The Outward and Inward Man
 n our study on counseling problems
we looked at some of the nature of man. Man is basically a spirit living in a physical
body. We saw some of the functions of the body, soul and spirit. Now I want to show how
all of these three parts of man’s nature work together to make up a whole person. I
want to repeat some of the functions of the spirit here in a bit more detail.
The first of these is the ability to "know" apart from the
physical senses and intellect. We call this inner knowledge "intuition" or
"revelation." The spirit can get knowledge from the spirit realm using this
ability. The second function of the spirit is the ability to detect the presence of good
and evil. We call this function "conscience" and it accuses or excuses our
actions (Rom 2:15). The conscience tells us if guilt is present or not. Then the final
function of the spirit is to make contact with or detect the presence of another spirit.
This function, called "communion" allows us to make contact with God who is
Spirit.
Man was given the ability to receive from God's spiritual realm all he
would need to live successfully on earth. All he needed to do was to listen to his spirit
and let it rule his soul and body. There was nothing complicated about this, and all would
have gone well if Adam and Eve had stayed away from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and
Evil. They just needed to fellowship with God in the cool of the day and listen to
receive His Words of instruction and encouragement. But of course Eve let the serpent
tempt her and she made Adam open the door for Satan. Sin entered man through the body via
the forbidden fruit. And it caused a condition that stopped them from living the way
God had planned them to live.
I don't want to look at sin in a lot of detail here, but I want to look
at how man’s spirit, soul and body work together to produce our lifestyle. Modern
science tells us that the brain lies at the control center of the body. Through the
nervous system it is able to control the whole body. Some of these happen automatically.
For example, your heartbeat and breathing take place without you thinking about it. The
same applies to the way the body protects itself from harm and disease.
But the brain is also clearly linked to the mind of the soul. It
allows us to think consciously and remember things. So body and soul join together in the
brain to form the conscious mind. When your body is sleeping you are no longer
"conscious," which means that your conscious mind is not working. Science has
made the mistake of thinking that the brain is the organ of memory, and that the different
in intelligence between people depends on their brain power.
This would mean that when a person dies, and his spirit leaves his
body, he would no longer have any knowledge or remember what happened during his life. Yet
Scripture clearly shows us that the spirits of the dead still know what happened in their
life. I will not take up space proving this here, but you can look up all references to
this in the Word. Read the incident Jesus told of the rich man and Lazarus who died. Read
also of how Jesus after His death descended into the realms of darkness and preached to
the spirits in prison.
Psychologists in trying find out how the soul of man works have
discovered that there is a deeper "mind" in man, which they call the
"sub-conscious mind." This is because it lies below the surface of the
conscious mind and is beyond the reach of our will. They found through research that what
is held in the conscious mind starts to sink down into the sub-conscious mind. They also
found that the sub-conscious mind has a stronger control over the person than the
conscious mind. In fact what is in the conscious mind often comes from the sub-conscious.
The basic difference between the two though, is that we can control our conscious mind by
an act of will.
What they have discovered is actually nothing new. The Scriptures have
taught from the beginning that man is a spirit and that all control actually comes from
the spirit of man. It is similar in an animal, except that an animal does not have a
spirit. The controlling life force, or instinct in an animal cannot be changed and
does not depend upon its conscious thoughts. You cannot teach a dog how to make nests,
because this is built into the birds who make nests. But man is different. He does nothing
by instinct, except what has been built into him through upbringing and the experiences of
life.
But there is an influence in man that comes from the sin of Adam. It is
a sinful principle that causes everyone to be trained in the ways of sin. A child
starts out in a condition of innocence, but he soon gets trained in the ways of sin.
It comes from this principle in him, and also from experiences in a world that is
tainted by sin. The whole world system, now being controlled by Satan, is designed to
train man to sin. It feeds his sub-conscious with patterns that predispose him to
sin.
Let's see what the Bible teaches about the sub-conscious. Scripture
does not use this term, which was coined by man, by it does refer to the "heart of
man." This is not the physical organ called the heart, but the center of man’s
being, from which everything comes that controls his life. A close look at this term
"heart" shows that it is used to describe functions that come from both spirit
and soul, but never from the body. It is the "inner man" or the "spirit of
the mind."
Ephesians 3:16 That he would grant you, according
to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
Ephesians 4:23 And be renewed in the spirit of
your mind;
2 Timothy 1:7 For God hath not given us the
spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
Since the mind is contained in the soul I would like to suggest that
the so called sub-conscious mind is actually the joining of the spirit and soul. So
the conscious mind can receive information from two sources - the soul or the body, and
the sub-conscious also from two sources - the soul or the spirit. In both cases, the soul
is a common ground, because it links the body and spirit together. I want to take a look
at the chart above and show you how a flow can take place between these two parts of our
being.
Instead of using the terms "conscious mind" and
"sub-conscious mind" that man has chosen, I am rather going to use the terms
"outward man" and "inward man", which agrees with Scripture
2 Corinthians 4:16 For which cause we faint not;
but though our outward man perish, yet the inward [man] is renewed day by day.
The Inward Flow of Data
Let us consider firstly how data is passed down
from the outward man into the inward man. Data is gathered by the body from the world
around it, using the five senses. This is then passed down through the brain to the soul.
The more powerful senses are the senses of sight and hearing. Data from the sense of sight
is sent as pictures. This is the easiest way to receive information. The old saying that a
picture is worth a thousand words is very true. It is also very easy for the mind to
receive and remember pictures.
The sense of hearing is another important source. Usually we receive
information we hear as words, although any sound you hear is data. This way of receiving
information is not as clear as the sense of sight, but our main way of sending out
information is by means of speech. So we have grown up learning most of what we know
through the sense of hearing. Children spend hours in schools every day learning by verbal
instruction, and this continues into adulthood. Yet for all the years we spend getting
educated, it is amazing how little we remember of what we learn. The reason? The mind
cannot receive words unless they are converted into pictures.
The three remaining senses of touch, taste and smell are more to help
the body operate more efficiently. For most of us they play only a small part in our
knowledge and we remember little of the information they send.. Just try thinking about a
taste or smell. It is not easy to re-smell a rose, or re-taste a peach through thought.
You might sometimes find yourself craving something you haven’t eaten in a while, but
this tends to be more physical than mental. But when someone loses the use of their sense
of sight and hearing, or they are affected, then the other senses come into play and are
increased to take its place. The blind person uses the senses of touch and smell to
"see" as well as having a more acute sense of hearing.
So the outward man gathers data and passes it to the soul. And from
there it is passed down to the inward man, where it becomes a permanent memory. But the
inward man is fussy about the kind of the information it receives. It can only receive
data as 'pictures' received from the impulses of the nervous system from the five senses.
The spirit will remember sights, sounds, physical sensations, smells and tastes. But data
received in the form of words must be converted to pictures in the mind. If students were
taught to do this in schools they would be able to learn and remember what they learn
without having to use heavy study methods.
The Outward Flow of Data
Let us go on now and have a look at the reverse
process, i.e. communicating information outwards. The spirit of man can also obtain
information from the spiritual realm. The spirit has its own senses, which enable it to
gather information from the world of the spirit. This information, plus that which has
been stored in the inward man can then be sent out to the soul. And it is then expressed
in the outward man through conscious thoughts. This influence is not as strong as that
which comes from the world through the senses. So many people find it difficult to
recognize what is coming from their inward man.
However there is a big difference between the way data is passed
inwards and the way it comes out. Data is sent inwards when the mind is filled with
pictures.. But when the inward man starts to send out information it is seen more in the
emotions and the will. We tend to respond more quickly to the things we feel than we do to
the things we think. Haven't you ever disobeyed all sense of logic to do what you strongly
desire or feel like doing? Although the will seems to be the part that controls us, it
tends to bow very quickly to the feelings and desires. It is easy to say "I can do
anything I choose to do." But the trouble is you choose to do only the things
you feel like doing.
The reason your emotions are more easily affected by what comes out of
your inward man, is that there is nothing blocking it. There is no data flowing
inwards from the emotions as there is from the mind. And your will cannot stop what comes
out of your emotions. You cannot control your feelings and desires by an act of
will. You can only stop yourself from responding to them. But any data sent to
the mind is smothered by all the information that is going in from the senses. If
you want to listen to your inward man in your mind, you have to stop this flow from the
senses. We will be looking at this later, where we will show how you can come to a place
where you are able to clearly receive from your inward man.
The inward man is also able to send data outwards through your will.
When this happens it comes out as speech or words. Words are a tangible form of spiritual
essence. When words are uttered, a person causes what is in his spirit to flow out into
the earth. It is not necessary for the words to first come into the mind before they are
spoken. No person thinks words in his mind before speaking them. They rise up directly out
of the spirit. Jesus said in John 6:63 "..the words that I speak to you, [they] are
spirit, and [they] are life." Also concerning the Scriptures, we are told in 2 Tim
3:16 that all Scripture is "God-breathed." When God as Spirit sent forth His
Word into the earth, He sent out some of His Spirit to us. The Scriptures are an
expression of the very Spirit of God.
This gives us a very powerful tool, because not only can information be
passed down to the inner man through pictures, but it is also possible by the use of
words, to cause the process to be repeated. When a person takes in their mouth, the Words
which God spoke, and utters them again, by an act of the will, the Spirit contained in
those words is caused to be fed down into their spirit. So, by taking a powerful promise
of God and confessing it over and over, there comes an inflow of God’s power into the
spirit. We will be considering this in a lot more detail later in the study.
We can now begin to see in the way outward and inward man work, a way
for us to change the way we behave. That which fills the mind will be fed down into the
inward man. This will in turn bring an influence to bear upon the emotions.
And then your emotions will flow out in feelings and desires which will affect the things
you do. So what you are thinking about all the time will produce the feelings and desires
that decide how you will live. If you consider the way the world system is set up, it is
no wonder that man has become so corrupt. We are bombarded daily by the media and our
minds are filled with pictures which promote fear and sin. We can’t understand why we
are continually filled with fear, and find ourselves unable to live the kind of lives
which we know God wants us to live.
As far as speech is concerned, the world system under Satan has been
set up to program us into speaking words which instead of causing the power of God’s
Spirit to flow inwards, causes the spirit of the world and of antichrist to flow inwards.
The language of the world is tinged with death, fear and corruption. The utterance of
profanity which easily takes its hold on our speech, causes us to feed a destructive force
into the inner man. We need to be aware of this and change our language. This is a major
task, but it will make a drastic change to your spiritual life. We will be looking at it
in a lot more detail as we proceed with this study.
If you did not fully understand everything in this study, then try
printing out the chart and then re-read it with the chart in front of you. See if
you can figure out what I was talking about, because it is very important. If you do
not understand what has been taught here, then you will not understand what is to follow.
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