There is no psychology of the new birth, for the new birth is not mental, but spiritual.
Psychology has to do with the mind, and the new birth has to do with the “hidden man of the heart,” or the spirit of man.
You understand that man is in God’s class of being. When he was created in the garden, he was made in the image and likeness of God. He was a spirit being because God is a spirit. And YHVH breathed his spirit into the body he had formed, and Adam became a living soul.
They were created so that, by partaking of God’s nature (the way of the tree of life), they might become a child of God by birth.
If they were just a physical being, they could not receive God’s nature. If they were just a mental being (soul), they could not receive God’s nature.
Man had to be a spirit being, an eternal being who would live as long as God lives. Man had to be in God’s class. He had to be created so that he could be God’s companion.
God gave him authority over all the laws of nature. Every living thing was subject to him.
This same authority was evidently given to Jesus. During His earth walk, He ruled the laws of nature, changed water into wine, restored the maimed limbs, calmed the seas, and raised the dead.
Adam, the first man, was a spirit inbreathed of God. Before the fall in the garden, during his fellowship with God, his spirit ruled him, and his physical senses were subject to his spirit.
But, when he sinned, and his spirit had fallen, it became subordinated to his senses.
I believe that before Adam fell, his five senses played only a small part; the instant he fell, his spirit lost dominion, and his five senses took over. He now relied upon his senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling.
He was driven from the presence of God.
He was in an enemy world. He had to see clearly, lest he lose his life. He had to hear keenly, or an animal would take advantage of him. His taste must tell him what was good to eat. His touch must tell him whether an object was hot or cold, sharp, or rough.
Adam gained an education through his five physical senses.
His spirit was being made the prisoner of his five senses.
The psalmist cried, “Bring my soul out of prison” (Psalm 142:7). It was the cry of the soul for liberty. It has been the cry for freedom down through the ages.
Man’s spirit lost contact with God. His body became mortal, subject to death. This was the condition in which Jesus found the human race when He broke into the physical sense realm to introduce the Father to physical sense-knowledge man.
The physical body possesses the five senses; they are the educators and teachers of the brain. The person who has not been born of God in the Old Covenant only receive knowledge from the Holy Spirit when the Spirit came upon Him.
Let it be clearly understood that the brain cannot function without the senses.
If a child were born without physical sight, hearing, or feeling, he would be called an imbecile (Weak; feeble; destitute of strength, either of body or of mind).
They may have just as good an intellect as the other children, but the five senses have no way to contact it. The brain is dependent upon the five senses.
You remember how Paul told Agrippa, “I lived in all good conscience” (Acts 23:1). That was because his soul bore witness to his born-again spirit.
Here are some names that the soul is called in the Epistles: the “old man,” as in “put off the old man with his doings” (Colossians 3:9 ASV) and the spirit is called the “new man,” as in “put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).
The spirit is also called “the hidden man of the heart” (1 Peter 3:4).
The spirit is the essence of our being.
The body is the part of us, the home in which the spirit lives.
The real person is the hidden man of the heart, or the hidden spirit.
Here is the proof of it. The spirit is called a new creation: “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).
Another translation puts it this way: “There is a new creation whenever a person comes to be in Christ; what is old is gone, the new has come”.
Ezekiel 36:26 where the prophecy of a new creation is given:
“26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”
God says that He is going to give a person a new spirit. He is going to make a new person out of them. He is going to give them a new heart (soul), which becomes transformed through the new creation in union with God.
The sin nature is to be taken out of the person. They will no longer be called the old man. They are going to be called the new man in Christ.
As the sinner, the old man who cannot approach God except through Christ; they do not know Him as a Father.
Now God has performed a miracle. He has imparted His life to the spirit.
The old man has legally stopped being, and a new man has taken its place. A new creation comes into being.
This hidden man of the heart is now a new man, a new self. The old self was born of the first Adam
The new self is born of love, the nature of the Father God.
The new creation, is created in Christ Jesus.
The new creation is going to have a new kind of walk. The old self was in fellowship with the adversary; the new creation is in fellowship with the Father.
Here are a few valuable facts. The old creation had no standing with God. They could not approach Him. From the fall of man until Christ came, no human being could approach God except under the atoning blood of bulls and goats.
The new creation, who came into being after Jesus’ resurrection, could stand in the Father’s presence as though sin had never been.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifies. (Romans 8:33)
This new creation has become the righteousness of God in Christ.
Christianity is God dealing with the spirit of a person.
He imparts to the person His nature, making them a new creation.
They are as much a new creation as Adam was in his innocence in the garden.
God makes His contact with us through our spirit, not our physical senses.
The development of the human spirit is imperative.
We have wondered how this unseen, unknown personality could be developed. We know now.
By partaking of the divine nature. The first manifestation of that divine nature is the new kind of love
The development, then, of this new creation is going to be by the nature of the Father taking them over.
In other words, they begin to walk in love, live the love life, practice the Word, and fellowship with the Father.
Jesus’s earth walk was a perfect example of this new kind of love.
The Father can unveil the Word to a person’s spirit so that it becomes a living thing in their daily walk.
Love becomes their natural realm. They live love. They think love. They are love because they are a child of love. God is love.