THE THREEFOLD NATURE OF MAN

The outer circle stands for the body of man, the middle for the soul, and the inner for the spirit or what Paul caused the carnal I Corinthians 3:1-3; the “Natural” I Corinthians 2:14 and the “Spiritual” I Corinthians 3:1 parts of man. In the outer circle the “Body” is shown as touching the Material World through the five senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. The gates to the “Soul” or imagination, conscience, memory, reason and the affections. The “Spirit” receives impressions of the outward and material things through the Soul. The Spiritual Faculties of the Spirit are Faith, Hope, Reverence, Prayer and Worship. In his unfallen state the Spirit of man was illuminated from Heaven, but when the human race fell in Adam, sin closed the window of the Spirit, and pulled down the curtain, and the chamber of the Spirit became a Death Chamber, and remains so in every unregenerate heart, until the “Life” and “Light” given power of the Holy Spirit floods the chamber with the “Life and “Light” given power of the NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS. We see then why the “natural” man cannot understand “spiritual” things. He cannot understand them  until his spiritual nature has been renewed. 

But the Spirit of the Natural man is not only darkened, his “Will” stands as a guard at the door, and prevents the entrance of the Holy Spirit, and it is not until the “Will” surrenders through the power of the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, that the Holy Spirit can enter and take up his abode in the “Spirit” of man. (John 3:16; 10:9-10; 17:3; Rom. 3:23; 6:23; 10:9-10, 13-14; II Cor. 5:17, 21).

Finally, when a man dies his Soul and Spirit separate from the Body, and the Body is laid in the grave, but the Spirit is not bodiless, it has what Paul calls the “PSYCHICAL” or “Soulish” Body. As this “Soulish Body” can hear, and speak, and think, and feel, it must have some tangible form. It is not a ghostlike structure. There are doubtless limitations in its use, or there would be no need for it to recover its “physical” body at the Resurrection.

That there is such a thing as the “Soulish Body” is brought out in the story of the “Rich Man and Lazarus.” Luke 16:19-31. The story is not a parable but a description by Christ of something that really happened in the other world to his own personal knowledge.” 

Larkin, Clarence. 1920. Rightly Dividing The Word. Sunnyside.