Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

Paul, Liz, and Jon continue their conversation, taking this model of the soul and seeing how Jesus uses it in interacting with the Rich Young Ruler.
"There has been a wonderful movement in the church in the last century toward grace. But the downside is that Christians now get nervous about calls to obedience, because they think somehow that negates grace. Jesus is obviously full of grace, and because he's full of grace, he's challenging the Rich Young Man's will with a call to simple obedience. It doesn't negate grace; it's getting to the heart of the issue, literally and figuratively."
"There's a lot in our culture that shifts us into a passive posture. Jesus is superactivating Mark: go sell all you have, give to the poor, and come follow me."
"Jesus empties Mark's heart and then fills it again. He's doing both simultaneously. So the emptying is 'give it all away.' And 'come follow me' is the replacement for those goods. And Jesus is a better good."

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their discussion of the soul, widening the conversation to consider how communities function with a kind of "corporate soul."
"The state of the soul is shaped by where it is on the J-Curve. And as it goes down into death, that breaks our pride, which is essentially at our affections level. Our affections are disoriented, or they're rightly oriented. And when they're disoriented, they're proud, and they're worshiping idols. They're turned inward in self-love and/or outward in loving the wrong thing."
"The J-Curve reorients the soul, so the soul becomes sane."
"When I came onto staff at seeJesus, it wouldn't surprise me that we'd pray when facing a challenge or difficulty, or after exhausting all our resources, because I always did the same thing in my pastoral ministry at previous churches. That was not abnormal. What struck me more was when we'd be excited together, dreaming and vision-casting. Then someone would catch themselves and remind us to stop and pray. It felt frustrating, like we were cutting off the good part. But that was a way of slowing down, literally having to stop and talk to the Spirit, talk to God. It's actually a very practical thing to do in a group or leadership setting."

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about learning how to be a person by looking at Jesus.
"We've been looking at Jesus' soul, and that's not something that we're used to thinking about. In the church, we sort of generally think of two large categories with Jesus – his deity and then of course his work for us on the cross. So we're actually going to an area that is not well explored by the church. The joy of exploring it is we're looking at what it is to be a person. The big theological word is anthropology."
"What does the anthropos, the person, the man, look like?"
"When Jesus says to his brothers, 'My time has not yet come. I'm not going to the feast.' That was the tip of the iceberg, and underneath was a soul saturated in the word of God, a soul in step with the Spirit, in prayer. He was doing nothing on his own. He was waiting for his father's time. He was functionally the most dependent being who ever lived, and that's our model for how to do life as Christians."
You can view the chart Paul references on the complete soul (will, affections, mind) here.

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about the structure of the soul, looking at how the Spirit helps our souls.
"If we learn amazing truth at our seminaries but never apply it to our hearts, it's disembodied knowledge. If my will is the steering wheel and my heart is the gas pedal, then it's like never actually putting my foot on the gas or my hand on the wheel. I just aced the written exam but never actually drove."
"When you're walking with the Spirit, you are walking with Jesus. So He's there now as my friend, guiding me into love."
"Paul says to walk, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. So my soul is not alone. By the Spirit, because He dwells and lives within us, there is absolute power and absolute hope that the flesh can be defeated, not in our own strength, but in His."
You can view the chart Paul references on the complete soul (will, affections, mind) here.

Paul, Jon, and Liz continue their conversation about what we learn about the soul, sketching out three faculties of the soul (the will, the affections (loves), and the mind) and how they interact.
"The modern word for the soul is the self. But people don't think of the self as a spirit. Our world is Spirit-less, so it's soul-less. Both evangelical and secular scholars say that our world is disenchanted. In 15th century Europe, they couldn't imagine a world without God. And now our modern culture can't imagine a world with God."
"Soul care at its finest is engaged bodily in the world of love. But often the way we care for our souls is by protecting them from trouble, as though the soul is at its finest on vacation."
"The affections, or the loves of the soul, are the sum total of what we love. And the sum total of what we love is the powerhouse of the soul. The mind is wonderful because it allows us to speak to our soul. The Psalms are full of that! As new creatures in Christ, we are not just slaves to our own desires; we actually have a choice. The mind has the ability to tutor, in a sense, the heart."