We Are Three Parts, Made In His Image

By Tammy Lacock

This week, Warren Litzman dives into the depths of the Apostle Paul’s gospel of grace by helping us understand the revelation knowledge that Paul received directly from Christ.

In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul shares this new knowledge, which consists of an understanding of how God made us as human beings so we can understand our new life in Christ.

In Genesis 1:27, we know God created us in His own image and likeness. And we know our God is a triune God made up of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Paul tells us on several occasions as well as in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 that we, too, are made up of three parts: the body, soul, and spirit. We know we have bodies. Paul tells us in Hebrews 4:12 and 2 Timothy 2:15 that we also have two invisible parts: our souls and spirits. Because of the Cross, God can now change us innately by joining Christ’s Spirit to us, making us one in Him (1 Corinthians 6:17), brand-new creations. Before the Cross, we operated by self, Satan’s nature, passed down by the curse of Satan through Adam’s disobedience, making us ignorant to Christ. Now, as believers, Paul reveals that Christ is our new operator. The Cross and Christ living in us as our new life go hand in hand. There is not one without the other. This is Paul’s gospel of God’s amazing grace, that we are saved by Christ’s very life within us and not by anything we do.

The only change God made within us when we believed in Christ was in our spirits. We were created by God to have Christ complete us; and in our spirits, we are complete, saved, and going to heaven. By His life within our spirits, we are clothed in His righteousness; therefore, we stand before God blameless. This was in God’s plan before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4):

“According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.”

Yet Paul tells us that our souls are not complete, the part of us where our minds, free will, and emotions reside. We have yet to undergo in our mindsets the same death and new life that took place within our spirits. Our spirits underwent death to our sin-natures as Christ became our new life in us. This is what it means to be rebirthed or born again. The incorruptible Seed of Christ has been literally and permanently planted within our spirits and, Paul tells us, it’s now time to water and nurture His seed within us by undergoing a continual mind-change in our souls. The only way God deals with us now is on the basis of Christ within us. By the help of the Holy Spirit in our minds, Paul’s hope is that we come to know Christ in this way.

Christianity isn’t just a visit with Christ. It is a journey of getting to know Him and knowing Him as our new life, the very breath within us. By getting to know Him in us and reciprocating His love, we can now live out exactly who God created us to be in our entire being, all three parts of us: body, soul, and spirit!