“But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive … And so it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:20-22,45).
Jesus came into the human race from the outside, and when we are born again, His life comes into us from the outside … We do not enter into His life by imitation; we enter into it by its entering into us by means of His death. Jesus Christ gives us His life, viz., Holy Spirit … When we become regenerate, born from above by the gift of life from the last Adam, then we have to live in obedience to that Spirit which has come into our spirit.
“As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust;
and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:48).
The ‘natural’ is not life in itself, therefore we must be born from above. To be born from above means that we are lifted into heavenly places in our personal spirit by the Holy Spirit Who comes into us. He quickens us all through. The Holy Spirit does in us what Jesus Christ did for us. Holy Spirit is essential Deity, and He energizes our spirit and presences us with Deity as our Lord was presenced. Holy Spirit never becomes our spirit; He quickens [makes alive] our spirit, and instantly we begin to express a new [quality of] soul.
When God Spirit comes into our personality, our soul life begins to be upset, and the bodily life often gets disorganized. Health is simply the balance of our bodily life with external circumstances; anything that upsets the equilibrium on the inside upsets the body equilibrium on the outside. Consequently when a man is convicted of sin, his ‘beauty consumes away like a moth’ (Psalm 39:11). Beauty means that perfectly ordered completeness of a man’s nature. A man into whom the Spirit of God has entered is for a while out of harmony. The Spirit of God brings upset and conviction, He throws light on what is dark, He searches the recesses of the disposition; consequently the preaching of the Gospel, while it awakens an intense craving, awakens an equally intense resentment. Conviction of sin means that we realize that our natural life is based on a disposition that will not have [welcome] Jesus Christ. [“For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells…” Rom 7:18.] If the man will obey the Holy Spirit, the new balance of holiness will be set up, the balance of his disposition with the law of God. [“For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man” Rom. 7:22.] Then he must obey God’s will in his body, and this will mean crucifying the flesh with its affections and less (Gal. 5:24).
“And as we have borne the image of the man of dust,
we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man” (1 Cor. 15:49)
[Although this is ultimately fulfilled in the believer’s resurrection, there is also a new image available here and now through sanctification.] Have you never seen the earthy defaced by the heavenly? Watch the face of a man or woman who has been born again and who was going on with God; there is a change in the features which cannot be defined. The explanation of it is that when God makes us all over again, our bodies are molded by the new Spirit within and begin to manifest that Spirit (2 Cor. 5:17). When we receive the Holy Spirit, He lifts us into the realm where Jesus Christ lives and all things become new. We cannot estimate Jesus Christ along the natural line. He does not be long to this order of things, and He says that if we want to be long to His order we must be born from above (John 3:3,5) [1].
Let a man receive the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ will do in him all that he ever imagined would do, and he will find that it works all the time.
Excerpt from The Psychology of Redemption by Oswald Chambers London: Simpkin Marshall, pp.12-15.
[1] Chambers comments, “[Leo] Tolstoy taught the principles of Jesus, but he ignored the need to be born again.” [Principles such as: “Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”]
Diagram by Charles R. Solomon, adapted from The In and Out of Rejection, p.117.
For further study on the spiritual, psychological, and physical aspects of man, see the editor’s site: biblicalpsychology.net
Bracketed content added. Biblical quotations updated to NKJV.