The one commonality among every single Christian living today is that all of us have underestimated the depth and breadth of God’s love. Many of us have studied His Word, and some of us have done so exhaustively. We may comprehend God’s love intellectually; in other words, everything that we have read in the bible makes perfect sense to us, but when it comes to spiritually comprehending the impact of what each of us can do through God’s love, most of us are miles away from where we need to be. This is because we haven’t yet come into the kind of relationship that we should have with the person of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is a person of the Godhead bodily. He is as much God as Jesus Christ and God the Father. To live out of our spirits, we must understand to some degree the connection between Holy Spirit and our human spirit. To shed more light on this subject, I’d like to expound upon some spiritual truths from the Word of God that we’ve covered many times in previous teachings. It may be somewhat redundant, but it is a small cost, because these truths are fundamentally essential to growing in our relationship with Heavenly Father.
Genesis 1:26 (NIV) bears record that humankind was created in the image of God. It says, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” God is speaking to His Son and the Holy Spirit, confirming that we are to be created in His likeness. This means that we can look at our own makeup, and doing so will give us definitive answers about the Father’s makeup, because we are made in His likeness. There are three parts to the Godhead, and there are three parts to our makeup as well.
1Thessalonians 5:23 (NIV) says, “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God created us as three-part beings; spirit, soul, and body. The spirit in this verse is not referring to the Holy Spirit that indwells us after he has given us salvation. The spirit that is referenced in 1Thessalonians 5:23 is our own spirit man that is a part of our total being. We were born with this spirit.
The one thing that we know about the spirit man is that before we are born again, he (your spirit man) does not have eternality. Your spirit man keeps your body alive and thriving throughout your existence on earth, but it will die without an infusion of God’s everlasting love.
In John 3:3 (NIV), Jesus told Nicodemus, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” This baffled Nicodemus, because in his understanding of a human birth, he could not reconcile a fully-grown adult reentering the birth canal of their mother’s womb. But Jesus Christ wasn’t referring to a physical rebirth. He was speaking of something infinitely greater. Jesus Christ was teaching Nicodemus about the rebirth of the human spirit.
2Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) tells us, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” Words cannot describe the salvation experience. It is a supernatural transaction that transfers us from darkness to light, from death to life through Christ Jesus. Salvation begins the transformative work of our souls through the Holy Spirit. This is where our spiritual journey begins.
We know that after we become born again and accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, our bodies do not change. We can look in the mirror and see this evidentially. Additionally, we may experience a wonderful explosion of joyous emotion (I know that I did), but our new birth reality did not give us a new mind. When we come down off the high of having been born again, we come back to thoughts that need to be renewed and a heart and soul that need to be transformed into the image of Christ over time. So when 2Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) tells us that we are new creations, what does it mean?
Our born-again reality makes us new creations in Christ because of what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross. The Godhead had never been separated, but when Jesus Christ took on sin in his body, he was separated from Heavenly Father for the first time. He had never known sin, and he voluntarily took it on himself. He was the only one who COULD do it. He took on every sin possible in human experience or else his perfect work would not have been complete. You and I do not have the capacity to experience the suffering that he did on the cross, and this is one of the reasons why he did it for us. He did not suffer on the cross as God. He suffered on the cross as a man. He proved to us the depth and breadth of God’s love and demonstrated for us that God’s love is unfailing; even in a human frame.
Even though there have been many times that we did not honor Jesus; even though many people during his time called him a worker of satan because they were filled with darkness and ignorance; even though his friends abandoned him; even though there were many in the crowd watching his crucifixion that he had healed and delivered, and none of them helped him; he passed every test of love and gave his body to be beaten and his blood to be shed. He did all of this because he knew what would happen because of his sacrifice. He saw our destinies. He knew who and what we would become as a result of his finished work.
Jesus Christ made it possible for our spirit man to be created anew, so that we could be eternal spiritual beings, and blessed with all spiritual blessings. Our human spirit through Christ is incorruptible. 1Peter 1:23 (NLT) tells us, “For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God.”
It was always the Father’s heart that we would have His nature. He knew from the very beginning that we would need to be redeemed, and He knew that in order for us to be all that He desired us to be, we would not only need a new spirit, but we needed to have His Spirit dwelling on the inside of us, most importantly. He gave us this gift who communicates with us spirit to spirit! This is incredible!
Heavenly Father is holy; untouched by sin. He came to earth as a man in the person of Jesus Christ, and wedged himself between the Father and sin. He redeemed us! We have a clean slate because he made it possible for our spirit man to be born again. Now, our bodies can be temples that house this tremendous gift, and because of Christ we can live out of our spirit man with the power of the Holy Spirit! More to come!■
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
“Living Out of Your Spirit Man!” written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2017. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.