in answering the question 'What is spirit and how is it different from the soul?' we can say that the spirit is a distinct body and the soul is the vehicle that this spirit finds expression thorough, in the same way that our soul is the vehicle our natural body finds expression through via the natural functions of the brain. If you look at yourself in the mirror you see your natural body but if you were brain dead that body could do nothing, So think of a spiritual body that is brain dead and therefore is not capable of operating in anyway. But Jesus will bring this dead spirit back to life and it will be the soul which allows it expression once again.

God had given commandment to Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that in the day he ate thereof he would surely die. Adam did not die in his natural body the day he ate the fruit. I use to think the explanation for that was the biblical statement a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. But now I believe the explanation is that it was Adam's spirit that died on that day. Now the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the spiritual knowledge the writer of Hebrew refers to when he speaks of having your senses exercised to discern both good and evil (Heb. 5: 14). God intended for Adam to live by faith and not to have any knowledge of good or evil. The knowledge being gained Adam's spirit must become dead because of the great evil that can be perpetuated by this powerful spirit of his. Even with the deadened spirit think of the evil that was perpetuated in this earth due to Adam's sin. Having gained the knowledge of good and evil we now need to learn to discern good from evil, and this is accomplished by a return to a walk of faith. And we need to learn to distnguish between the soul and the reactivated spirit so that we can properly learn to discern both good and evil. This is why it is so important to separate soul from spirit.

Now how is this done?

The simple answer to that question is through prayer, and actually that is all the answer that is needed. But for your intellect to be able to hopefully perceive the Lord's answer to your prayer to separate your soul from your spirit, I will attempt to use some Biblical examples and personal experience.

Joseph dreamed of the sun and moon and eleven stars bowing down to him. Now everybody dreams but this dream was obviously recognized by Joseph and his family as being something beyond the normal dream. The reaction of Joseph's family to his dream was not a good one. His brothers were going to kill him but ended up selling him into slavery. For a period of fourteen years Joseph was a slave, then betrayed by his master's wife, and then put into prison. But Joseph's dream did come true and he became ruler in Egypt and his family did bow to him. Joseph did nothing to make this dream become reality. His soul was not involved at all. He just remained faithful to his God during those years of slavery and imprisonment.

Daniel was a captive in the Babylonian take over of Isreal. He was assigned in his captivity to become a king's magician. In effect he was asked to use his soul in what we term today as witchcraft. But Daniel set his heart to obey God and did not eat the king's meat. It is amazing to me how Daniel was able to be taught witchcraft but apparently never allowed his soul to become involved but rather allowed God's Spirit to take over and he was the greatest of all the Babylonian magicians.

Actually all the old testament prophets could be used as examples, from Elijah's triumph on Mt. Carmel (Elijah is running for his life in the next chapter) to Job's suffering or Jonah's mission to Ninevah.

In all these examples witchcraft is taking place at some level or another around all these men. But God's Spirit in these prophets prevails. Today we need to separate our soul from our reactivated spirit like these men did. Our soul is our natural conscious self of thoughts, will, and emotion. Our spirit is in communion with God. We separate these two by prayer acccording to Heb. 4: 12-16. Now we also need to distinguish between the two. This can only be done by reason of use (Heb. 5: 14) and mistakes along the the way are sure to occur. At this point a personal example might be helpful.

I was in a situation where a young man was very belligerent to me. I felt I needed to deal with the situation. I prayed for God's direction and He spoke to me to respond to the situation with love. I found I couldn't completely do that. I showed love to this boy up to a point but I wasn't willing to continue to endure his belligerent attitude. Now in retrospect, having more knowlege about this boy, I realize that complete love in that situation was exactly the right thing to do. But I didn't have a thorough understanding at the time and I let my mind supersede my spirit and intellectually did what seemed to be the best thing. The consequences of all that I won't go into but God was able to teach me a valuable lesson. Don't obey Him 95% which was what I had done in that situation but obey Him 100%. I believe this was the most valuable lesson I ever learned but I had been incredibly hurt by that situation in the learning.

When Peter saw the sheet coming down from heaven and God saying kill and eat, this vision was to prepare Peter to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. God didn't want Peter to eat unclean meat. the literal interpretation of that vision, but to take the Gospel to people the Jews saw as being unclean. The literal interpretation might be considered the soulish interpretation. The spiritual interpretation is the correct one.

So we are trying to learn here how to distinguish the soulish from the spiritual. Satan deals with the soul to get to the spirit. God communicates to the spirit which then enters the soul. The distinction is a fine one. But to live the spiritual life correctly it must be learned. I hope this has helped, but you will have to learn personally from your own experience. If your heart is set solely on God you need not despair or fear. You will learn and you can trust Him.

The Knowledge of Good and Evil

I will begin this article by referring the reader to the paragraph in The Separation of Soul and Spirit stating that God never intended man to have the knowledge of good and evil and man having gained that knowledge must now reverse its effect by a return to a walk of faith. I wish I could say that it was possible to now lose the knowledge of good and evil but I don't think that is very probable now that the knowledge has been gained. But a return to faith can cancel its effects and highly diminish that knowledge. I hope to explain in this article at least to some extent what the knowledge of good and evil entails, why God forbade man to have this knowledge, and how the effects of this knowledge can and should be reversed.

God had given the authority of the new world He had created to man (Gen. 1:28). He gave man freedom to eat of all the fruit of the garden, except for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:15-17) I must ask my readers to refresh themselves with the understanding of the spirit delineated in the Separation of Soul and Spirit article. The garden and its fruit is spiritual. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. the tree of life, and we can assume all the other trees of this garden are spiritual fruit. Do not think of them as the natural fruit we eat of today but as fruits of spiritual knowledge. Remember man's original creation. His spirit was as alive and he was as consciously aware of his spirit as we are of our natural body of the flesh today.

Why did Adam have to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil when God had allowed him to freely eat of all the other spiritual knowledge in the garden? And what was it about the knowledge of good and evil that caused God to forbid it to man? And why was the result of the eating of that fruit to be spiritual death? And finally how will our present understanding of these truths help us to return more closely to our original creation. These are the questions I hope to answer at least in part in the present article.

I think to answer these questions we will need to look first at the sin of Lucifer. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth it says in Gen. 1:1. Genesis 1 precedes to delineate the creation of the earth but the first verse says God created the heavens also. Prior to the creation of the earth there was another creation, a creation of the heavens which was populated by angels and prehaps other creatures which we know little about from the scriptures God has given us. As far as we can determine from the scriptural record this creation included the creation of three archangels; Michael, Gabriel, and Lucifer. We know of the rebellion of Lucifer, his taking a third of the angelic creation with him and the subsequent existence now on this earth of the now demonic once angelic spirits.

After this first creation God makes a new creation and makes man after His own image. Man is given dominion over the new earth. He is given access to all the fruits of spiritual knowledge in the garden including the tree of life but is forbidden the knowledge of good and evil. Today we have that knowledge because of Adam's sin but originally man would not know good and evil but live in communion with God. Think about this for a minute. All of your knowledge, your human knowledge of what is good and what is evil is in effect determined by man because man has the dominion of the earth. I am an American and as an American I have certain values. But a person of another culture may have another set of values which might not always correspond to mine. Who is right and who is wrong? Neither, because we should have never gained the knowledge of good and evil in the first place. God should have been the sole determiner of what is right and what is wrong, but because of Adam's sin it is in our hands now. So how do we get out of our predicament? We must return to a walk of faith, to communion with God and again let God determine the right and the wrong of any siuation. Basically we should have no judgment at all but turn all judgment back to God. This is done by the force of our wills. I am not saying this is easy to do. it is not. In sharing this insight to people I have been somewhat amazed by the amount of resistance to this concept I get. I don't think the idea of releasing our judgment in matters to God sets too well with some people. I think that is a lack of faith in God on their part. I can't really answer why the knowledge of good an evil was to be so harmful to man but the resistance to giving it up says something to me.

Why did Adam eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Satan tempted Eve and Adam that they would be as God. They were going to be the determiner of right and wrong and in effect be as God. It was really the same sin as Lucifer's. And now we are stuck with it. But God has provided a way out through Jesus Christ.

Christian, are you willing to give God back the knowledge of good and evil? To sustain all judgment to learn to commune with Him and to hear His voice "this is the way walk ye in it" when you turn to the right or to the left (Is. 30: 21). This is not easy to do. Our minds immediately jump in and say, no, this is the way, because we now have that knowledge of good and evil. But our wills can determine the pattern of our heart and we can learn to yield this knowledge back to God. That is in effect exercising the authority that God gave us.

Our Authority in Jesus

In the original creation God had given the authority of the newly created earth to man. This authority has never left the hands of man although Satan usurps it through utilizing man's will by deception. By getting Eve and Adam to eat of the knowledge of good and evil he gained the potentiality of capturing man's will to his own. I would say he has done a good job of it! But the authority is still in man's hands and you Christian, if you are willing, can be a part of God's purposes on this earth by giving back the knowledge of good and evil to God. I have heard many people give their ideas as to why man was created. The most popular opinion about that I would guess would be for worship. But God already had a whole creation of worshippers in the angels and other heavenly beings. My opinion for what it is worth is that He created man to have authority so that by the choice of will man would chose to be a worshipper of God. With the sin of Adam that was pretty much negated but not entirely for God had His plan in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus as a man born of woman would have the authority as a man and his choice was to go to the cross for the rest of us. And that he did. But I want you to notice something interesting. After Jesus went to the cross and rose again he didn't stay on earth and set up his earthly kingdom. He could have done that but he did not. Why? I submit for the same reason God had made man in the first place. He still wants man by the act of his free will to chose Him. Jesus after his resurrection proceeded to pass his newly gained authority right back to man. (Matthew 28: 18-20) So we still have that authority. And look what man has failed to do with that revitalized authority. The Church of Jesus Christ is more corrupt than what we would like to admit. And why did this happen? I propose that part of the reason man has continued to fail even after being given the provision of Jesus is his failure to turn the knowledge of good and evil back to God.

[At this point I am adding a few thoughts some two years after this was initially written, and that is why I have put it in brackets. At the bottom of this page I ask you to visit another website of mine. You see I have recently lost my 21 year old son and that website is in tribute to him. But I have learned some things through this experience. I understand what the disciples must have gone through at Jesus' death. To them a pointless and tragic event. But what had Jesus said to them in regards to his death. "Greater things will you do because I go to my Father." This is what these articles are really talking about. Allowing His Spirit to use our spirits here on earth so that "The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ." I believe this is what Jesus was talking about when he said we would do greater works. Not really ourselves doing this but Him through our willing cooperation.]

What we need to do

First of all we need to obey God. And I believe to adequately do that we need to turn the knowledge of good and evil that we now have back to Him. I believe we need to pray for Jesus' return so he will set up his earthly kingdom. Some Christians are a bit scared to do that because of the prophecies of the last days. As scary as they are, the same trust in the Lord that allows us to give back the knowledge of good and evil will also see us through those trying times. Basically we just need to turn everything back over to God by the choice of our wills. We need to use our authority in this earth in cooperation with God's purposes whatever those purposes might be. We may find that as the Lord reveals His will to us we don't initially like it too much but we have made our choice and obey anyway. I get up each morning with this prayer on my heart which I hope many of you will pray with me. Father God, I yield my body, soul, and spirit to you both to will and to do of your good pleasure (Phil. 2:13).

http://www.oocities.org/jhewlett.geo/jeremy.html

This is the site given in tribute to my son. It begins with a fascinating poem written by him shortly before he died. Just put jeremy for index from the address on this page and you will get right in.

jmvhewlett@bellsouth.net