The Inner Man

THE DAILY WORD
By Jim Seekamp

Monday June 2, 2008

The Bible tells us that man is made up of three distinct parts: spirit, soul, and body.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 (NIV)
23. 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.

Although it's quite clear what the body is, the spirit and the soul often get confused. To define the three parts as clearly as possible, we can say that:

1. With the body we contact the physical realm.
2. With the soul we contact the intellectual and emotional realms.
3. With the spirit we contact the spirit realm.

Man is a spirit being. We are created in the image of God:

Genesis 1:27 (NIV)
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

God is SPIRIT:

John 4:24 (NIV) (Jesus speaking)
"God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

Since God is SPIRIT, and man is created in the image of God, we know that man is also a spirit being.

We also know that when a person is born again, they become a "new creation":

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

We know from what Jesus told Nicodemus, that this new creation happens in the SPIRIT, and not the soul or the body:

John 3:3-6 (NIV)
3. In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."
4. "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"
5. Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

Spirit gives birth to SPIRIT! When you are born again, you receive a new human SPIRIT from God!

It is the human SPIRIT that becomes a new creation when we get saved, not our SOUL. The spirit is the "inner man" that becomes a new creation in Christ. This immediately causes a conflict for us, since we have the same soul and body as before we were saved:

Romans 7:18-23
18. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-- this I keep on doing. 20. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22. FOR IN MY INNER BEING I DELIGHT IN GOD'S LAW; 23. but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

Here we see that in our "inner being" (born again human spirit) we delight in God's law. In other words, our born again spirit delights in His ways... but we still have our flesh and our minds to deal with! Our nature has become good; we now desire to do what is right, but as Paul says, we find we cannot always carry it out!

I once heard a minister tell the story of how he told an unbeliever that if he received Christ and got saved, he could sin as much as he wanted! At that, the man promptly received Christ and got saved!

A few months later the man came back to the minister and told him he understood now what the minister meant when he said that; the man no longer WANTED to sin! His NATURE had changed! He was a new creation in Christ and DESIRED to do what is right in God's eyes!

Too many times we put the cart before the horse-- telling people they must straighten out their lives if they are going to receive Christ-- when actually it's the other way around. If someone will simply receive Christ as their Savior in whatever condition they are in, they will become a new creation in Christ, and they will then begin to DESIRE to do what is right!

PRAYER
Thank You Father for Your life-giving Word. Thank You for sending Jesus Christ to save me by His work at the cross. Thank You for making me a new creation in Christ Jesus. Help me to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is not a single good work I can do that will make me more born again than I already am.
In Jesus' Name, Amen.

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