Foundations of the Christian Life. Chapter 21. The Holy Spirit #2. – Regeneration and Indwelling.

Foundations of the Christian Life.
Chapter 21. The Holy Spirit #2. – Regeneration and Indwelling.


In the last chapter we saw that the gift of the Spirit included two relationships of the Holy Spirit to the Believer. These are the "in" and the "upon" relationships.
The covenant gift of the Spirit contains two relationships of the Spirit to us: the Baptism (the Spirit on us) and the Indwelling of the Spirit (the Spirit in us).

The TRUTH, then, is this: - Every Christian has both the indwelling and the baptism of the Spirit. They are covenant gifts which come when we receive the covenant.
The Bible position is clear (as we shall see): Every Christian receives the Spirit at conversion – both baptism and indwelling.

In this chapter and the next we are concerned with the "in" relationship.
Here three words are important:
A) Regeneration.
B) Indwelling.
C) Filling.

These three words describe the "in" relationship of the Holy Spirit. We will look at regeneration and indwelling in this chapter and at filling in the next chapter.

We need to understand how we were originally made and what happened to us if we are to understand the effect of the gift of the indwelling Spirit in our lives.

HOW WE WERE MADE IN CREATION.

Genesis 2:7.
“…the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

This verse describes to us the construction or make up, or “psychology”, of the human personality as God intended in creation.

There are three things here:
1. God took dust from the earth and made a human body. Essentially our body is made up of chemicals we find in the soil and water. Our identity with this physical world was thus established long before science proved it to be true.
2. He then breathed into that body “the breath of lives”. The Hebrew word for “breath” is the same word as for “spirit”, so this tells us that into the body he had made God imparted spirit. God’s breath, God’s spirit, was given to man in such a way that we are not just physical beings, we are spiritual beings. In this man differs from the animal kingdom. Like the animals we have a physical body, but unlike the animals we have “spirit”, and in this possession of spirit we are made in “the image of God”.
3. As a result of the imparting of spirit into the body man became a living soul. The word “became” here indicates that something new came into being. Body and spirit had existed before, but now a new thing, called “soul”, came into being as a result of the joining of body and spirit. “Soul” is thus something unique to man in this sense. Animals do not have “soul” in this sense, as they do not have spirit. Angels do not have “soul” in this sense because even though they are spirit they do not have body. It is through the joining of body and spirit that “soul” is created and this is unique to man. Soul is a sort of “buffer zone” between the other two elements.

In God’s creation of man we were made one being with three distinct parts: A spirit, a soul and a body. We are designed to operate as a unity, but the understanding of the three parts is helpful in understanding the whole and how it works.

Diagram:

When I find out how to insert the diagram I will.




















The body has 5 senses by which it interprets the world around it – sight, taste, feel, hearing and smell.

The human spirit was created with many functions “in the image of God”, who is also spirit. Included in this are:
* Conscience: the ability to discern right from wrong.
* Intuition: the ability to perceive knowledge/truth spiritually without rational reasons.
* Communion: the ability to relate to God.
* Creativity.
* Sustaining of Life.
There are others but this is enough for our purposes here.

The soul is the seat of our personality and has three primary functions, mind (intellect) will and emotions.

The central issue for the human personality is knowledge – our soul needs knowledge to operate. When the Bible talks of men as being “living souls” the emphasis is on the fact that we have free will, we are a decision making being. For us to live effectively we need to make decisions and those decisions are based on what we know. So the heart of all of our life and actions is having knowledge. That is why the test in the Garden of Eden was to do with knowledge – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The choice was – were we going to follow God’s knowledge source or some other source?

It was God’s purpose that we be dependent on the Holy Spirit for knowledge.

We were created in such a way that the Holy Spirit would dwell in our human spirit.
Probably the best way to envisage this is with the picture of a hand and a glove.
A glove is designed to be “filled” with a hand. By itself a glove can do nothing, it is dead. In as sense it is almost nothing, it lies flat and cannot be seen easily. But if a person puts a hand into the glove then the glove is “filled out” and it becomes visible and can do things it couldn’t do before. The glove exists without the hand but it is not the same.

In a sense our human spirit is a glove, the Holy Spirit is like the hand that fills it. We were made to be Spirit-filled.

In God’s plan this is how man was meant to operate:

* The Holy Spirit was to dwell in and fill our spirit and to speak to our spirit in our intuition.
* Our Spirit would then inform our soul through our mind.
* The mind would then direct the will.
* Resulting in bodily action.

THE RESULTS OF THE FALL.

When Adam rebelled against God, in what we know as the Fall, there was a major disruption in the human personality.

1. Spiritual Death.

The first thing that happened was that man died spiritually.

By this we do not mean that mankind now has no spirit at all, nor that it does not function at all. Man’s spirit still exists – we acknowledge this in:
* The fact that we believe, e.g. that a baby’s spirit is fully conscious from conception and
* That a person’s spirit goes to God when they die and
* People are still creative (a spiritual function).
These are true even for the non-Christian. We acknowledge every person still has a spirit that works.

What we mean when we say, “Man in sin, apart from Christ, is spiritually dead” is that his spirit has lost contact with the spiritual realm, in particular the Spirit of God who he was created to relate to in a unique way. The Holy Spirit withdrew from the human spirit, just like when a hand withdraws from a glove. The result is that even though there still is a human spirit, just as there still is a glove, but it is flat, weak, performing below God’s original intention.

The link between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit was broken. Man no longer could receive knowledge from the Holy Spirit. But his soul still needed knowledge to survive so he turned to the body to gain knowledge through his senses – that is what “eating of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” means. This is what we call “scientific knowledge” – it is always good and evil at the same time. The knowledge man gets by his own effort is always cursed with this fact: It is both good and evil. There is always an upside and a downside.

An Aside Question:
This presents a problem of understanding that some may think of here. The gift of God’s “breath” in the beginning was clearly a gift of God’s Spirit. Man’s spirit thus originally had its ground in the Spirit of God. With the fall this “ground” was lost. There are two ways of understanding the present fallen state of man:
1. When God created man the gift of spirit involved more than just a gift of the Holy Spirit to man’s body, but involved the creation of a new form of spirit, independent of God’s spirit but capable of having the Spirit of God dwell in it. Thus with the fall, even though the Holy Spirit withdrew, the spirit of man still existed. This, I think, is probably the commonly held view. It conforms to the whole idea of creation wherein God, by his Spirit, created the universe, physical and spiritual, yet gave it a real existence independent of himself. This is the view held by this author.
2. The other view is that the gift of God’s Spirit was in some sense permanent. The human spirit is thus part of the Divine Spirit. In this view there is a sense in which every man has a relationship with the Spirit of God, but it is not the full relationship God intended. This gives us a hint of how it can be for Christians who have “received the Spirit” through being born again, but may not be fully living in that reality. This view tends to animism or pantheism, depending on how it is understood. But there may be an element of truth in it.
Which view is correct we don’t know for sure.

2. The Merging of Soul and Spirit.

After the Fall the remaining functions of the human spirit merged with the soul and we became soulish.

The human spirit, then, though it still exists, is largely invisible. Like a glove without a hand we cannot see it “do” anything, so it can’t be seen.

This is why, when secular philosophers and psychologists look at man they decide that man is made up of two parts – body and soul, which they sometimes call “spirit”. This belief is called dualism. Because they can’t “see” the human spirit” they assume it doesn’t exist. Because of this failure to acknowledge the third part of man’s personality, secular thinkers are unable to address the deep issues of man’s heart and provide answers that satisfy. They cannot bring healing to the whole personality because they deny that one whole part of our being even exists.

3. Personal Bondage to the Body.

In turning to the body for knowledge the soul became dependent on the body so a reversal took place in the human personality.

* The Body now rules
* The Soul which is in turn merged with
* The Spirit.

This is what we call the “fleshly, or carnal, man” because the fleshly appetites of the body are now the dominant drives in human beings. An exact reversal of the human personality has taken place.

We are less than human because:
* Our spirits can no longer communicate freely with the Holy Spirit and the rest of the spirit realm.
* The soul is dependent on the body for knowledge so has a limited knowledge source.
* The body dominates our desires in an unhealthy and destructive way.
* Our human spirit has lost independence and is merged with the soul.


WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SOMEONE BECOMES A CHRISTIAN?

Two Events:

(1) Our Sins are forgiven:

Sin has two effects in our lives:

(a) Guilt. This is a legal condemnation before God that results in a feeling of guilt in our conscience. It is the sense of estrangement from God because we are unworthy.

(b) Death (Romans 6:23). Death is a power of destruction in our lives. Every time we sin the power of death works some destruction in our lives.

The work of Christ is designed to remedy both of these problems but there is a difference between them.

(i) At conversion guilt is immediately removed, the legal condemnation before God is remitted. We should then feel free from guilt, though the feelings may not follow immediately. Thereafter if we sin our conscience will sense guilt, even though God has already forgiven us all our sin - past, present and future. This the Bible calls justification.

(ii) However the destruction sin has wrought in our lives through death is not immediately removed. The distorted human personality has to be reconstructed into the image of God. This the Bible calls sanctification - it is a process of being conformed to the image of Christ.

Hence thought the guilt of sin is removed, the consequences of sin are not. The destruction remains - with one exception, the Holy Spirit enters into our spirit and gives us spiritual life, the death in our spirit is reversed and we are made spiritually alive. This is called being “born again”.

(2) We Are Born Again:

The Holy Spirit enters into the Believer's spirit. We become one spirit again with God.

Romans 8:9-11.
“You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”

* Our body is still in bondage to the power of sin and so is “dead”: i.e. unable to live in the way God wants.
* Our human spirit is made alive (by the Holy Spirit re-entering it).
* God’s purpose in this is that we will learn how to release the life of the Holy Spirit in our spirit so that the Holy Spirit can “give life to our mortal body”.


1 Corinthians 6:17.
“But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.”

The function of Communion (relationship with God) in our spirit, which has been dead, comes to life again. As a result the other functions of our spirit begin to work again with greater accuracy and sensitivity. Conscience becomes more acute; revelation begins to flow in our Intuition.

Another Aside Question:
Question: The promise of the New Covenant is that God will put a new spirit into us. Doesn't that mean at new birth that I get a new human spirit?
Answer: Evangelical teaching has (often) taught that this is so, but the Bible does not say so. Yes, a new (human) spirit is promised, but the Bible nowhere indicates that we receive it at conversion. In fact examination of the human spirit would show that this does not happen. If the spirit of man includes conscience, intuition and communion then - if we received a new spirit at conversion (presumably a good one from God, not tainted by sin) - then we would expect that from conversion our conscience would always work perfectly, we would always know right from wrong; our intuition would always hear God's voice perfectly; we would always be able to have perfect communion with God. Clearly this is not the case.

Also on the negative side:
* Christians sin and so pollute their spirit so it needs cleansing again and,
* Christians are people and so can be wounded in spirit, just like anyone else, and so need healing in our spirit.

Rather the Bible teaches that our spirits, though inhabited by God's spirit, is on a path of renewal. Hence 1 Thessalonians 5:23 makes sense - we are to become holy in our spirit. We wouldn't need to become this if it were already true as a gift.


THE CHRISTIAN'S CONFLICT.

Even though God dwells within us by his Spirit, the fallen nature (the flesh) is still with us. The soul and spirit are not, in our experience, totally divided again and they are still dominated by our bodily passions. The flesh is not removed at conversion, nor are we automatically set free from its bondage. Rather, we are to learn to grow spiritually, and to subdue the flesh by walking in faith and obedience to the word of God. A conflict results between the flesh and the new nature of God, living in our spirits (Romans 7).

The Christian psychology immediately after new birth looks a bit like this:

* The Body still rules
* The Soul which is in turn merged with
* The Spirit. But now the Holy Spirit lives in our Spirit.

So, initially at last, the dominating force in the Christian life is still the flesh. To become spiritually mature we need to learn to hear the voice of the Spirit of God and choose to do his will and not fulfill the desires of the flesh. As we choose the Spirit over the flesh our personality is progressively restored into the image of God, who is Christ, in whom the Spirit fully ruled his spirit, and his spirit ruled his soul, which in turn ruled his body – just as with Adam in creation. There have only been two real men, Adam before he fell and Christ.


The presence of the Flesh does two things:

(i) It distorts our personalities, through brokenness, so we are not what God wants us to be and,
(ii) It creates bondages and blockages so that we cannot live the life of God as he wants us to.

The Holy Spirit WILL NEVER take control of our souls and bodies, that is not the way he works, rather he endeavours to teach us to TAKE CONTROL OF OUR OWN LIVES, through our own will, with the strength he supplies.

THE WAY TO FREEDOM.

Christ is the answer to every problem. He has given us Full Salvation through his work on the cross. However we need to learn to appropriate and live in each facet of this salvation, one step at a time.

The Process:

John 8:31-35
“you shall know the truth, and it shall set you free.”

* Freedom comes by the “truth”, i.e. the word of God.
* To “know the truth” is a Hebraism. It means not just intellectual understanding but also living the truth. To know intellectually and to not do is deception and just increases bondage.

Hebrews 4:12
“the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, divides …between soul and spirit.”

* One of the things the word of God will do in us is divide our soul and spirit. We are a unity - but even God knows that the parts have to work in a particular order and that sin has brought about a false unity.
* One can only divide between two things if the two things are essentially different. If soul and spirit were not essentially different then they could not be divided. This is one of the clearest indications in scripture that soul and spirit are different things.

Notice how the answer is the real antidote to the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem was seeking false knowledge; the answer is to know truth from the tree of life. To "know" in Biblical thought is to experience, to live in. Intellectual knowledge is involved, but it is not the end. When we know intellectually we must obey, or the truth does not set us free. In actual fact to know the truth AND NOT DO IT will only serve to bring us into deeper bondage (James 1:22, 4:17; Isaiah 28:9-13).

The first step of personal renewal, to bring us back into the image of God, is regeneration.

WHAT IS REGENERATION/NEW BIRTH?

(1) A Divine Act of Re-Creation.

When we become Christians the Holy Spirit enters again into our spirit. This means that again we can have direct spiritual contact with the spiritual realm and with God. Where we were spiritually "dead" - unable to communicate with the spiritual realm, we are now made spiritually "alive". This experience is called REGENERATION, a word which comes from the Latin:

re = again,
generate = to be born.

John 1:12,13.
“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.”

John 3:3-8.
“Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, `You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

John 3:14-16.
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

* Regeneration is a gift of Eternal life; i.e. of God's sort of life.
* The Greek is in the aorist, implying that this is a single event which has effects abiding for all time – and for eternity. We cannot be "reborn" twice.
* The way to be born again is to “believe in Him, i.e. Christ.

Ephesians 2:1-5.
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved.”

This describes the change from death to life that happens at conversion.

James 1:18.
“He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.”

This new birth comes to us through the operation of the power of the word of God in us.

(2) An Ongoing Experience.

This act of rebirth begins a process in our lives in which God makes us new, i.e. he regenerates us:

Titus 3:5.
“he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,”

Here the Greek is in the continuous tense, indicating a process that carries on forever.

WHAT REGENERATION IS NOT:

1. It is not “becoming perfect” or wholly sanctified, not even in our human spirit.

1 Thessalonians 5:23
“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Paul is writing to Christians and he expresses his desire that they would be perfectly sanctified in their spirit, soul and body. The text implies that there is as much need for sanctification in the spirit as there is in the soul and body. Our spirit has a need to remain “blameless” just as much as the rest of our being.
Nowhere does the Bible say that we are perfectly sanctified in spirit from the moment of conversion. Logic tells us this would not be so. Sin is not just a physical thing but is spiritual also. Even as Christians we sin and so we pollute our human spirit so it needs cleansing again.

2. It is not becoming spiritually mature.
New birth is called a birth because there is implicitly an understanding that we are like babies. Read chapter 1 again to find references to this fact of spiritual babyhood.

3. It is not an instantaneous restoration of the human personality.
The scenario I have painted of the reversal of the human personality is not automatically reversed because we become Christians. We are required to learn how to restore our personality in the power of the Holy Spirit as part of our sanctification.


(B) INDWELLING.

From the moment of our rebirth the Holy Spirit makes a permanent home in our spirits. He lives inside us, or "indwells" us. The Bible talks of this in many ways:

1 Corinthians 6:19,20.
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your body.”

The Greek words for “you” in this passage are the second person singular, so they refer to the individual Christian, not to the Church as a whole.

Romans 8:9-11.
“You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”

* In three sentences Paul says in four ways that the Spirit lives in us - just in case we miss the point.
* Not just the Spirit, but the whole of the Trinity lives in us. It is the "Spiirt of God...who raised Jesus from the dead", it is "Christ in us", "his Spirit who lives in you".

This is the mystery of the Trinity. The Church has always held that they inter-permeate each other. Each of the three persons of the Godhead are fully present in each of the others. Thus the Father and the Son indwell us in and through the Spirit.

John 14:15-17,
"If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever- the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”

This is called the "Indwelling of the Holy Spirit".

The miracle of the Spirit’s indwelling is the absolute grace he shows to us. We are not yet perfected but he chooses to dwell in the hearts of unclean people. In principle we are clean – washed in the blood of the Lamb, but in practice we continue to sin and get polluted. Even though he is holy the Spirit continues to abide with us. Just as Christ was incarnated into a sinful world and dwelt with us to secure our redemption, so too the Spirit deigns to dwell in sinful hearts with a view to their eventual sanctification.

However such pollution does upset the Spirit:

Ephesians 4:30.
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

We need to try to avoid sin so we do not grieve him, but if we do sin we can plead the blood of Christ which cleanses us and makes us holy again.

THE PURPOSES OF THE SPIRIT’S INDWELLING:

1. To teach us.
John 14:26
“But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”

2. To convict us. To bring us to repentance, i.e. life change.
John 16:7-11.
“But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned."

3. To tell us of things to come.
John 16:12-14.
"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.”

The Spirit is prophetic. Christianity at its very heart is prophetic – we believe in a God who tells us the future – not just of world events, but he guides us into things that are still future.

4. To guide us.
Romans 8:14
“because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”

5. To include us in the family of God.
Romans 8:15,16.
“…but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, <"Abba,> Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.”

6. To assure us of our salvation.
Romans 5:5
“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

7. To give us victory over sin.
Romans 8:4-6.
“…in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;…”

8. To fill us with God’s presence. See next chapter.

HOMEWORK:

Read Romans chapter 8. This is the Apostle Paul’s greatest discourse on the work of the Spirit of God. Some people call it a “Land of Promises” (similar to the Old Testament “Promised Land”).

Make a list of all the promises given there of what the Spirit will do for us. Turn them into confessions. Write a prayer of thanksgiving for each one. You should end up with a page of things each one in this format: Confession, Verse, Prayer. I have done the first one for you as an example:

The law of the Spirit of life has set me free from the law of sin and death.
Romans 8:2
“…through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”
Thank you Jesus that you have set me free from the law of sin and death. Thank you that you have given me the Spirit of Life.

When you have completed the list use them in your devotions for several weeks on a daily basis. Read them out loud, let God impact you with them. Pray around them as the Spirit leads. Claim them as promises.

TRANSFORMER VERSE:

Regeneration:
John 3:3-8.
“Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, `You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

Indwelling of the Spirit
1 Corinthians 6:19,20.
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your body.”

PRAYER:
Father God, I thank you for the Holy Spirit. Thank you for the miracle of rebirth in the Spirit, that I am born again in my spirit, I have come alive. Thank you that the Holy Spirit dwells in me. Help me to honour God in my body. In Jesus name pray, Amen.