And how we have been made the very friends of Jesus, His beloved, new creations. Old things have passed away, behold new things have come.
Glorious New Covenant truths about "It is finished". How our sins have been forgiven, past, present and future.
However...
In addition to our new spirit, our new "nature", our new heart...
We have a soul. Made up of, let's say, mind (our thinker), emotions (our feeler) and will (our chooser).
And here's the point: In our soul...
We are broken.
And we are wounded.
And we are hurting.
To pretend that we are not broken and wounded and hurting is as absurd as teaching that God loves and favors us based on our performance (the truth is He just loves us, period).
To pretend that we are not broken and wounded and hurting is as ridiculous as teaching that it's our obeying rules which is the real point of the Christian life.
Acting like we "have it all together" is crazy.
No, we ARE broken and wounded and hurting in our soul. In our mind, and emotions and will.
But He has begun a good work in us! And He will complete it!
He has begun with a new heart. A new spirit. A new nature. And His Spirit living in us.
And He's working on the rest. He really is. He is working on our soul. Our mind, emotions and will.
And He's promised that "He who began a good work in you will complete it..." (Phillipians 1:6)
He will fix our brokenness. He will heal our wounds. He will comfort us in our hurting. Slowly or rapidly, before we die or after. He will complete it.
Meanwhile, we might THINK and FEEL and CHOOSE in ways that we would not prefer if we were walking by His Spirit and our new spirit.
That's why in our heart of hearts we desire to walk by His Spirit and our new spirit. To fellowship with Jesus. To commune with Him.
"I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin."
"But if you sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous."
"What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." -- John the Apostle
It's not good to THINK and FEEL and CHOOSE wrongly.
But it's forgiven.
And here's the final point:
The only One who can really fix our brokenness and heal our wounds is Jesus. And He's really good at it.
But that means we can't fix each other's brokenness and we can't heal each other's wounds.
Yet we can lead one another to Jesus, and He can use us as instruments of fixing and healing and comforting.
He may not be in a hurry.
But nothing is too hard for Him.
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2 comments:
Hi again Terry,
I have always found myself to be straddling the fence about trichotomy vs dichotomy.
I am assuming from this article that you hold to the trichotomous view. If my assumption is wrong then the entire article is way over my head. :)
Are there any articles in your archives concerning trichotomy vs dichotomy? I need to get off this fence someday.
MichaelDkaster
Hi Michael,
I really need to write more on the subject because I think it's important.
As an introduction I would pose the question, "When we were born again, what part of us was born again?"
Was it our body? Certainly not.
Was it our mind? Well, no. Our minds still need to be renewed.
Was it our emotions? No, they still may go up and down, back and forth, according to our thoughts.
Was it our will? No, we still choose rightly sometimes and wrongly sometimes.
What then was "born again"?
I contend it's our very nature, or what we might call our spirit, which is made "one spirit with Him [Christ]" (1 Cor. 6:17).
Also known as our "new heart" (per the New Covenant), it is the essence of us, the "new creation", which is "perfected" (Heb. 10:14).
Thus we have what, loosely speaking, I refer to as Body, Soul (mind, emotions, will), and spirit (nature, essence, new heart).
Finally, I think there are many Scriptures which simply cannot be understood without somewhat understanding that trichotomous view from Scripture.
Hopefully more to come in one or more blog posts.
Thanks for the input, Michael!
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