Spring 1983
The Latter Rain a Revelation
Part II—The Threefold Constitution of Man
Frank Shimmel
Tyrone, PA

It is general knowledge in the church today that man is constructed of body, soul and spirit. It is, at the same time, a matter well hidden. The enemy of our Father and His Christ has been successful in his efforts to camouflage the truth within the context of familiar terms and “religious knowledge.” Most often the “hidden life” within that very thing is missed, and we settle for shallow understanding. The old-fashioned principle of humbling ourselves, receiving a love for the truth, and trusting the character of our Father is still the way to true spiritual knowledge, as distinguished from mere mental apprehension.

In Job 7:17-18 he inquires of God: “What is man that thou dost set your heart upon him?” David declares in Psalm 139:14 that he is fearfully and wonderfully made—meaning that this man God created is both frightening and unique (distinctive) from all creation. He is so constituted that to take account of man is to make us aware of the creative genius of our Father, recognizing that we will never completely understand man in this life; but know also that He does not leave us void of the knowledge necessary to become the living expression of Himself that He intended for man from the beginning.

In keeping with the matter at hand (the latter rain, which is the restoring of the spiritual man in the earth), it is necessary for us to see the distinction between body, soul and spirit. But no matter how much we know of man, there is always more to see. There are certain aspects of man we can put our attention to in order to establish an understanding of this matter. Let us go back to simplicities as much as possible; then as we meditate on these things, the Lord will enlarge them to our understanding, as we see progressively the many implications.

Body, soul and spirit are comprised of three general aspects:

Body: Blood; bones; flesh (physical).

Soul: Mind (reason); will (ability to choose); emotion (feelings, etc.).

Spirit: Worship (outreach toward our Creator in response to Him);
Conscience (inward knowing of what we reduce to right and wrong);
Institution or revelation (faculty of seeing and hearing).

It is important to have enough understanding of man to enable constant and progressive growth; but through perversion of this area of truth, our enemy has brought many of the Lord’s people into bondage and limitation. Although there is a distinction between soul and spirit, and it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to see that distinction, it is equally imperative that we see our soul as our Father sees us: not as an object of hatred and disgust, but as the great object of His love and constant attention. He would win our soul to Himself, and bring us under His authority. As Christ is reproduced in our Spirit through intuitive seeing, our soul looks upon the scene, and through the constant faithfulness of the Father in our lives is won by His presence and love, and brought into submission to the higher life of the Spirit. As the soul is yielded to the spirit, it is reconstituted into the kind of humanity the Lord Jesus perfected in Himself on earth. He then went to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit into the church for the purpose of reproducing His life in us. This reproduction constitutes us through the process of change, suitable to exhibit His life as His body, His fullness (Ephesians 1:22, 23). This process is solidly laid down in Romans 12:1, 2 and Second Corinthians, chapters three, four and five.

A master strategy Satan has achieved in the church is the constant harassing feeling that we must always choose between two aspects of truth. In this present matter, it is revealed in the sharp division in the saints over this matter of soul and spirit. The trick has been to get people to think they must choose one aspect at the expense of the other. Those who see the spiritual side of things have difficulty accepting the place of the soul; and those who see the importance of the soul cannot align the spiritual side with their comprehension. One tends to ultra-grace; the other to ultra-humanism. A great need in the church today is to see our humanity as God sees it. Our humanity (our soul) is a wonderful creation of God, designed to express to the rest of creation the person of the Creator. In the fall we became constitutionally unfit for this purpose, thus the need for “new birth,” or birth from above. Through new birth we become a new creation, constitutionally suited to contain divine life. The process of spiritual growth is the enlargement of the spirit (the new creation), bringing the soul into submission to it, and changing the soul through transfiguration (same word use of Christ on the Mount) constitutionally into the image of Christ, thus producing by birth and growth a whole new man. This process will be completed when our body is changed, through redemption into the new creation body that is designed to exhibit the Christ, being reproduced within us now, as we fix our gaze upon Him the perfected humanity.

The greater the balance becomes in us, the more we will appreciate our humanity, because it is becoming something to be admired under the hand of God. As we wait on the Lord, He will make real within us these things, and we will see as we exercise the spiritual faculties given us by birth, or birth from above. (Hebrews 5:8-14/6:1-3).