Spirit, Soul & Body and the 3 Realms of Reality

When we understand how God made us, and the changes wrought through salvation, we are better equipped to overcome the world, the flesh and the devil. We need to start with a solid understanding and description of what we are, and what our environment is. If you are a regenerated Christian, you can say, “I am a spirit, I have a soul and I live in a body.”

The Body & the Natural Realm

God created us with bodies. Each of us lives in a unique body, inherited genetically from our parents, who inherited their bodies from their parents, and so on. The body is made up of skin, muscle, circulatory system, heart, brain, etc. Our body was made to function in this earthly environment for a limited time and under earthly restrictions, and it is our body that communicates and relates to this world. The body has five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing. The body is not a spiritual entity, but is often affected by what goes on in both the soul and the spirit. Before we were born into this world, we did not have the body we have now, and after we die, it will go into the ground (in one way or another). The body is not eternal.

Because the body is a part of the natural realm, it is subject to natural laws. Some of these are time, decay, hunger, pain (sunburn, broken bones) and tiredness. Illness, stress and accidents are also a part of this realm. Jesus said the rain falls on the just and the unjust; the positive and the negative of the natural realm do not discriminate between believers and non-believers. Likewise, natural disasters, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes and the like do not always represent signs or judgment from God.

Warfare in the natural realm consists of taking care of our bodies; generally speaking, most of us don’t have any trouble seeing the need for brushing our teeth, eating properly, exercising regularly and getting proper sleep (though we may not actually do them). We do need to be aware, however, that when our bodies break down, it is often a clear indication that there is something wrong in the soulical realm.

We need to not only take care of our bodies (God loves your body), but also be aware of what is going on in the natural realm. God is constantly speaking through creation; this is one of the reasons there is such debate regarding the creation of the universe, the evolution of man, and the existence of alien life. In his present state, man often relies on “faith in the insupportable” to divert his thoughts from being confronted daily by the infinite majesty and order of the created natural realm (it takes more faith to believe in the poorly researched and illogical hypotheses of much of the scientific community than it does to believe in an infinitely creative God. By the way, among evolutionists, there is no agreement on what the main tenets of evolution should be, except that evolution opposes creation. True science wonderfully reveals God’s existence and workings in the natural realm; it’s often when we try to apply scientific, natural reasoning to the supernatural and spiritual realms that science turns into deception and manipulation).

We can conclude that that which pertains to the natural realm is subject to natural laws, and is under the control of the One Who created it.

[to be continued]