Transforming the Soul
Spirit, Soul, and Body
Part 4
3/19/17
- Andy Davis There are three parts that make up who each of us are: spirit, soul, and body. As believers, our body - our skin, bones, tissue, and muscles - are the earthly dwelling for the Holy Spirit, and our soul is made up of our mind, our will, and our emotions. When we are born again, the thing that fundamentally changes upon being born again is our spirit. When we accept Christ into our life we become a new creation! (2 Cor. 5:17-18)
However, when we received the full portion of the Spirit of Christ, that did not necessarily transform our soul or our body immediately. 2 Corinthians 5:16 instructs us to “therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh.” When God looks upon this born again brother or sister, He sees Jesus, by virtue of His Spirit in them! We are urged to see them (and ourselves) likewise!
Now what the enemy will try to do, is to make us think otherwise about ourselves and about our other brothers and sisters in Christ around us. The enemy want to make us think that there is something at our core that is bad or evil. He wants to trick us into believing that all the thoughts that come into our head are really the “true you.” Those are lies he wants to sow into our heart about ourselves or those around us. He uses these lies to make us think that we need to “get more good” into us - that we have to try harder to make ourselves holy. That is the trap. That is religion. We have to fight against that because in fact, as born-again believers we have all the goodness, all the holiness, all the righteousness, all the perfection within us that we will ever need! We have the 100% Holy Spirit inside of us already! Rather than trying to “get good into us” we need to simply be letting that holiness of the Holy Spirit out of us! The bible is clear - we allow the goodness of God to be expressed in our lives by renewing our souls! (Rom. 12:2)
There are three ways we can be about the transformation of our souls. The core way is using the mirror of the Word and lining up with the Word. (2 Cor. 3:18) And the other to helping ways are by keeping / guarding our hearts and by managing / eradicating unbelief in our lives. This message is one of the most important ones a Christian can every know. As Hebrews 10:14 puts it “For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.”