Spirit-Soul-Body

The flesh is of a single piece: all that we feel, smell, touch, hear, and see.  The spirit is also of a single piece, and that is the fulness of the divine nature of God.  The soul is in the middle and it is the best description of who I really am, intrinsically.  I am not this hunk of protoplasm as the secular world would have me believe.  Nor am I yet completely identified with the Spirit of Christ within me.  But the actions I choose determine where I am camping and which side I call home.  

The flesh and spirit are both destinations and life is a journey.  The road to the flesh is short and easy and leads to death.  All that life will one day be destroyed.  The road toward the spirit is as long as life or perhaps longer.  It is difficult and requires concentrated effort.  It is often contrary to "common sense" or earthly wisdom.  But the end of that road is eternal life, peace, joy, and fulfillment.

My everyday actions are not individual and separable.  They are either toward the flesh with all its corruption or toward the spirit and life and peace.  Overeating and impatience are all the same thing.  Adultery is of the same nature as gossip.  Any sinful action positions my soul closer to the life of the flesh, and then the corruption of the flesh begins to seep through my soul and become visible.  Love and praise, prayer and Bible reading are all of the spirit and lead toward the spirit.  But I must concentrate and throw my soul (heart) into these activities before they edify me.  I can act out spiritual things from fleshly motivations, but I cannot act out fleshly things from spiritual motivations.  I think this is what makes the spiritual road intrinsically harder.  

So it is not the activities themselves that makes me fleshly or spiritual, but the attitude of heart that motivates my actions.  It is possible to camouflage fleshly motivations with spirit-like activities, but spiritual motivations always result in spiritual actions that are incomprehensible to the world.  Spiritual motivations draw me closer to the life of God within me and transform my mind.  Then that life can begin to work its way out through the soul and even the body.

I think there is a third destination, and that is soulishness.  This is the destiny of all people who live moral lives and try to do what is right.  But since eternal life comes only from the spirit, this way, too, leads to death.  The soul-life is certainly more noble and lovely than the flesh life, but it is finite and mortal.  There is no ultimate hope in the soul life alone.  But by transforming the mind through the Scriptures, I can place myself in the life of God.  I am laying up for myself treasures in heaven.  

There are, I think, two kinds of heavenly treasures: soulish ones and divine rewards.  The soulish treasures are in being myself, as I want to be, through eternity.  The divine rewards we can only imagine parts of.  All of me that I wish to preserve must be identified with the spirit through the transforming of my mind.  Then I can be both what I want to be and what God requires.