Ascension Life Booklet . Paul's System of Truth . Volume 2

Man Is A Spirit, Soul And Body

We have been studying Paul's system of truth. For a foundation on this subject please see previous "Word For Today's." We are presently focusing our attention on the first phase of Paul's Revelation which is "Man is a Spirit."

For Paul, it is the spirit of man that knows and contacts and understands the things of God. In Romans 1:9, he says, "I serve God with my spirit" When you consider it, "serving God" takes on a lot of activity. Paul was saying, "I worship God with my spirit, I obey God out of my spirit, I fellowship with God with my spirit, and God uses me by flowing out of my spirit." In short, all the activity in his relationship to God centered around his spirit. It's not that the rest of his being was not involved at all, it's just that his spirit was the center of it all, the focal point. He said in Philippians 3:3, "We are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." In I Corinthians 2:14 he says the man who knows and judges things after the soul (the King James say, "natural man" which in the Greek is literally "the soulical man" or "man of the soul"), cannot know the things of God because they are spiritually discerned. In other words, he really contrasts soul activity and spirit activity and says that man does not contact God and the things of God with his soul but with his spirit. And since man is spiritually dead because of the fall, he can't know the things of God until he is reborn and receives the life of God, Ephesians 4:17,18.

In Ephesians 1:17,18, Paul prays for believers that God would "give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of his calling and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints ..." Paul is praying that the Church at Ephesus would come to know or "understand" what is already true of them in their heart or spirit. He is saying that you don't know who you are in Christ and what your inheritance is, you don't know the things of God or Jesus Christ until your mind is renewed to them, because it's your reborn spirit that knows, contacts and understands the things of God.

This leads us to understand how Paul uses the word "knowledge." He prays in Ephesians 3:16-18 that they would be "strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man" [that they] may be able to comprehend the spirit dimension and the love of Christ. It is the spirit of man that is reborn, making us a new creation (II Corinthians 5:16,17; Galatians 6:15). It is the spirit of man that is put in union with Christ (I Corinthians 6:17); and it is the reborn spirit that is to dominate (Galatians 5:16,25).

This single aspect that man is a spirit is so interwoven throughout Paul's system of truth that failure to recognize it has kept many from grasping the rest of Paul's revelation. It's restatement and re-emphasis in our day means that many are coming into precise knowledge of who they are in Christ.

Paul’s System Part 2

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