Many writers and preachers have already addressed this topic
of the “inward man”. I don’t intend to add anything more but I hope to
highlight just a few basic things.
Man is a spirit. In the beginning when man was created in
the image and likeness of God.
Therefore if God is spirit then man too is an eternal spirit. Man also possesses
a soul. The soul of man is his reasoning faculties – his intelligence, his
mind, will. The outside of a man is called the body. It is the flesh with the
five senses. So to summarize, Man is a spirit who possesses a soul and is in a
body (earth suit).
Before sin entered the world, man was in communion with God.
His spirit was in fellowship with God. When sin entered the world it caused
spiritual death. In other words, the human spirit/ man was disconnected from
God who is life. Man was now in communion with the devil and thus was dead.
In
2
Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,
he is a
new creation;
old things have passed away;
behold,
all
things
have become new”. When we accept Christ, we are “in Him”.
Therefore if we are in Him, old things have passed away. What is this old
thing? This old thing is the old sinful nature or the spirit in communion with
the devil. When someone says that a
person has passed away, what does it mean? It means that he or she has died. So
when the bible says that the old man ( or the spirit in communion with the
devil) has passed away it means that the old nature was
DEAD.
Well if the old man died, something new was recreated in its
place. That was our new spirit. This new spirit is reconciled to God
(
2
Corinthians 5:18). In
1Peter
3:4, Peter calls the spirit as the “hidden person of the heart” Why hidden?
He calls the spirit hidden because it is not possible to for the flesh (5 senses)
to access the spirit of man. We can neither ‘feel’ nor sense the spirit
physically. The flesh or the ‘carnal/natural man’ cannot access the things of
God nor does it have the ability to do so. God can only speak to our spirits
and fellowship with our spirits.
I
Cor 5:7 help us understand this concept. Jesus said I have come to give
life and life more abundantly. He was talking about our spirit being given the
eternal and abundant LIFE. Also Jesus
said about the Holy Spirit to the disciples that He is with you and will be
in
you. So the Spirit of God comes and dwells in our spirits
This implies that the spirit of man has the nature of God.
The spirit of man has a desire to obey God. Paul talks about the spirit of the
man calling him the “inward man” in
Romans
7:22. If you read the whole chapter of Romans 7 you will understand that
the spirit man desires to do good. Paul even says that the evil tendencies that
he face is not really him but the flesh that he has, implying that the real him
is His spirit. (
Note: I can already hear religious
folks screaming “oh does that mean we don’t have a responsibility over the
flesh? Does that mean you can do whatever we want and blame it on the flesh?” I
never ever said we don’t have a responsibility for the actions of the flesh.
Read Romans
12:1-2 I address that in another article). This was prophesied in
the Old Testament by Ezekiel -
Ezekiel
36:26-27 we read “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I
put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I
will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause
you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them” So
when God’s Spirit is in us He CAUSES us to walk in obedience to God’s ways.
This desire to obey God is an inherent part of the new recreated spirit whether
you choose to believe it or not. We may not even physically or even emotionally feel like obeying God. But the spirit does! In addition, the spirit has been united with
Christ in his death and resurrection. When Christ died, our old man died. When
Christ was resurrected, our new spirit was formed into his likeness / nature (
Romans
6:5).
When we say we are “born again” surely it is not our flesh. Is
our flesh born all over again? Let us go to
John
3:5 When Nicodemus asks how can he go back into his mother’s womb in order
to be born again , Jesus says that Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives
birth to
spirit. Obviously
Jesus was saying it is the ‘spirit’ that is born again / recreated.
Neither is it our reasoning faculty (soul). For example a
person who doesn’t do so well in Math doesn’t all of a sudden become smart because
“He is a new creation”. Our old way of thinking remains. The soul (reasoning faculties)
is influenced easily by the flesh/body (five senses). For example if I have to
study a subject, I have to read a book, I have to listen to a teacher etc.
While the body cannot influence the spirit (since it born of
God), vice-versa is possible although not directly. This is how the spirit influences our body: Soul is influenced by the five senses inherently. It is safe to say that the spirit can directly influence the soul if we allow to do so. We must train our soul to respond to our spirit by the renewing of our
minds (reasoning faculties). Once the thoughts have been influenced the spirit,
our external actions (body) get influenced by our thoughts (soul). Read
Romans
12:1,2
All that we need for our walk on earth toward
godliness and Christ-likeness has already been deposited by God in our spirits
(
2
Peter 1:3) This is something that will radically change your thinking when you
understand and realize all the spiritual things that you have been seeking
externally is already inside of us (the spirit). The spirit man having the nature of God who is
LOVE has the ability to love another person unconditionally.
For those that say the spirit and soul of a man are the same
thing please read
1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews
4:12. You will notice “the division of soul and spirit”. I
hope I was able to briefly help you understand on the topic of the spirit,
soul, and body. Hopefully I will talk more about the inward man or the spirit. Obviously
this is not an exhaustive article but a brief summary of my understanding on
the topic. In addition to reading the bible, I suggest reading books by Watchman
Nee especially
The
Spiritual Man for a detailed study this topic.
