The 3 Parts of Man—Spirit, Soul, and Body
Human beings are complicated. Each one of us is unique; we come from various backgrounds
and have different personalities.
But with respect to how God created us, we’re actually all the same. The Bible tells us in 1
Thessalonians 5:23 that we were all created with three parts—a spirit, a soul, and a body:
“And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may beyour spirit and soul and body
preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
In this post we’ll read an extremely helpful note on this verse in the New Testament Recovery
Version to help us understand these three parts.
The three parts of man
Let’s take a look at note 5 on 1 Thessalonians 5:23 in the Recovery Version. Since this is a
lengthy note, we’ll read it in sections.
The first part of the note says:
“This word strongly indicates that man is of three parts: , , and . The as our spirit soul body spirit
inmost part is the inner organ, possessing God-consciousness, that we may contact God (John
4:24; Rom. 1:9).”
The is the deepest part of a person. By means of this innermost part, we can human spirit
contact God in the spiritual realm. No other creature was created by God with this third part. 9
Now let’s read the next section of the note, which explains our soul:
“The is our very self (cf. Matt. 16:26; Luke 9:25), a medium between our spirit and our soul
body, possessing self-consciousness, that we may have our personality.”
Our soul perceives things in the psychological realm. In fact, in Greek—the original language of
the New Testament—the word for is , which is also the root word of soul psuche psychology.9
Our soul is our personality, who we are. With our soul we think, reason, consider, remember, and
