NEW CREATION: RECREATED HUMAN SPIRIT

God designed the human being as a tri-part being: a spirit, who has a soul, and lives in a body. The real man is a spirit. That is why at the new birth, it is the human spirit that gets recreated. When a person gets saved, his or her body may experience any form of change, except for divine healing. The soul may also not change radically or immediately. The part of the human personality that changes at salvation is the spirit. God begins the process of salvation with the real man – your spirit, the “hidden man of the heart”; that part of man that cannot be perceived with the physical eyes or senses.

But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price (1 Peter 3:4)

With your body, you contact and interact with the physical, natural, visible, tangible realm. With your soul, you relate with the mental, intellectual, emotional realm. With the spirit, you contact, commune, and interact with the spiritual realm – that realm that is more real than the natural, though invisible to the physical eyes and imperceptible to human senses. That is why an un-recreated man cannot commune intimately with God. God is Spirit (John 4:24). He made man in His Image – as a spirit – and it takes a man who is spiritually alive and aware to contact, commune and relate with God effectively.

At the moment of the new birth, the dead spirit which could not relate with God was recreated into a living spirit. Your soul was not changed. That is why after you were saved, you are now responsible to renew your soul through exposure to God’s Word and submission to His Spirit. The more you renew your thinking and allow it to be transformed by God’s Word, the more your mind aligns with the things of God, the more your body (senses) will fall into alignment. This is what it means to present your body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, and to not conform to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:1-2).