Who am I?

Understanding who God is really leads right into understanding who you are.

Here’s an astonishing Biblical fact: Of all God’s creation, nothing was made in His image but humanity. You’ll learn exactly how you are created in the image of God, and the vital connection that you have with God, which will drive and shape everything about your life following Jesus.

Joshua S. Hall on his website truevinelife.com, provides wonderful and ample resources on the subject of how you are designed, in his article entitled Integrated Design for Empowerment. Here’s a small excerpt:

“God is a triunity. He exists as three distinct persons—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit—but yet He is one. In other words, God has three distinct persons, each of which are entirely Him, but He is one. Similarly, man has three distinct components—spirit, soul, and body—but he is one. An individual is not defined by just his spirit or just his soul, he is simply defined as the integrated whole.”

This is a foundational concept and truth that you must grasp in the beginning of your path to following Jesus, the one who has designed you. Not only are you designed in the image of God…

You are intentionally and intricately engineered for a present and eternal connection with Him.

From Mr. Hall’s insightful and scripturally-based research and writing, he identifies the three distinct human components – spirit, soul and body – and how they together make it possible in an integrated way for you to live this life as a follower of Jesus. Of course, the Bible is the ultimate authority on this understanding, and you’ll find ample scripture references throughout Mr. Hall’s articles. Below you’ll find bits and pieces of information from his writings.

Your spirit (Greek πνεύμα – or pneuma)

The nature of the [human] spirit defines the individual. God recreates the spirit of the believer in Jesus Christ for eternity and this gives him a new spiritual identity as a child of God… The believer is literally possessed by God. His spirit is united with the Holy Spirit. If he yields to God’s Spirit, he can be controlled by God. This is what God wants for His church. He wants us to be controlled by His Spirit so that Jesus Christ can live through us. – https://www.truevinelife.com/growthinchrist/the-architecture-of-man-part-2-the-spirit-of-man

This is your essential immaterial core belonging to God (see Ecclesiastes 12:7). The human spirit comes directly from God. Your spirit is the fingerprint of your being, holding the key to your unique individuality as a person, created and designed by God for His purposes, and in His image (see Genesis 1:27).

Take a moment here to dwell on the following words preserved forever in Scripture from King David reflecting the deeply profound, sacred and mysterious process of your beginning. Note that God first created your “inmost being’ – commonly believed to be your spirit and soul. These ancient words illustrate the divine integration of your immaterial (spiritual) and material (flesh) components, woven together into the one beautiful person that you are. Speak aloud the passage below:

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand….”
– Taken from Psalm 139, 13-18

Most amazingly, when you believe in Jesus and receive Him as your Savior, the spirit of your “inmost being” is regenerated, made pure and new again by the power of God! As a believer, your regenerated spirit is forever free of sin. Now you can be ready to step into the coming days of your life that the Creator and Lover of your soul has already written!

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.” – 2 Corinthians 5:17 (HCSB translation)

Now if that regeneration of your spirit isn’t amazing enough, let this sink in: The Holy Spirit becomes inseparably united with your spirit. The human spirit was designed to be one with and function in tandem with God’s Spirit. Writers at www.compellingtruth.org provide support for this profound fact, writing

“The spiritual part of believers in Jesus Christ is that which responds to the things that come from the Spirit of God, understanding and discerning them spiritually.” – https://www.compellingtruth.org/difference-soul-spirit.html

What an incredible union! This is a supernatural connection between God and you, guaranteed and sealed by the Holy Spirit unto eternal life. You become a son (or daughter) of God and are fully equipped to be filled with His divine nature. The Apostle Peter recorded these words in one of his letters to the early believers:

“His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. By these He has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature…” – 2 Peter 1:3-4 (HCSB translation)

Your soul (Greek ψυχή – or psyche)

Let’s look more now at your soul, and it’s relationship to your heart and mind. These two immaterial components are not the same as your physical heart and your brain. Mr. Hall describes them as “sub-components” of your soul, each of which has a distinct influence on the quality of your life and your faith, expressed within your soul.

Bob Wilkins of Grace Evangelical Society, provides a very succinct set of equations that clearly define each of these intangible aspects that are the inner essence of a human being.

Heart = inward self where feelings, emotions and thinking occur.
Mind = the inward part of us where thinking occurs.
Soul = the entire inner person.

– Taken from https://faithalone.org/blog/is-there-a-difference-between-heart-soul-and-mind/

Although the distinction between heart and mind can’t be fully understood (and they somewhat seemingly overlap), let’s listen to Mr. Hall eloquently expand on how these two aspects of your soul operate to have a profound impact on the quality of your faith and life:

“The Bible reveals a pattern of connectivity between the heart and the mind. The heart is the steering wheel of the soul where the words of God are processed and faith decisions are made or rejected. Positive acceptance causes the mind to inherit insight and understanding that reinforce actions of righteousness.” 
– Taken from Integrated Design for Empowerment, Joshua S. Hall

Now this is where it gets really interesting! In the quote from Mr. Hall above, did you catch the divine, “words of God” connection that exists within you? The connection between the Holy Spirit (aka, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ) and your own, God-given spirit is activated. As the voice of God – the very essence of God – flows from His Spirit to your spirit, to your heart and mind (your soul), you as a human being can choose to respond.

To make it possible for you in your humanity and sinful flesh to actually know and respond to God in this earthly existence, your heart and mind are actually informed by your own spirit. Although your spirit is regenerated and sinless when you become a believer, your heart and mind are not. As you choose to follow Christ, throughout your life your heart and mind are transformed relative to your willingness to respond through these two components to Christ and the Holy Spirit. Your spirit and soul are tightly woven together in such a way that only the Author and Creator God could ever divide the two. In a few words below, Mr. Hall (truevinelife.com) describes this spiritual connection.

“…the spirit of a man is mysteriously fused with his soul. The Bible is the only textbook we have for understanding this mysterious fusion. In the natural realm we cannot observe this at all, we can only view the fruit of the body or the actions that spring forth from this fusion…”
– Taken from Integrated Design for Empowerment, Joshua S. Hall

Again, the writers at www.compellingtruth.org help us by further defining the soul and distinction between the spirit and soul, while at the same time acknowledging the immutable connection between the two:

“While the two words are often used interchangeably, the primary distinction between soul and spirit in man is that the soul is the animate life, or the seat of the senses, desires, affections, and appetites. The spirit is that part of us that connects…to God.” – https://www.compellingtruth.org/difference-soul-spirit.html

Another writer, Dave Perry, expands further on the fascinating integrated role of your heart and mind.

“Generally speaking, we think, rationalize, decide, and do a host of other things with our minds. The heart is more like a repository of the things we believe to be true. Many thoughts enter our mind over the course of time, but we don’t act or give them much consideration. We can generally change our minds quickly, and often do; but the heart is slower, and often reluctant, to change. That’s because the heart contains the accumulation of beliefs, attitudes, opinions, desires, and emotions that have been shaped through our life experiences. How we were raised and educated has an influence on our hearts and is reflected in our character. These experiences shape our hearts and can result in either godly or ungodly behaviors.“
– Dave Perry, Being Heart Healthy. thesowermagazine.com 2017

Hopefully you’re beginning to appreciate the powerful and real inner-life (i.e. secret place) connection with God that you receive as a believer, and how this inner working will naturally reveal itself in your outer life as you follow Christ! What a beautiful and natural reflection of the divine nature which is Christ in you, as you respond and choose to follow Him. This outer life of course will inevitably be expressed through your physical being, your body.

Your body

The human body is your only physical, material component, through which the immaterial aspects of your humanity are expressed. Additionally of course, through your physical senses, you interpret the world around you, processing and responding to all of this information via your secret life – spirit, soul, heart and mind.

Finally, Mr. Hall provides an excellent summary of the integrated function of all human components with respect to your life as a believer and Christ follower!

“I love God with my heart by having faith in what He says. I love God with my soul by acting on it. I love God with my mind by studying His word and aligning my thinking to His revelation. I love God with my strength by serving Him with my abilities and physically enduring. God desires that I love Him with all aspects of my being. This is both necessary to functionally love Him since these all flow together but also symbolic in that I am loving God with everything in me.”
– Joshua S. Hall, Integrated Design for Empowerment, truevinelife.com

You’ve covered a tremendous amount of ground in building your foundation for following Jesus.

So what’s next? With your new understanding of God and yourself, the logical next step would be to dig into this new relationship between the two of you. There are some very revealing, actual conversations between Jesus and some of His earliest students, dating back to the early first century. Read the next article to discover the one thing that Jesus expected of His student followers back then, as He does today, in this relationship (click the link at the bottom right).

Key takeaways:

1. As you learn about who you are, uniquely created in God’s image, this will drive everything about your relationship following Jesus.
2. Not only are you created in God’s image, you are designed with a fully integrated architecture for a present and eternal connection with Him.
3. This supernatural connection, guaranteed and sealed by the Holy Spirit for eternity, equips every believer to live out the “divine nature” according to Scripture.

For reflection or discussion:

1. Do you find anything striking about the similarity between the Creator God and humanity? Can you describe what is significant about that similarity?
2. That you are designed in the image of God is profound in itself, but did you catch anything else equally profound in what you are designed to experience? How would you describe it?
3. Related to the first two questions, what is the significance of your spirit in relation to God?
4. As you read through the sections pertaining to each of these three “components” of your humanity, can you identify one or more distinct and unique aspects about the function, purpose and value of each?
5. Find where the article above references the phrases “inner life” and “outer life.” Where would you say your relationship with Jesus begins and develops, in your inner or outer life? What information from the article supports your answer?
6. Take some time to reflect on the summary quote by Joshua Hall underneath the “Your Body” section. What is the most important quality that develops in you as you engage with God through your spirit, soul and body?
7. In that same quote, can you identify six actions you’ll be increasingly empowered to do as you develop in your relationship with God.

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