Gaining an understanding that you are a three-part being is, I believe, the single most important factor in living a victorious Christian life. This knowledge not only makes those seemingly hard-to-grasp verses in the Word make sense (e.g., 1 John 3:9), but it is also what will enable you to believe without physically seeing (Matthew 21:22). It’s how you can declare, without a single doubt, “I am healed and I am holy before God” even when your body and your actions are saying something different.
A Three-Part Being
In Lesson 1, Made in the Image of God, we focused on three verses that showed you the truth that you are a three-part being; namely, you are a spirit, you have a soul, and you live in a body (1 Thessalonians 5:23, Genesis 1:26, and Daniel 7:15). This is where we’re going to pick up from today. You are going to discover the real you in this article.
The real you is not what you see on the outside when you look in the mirror, but it is what you can’t see on the inside that is who you truly are. This revelation was the catalyst for everything changing in my life, because through it, I discovered who I am in Christ. I’m going to share with you how I got that revelation, and how you can get it, too. Let’s get started!
The Catalyst
I shared with you in Made in the Image of God the statement that started me on my quest to get a revelation of spirit, soul, and body. One of my instructors in Bible college said that the reason you don’t get healed is because your physical body is more real to you than your spirit man. Hmm. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I knew it was certainly true. At the time, I couldn’t tell one iota of difference between my spirit and my body, and my body was definitely running the show!
He went on to say that when your spirit man becomes more real to you than your physical man, then what is true in the spirit realm would become true in the natural realm. Hmm. Again, no idea what that meant, but I knew that it was vitally important for me to get it. My body was slowing dying every day, and I needed to finally, after 13 years, receive the healing I knew He had already provided for me.
The Quest Begins!
Every day, I applied the four principles of creating an environment to receive revelation to gaining an understanding of how to make my spirit man more real to me than my body. (See the article Receiving Revelation to learn those four principles.) These four principles are a great place for you to start. You will also have this teaching as a guide to get you there much quicker than I did! The first verse Father brought me to was 2 Corinthians 5:16:
Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh.
Let’s stop right there. You are to regard no one by the flesh, which is a fancy way of saying that you aren’t supposed to identify people by their outward appearance, their deeds, actions, or accomplishments. In other words, your flesh is not the real you and you are to get no knowledge of or understand anyone by it.
The Word says to know no one by the flesh, including yourself. What you do in the flesh, and how you look in the flesh, is not who you truly are, and you’re not to identify with yourself primarily on that basis. Read the second part of 2 Corinthians 5:16:
Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer.
The disciples knew Jesus in the flesh. They had walked with Him and talked with Him on a daily basis. This verse is saying that they didn’t know Him by the flesh any longer because Jesus was no longer with them in His physical body; but He was still with them in Spirit, and this is how you know Him, too. You have never seen His physical body with your eyes or touched His scars with your hands, but you know Him.
How is that possible?
How can you know Him even though you can’t physically see, touch, or talk to His physical body? The answer is simple: You know Him through the written Word of God, and that is exactly how you will learn to identify with your spirit man. The Word is a perfect representation of who you are in the spirit. Just like looking in a natural mirror is a reflection of your physical self, looking in the Word is a perfect reflection of who you are in the spirit.
When you accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that something old passed away and something became new. What passed away was the old sin nature that you were born with, but what was made new? Was it your body? Was it your mind, will, and emotions? Those things obviously didn’t change because you still had the same physical imperfections and the same thoughts and habits. Your spirit man is what was made new.
This word “new” in the Greek is kainos and it means “recently made … a new kind, unprecedented, novel, unheard of” (Strong’s Concordance). Your spirit man was created brand new. It’s not like God took your old nature and renovated it. He took the old nature completely out and put in the new! You might be wondering:
What exactly did happen the moment I was born again?
In that moment, God put Jesus’ spirit inside of your heart, your two spirits became one, and then the Holy Spirit immediately sealed it so that it could never be corrupted (Galatians 4:6, 1 Corinthians 6:17, and Ephesians 1:13). This is why 1 John 4:17 can accurately say that as Jesus is, so are you in this world. It’s speaking in the present tense, not prophesying about some future time to come. Your spirit man is identical to Jesus, which means it is perfect (Hebrews 12:23). It is righteous and holy before God (Ephesians 4:24). It is faultless and blameless in His sight (Colossians 1:21-22).
This is how God sees you when He looks at you because He deals with you on the basis of your spirit man (John 4:24). He doesn’t see your scars and flaws and bad habits. He sees the righteousness of His one and only Son. This means you don’t have to come sniveling to Him, begging for the scraps from His table. You are a son or daughter. You are righteous and holy before Him. You can boldly approach His throne of grace in the time of need and know that He will help you (Hebrews 4:16).
Full of Wisdom
As if that wasn’t enough, the Word goes on to shed more light on who you are in the spirit. In 1 John 2:20, it reveals that you have an unction from the Holy Spirit and you know all things. You know all things … in your spirit. If you need understanding about a certain verse in the Word or you have a problem that needs a solution, it’s all in there!
Complete in Christ
Colossians 2:9-10 shows that you are complete in Christ. This means that you are lacking nothing. You aren’t waiting on God for a single thing because it’s all right there on the inside of your spirit. Regardless if you feel like it or not, your spirit is healed, whole, prosperous, and free from the bondage of sin.
Full of the Fruit
Your spirit is filled with the fruit of the Spirit, in unlimited supply, that are listed in Galatians 5:22-23. This means that if you are “feeling” depressed, you just need to dip into that well of joy that is available on the inside of you and walk in it. If you are super irritated and don’t “feel” like you have any patience, then you aren’t using what’s inside of you.
You don’t have to ask God to fill your heart with love because He has already given it to you by depositing it directly into your spirit. Once you recognize what you already have, you’ll stop asking God for it and simply start making withdrawals, receiving by faith from the overflowing well that’s inside of you!
The How-To
You are not just what you see on the outside. I can’t stress that enough. God doesn’t look at you in the flesh, so neither should you. You can begin your own quest of identifying with the real you by meditating on the verses above and then by practicing walking in the spirit and not in the flesh.
How do you do that? You do that by stopping and thinking before you speak and before you act. When a situation presents itself, before you say a word, ask yourself how your spirit would respond. You won’t need an audible voice from heaven to tell you. You will just know because your spirit is full of the wisdom of God.
Practice responding from your spirit as opposed to reacting in the flesh. As you practice, it will become easier and easier and the change will be effortless. That is how you will identify with your spirit and put it in the position of power in your life.
Reaping the Benefits
As I did these very things in my life that I’ve told you about – meditation and practice – I felt my spirit man growing in dominance over my body, mind, will, and emotions. It came to a point where I didn’t even have to think about it anymore, I was just walking in the spirit.
As I practiced them consistently (this is key), I noticed a major change in how I viewed the sickness and disease that was in my body. In my mind, the lupus, Sjögren’s syndrome, and the many other things that had taken up residence no longer belonged to me. They were no longer something I accepted as part of me.
My spirit was the real me and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was completely healed and whole, so I saw these things for what they were: intruders, trespassers, and definitely not part of what God had promised me. If God didn’t give it to me, then I didn’t want it and I certainly didn’t have to keep it. I separated myself from the sickness and disease, and then it was only a matter of time before they all left.
This same thing applies to anything that the enemy tries to give you that isn’t yours – poverty, depression, bondage to sin, etc. If it isn’t a promise from God, don’t accept it!
This Bears Repeating
A revelation of spirit, soul, and body is what ultimately led to my healing, but it has also been how I have been able to stay healed, whole, prosperous, and free in my body and mind over the last five years. This is at the core of every revelation I have ever gotten and will continue to receive.
This is important. Don’t let it just go in one ear and out the other. It is the key to your healing, your prosperity, and your freedom in Christ. It is how God sees you, how you should see yourself, and who you really are.