THE SPIRIT OF A MAN

THE SPIRIT OF A MAN

            Our Youth Pastor, Shannon Daniels gave the Sunday night service last night. He preached a sermon on the spirit of man, how God is Spirit and those that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24) His opening text was (2 Cor. 4:18)

            Shannon’s opening text was this: “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal (temporary) but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 2Cor 4:18

            Paul goes on in 2 Cor. 5:1 saying: “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, for indeed in this house we groan longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven inasmuch as we, having put it one Shall not be found naked.

            We need to understand first and foremost that man is a spiritual being. We were created in the image of God and God breathed His Spirit into Adam and Adam became a living and sentient being… a living soul. Gen. 2:7. God did not breathe His Spirit into animals, but only into man.

            God is Spirit. He created man in His image. Therefore, even though as Adam was given a physical body in which to live in this physical universe, the real Adam was his spirit. God breathed His Spirit into Adam and that is what set man apart from the animal kingdom. All living things have in them the breath of life… but only into man did God breathe His own Spirit.

            It was this Spirit in Adam that had to depart from him, when he chose Satan as his new king and so Adam received the spirit of Satan. Jesus pointed this out to the Pharisees saying:   “You are of your father the devil.” But Jesus wasn’t just speaking about the Pharisees. We are all born as sons and daughters of the evil one and we don’t have to be taught how to sin. It is in our nature to sin because we are all children of fallen Adam and we can obey the Law and keep out of trouble, but while that obedience was accounted as righteousness, it could not really make anyone truly righteous.

            Jesus came into this world to restore to us the Spirit of God, the Breath of God that Adam lost in the fall. It is by this Spirit of God that we are born again. By this the Holy Spirit quickens our spirit and we are suddenly alive in the Spirit… the image of God is restored to us and we receive once again that which is eternal. We receive eternal life and as the Bible says, when this outer shell, this body dies, we have a house in heaven not made with hands. 2 Cor. 5:1, 2.

            Our spirit goes back to God when we die. The real us, the born again us… the part of us that is created in the image of God… the sentient… self-aware part of our being goes back to God to await the resurrection of the physical body. We know this to be foundational truth and Jesus confirmed it to us when He breathed on His disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” John 20:22.

            We need to understand that this Jesus is the same One, the same God of Genesis who breathed into Adam the breath of life (His Spirit) and Adam became a living being in the image of God. So Jesus as our last Adam came to restore that from which Adam had fallen and He started with his disciples. And whether this gesture was symbolic or real we do not know, but it was highly important in showing us what Jesus came to bring.

            Jesus, after that occasion also told them to tarry in Jerusalem and to wait for the real thing, the baptism of the Holy Spirit as power for witnessing and doing the works of Christ in the world. I believe that both events were real, for just as we receive the Holy Spirit when we are saved and born again, we must go on to also receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit to equip us to do the works of Christ in the world, for Jesus said of Pentecost…”You shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall be my witnesses…” Acts 1:8

            So we receive the infilling of the Holy Spirit when we are born again, but we must pray for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit which is passed on by the laying on of hands to equip us with power to witness and to do the works of Christ. (Acts 8:18, 1 Tim. 4:14)

            Not many Christians understand this today and so we live mundane lives as fleshly temporal beings slugging it out here on earth as if no real change has taken place in us when we received Christ. We live according to the flesh and we add religious acts to our lives, but very few actually enter into the spiritual realm to operate in the true authority and Spirit of Christ. We don’t really engage the enemy in the spiritual realm because we continue throughout our lives to pray fleshly “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayers that cause no disturbance in the spiritual realm of the enemy at all.

            When Jesus walked around on this earth, His presence brought about a constant disturbance in the unseen realm. He flushed demons out of the woodwork and those demons manifested in those who were run by them… and why did His very presence cause such turmoil? It was because Jesus was bringing back within Himself the very Spirit that Adam lost in the fall. He was bringing the Tree of Life back into this fallen planet. He was preparing to rip open the veil to the Holy of Holies and restore access between man’s born again spirit and God’s Spirit and Satan was fighting it every step of the way. Jesus was the peace in the midst of a spiritual storm.

            We as Christians often fall very short of understanding what it is that resides inside of us. We pray fleshly prayers with our fleshly mind, telling God what we want and how He should run the universe and we think that we are engaging the enemy, but more often than not, we are not engaging the enemy at all for we are not praying in the Spirit, but only with our mind.

            Paul teaches us the difference between praying with the mind and praying with the spirit and both are important. God gave us our minds to reason and to understand truth, but He also gave us our spirits and we need to exercise them and in fact learn to live by the Spirit rather than by the flesh, for only in the spirit is there real power. WE cannot engage the enemy with our flesh and hope to win.

            As we can see here in 1 Cor. 14; praying in the Spirit sort of bypasses our mental mind and speaks in the language of the Spirit which the mind doesn’t understand, but it builds up our spirit man. I like to think of it like a computer. The inner computer communicates in ones and zeroes and we can’t understand this inner language, but the computer also translates those ones and zeros into our language so that we can dialogue with our minds. It is the same thing with the gift of tongues. We speak in ones and zeroes and our mind doesn’t understand, but our Spirit does and is built up or edified by it. And we need our spirit built if we are to live by it.

            But that is a side note. I am not discussing tongues as such today. I am talking about the fact that as born again Christians we are spiritual beings. This body is merely a tent that we dwell in, but the real us is that which has been recreated in us by the New Birth and that real us is eternal for it is from the unseen realm and as 2 Cor. 4:18 tells us, that which is unseen is eternal. In fact in 2 Cor. 4:16 Paul says: “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.

            In our new birth, Jesus restores to us His Holy Spirit and recreates in us the new man in Christ we know as the inner man and that inner man, or new man, or spirit man can be renewed day by day, even as our outer man is growing old and decaying and preparing to die.

            But death is not the end of the story for Paul also explains to us in 2 Cor. 5:5-8:

            “Now He who prepares us for this very purpose is God who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. (A guarantee) Therefore being always of good courage and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord- for we walk by faith, not by sight- we are of good courage I say and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord…”

            Paul continued this line of thinking as he neared the end of his life and he said: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh (this tent, this body) this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose. But I am hard pressed from both directions having the desire to depart and be with Christ for that is very much better, yet to remain on in the flesh (this tent, this body) is more necessary for your sake.” Phil. 1:21-24

            Do we as Christians really understand who we are and what we are? I don’t think that many Christians really understand this, or if they do, they don’t bring it into reality in their lives. So they live mundane lives in the flesh, trudging along through life without ever starting the engine… never truly engaging with God or with the enemy… just getting beat up because they don’t know their authority in Christ or the power He has placed in us to defeat the unseen enemy.

            This is why I have parked in Romans 8 and I harp on it a lot not only for your sake, but for mine. “Those who live by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.” Romans 8:14.  Most of the time, we simply play at religion as if a religious routine will actually seat us in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, or give us victory in spiritual battle. We live disengaged lives because we do not understand what is available to us; or who we are in Christ. So the best we can come up with is to keep preaching the Law to people.

            We do not understand that we have been recreated in His image… to live by His Spirit… to engage with the enemy… to overcome, not by our power, but by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony…not the weak mutterings of the flesh, but by the Spirit… divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.

            “For though we walk in the flesh we do not war according to the flesh for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” 2 Cor. 10:3-5

            So how do we take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ? If our mind is straying like a herd of wild cattle, how can we take all of those thoughts captive and bring them into line with Christ? We do so with our spirit. We learn to live by the Spirit rather than by the flesh and our spirit will grow in grace as it begins to take those wayward thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ.

            We know for a fact that the outer man cannot control itself. Even our best righteousness is as filthy rags. But Christ has placed in us a new inner man… an eternal spirit that cannot sin. Whaaaaat?

            Yes, it is true. Read this: “The one who believe in the Son of God has the witness in Himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar because he has not believed the witness that God has borne concerning His Son: AND THE WITNESS IS THIS: THAT GOD HAS GIVEN US ETERNAL LIFE AND THIS LIFE IS IN HIS SON. HE WHO HAS THE SON HAS THE LIFE; HE WHO DOES NOT HAVE THE SON OF GOD DOES NOT HAVE THE LIFE. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God IN ORDER THAT YOU MAY KNOW THAT YOU HAVE ETERNAL LIFE.” 1 John 5:10-13

            This is astounding is it not? But then John goes on to say in verse 18: We know that no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him and the evil one does not touch him.”

            In other words, even though we struggle on with our flesh, for our flesh is of this fallen realm, God has placed within us an inner man, a born again man that cannot sin because it is born of God. So if we will learn to live by that inner man instead of by the outer flesh, our lives will be pleasing to God.

            Again in 1 John 3:9 John tells us about the inner man that Christ has placed in us saying: No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; AND HE CANNOT SIN because he is born of God.”

            John is certainly not talking about our outer man for it stumbles and falls all the time. He is talking about the new man, the eternal man, the new Spirit man that Jesus has put in us when we were born again. It is a seed that cannot sin because it is born of God. So does this not let us know how important it is for us to learn how to live by that spirit rather than by the flesh?

            This is the struggle of the Christian life, to die to the flesh and to live unto the Spirit… to die to the sinful cravings of the outer man and to live by the divine nature of the inner man that has been created within us by the Holy Spirit.

            So we are equipped to be seated with Christ in heavenly places (For in the spiritual realm there is no time or distance) but we are also equipped to engage in spiritual warfare with the enemy. But you dare not go into such a battle in the power of your outer man. Our outer man is no match for Satan and his demon hoards. He will win every time. So we must by all means engage the enemy with the born again, Spirit filled inner man if we are to do spiritual warfare.

            I experienced this couple of days ago when I was asked to pray for an ongoing situation and a legal battle. Realizing that our battle was not against the people involved, but against the spiritual powers that were using them, I asked the Lord to anoint me for prayer before I began. I asked not to pray in my strength but His and not for my will but His and then we entered into spiritual battle against the spirits involved in this situation. The Lord took over my prayer   and I simply heard powerful and passionate words of both anguish and authority coming from my mouth as the Holy Spirit used me to bind that situation and to defuse it so that a phone call about two hours later showed us that the case was going to be resolved peaceably and in good order.

            This was a revelation to me on how we should ask the Lord to arouse and anoint our inner man for warfare... For our war is not carnal, but spiritual and if we are going to tear down the strongholds of the enemy we need a far greater power at play than our own minds.

            We as Christians need to become a lot more spiritual than we currently are. It begins when we come to grips with who we are and what we are as born again believers. This is why Paul is so adamant against falling back to the weak and useless things of the Law. He is telling us that we have been given something infinitely more powerful than the Law with which to do battle in the heavenly realms. He has given us a newly formed inner man, created in the image of God and bearing the Seed of God so that if we will learn to live by that Spirit we will overcome the world, the flesh and the devil.

            This is not something that we can work up. It is not like turning over a new leaf. It is not by a strong backbone and grim determination… it comes by entering into His rest… living by His Spirit… understanding that eternity already dwells inside of us… that as long as we are in these earthly bodies, we are here to learn how to be seated with Him in heavenly places on one hand and to engage the enemy by the power and the authority Jesus has placed within us.

            “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God who also made us adequate as servants of the New Covenant not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills but the Spirit gives life.” 2 Cor. 3:5-6

            It is time to learn to live by the Spirit of God because as we can see, Satan is unleashing his demon hordes upon the earth and we are no match for this if we are not learning how to live by the Spirit and to do battle by the Spirit. Selah.