Question: As unsaved people, we lived the old man. Now that we are saved, we live the new man. This seems to indicate that the old man is finished. How can we say that our old man, the soul, still remains as an organ? Romans 6 and 7 reveal that our old man was not only crucified with Christ, but also buried with Him. How can our soul, our old man, come back to be the organ of our new man?
Answer: We should not forget that Romans 6 does not stop at burial but goes on to resurrection (vv. 4-5). The crucified person was buried and resurrected. The natural faculties of our soul were crucified and buried, but they also were resurrected. We now have the faculties of our soul in resurrection. The soul as an organ of our new man, the spirit, is not in its natural condition. It is in a resurrected condition. Our natural man, our natural being, has been uplifted in Christ’s resurrection. Our humanity has been crucified, buried, and uplifted by Christ’s resurrection.
Question: As we have been crucified, buried, and resurrected, what was resurrected concerning us?
Answer: Before we were saved, our mind was very dull and foolish; our emotion was unrestricted and unbridled; and our will was either very stubborn or very weak. However, after we received Christ, He did not only regenerate our spirit, but He also uplifted our mind, emotion, and will through His resurrection. His resurrection immediately uplifted the natural faculties of our soul. Since we are saved persons, our mind, emotion, and will are surely different from the past.
Because we have been grafted into Christ, we are growing together with Christ, and the faculties of our soul are continuing to be uplifted and enriched. Romans 6:5 says, “For if we have grown together with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection.” To “have grown together with Him” is “to have an organic union in which the growth takes place that one partakes of the life and characteristics of the other. This is grafting (Rom. 11:24) that: 1) discharges all our negative elements; 2) resurrects our faculties created by God; 3) uplifts our faculties; 4) enriches our faculties; and 5) saturates our entire being to transform us” (Rom. 6:5, note 1-Recovery Version. See also Rom. 6:5, note 2.).
Question: My concept has been that the life of the soul and the faculties of the soul are two different things. The life of the soul needs to be denied, but the faculties of the soul, including the mind, emotion, and will, need to be preserved. Is this an accurate understanding?
Answer: The life of the soul is the person, whereas the faculties of the soul are the soul as an organ. The soul is the organ, and the faculties of the soul are the abilities of this organ. It is better to say that we have the person of the soul and the organ of the soul.
Question: Our spirit contains the Spirit of Christ, who is a person with a mind, emotion, and will. How can we say that we do not have these faculties in our spirit?
Answer: Our spirit today is the new man, and in this new man, in this spirit, we have Christ as our life. Christ does have the faculties of loving, thinking, and deciding. However, the faculties of Christ are spiritual faculties, that is, they are the faculties of God. These divine faculties of Christ could only be manifested indirectly through our faculties. The faculty of Christ’s thinking is never expressed directly by itself. It is always expressed through our mind (1 Cor. 2:16).
Adam was created according to God’s image. Many Bible teachers define the image of God as the faculties of God to love, hate, and think. God loves, so we love; God hates, so we hate; God is very thoughtful, so we are thoughtful also. We have the image of God, yet this image remains empty without any content until we receive God. When we were without God, we exercised our minds in an empty way without God as the content in our mind. But when we receive God, God becomes our content. God’s thinking becomes the content of our mind, and His love becomes the content of our emotion. A glove is a good illustration of this. The glove has five fingers, but these five fingers only have the image of the fingers, not the reality of the fingers. When the hand enters into the glove, then the fingers of the hand become the content of the fingers of the glove. Our mind, emotion, and will are just the fingers of the glove. When Christ comes into us with His mind, emotion, and will, His faculties become the very content of our human mind, emotion, and will.
Not many Christians understand these details of the spiritual life, but we need a vision of these details so that we can be those who live Christ.
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