Instinct for Animals, the Holy Spirit for Man

Instinct for Animals, the Holy Spirit for Man

God created every human being with a body, a physical form. This is something we share with all forms of created life on earth, with animals as well as plants.

God also gave every human being the capacity to think, react, and decide - mind, emotion, and will. We can group these psychological behavior mechanisms and think of them together as the "soul". It is within the soul that human behavior is determined, for it is here where decisions are made, plans are conceived, and the will is exercised to bring the body into action. The will is exercised under the influence of the mind and the emotions, whatever influence controls our mind and emotions will ultimately control our will. Through the behavior that results from this active operation of our soul, the thoughts and intents of our heart are communicated to the outside world.

The soul as so defined is a characteristic that we share with animals, but not with plants. It may surprise you to think of animals as having souls - minds to think with emotions to react with, and wills to decide with. If so, here is a simple experiment you can try; Find a stick, then find a wasps' nest and poke it with it with the stick. You will discover that wasps have a highly developed emotional capacity: They can get very angry. You will also see that wasps have a highly developed intellectual capacity to determine exactly who is stirring up their nest. Not only that, but you will find they have a highly developed volitional capacity, a will to wreck vengeance on their enemy. Though by that time, in all probability, you will not be hanging around to find out anything more.

So animals are like human beings in that they have a soul, a capacity to think, react, and decide. God however did not create animals with the capacity to be inhabited by their Creator, as man was. Instead, God built into animals a unique and wonderful mechanism called "instinct". This is the indispensable means by which He protects them and governs their behavior.

Because of instinct, the behavior patterns of animals are repetitive and predictable. but there is no moral relationship between the animals and their Creator, as there is between human beings and God. Every bird or beast or insect does what it does because it must. It is governed by a law of compulsion that operates in the soul of every  animal to teach its mind, control its emotions, and direct its will.

Instinct is indispensable to animals in the same way that the Holy Spirit is indispensable to us in our humanity. Human beings are uniquely made with the capacity to be governed by God Himself dwelling within the human spirit in intimate identity with the human soul, so that God, within the human spirit, gains access to the human soul. There He plays that role in man's soul which instinct plays in the animal- teaching the mind, controlling the emotions, and directing the will. In this way, according to His intended design and purpose, He governs our behavior, so that He in us is the origin of His own image,source of His own activity, dynamic of His own demands, and cause of His own effect.

God has created us to be functional only by virtue of His presence, exercising His divine sovereignty within our humanity so that out of our love for Him, we live in utter dependence upon Him. Moreover, the only evidence any of us can give of such dependence on Him is our unquestioning obedience to Him.

That is the threefold moral relationship - love for Him, dependence upon Him, and obedience to Him - that allows God to be God in action within a human being.

This is also the threefold moral relationship which Jesus Christ, for thirty-three years on earth, expressed  toward His Father. His love for the Father demanded absolute, unquestioning dependence upon the Father and total obedience to the Father. That is why He said that without His Father, He could do nothing (John 5:19, 30). The true sinlessness of Jesus was His constant reliance on the Father, never falling back on Himself.

If you and I are to be functional, this same relationship that existed between Jesus Christ and His Father in heaven must also be the relationship between ourselves and the Lord Jesus.

None of us are essential to God, but He is essentially indispensable to each of us. God so engineered you and me that His presence is indispensable to our humanity, teaching our minds, controlling our emotions, directing our wills, and governing our behavior.

Your new birth puts God into action IN you. It lets all of God loose, clothed with the redeemed humanity of your own flesh and blood as a forgiven sinner, so that at last you become a normal human being as Jesus was.

"God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work" (2 Corinthians9:8)

~W. Ian Thomas~