Some time ago, I was asked to write an article on the psychology of the new birth.
As I began to study the problem, I saw that 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 had to be a spirit being because God is a spirit.
He was created so that, by partaking of God’s nature, he might become a child of God. If he were but a physical being, he could not receive God’s nature. If he were but a mental being, he could not receive God’s nature.
He 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 in God’s class. When he committed high treason, he became a partaker of Satan’s nature. He was actually born again, and he became a new satanic creation. Because man is a spirit being, it was his spirit that partook of Satan’s nature.
Before the fall in the garden, during his fellowship with God, his spirit ruled him, and his senses were subject to his spirit. But, when he sinned, and his spirit received the nature of the adversary, 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 senses.
His spirit was being made the prisoner of his five senses.
The psalmist cried, “Bring my soul out of prison” (Psalm 142:7). The Hebrew word should have been translated “spirit” instead of “soul.”
It was the cry of the spirit 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 sense realm to introduce the Father to sense-knowledge man.
Here are some spirit facts: man is a spirit; he has a soul. The soul is composed of his reasoning faculties. He lives in a physical body. The physical body possesses the five senses; they are the educators and teachers of the brain.
Let it be clearly understood that the brain cannot function without the senses.
If a child were born without sight, hearing, or feeling, he would be called an imbecile.
He may have just as good an intellect as the other children, but the senses have no way to contact it. The brain is dependent upon the five senses.
The spiritually dead man’s spirit is in harmony with Satan. His spirit does not object if he commits murder.
You remember how Paul told Agrippa, “I lived in all good conscience” (Acts 23:1). That was during the time he was consenting to the death of the believers.
His conscience permitted him to do it. That conscience was the voice of a spiritually dead man, a Satan-ruled spirit.
Here are some names that the spirit is called in the Epistles: the “old man,” as in “put off the old man with his doings” (Colossians 3:9 ASV) and the “new man,” as in “put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).
He is also called “the hidden man of the heart” (1 Peter 3:4).
The spirit is the real man. The body is not the real man; it is merely the home in which the spirit lives.
The mind is not the real man, because the mind can be destroyed by destroying the senses.
The real man is the hidden man of the heart, or the hidden spirit.
Here is the proof of it. He 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 man comes to be in Christ; what is old is gone, the new has come” (MOFF).
That is in perfect harmony with Ezekiel 36:26 where the prophecy of a new creation is given: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.”
The words heart and spirit are used interchangeably all through the Old and New Testaments.
God says that He is going to give man a new spirit. He is going to make a new man out of him. He is going to give him a new heart (or spirit), which will make him a new creation.
What striking statements these are! Man is going to be recreated. The sin nature is to be taken out of him. He will no longer be called the old man. He is going to be called the new man in Christ.
As the sinner, he is the old man who cannot approach God except through Christ; he does not know Him as a Father.
Now God has performed a miracle. He has recreated him. The old man has stopped being, and a new man has taken his 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 spiritual death, the nature of the adversary. The new self is born of love, the nature of the Father God.
He is a new creation, and he is created in Christ Jesus. He 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 man, who came into being on the day of Pentecost, 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 ASV)
Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. (Romans 8:33)
This new creation man has become the righteousness of God in Christ.
You can now see that Christianity is God dealing with the spirit of man. He imparts to man His nature, making man a new creation.
He is as much a new creation as Adam was in the garden.
God makes His contact with man through his spirit, not his senses.
The development of the human spirit is imperative.
We have wondered how this unseen, unknown personality could be developed. We know now.
He is a partaker 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 him over.
In other words, he begins 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 love life.
The Father can unveil the Word to a man’s spirit so that it becomes a living thing in his daily walk. Love becomes his natural realm. He lives love. He thinks love. He is love because he is a child of love. God is love.