Who are you?
- Part 2 -

Bienhome Muivah *

According to this scripture, we have three parts-a spirit, a soul and a body. Paul prayed that God would keep and preserve the Thessalonians wholly, or completely, in spirit, soul and body.

The body is very easy to identify. It is the physical part of us. The soul is the emotional part, or what most people consider to be their real personality. It includes our thinking processes, our feelings, and our will. Then there's another part of us the Bible call the spirit, and this is actually the most important party.

In James 2:26 the Bible tell us that 'as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead too. The spirit is the dynamo of our whole being. It is the life giving force within us.

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7).

When the Bible says God created Adam and breathed into him the breath of life, that word 'breath' is the same word from which we get the word 'Spirit'. God put a spirit on the inside of Adam. So the spirit is the real part of us, and when we get born again we receive a new spirit.

And the Lord God commanded the man, "you are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die" (Gen 2:16,17).

The Lord told Adam that in the day he ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would surely die. When Adam disobeyed God and ate of that forbidden fruit, his spirit died within him. He did not die physically for 930 years, but he died spiritually at the exact moment.

That doesn't mean that his spirit ceased to exist. It was still there. But it ceased to be under the control of the Lord. It was no longer releasing the life of God, which made it incapable of sustaining physical life forever.

The spirit of man received the life of God and then disseminates it through the soul and body. When Adam sinned against God and did his own things, the spirit within him was separated from fellowship with God.

He no longer had the divine life of God-the Holy Spirit-flowing through him, sadly another spirit stepped in to take its place, which was Satan, who began to pour his death into the human race through the spirit.

The spirit that was within man from Adam until salvation was united with the devil. That's what Paul was referring to when he wrote in Ephesians 2:2,3 that before we were saved we were by nature the children of disobedience, the children of wrath-in other words, the children of the devil. He meant that until we were born again, our spirit was united with the devil and Satan poured his corruption into us through our spirit man.

As we saw in 2 Corinthians 5:17, when we were born again, we become a new creature or a new creation-old things pass away and all things become new. Just by the process of elimination, we understand that it is not talking about our physical body, because when we were born again our physical body did not change. If we were fat before we got saved, we were still fat after we got saved. That's not the part of us that changes through salvation.

Neither does our soul change, because as we saw in I Cor 13:9,10 that now we only know in part, we only prophesy in part but when that which is perfect is come, then we will know all things just as we are known. The mental part of us is not saved. If we are ignorant before we got saved, we were still ignorant after we got saved, until we educate ourselves through the Word of God.

If our physical body didn't change and our soul didn't change, then the only part of us that is left is the spirit. Our spirit was completely, radically changed when we got born again. We didn't just get improved, we became a totally brand new spirit. The Christian life derives its power from the new birth. When we are born again, God places a new spirit on the inside of us, and we have everything we need to live the victorious Christian life.

Our born again spirit has everything, and it will never change. We are the exact same spirit at this moment that we will be in eternity. When we go to be with the Lord, our spirit isn't going to have to be changed again. We are as complete right this moment as we will ever be in all eternity.

That is an awesome thing to think about! We have eternity living inside of us!

Be in tune with the spirit always!

Concluded...