God is setting us free from a lot of religious thinking. When we begin to encounter God intimately where we begin to partake of His divine nature and be taught by the Holy Spirit himself. We find a lot of our belief systems being challenged.
When we think of our person being saved what do we think of? We think that when a person gets saved, that means when they die they will go to heaven and not hell.
My whole belief system about hell is changing, as I am doing an in-depth study on every reference in the bible I believed referred to it. But that is another subject; I want to focus on salvation.
Before our spirit was born again, we were called sinners.
Mark 2: 17 When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
The word sin in the Greek is hamartia which is a noun, which means to be without a share in. It comes from the root word hamartánō to sin which is a verb which comes from the root word meros meaning a part due or assigned to one, a lot, inheritance or destiny
2corinthians 5: 21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
Sin is not sharing in our inheritance; it is not walking in the divine nature.
We are saved-our spirit. We are being saved-our soul. And we shall yet be saved- our body.
Salvation is not dying and going to heaven, it is our whole being, being restored to God’s original design-made in his image and likeness.
Think of salvation as something being saved. Instead of throwing something in the garbage, we think we can save it, so we fix it up or restore it to its original condition.
1 John 21My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
If we are still struggling with sin, we are considered a little child, If any man sin, not when you sin.
1 john 2: 13I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one.
I Corinthians 13: 10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away . 11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1 john 3 9 Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.
The part of us that cannot sin, is the seed of God in our spirit, the Christ in us cannot sin.
The Salvation of the spirit or being born again (is the common Christian phrase when they refer to a person getting saved) is just the starting point where everything within us that has been damaged and broken by sin is cleansed, healed and restored, so that we can go on to perfection. Perfection refers to being a mature Christian where we enter a face-to-face relationship with God. For this to happen we must go through a transformation of our soul where the D. N.A, the seed of God grows in us forming Christ within us.
As we begin to grow spiritually, we change from the inside out. A purifying work takes place within our heart (soul), where we begin to perceive God, his glory and as we see him, we are transformed into his image.
Spiritual growth does not automatically happen. But the Holy Spirit is revealing step by step how it takes place.