BODY,
SOUL AND SPIRIT

Confirmation, baptism, holy communion, confession of faith: none of these nor all of them together can turn flesh into spirit nor make of a son of Adam a son of God.1

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… it is proper to say that man is made for the earth, it is actually necessary to say that man’s body is made for the earth. It was his body that was taken from the dust of the ground, for man became a living soul when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. The image of God was not in the body of the man, but in the spirit that made him man. The body is simply the instrument through which the soul manifests itself down here—that is all.2

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We should not think it is humility to berate and cry down this body which God has given us. It serves us well, but it has no power in itself. It has no will of its own. The body cannot express affection or emotion.3

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The human body has no thought processes. Our human thought processes lie within the soul, in the human mind, in the human spirit. But God has ordained that it is through the instrument of the body that our ability to think shines forth and expresses itself.4

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There is nothing evil in matter itself. Evil lies in the spirit. Evils of the heart, of the mind, of the soul, of the spirit—these have to do with man’s sin, and the only reason the human body does evil is because the human spirit uses it to do evil.5

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In the time of our departure, the body that He gave us will disintegrate and drop away like a cocoon, for the spirit of the man soars away to the presence of God.6