Troublesome Topic: THE ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSE Part 1

The Ancient Hebrew understanding of how everything in the universe is constructed (anatomy), and how it functions (physiology), can be expressed with what I will refer to as three “constructing materials” and three “functional states”.

ANATOMY

The three types of construction material are Body, Soul and Spirit. This describes our anatomy – what we are made of, or how we are put together.

The body is the physical aspect of anything – here I am using the term body for anything physical, even a rock or a piece of metal. The point is that it has physical reality.

The Soul is, well, it quickly gets difficult to describe because the Bible’s use of the terms rendered in English as soul are quite varied in their usage. But the idea seems to be that the soul is the non-physical side of me that makes me me. It is sometimes called the “inner man.”

Spirit seems to be that which connects me to others, especially to God.

Either the soul or the spirit, (or both), drives the desire for truth and a spiritual relationship with God.

Everything everywhere is composed of either a physical body, a soul, or a spirit, or some combination of the three.

Much more can be said about the soul and the spirit, for they are complex issues. For instance, the Bible says that both humans and animals are souls and possess spirits, but these are a reality for animals in a different way than for humans.

My point here is simply that, if we ignore the aspects of soul and spirit in us, we are ignoring most of what makes us who we are. I believe our composition is not divided evenly between those three “construction materials”, rather, the soul and spirit make up more than a third each, while the physical body is less than a third of who we are. Science, medicine, academia and governments usually see humans as only physical beings; they try to tell us how to think and act while looking at less than 30% of who we really are.

PHYSIOLOGY

Everything functions in ways that are described as fitting the following functional states, or conditions: They are some combination of clean or unclean on one side, and either common or uncommon (i.e. holy) on the other side. T

The possible combinations are:

Uncommon (holy) and clean

Common and clean

Common and unclean.

(To be unclean and holy at the same time is totally impossible – even putting those words together in written form feels like a violation of some cosmic law).

If something was unclean it needed to be cleansed, usually with water. There were times that a blood sacrifice was needed and that was because a line had been crossed making atonement necessary, not just cleansing.

Water cleanses; blood atones.

Cleansing must always come before atonement.

Cleansing and atonement were the mechanisms God gave Israel for movement from common and unclean to clean and holy.

It is highly unfortunate that we don’t hear teaching about clean and unclean in the church today. While we do not need to follow the regulations which served as the teaching tool in the Old Testament, we should follow the principles those regulations taught. This issue was one of the most important foundation stones of God’s spiritual teaching method. We should not ignore it.

The realities of clean and unclean are true even after Jesus died for our redemption and rose again for us to live a holy life.

We are cleansed when we repent and confess; we are atoned for when we use faith to grab hold of the atoning blood of Jesus. In our minds they go together when a person decides to follow Jesus, but in reality they are two different things that fulfill the two requirements of God’s spiritual economy.

I know that when I said that cleansing must come first, some of you thought about baptism and how baptism comes after salvation. But baptism does not cleanse us, the cleansing has already occurred; baptism is only an outward sign of what has already happened inwardly. And in this case, the water of baptism does not represent cleansing, it represents death! That’s right. Baptism is a type of burial, except we don’t bury people in dirt and then pull them out again; some might not get pulled out in time to stay alive. So we “bury” them under water just long enough to represent death and resurrection. So the truth still applies – cleansing must come before atonement.

That fits the Old Testament pattern that one could not jump from being unclean and common to being clean and holy; first one needed to become common and clean and then he was eligible to become clean and holy through the atoning work of a blood sacrifice.

ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY WORK TOGETHER

In our physical bodies, our anatomy (how we are put together) and our physiology (how everything functions) are closely related. That is true in the spiritual realm as well, although at first glance they do not appear to be connected.

What I said above about us being made of body, soul and spirit, is connected to the issues of clean and unclean, cleansing and atonement, in at least one way, a very important way. Our goal should be to live in the state called Clean and Holy, right? But in order to stay in that condition for long periods of time, in order to not spend most of our time bouncing back and forth from unclean to clean and back to unclean again, there needs to be agreement, unity. What unity am I referring to? Our body, soul and Spirit must be pulling in the same direction. If any part of us is drawn away from godliness, we are not experiencing internal unity and we are likely to slip back into an unclean state. But if every aspect of our being is driving toward the goal of glorifying God in all we do, we will indeed be able to maintain the condition of clean and holy for long periods of time.

Holy living is possible!

The next lesson is THE ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSE Part 2