SOUL and SPIRITof MAN

1. Man has a body. In this he is like all creation of God through the animal and vegetable world.
2. Man possess a soul. In this we are unlike the trees , plants, and lower animals. The soul is the seat of our emotions, our passions, our feelings, our feelings, our desires, our affections, our likes and dislikes, and our will. All these thing we have in common with the God.
3. Man is a spirit. In this he is unique among God's creatures. "The spirit of a man is the candle of Jehovah"Proverbs 20:27, and it is this that is set aglow when man is born-again; and the God's Spirit testifies with man's spirit that he is a child of God. God cannot be known by the body, nor by the soul, but only by the spirit. And even the human spirit is incapable of finding out anything about God or of knowing God except by revelation of the Spirit of God.
"For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God...But the soulish (so the Greek) man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they anew foolishness unto him: neither can he know them,because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritually discerneth all things, yet he himself discerned of no man" 1 Corinthians 2:11-15.

The believer is spiritual only when he is ruled through his own spirit by the Spirit of God. If he is ruled by his body as dominated by his soul, he becomes a slave to his own affections, appetites, emotions, passions, and therefore is a willful, selfish man. The Word of God is is very careful to distinguish: between the things of the soul and the spirit even judging "the thoughts and the intents of the heart" as to whether such thoughts and intents are spiritual or soulish, Hebrews 4:12. It declares that any wisdom which is not from above and therefore not from the Spirit of God, is earthly, soulish, devilish" James 3:15. It asserts that the false teachers of the end-time are "they who make separations, soulish, having not the Spirit" Jude 19; and finally, it gives us the glorious assurance that when we get our resurrected bodies 1 Corinthians 15:44 they will be no longer soulish [natural' is incorrect here also], but spiritual: no longer dominated by selfishness and willfulness, but rather under the full and free control of the Spirit of God.