Person (4) External Senses

The five external senses are well understood. We learn to enumerate them from childhood: see, hear, smell, taste, touch.

Those who want scriptures can find references for each of the five senses. There are plenty for seeing, hearing. Jesus physically touched many people and the bleeding women touched him. Smelling is less common, but Lazarus stank. There was plenty of tasting at the wedding in Cana.

The role of the external senses is to inform us what is happening in the external world. When a leaf fall off the tree, I can see it. When a door shuts, I can hear it. These senses are essential for living in the physical world. A person who is deficient in one sense is limited in some way. A person who is blind finds it much harder to move around in the physical world. A deaf person misses out on some things.

The external senses have no moral character. They are neither good or bad. However, they are neutral in what they perceive. They can perceive things that are good and things that are bad. My eyes can see violent movies. I can hear a testimony about Jesus.

Our external senses take stuff from the external world and bring it inside us, so we should be careful about how we use our senses. We can use our external senses to fill minds with good stuff and with bad stuff. Job said,

I made a covenant with my eyes
not to look lustfully at a young woman (Job 31:1).

We should be careful that our eternal senses are focussed on stuff that will edify us.

Christians should not be driven by what we perceive from the physical world with our external senses. We should be shaped by what is happening in the spiritual realms. We perceive that through our spirit. Paul said,

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Col 3:1).

Christians use their five external senses to operate in the physical world, but we must fix our heart on Jesus in the spiritual realms. I have described this in greater detail in the Spiritual Realms.