The Scriptures clearly reveal that we have a human spirit and that God created our human spirit for us to contact Him. In John 3:6 the Lord Jesus said, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In this verse there are two spirits. It is easy for us to understand that the first Spirit must be God’s Spirit, but what about the second spirit? The second spirit in this verse is our human spirit. Our human spirit is born of God’s Spirit.
Many of us were taught that because we are so sinful, so evil, and so bad, we need to be born again. Let’s suppose that you are not evil or sinful, but that you are so good, even better than the angels. Would you still need to be born again? The angels are good, but they don’t have the life of God. We need to be born again. It doesn’t matter whether you are good or bad. You still need the life of God. Even if you weren’t sinful, you would still need to be regenerated, to be reborn. Before the fall Adam was perfect, pure, and clean; in him there was nothing wrong, nothing short, nothing too much, nothing damaged, nothing ruined, and nothing corrupted. Adam was so perfect, so pure, and so clean. Such a pure, perfect, clean, original man needed to be born again in order to have God’s life. How could Adam have gotten God’s life? By taking the tree of life into him (Gen. 2:9). If the life of the tree of life had gotten into him, he would have been born again! He would have gotten another life, the life of God. To be born again simply means to get another life.
Even though Adam was so perfect, so pure, so clean, and so good, with nothing changed, nothing damaged, nothing corrupted, or nothing ruined, he still needed the life of God. Adam at the beginning just had one life, but if he had received the life of God he would have had two lives. Another life would have been added into him. This is rebirth. This is regeneration. To be born again, strictly speaking, has nothing to do with our fall. Even if we are genuine, perfect, complete, pure, and clean, we still need God’s life to come into us. When God’s life gets in, we are regenerated.
The Bible tells us that before we were regenerated we had our human life. This human life is in the soul. In the Bible this is called the soul-life. The New Testament sometimes uses the word soul for this life. This is why in the King James Version of the New Testament, a number of times the word soul has been translated into life (Matt. 16:25; Luke 9:24). This word for life in the original Greek text is the very word psuche or soul.
We also have another kind of life-the biological life. This is the life of the body, which in the Greek text is known as bios. This is the root of the word biology. Bios is in the body. When a person is dead physically, that doesn’t mean his human life in the soul is dead, but it means his physical life, the bios, is dead. In the soul you have the soulish life; in the body you have the physical life. When a person is dead physically, he is dead bodily. That means his bios is dead but his psuche, his soul-life, is still existing.
Home | First | Prev | Next