2Corinthians 5:17 (Amplified) says, "Therefore, if any person is (ingrafted) in Christ Jesus (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old (previous moral and spiritual condition) has passed. Behold, the fresh and new has come."
Your spirit man was created perfect in Christi Jesus, the very moment you received Him as your Lord and Savior. Our struggle hasn't been with the sin in our lives, but with remembering the sin from our old lives. Our mind (which is part of our soul) have never been seriously renewed. The only thing our soul knew, was the ways of the world. Our spirit man was separated from the Spirit of God, at Adam's fall in the Garden.
The only information and education our fleshly man (the house of our spirit) can now receive, come from only our soul and five senses. We were created in the Likeness of God and Jesus said that "God is a Spirit." The part of us that is like Jesus' was (and is), is our spirit. When God placed the spirit man into a body formed from the earth, God breathed into him and man became a living spirit. The Life breathed into this fleshly man (or house for his spirit to live in), was made to contact the earthly realm that God created for us to lie in.
Our spirit was housed in a physical body, in order to have dominion over the physical earth. In this physical man, God breathed a soul or a center of communication between the spirit and the flesh. Our brain is a physical component that directs the body and was to be educated by the Spirit of God, in how to walk with Him on earth. Your body was the earth contact, your soul is the information center, your spirit is supposed to be the authority over both your soul and body, and your spirit is to be in perpetual contact with God's Spirit. Everything Adam was to know, was to come from God, in his spirit. Adam then, would control his soulish part by the Words God spoke to him and Adam's flesh would simply carry out his directions on earth.
God and man were to be in constant contact with one another and were to grow in the relationship of a Father teaching his child. When Adam transgressed and communication was severed from the Spirit of God, the soul took dominion over the flesh and blood body, teaching it how to function and what to function in. God was no longer able to deal in man's spirit and must by necessity, deal with man from the outside and not the inside. The Law was created to do so.
The Law was the Word of God that dealt with man, in the order of controlling him from the soulish realm. Even though the Law was spiritual, man could only comply in his flesh. Following commandments and rituals of the things of God, man could remain in God's grace and God could dwell with man in a limited capacity. God could live in a temple with them, as long as man would obey His Law. Men couldn't openly come into God's Presence and God couldn't openly come into their presence.
Man's soul was only taught from the outside and the natural realm, leaving the soul to train and teach the body by very limited counsel. The soul began gathering information from other sources and persons, leaving the flesh (which was a slave to what it was taught) to follow in what it learned. The flesh developed habits that it learned from the world and became addicted to a certain way of behavior and conditioning. Since it has been programmed into this way of being, the flesh protests when we try changing it.
When we renew our minds with God's Word, we begin reprogramming the soul (mind) to teach a different curriculum, thus changing the habits of the flesh. Romans 8:6 (Amplified) says, "Now the mind of the flesh (which is sense knowledge and reasoning without the Holy Spirit) is death (death that comprises all the miseries arising from sin, both here and hereafter) But the mind of the Holy Spirit is Life and (soul) peace (both now and hereafter)." When we read this scripture by the Holy Spirit, Romans 8:5 (Amplified) reads, "For those who are according to the flesh and are controlled by its unholy desires set their minds on and pursue those things which gratify the flesh,but those who are according to the Spirit and are controlled by the desires of the spirit set their minds on and seek those things which gratify the Holy Spirit."
The carnal mind, the world trained soul and mind that was in us when we were born-again, will still lead the flesh in the same paths as before. The mind that is renewed by God's Word, will "lead us into the things of God." Romans 8:7 (Amplified) says, "(That is) because the mind of the flesh (with its carnal thoughts and purposes) is hostile to God, for it does not submit itself to God's Law; indeed it cannot."
Our minds (soul) have been taught contrary to God's Spirit and it refuses to follow everything which goes against what it knows. If someone tries telling you that, "Two plus two equals five," then your mind would reject that as being wrong, because you were taught in elementary school that it equals four. It only accepts the things it's been taught over time. When your mind has been trained against God, then it rejects the Truth of God.
Our "religious" minds have been taught and trained to believe in God, so we can accept that He exists, but still go against His reality for us in this realm. We can "religiously" accept that God is, but then reject that which we've been taught about the Super-natural things in this life. The carnal mind is at war with Spiritual Truths.
The soul (mind, will, emotions) is the part that didn't submit to the new birth, when we accepted Jesus. This part of every man must be retrained or once again conformed by the Word of God. In Matthew 15:6 (Amplified), Jesus told the religious people of His time, "So for the sake of your traditions (the rules handed down by your forefathers) You have set aside the Word of God (depriving it of force and authority and making it of no effect)." These people didn't deliberately try to set aside God's Word, but they accepted what they'd been taught. And, they would do so, until their minds (as well as their senses) were trained to reject anything different than the carnal concepts of God.
These people observed the Feast Days and the ceremonial things that their minds and bodies had been taught, but they lost sight of the Spiritual things of God. They observed the formalities of religion, but had forgotten or been trained against the Truth in which they came.
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