The Questions Indicate Body, Soul or Spirit

Worship in spirit and truth means obedience. The spirit is the meaning and the purpose of our lives, and that the meaning of God’s Spirit is summed up in His Will. To understand the spirit of a matter is to understand the point. Recently it occurred to me that the reporter’s interrogatives used for gathering information for a story correlate to different attributes of the body soul and spirit.

The human spirit is the meaning and purpose of our lives. Like DNA it is the code of our existence and purpose. In our heart and gut we follow the path that God has laid out for our lives. That is the communication of our spirit to our soul. As Watchman Nee says, we commune with God through our spirit, we hear from God intuitively with our spirit, and the guidance of our spirit on the day to day choices of right and wrong comes to us through our conscience.

Our souls are the expression and comprehension of our personalities. We understand what our spirit is leading us through our minds. We act on those leadings through our will. And we express the mood of the spirit with our emotions.

Our bodies express and implement the soul’s understanding of the spirit. We express the mood of our spirit through body language. We interact with the world with our bodies on behalf of the spirit through the soul. And we communicate to the world from our spirit through the soul. Of course, this outline is only in regard to the proper functioning our spirit soul and body apart from the Fall and the Flesh. The interrogatives address each of these three parts of human make up.

The question “Who?” enquires about the personality involved. The personality belongs to the realm of the soul. This is our point of identity and self awareness.

The question “What?” enquires to the event that happened. This relates to the body in the world.

The question “When?” enquires to the time of the event. This relates both to the body in the world and to the spirit for time is the spiritual grid of creation. In the fullness of time Christ entered the world, for example. All of creation is laid out on the grid of time. Mordecai told Esther, “Who knows whether you are come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14). It relates to purpose, which is the spiritual realm.

The question “Where?” is the body in geography.

The question “How?” touches the realm of the soul and the body. The soul is the realm of mind and understanding. How something is done asks about the plan of execution. The execution, of course is in the world where the body participates.

The last question, “Why?” is the reason and purpose for the event. Purpose is motivation, which touches both the spirit and the soul. The why of a person is to touch that person’s spirit. Motivation has external origins, too, hence touches the soul. The soul ties person’s spirit to the world.

The interrogatives provide glimpses into the relation of body, soul and spirit to an event. Ask these questions about yourself, and you can see your own body, soul and spirit in your personal events.