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God’s Salvation
God’s Salvation and the Three Parts of Man
God’s Salvation for the Three Parts of Man
God’s complete salvation encompasses man’s entire being. It not only restores the three parts of man to their proper function, but also dispenses Himself as life into each of them for the fulfillment of His plan. He starts at man’s innermost part (the human spirit) and spreads outward through the soul to the body until every effect of the fall of man has been reversed, every trace of the fall has been erased, and man has been thoroughly saturated with the life of God in each of his three parts.
Regeneration in our Spirit
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By this new birth a new element has been added to our spirit that was not originally there according to our first birth: God’s own life
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As the first step of God’s marvelous salvation, He regenerates man’s spirit. When we first repent of our sins and apply Christ’s redeeming blood to cleanse our conscience, our deadened spirit is made alive. Ephesians 2:5 explains, “Even when we were dead in offenses, [God] made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” Our enlivened spirit then begins to sense God and to contact God. Through this contact, not only is our spirit’s function restored, but the divine and uncreated life of God is also added to it (Romans 8:10),
which life is Christ Himself (John 14:6). This is the new birth,
the regeneration alluded to in John 3:6: “that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” By this new birth a new element has been added to our spirit that was not originally there according to our first birth: God’s own life. This is also the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise in Ezekiel 36:26: “a new spirit I will put within you” (Witness Lee, Economy 66-68).
Transformation in our Soul
As a result of regeneration, a change in life began to take place at the center of our being. God’s life with its divine nature was added to our human spirit. Following our regeneration, God desires that this change of life would continue by gradually spreading into our mind, emotion, and will. We may have Christ in our spirit, yet it ispossible that our mind, emotion, and will may remain the same.
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We begin to think as God thinks, love as He loves, and choose as He chooses
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For this reason, we need Christ to grow and expand continually from our spirit into our soul, a process the Bible calls transformation. Christ carries out this transforming work through the indwelling Holy Spirit, beginning with the renewing of our mind mentioned in Romans 12:2: “be transformed by the renewing of the mind.” As this renewing progresses on from day to day, we begin to think as God thinks, love as He loves, and choose as He chooses. Eventually we will resemble God in full; that is, we will be absolutely conformed to the image of God. This is why 2 Corinthians 3:18 explains, “we all with unveiled face,
beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.” Thus, in God’s salvation of our soul, not only is the contamination of Satan negated, but even the more, we come to bear the glorious image of Christ in full (Witness Lee, Conclusion 1601-1602, 1609-1610).
Transfiguration of our Body
Following the lifelong process of transformation in our soul, God will culminate His salvation process by transfiguring our mortal body, as described in 1 Corinthians 15:52-53: “ In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…we will be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” Philippians 3:21 also speaks of our transfiguration: “Who will transfigure the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of His glory.
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For this corruptible must put on incorruption
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Footnote 211 for this verse in the New Testament Recovery Version sums up God’s salvation of the three parts of man: “The transfiguration of our body is the ultimate consummation of God’s salvation. In His salvation God first regenerated our spirit (John 3:6), now is transforming our soul (Rom. 12:2), and consummately will transfigure our body, making us the same as Christ in all three parts of our being.” Thus, in God’s full salvation not only is our body freed from the foreign elements of sin and death, but even the more, it is saturated with the divine glory and conformed to the body of His glory (Witness Lee, Footnotes 914).
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