We learned that man is a spirit.
We learned that man is a spirit. He is in the same class with God. He can live independently of the body. He is eternal. He will live as long as God lives. We learned that there are two kinds of education, spirit education and mind education. We discovered that the church and our educational system had never seriously attempted to understand the real man.
In the babe we see purely the physical. Then as the child's mind begins to reach out and becomes inquisitive, the child becomes simply mind and body to us. We are careful to feed its body, to build it up, to train the mind and make it efficient, but who has ever taught or trained the spirit? We heard much in psychological discussions about the subconscious mind.. At first we were thrilled with it. Then we discovered that it was nothing but our own spirit.
We found that conscience is the voice of the spirit, reason is the voice of our mind, and feelings are the voice of our body.
Christianity is God's answer to the hunger of the human spirit. Every human religion attempts to answer this hunger and fails. The part of man that is Born Again is the spirit. It receives the nature and Life of God. It is our spirit that can contact God, or contact Satan. Reason cannot find God. Sense Knowledge has been unable to discover God, or the human spirit. It can see evidences of a Creator, but it cannot find Him. It can see evidences of man's spirit, but it cannot understand it or find it in the body. Natural man's spirit is dominated largely by evil. Men have used it to gain the mastery over others for their own ends.
Because "the spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah,"(PROV 20:27) God, Himself must fill the lamp with oil of the right grade and from the right source. This oil is Eternal Life. The lamp sheds light in the spirit realm, the realm of faith and the realm of love. It throws light upon the Word. "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my pathway." Your spirit is in the realm of creative faith, of dominating faith, faith that rules demons and disease.
I have found in my dealings with the sick during the early days of my ministry, that certain diseases filled me with fear. I shrank from going into their presence. I had seen their devastating work in my own family. But later I came to see that disease was not physical but spiritual.
When my spirit had fed upon the Word until it had developed a robust, unconscious faith, then I walked into the presence of diseases as a master. Jesus' dominion was not a physical or mental dominion. He ruled men, the laws of nature, demons, and sickness by His spirit. He said, "The words that I speak are not mine, but my Father's; and the works that I am doing are not mine, but my Father's." John 6:63 "It is the spirit that giveth Life; the flesh (senses) profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life."
God is a spirit, Jesus is a spirit. He was here in a physical body so that men could see Him. His lips spoke Words of the Spirit. When you give your spirit right-of-way, and it assumes the dominion in your life, love will be natural. Love is the fruit of the spirit.
When your spirit is recreated, that love will be the Jesus kind of love. The natural man has natural love which is selfish, and turns to hatred, jealousy and ofttimes to murder.
The Jesus kind of love flows from the fountain of a recreated spirit. John 6:47 "He that believeth hath Eternal Life." Eternal Life is the nature of God. That nature has now come into man's spirit.
1 John 5:13 "These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have Eternal Life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God." 1 John 4:8 "He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." 1 John 3:14-17 "He that loveth not abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath Eternal Life abiding in him." Eternal Life abides in a man's spirit. When a man is recreated, and filled with the nature of the Father, which is love, there will come forth from his spirit love acts, promptings for love words and love deeds. Let us study it from another angle.
The animal world acts by instinct. They have souls; they reason; they have affection. They have the power of choice in a measure, but instinct rules them. God did their thinking for them. The animal's safety depends upon instinct. Sight and hearing have a second place. When the wild animal trusts his sight or his hearing and ignores his instinct, he becomes a prey of his enemy.
When we ignore the voice of the recreated human spirit, we become a prey of the adversary. 1 Cor. 2:14 "Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually understood."
The 13th verse, "Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the spirit teacheth; combining spiritual things with spiritual words."
It is spiritual teaching. God's Spirit through the Word is teaching our spirits. Natural man cannot know God. Sense Knowledge has never been able to find God. Sense Knowledge makes man more skeptical. Ofttimes, the more Sense Knowledge a man possesses, the farther away he is from the Word. 2 Cor. 5:7 "We walk by faith, and not by sight." Faith rules the spiritual man. Why? Because Jesus is the Lord and head of this New Man. The Word rules him.
It is deeply important that we realize that this New Creation has a 'law all its own.
John 13:34-35 "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one for another." The New Creation has a priesthood of its own. Jesus is our High Priest. We New Creation folk belong to the Holy Priesthood. We have the joy of functioning in the Royal Priesthood. I Peter 2:5 "Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual household, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."
God has become our actual Father. We are His actual sons and daughters.
I John 3:2-3 "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." It is well that we know that reason and feelings, and the senses, are generally opposed to our spirit. Some believers have never learned to live in their spirit. They live in their senses, their bodies largely ruling them. Others live in their soul, or their intellect. They are what Paul calls, 'psychic men.'
I Cor. 2:14 (marginal rendering) "New the psychical (or natural) man receiveth not the things of the Spirit A God for they are foolishness unto him: and he cannot them, because they are spiritually understood."
A carnal believer is a babe believer who has been fed with milk, and not with meat.
I Cor. 3:1-4 "And do ye not walk after the manner of men?" This is one of the most striking sentence in that wonderful Epistle. This man, who is recreated, has never yet learned to walk in his spirit, governed by the Word. He walks as a common man. He walks just as he walked before he was Born Again. In a short time, he will break fellowship with the Father and fall back again into the old life, a recreated man. but one dominated by the physical body, or his senses. The New Creation man is to walk by faith. Heb. 10:38 "But my righteous one shall live by faith: and if he shrink back, my soul hath no pleasure in him.
Shrink back from what? From the walk of the spirit by faith. He shrinks back into sense knowledge. You can see, that if you are a recreated you should live in the realm of the spirit Matt. 4:4 "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the, mouth of God." This righteous, recreated man lives by the Word, feeding on it, and obeying it. We have found that man is a spirit being. God's dealings with him are through his spirit. If he is sick, his spirit must be healed. If he is ruled by sin, his spirit must be cleansed, If his mind has not been renewed, the spirit does not have liberty or freedom, and cannot manifest Christ in his life. The spirit of man is really the lamp of Jehovah.
The Hidden man