The triune human

Have you ever wondered what actually changed the day you were born again?

You looked in the mirror and saw the same face. Your habits, your moods, and your thought patterns were all still there. Yet Scripture says something happened to you that was total and complete. This newsletter is about what that something is.

Two Experiences; One Reality

When I was born again, I felt it immediately. I was light and alive in a way I had never known. I was filled with a love and peace I couldn’t explain, and it didn’t depend on anything around me. That was the life of God reanimating my human spirit.

It didn’t last, at least not the way I felt it that first day. Before long, my unrenewed soul took over again. My old thought habits ignored what God was telling me through my revived spirit, and that sense of peace in every circumstance faded. My spirit hadn’t changed, though. My thinking was getting in the way.

My best friend had her own unusual idea of what happened when she was born again. She called on the Lord while she was under the influence of drugs, and she suddenly felt light and free. She assumed her body must have died and that she was now only a spirit. She called a pastor she knew and asked whether it was okay to tell people she was just a spirit now.

She wasn’t wrong that something real had happened. She just had no category for it. Over time, she worked out what had actually occurred at her new birth. Her spirit had been made alive, and her body and soul were still the same. To this day she is very aware of her quickened spirit.

Both of us experienced something real and had to learn what it was. To understand it, we have to go back to the garden where it all began.

Made in the image of a three-part God

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” (Genesis 1:27)

God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three persons, one God. When He made humanity in His image, He made a being who reflects that pattern. Paul prays over believers in exactly these terms:

“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23)

I believe this is the plain reading of Scripture, not a clever interpretation. Paul names three things and calls them the whole person. You are a spirit, you have a soul, and you live in a body.

• Spirit: your God-consciousness. The deepest part of you, where you connect with God.
• Soul: your self-consciousness. Your mind, will, and emotions; Your personality.
• Body: your world-consciousness. The five senses that let you interact with the physical world.

Genesis 2:7 shows all three at work in one verse. God formed the body from the dust. He breathed into it the breath of life. And “man became a living soul.” The body is the house. The spirit is God’s own life within it. The soul is the person who emerges when the two come together.

The Fall: what actually died

God gave Adam one warning:

“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Genesis 2:17)

Adam ate, and he did not drop dead. He lived another 930 years. His body worked, and his mind worked. So what died “in the day”? His spirit. His living union with God was severed. God’s word cannot fail, so something died that day, and it was the part of Adam that was joined to God. This is why God "looked for" Adam in the cool of the day. They no longer had that intimate connection Adam was created for.

Paul describes this as an inheritance:

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” (Romans 5:12)

Every child born after Adam arrived with a living body and soul and with a spirit which was cut off from its source. This is why Paul can write to people who were up and walking around and say:

“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” (Ephesians 2:1)

They were physically alive and spiritually dead. Humanity was born dead.

From Adam to Jesus: the long search

The Old Testament is the story of a family that had lost something and could not get it back by effort. Sacrifices covered sin for a year at a time. The Law revealed the problem but could not fix it. The prophets kept pointing ahead, and God made a promise through Ezekiel that describes the exact solution:

“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.” (Ezekiel 36:26)

Notice what He promised. He did not promise a better-behaved version of the old spirit. He promised a new one.

Jesus, the last Adam

“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” (1 Corinthians 15:45)

Adam passed on death. Jesus passes on life. Adam’s disobedience put humanity into death, and Jesus’ obedience, cross, and resurrection opened the way out.

Jesus told a religious scholar named Nicodemus exactly how it works:

“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God… That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:3, 6)

Nicodemus had a trained mind and a religious résumé. What he lacked was a living spirit, and no amount of study or effort could supply it. He needed a birth.

What changes at the new birth

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

This verse is true, and it is also not visible in the mirror. The body has not changed. The soul has not yet changed. What has been made new is the spirit: instantly, completely, and permanently. The old thing that has passed away is our spiritual connection to sin.

“In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise.” (Ephesians 1:13)

Your born-again spirit is as righteous as Jesus Himself, because it has been joined to Him: “But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:17). When you stumble in your thinking or your behavior, that does not reach the sealed spirit. God relates to you on the basis of who you are in your spirit, not on your performance.

But the story is not finished

Here is where many believers get stuck. If my spirit is brand new, why does my life still look the same?

Because salvation is not one event with one location. Paul writes to people who are already saved and tells them:

“Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12–13)

Pay attention to the wording. It says work out, not work for. You cannot work out what you do not already have. The salvation is already deposited in you. The assignment is to bring it out of your spirit and into your thinking, your choices, and your life. And because “it is God which worketh in you,” you are never doing this alone. God is changing you by His word. He sent His word for this very purpose. We must consume the word for it to do this internal work.

James and Peter say the same thing about the soul specifically:

“Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.” (James 1:21)

“Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:9)

Both letters were written to believers. If the soul had already been fully saved, there would be nothing to receive. The salvation of the soul is a process that continues through our whole lives.

Why this matters to me

I hold to this teaching because I believe it is the true reading of Scripture as a whole, not just a handful of verses. It was taught clearly by Kenneth E. Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, and Andrew Wommack, and it flows from the Word of Faith tradition. When you read the Bible with the three-part human in mind, passage after passage that used to feel confusing begins to make sense: new birth, the renewing of the mind, the difference between the inner and outer person, the promise of a future resurrection. I do not accept a two-part view of the human being, because I do not find it in the text. A three-part God made a three-part person.

I am not asking you to take my word for it. The Bereans were praised because they “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11). Read the verses. Read the teachers below. Test it.

Where this leads: the spirit is saved in a moment. The soul is being saved over a lifetime. The body is saved at the resurrection. In the next newsletter we will look at the soul and why this matters for how we pray and grow in Christ.

Go deeper: resources for Newsletter 1

• Andrew Wommack Ministries, “Spirit, Soul, and Body” (blog): https://www.awmi.net/blog/spirit-soul-and-body/
• Andrew Wommack Ministries, Spirit, Soul and Body study guide (PDF): https://cdn.awmi.net/documents/study-guides/sg418/spirit-soul-and-body-study-guide-language-english-full.pdf
• Kenneth Copeland Ministries, “4 Keys to Understanding the Spirit, Soul, and Body”: https://www.kcm.org/faith/4-keys-to-understanding-the-spirit-soul-body/
• Kenneth E. Hagin, Man on Three Dimensions, Vol. 1: Spirit, Soul and Body (Rhema Bible Church / Kenneth Hagin Ministries)
• David Hernandez Ministries, “Understanding Body, Soul and Spirit”: https://www.davidhernandezministries.com/blogarchive/understanding-body-soul-and-spirit
• Video teaching on spirit, soul, and body: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFS9KAgjtR0