What is Man?

What is Man? is T. Austin-Sparks’s sustained study of humanity from God’s standpoint: what a human being was created to be, what changed through the Fall, and how God produces a new kind of humanity in Christ. The book’s governing framework is the biblical distinction among spirit, soul, and body, but Sparks uses that distinction to explain much more than human constitution. He connects it with new birth, sanctification, the Cross, spiritual discernment, deception, resurrection, the Holy Spirit, and conflict with evil spiritual powers.

Psalm 8 and Hebrews 2 open the study with humanity’s high calling and destiny. Genesis then provides the creational foundation. Sparks presents the human spirit as the organ of God-consciousness, fellowship, and spiritual apprehension; the soul as the sphere of reason, emotion, and will; and the body as the means of outward expression. In God’s intended order, the human spirit was to live in relationship with God and govern the rest of the person under that relationship.

The Fall reverses this order. Sparks describes fallen humanity as another order from the humanity God intended: the soul becomes dominant while the human spirit loses its living relationship with God. This distinction underlies his treatment of the natural or “soulish” person and the spiritual person. Psychology can analyze natural human functions, but it cannot account for the human spirit, new birth from above, or the spiritual realities that arise from relationship with God.

New birth is therefore a central transition. John 3 is important because what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Regeneration is not mere moral improvement or a stronger natural personality; it brings the believer into a new spiritual relationship with God. First Corinthians 2 distinguishes the natural and spiritual person, while First Corinthians 6 contributes the believer’s union with the Lord as one spirit. The renewed human spirit is to become the sphere in which the Holy Spirit makes Christ’s life effective.

A full chapter is devoted to sanctification. Romans 6–8 and First John help Sparks explain sanctification as regeneration carried forward rather than as external improvement of the old nature. The Cross deals with the old man and the old ground of life, while resurrection supplies a new basis. Spiritual growth therefore includes learning to recognize what proceeds merely from soul and what proceeds from the Spirit, allowing the life of Christ to govern the whole person.

This distinction becomes especially important in the chapters on deception. Natural reason, emotion, will, psychic force, and intense religious activity can be mistaken for what is genuinely spiritual. Genesis 3 provides the original pattern of deception, and New Testament passages concerning the natural mind, spiritual blindness, and deceiving spirits show why sincerity alone is not a sufficient safeguard. Sparks directs the reader away from endless self-analysis and toward Christ, the Cross, spiritual understanding, and the corporate safeguards God provides.

The chapter on world domination broadens the subject to spiritual powers, Satanic control, and the contrast between the old humanity and God’s new man. The Cross and the new creation then become the decisive answer: God does not merely repair fallen human nature but brings forth a new humanity in Christ. Union with Christ is therefore not incidental to the book’s anthropology; it is the basis of the spiritual person God intends.

First Corinthians 15 receives sustained treatment in the chapter on the resurrection or spiritual body. Sparks distinguishes the present natural body from the future incorruptible, spiritual resurrection body and connects that future transformation with resurrection life already active through the Spirit. The next chapter turns directly to soul, spirit, and evil spiritual powers, showing how demonic influence seeks advantage through the soulish realm and how spiritual warfare must be understood from the believer’s union with Christ.

The final chapter centers the entire study on the Holy Spirit. Human spirit has no independent spiritual sufficiency. Romans 8 supplies the culminating emphasis: the Spirit of God bears witness with the believer’s spirit and is the source of life, truth, wisdom, power, and spiritual understanding. What is Man? therefore helps readers asking what spirit, soul, and body mean, what changes at new birth, how sanctification works, how soulish and spiritual activity differ, how deception operates, what the Cross accomplishes in relation to the old man, what the resurrection body is, and how the Holy Spirit governs genuine spiritual life.