Each of us is born with a soul. The soul is made up of mind, will and emotions. The soul is distinct from both the body and the spirit. For instance, the mind is not the brain, and we have the same will after we become a spirit being as we did before salvation. The soul God gave each of us is the one He wanted us to have; it ain’t broke, and He is well pleased with it. It is only when we depend on its attributes to get our needs met that we run into trouble. This is how we create flesh, or self-life.

The way our soul is put together, a combination of our individual strengths and weaknesses within our soul, can be referred to as our temperament. Each of us has a unique temperament, though there are many ways we can generally categorize them, often according to strengths and weaknesses, or what is socially desired or devalued (someone with a strong will, passion, and intelligence is often referred to as a leader or gifted person, while someone with low motivation, low intelligence and passivity is often referred to as “slow.” It is important to remember that God does not value one person’s temperament more than another’s; He specifically created each of them!).