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what we are in our own right with clear differentiations between himself and us. God is purely spirit in his divine essence wherein three distinct persons subsist; and we are body and soul in our human nature wherein only one individual person consists at a time. And in this we live either as one male human being or one female human being at any given time. Indeed we Have to be if we are going to exist properly and fittingly in this very physical universe, particularly here on earth.

When Paul sets forth his threefold distinctions in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, what he gives us is not insight into what essentially characterises the human nature but an acknowledgement of the functional distinctions that show us how we relate to the divine being in the scheme of salvation. Spirit here refers to how the non-physical part of us is specially sensitive to the spiritual things of God, and soul to how in our non-physical aspect we think after our own individual self as a body-soul unit. Therefore spirit and soul are here not essential distinctions but rather functional ones. We see examples of such functional distinctions liberally throughtout sacred Scripture. For instance when Jesus says that we are to love God with our heart, mind, soul and strength. Nobody from this ever infers there are so many essential distinctions to our human nature. These are simply the way the self functions in person-to-person communication. The non-physical part of us is simply one thing in essence as distinguished from the physical aspect to us which is also only one thing in character. it can either be wholly called soul or alternatively spirit. This is why biblically the Bible in many other instances uses these terms interchangeably. We are rather simply put a unity in duality. Which is to say we are in essence a body-soul unit or alternatively spirit and body. There is a physical aspect to us (i.e. body) and a non-physical aspect to us (i.e. spirit or soul). Any modification to this historic understanding will simply lead you into the rolling waves of false teachings that distort historic christian teaching.

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