Man in the garden lived in the realm of the spirit. He had perfect fellowship with God. His spirit dominated him. Then sin came and he was driven from the presence of God. From that moment, he lived under the domination of his senses. These five senses became his master. His spirit lost dominion the moment that he became spiritually dead, a partaker of Satan’s nature. This, you understand, happened when he sinned.
The real man is a spirit being, but the moment that spiritual death took possession of his spirit, his senses dominated.
He lost his approach to God the moment that he sinned. The nature that he received made him antagonistic to God.
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are [governed by the senses] cannot please God. (Romans 8:7–8)
This translation of the Greek word sant as senses instead of “flesh” gives us the true intent of the word.
First Corinthians 2:14 declares:
But the natural man [the man of the senses] receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
So when man fell and his spirit received the nature of the adversary, he really became a stranger to himself.
He is a spirit being and is no longer dominated by himself but by his body in which he lives.
It made him a slave to his body instead of a master over it.
You understand that when this thing happened in the garden, he lost contact with God, lost his ability to approach Him, and he went out into the world to live by his senses.
We have a modern saying that “man lives by his wits.” That is another way of expressing the same fact.
We know that man cannot contact God through his reasoning faculties; that his only contact with Him is with his spirit. Having died spiritually, he is unable to make this contact.
It is very difficult for man’s language to convey God’s thought.
The Hebrew language is a dead language and it is a limited language.
We have many words for which the Hebrew language has no equivalent.
For instance, the word ruach, translated as “spirit,” can mean air, anger, blast, breath, cool, courage, mind, quarters, side, spirit, tempest, wind, vain, or windy; and in one place, it has been translated as whirlwind.
By this, you can see how limited the Hebrew language was to convey God’s thoughts.
That is the reason why the word ruach, translated as “spirit,” is often misunderstood by the sense knowledge of translators. You remember that man’s thoughts are not always God’s thoughts. Man was love’s product created to be His child and companion. He was created in God’s class of being, in His image and in His likeness.
God is eternal. Man is eternal.
God is a spirit. Man is a spirit.
Man was so created that he could partake of God’s nature and become God’s child.
Now mark this fact: man cannot be spiritual unless he is a spirit. He cannot know spiritual things unless he is a spirit.
He cannot partake of God’s nature unless he is in God’s class of being.
You can understand now the calamity that befell man when his spirit lost control over his senses.
In that moment, his senses governed his spirit. All the knowledge that natural man has, has come through these five avenues of the body—seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling.
The brain has no capacity to think independent of sense evidences.
A child that is born without sight, or hearing, or feeling, would be called an imbecile, though its brain was as perfect as the brain of any child.
That brain had no contact with the world because the senses failed to function.
Now we can understand that man’s physical contact is with the physical.
His mental contact is with the mental.
His spirit then can contact only the spiritual.
If man’s reasoning faculties cannot contact God, then it is up to his spirit to make that contact.
Man’s reasoning faculties are utterly dependent upon the senses.
Sense knowledge is unable to contact his spirit in any intelligent way until after that spirit has been recreated, received the nature of God, and his reasoning faculties have been renewed and brought into harmony with the recreated spirit.
Now we can understand the difficulties of psychologists.
You understand this is a study of the mind of man, and if the psychologist doesn’t know about the spirit of man, about what happened to the spirit of man in the garden, he will be unable to approach this subject with any clarity of thought.
Most of our psychologists deny that man is a spirit. He is simply a psychical, or soul-based, man.
He denies the existence of the spirit, and this denial makes it impossible for the spirit to function.
Now you can see why natural man cannot know himself, because he is a spirit.
The senses cannot register anything of the spirit or give him any spirit knowledge.
One who knows anatomy and physiology may not know much about the mind and he may not know man himself. All he knows is connected with the physical.
Natural man is in the same condition.
He cannot know spirit or spiritual things, so he cannot know himself, for he is spirit.
This is the reason that modern psychology is often times misleading.
Modern psychologists are majoring functional psychology or psychology based on the study of the five senses and their reaction upon the mind.
The new creation man finds a new self in Christ, and that new self becomes almost independent of the senses when he comes into closest fellowship with the Father.
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17), a new creation, a new self.
The real self has been made anew, recreated.
That means his spirit has been recreated.
It is imperative now that the mind, which derives all of its impulses, all of its knowledge from the five senses, should come under the dominion of this new recreated spirit or self.
This can only come as man begins to study the Word and then begins to practice and live it.
It is a fact of great importance that every believer should know that there is no such thing as understanding the Word until the mind is renewed.
The reason for that is that the Word is the work of the Holy Spirit and it is a spiritual thing, and sense knowledge cannot understand spiritual things.
So it is necessary that his mind be renewed and come into fellowship with his spirit.
It is almost imperative that this recreated spirit should gain the dominance over his reasoning faculties.
You know how we often fight our conscience, and how it is often in opposition to our reasoning faculties.
That conscience is the voice of our spirit.
If we should learn to obey our conscience, we could walk continuously in fellowship with the Word and with the Father; but the reason is, we have not learned to give our spirit the place of authority and dominion that belongs to it.
EDUCATING OUR SPIRITS
This brings us to another phase of this study.
Your spirit can be educated just as truly as the mind is educated.
It can be built up in strength just as the body can be built up.
That comes by meditation in the Word, by practicing the Word, by giving the Word the first place, and by instantly obeying the voice of our spirit.
After a while, you can know the will of the Father in all the details of life, because He communicates with your spirit, not with the reasoning faculties.
You know Paul speaks of the mind of the spirit.
For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded [that is our recreated spirit] is life and peace. (Romans 8:6)
The life there is zoe—eternal life—the nature of God.
The spirit mentioned here is the recreated spirit, not the Holy Spirit.
It is hard for us to accept the fact that the natural man is ruled by the five senses.
His body is the teacher of his mind and he cannot grow in knowledge beyond the reactions of his senses upon his brain.
The new creation man has almost an unlimited opportunity of growth because his spirit has received the nature of God.
He is in perfect fellowship with his Father.
He has an unlimited use of the name of Jesus that the natural man does not have.
He has the wisdom of God, for Jesus is made unto him wisdom. Natural man has nothing but the wisdom that comes to him through his “unrecreated” spirit.
The new creation man has the ability of God at his disposal.
You see, he is lifted out of the natural realm into the spiritual realm, and when he is recreated, he has the privilege of having the Holy Spirit, who raised Jesus from the dead, to come and make His home in his body.
Now you can understand Romans 12:1–2:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
This shows us why it is imperative to have the body, the university of the mind, under the control of the recreated spirit.
This new creation man does not walk under the dominion of the senses but is to be governed by the Word of God.
It is going to be hard for us to see that this physical body of ours is not only the home of the five senses, but that these five senses have been the instructors and teachers of the brain.
That makes the body the university of the brain. The five senses are the instructors.
This body is the laboratory where the brain receives all of its instructions.
These senses are five avenues to the brain, for we know that the brain cannot function without the senses.
Here are some facts that may be hard to assimilate.
The brain has no creative ability. It has nothing of itself by which it can create. It is dependent upon these five instructors.
The brain, by much training, can advise what action is best after the senses have communicated, but if the senses never function, the brain will never develop.
As long as the natural human spirit is held in bondage by spiritual death, it has no creative ability. This can be seen in heathen countries where they have never received eternal life. Spiritually dead men in those countries have no creative ability. They may be able to follow blueprints; they can imitate; they can experiment as they do in chemistry, but it must end there. Man’s creative ability is not in the reasoning faculties.
Reader, can’t you see the imperative need of giving to the youth of our nation eternal life?
I have proven to you in another chapter, that the children who have received eternal life in the teen age, seldom sow wild oats; seldom ever become criminals. They are easier to rear and to control, and they are more responsive to the appeal of the Word of God.
Another fact: inventors know this to be true, that after hours of experimenting, their minds are worn and tired. They stop to rest, and suddenly, without any effort, the thing they have been searching for flashes into their mind. They know not from whence it came, but it has arrived.
What did it? Their spirits spoke as soon as the reasoning faculties were silent and it could be heard.
Sometimes it comes in a dream or in the early morning when first awaking.
Psychologists have been puzzled by this. They had no answer for what seemed to them a mystery, so they called that something a subconscious mind.
But we of the new creation know there is no such thing as a subconscious mind; it is the mind of the spirit. It is the spirit struggling to express itself.
You ask, But can’t the natural man cultivate his spirit?
Yes, but it will be the cultivation of a spirit dominated by spiritual death.
That has given to us spiritualism with all those dangerous cults from India; given to us the strange miracles of the occult that often imitate God.
Here are more facts of vital importance.
The recreated spirit becomes the fountain of all the beautiful things that Christianity has given to us.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. (Galatians 5:22–25)
Notice, it is the fruit of the spirit—not the Holy Spirit. Translators should not have capitalized the word spirit. The Holy Spirit does not bear fruit any more than Jesus bears fruit. Jesus said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches” (John 15:5). It is the branch that bears fruit.
The Holy Spirit has imparted eternal life to our spirits.
That life is the nature of the Father as unveiled in Jesus, so the first fruit that is seen in the new creation is love.
We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. (1 John 3:14)
And then a joy that is unspeakable and full of glory fills our whole being.
Next, “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) becomes ours.
The troubled heart is filled with quietness.
Then as he goes out to contact the world, long-suffering is seen; kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.
These are the fruits of the recreated spirit.
You see, the recreated have crucified the senses and brought them into subjection to the Word.
“If we live by the Spirit [that is, our recreated spirit], let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25).
Now you will notice that this is perfectly in harmony with 1 Corinthians 13, where it tells us about that love-law that is to govern the believer.
Love is very patient, very kind. Love knows no jealousy; love makes no parade, gives itself no airs, is never rude, never selfish, never irritated, never resentful. (1 Corinthians 13:4–5 MOFF)
These are the fruits of the recreated spirit.
It is vitally important that we understand that the recreated human spirit is the fountain out of which faith flows. Natural man has only sense knowledge faith. Natural man believes in the things he sees and hears, and the things that have come to him through the five senses, like F. W. Woolworth, who had faith in a five-and-ten-cent store, and like John D. Rockefeller, who had faith in oil and gasoline.
Love and faith and courage are the fruits of the recreated human spirit.
The conduct that has made Christians outstanding in society, has been the fruit of the recreated human spirit.
You can see very clearly how the natural man could not know himself.
We must not forget that the natural human spirit can be cultivated.
We see this among the occult societies, among spiritualists and others that are in close fellowship with demons.
Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. (James 3:13–15)
Then, verse 17 tells of the wisdom that comes down from above. It is true and peaceable. This contrast is suggestive. Wisdom is not a product of the reasoning faculties, but of the human spirit. The natural human spirit can contact demoniacal forces, just as the recreated human spirit contacts God.
Christian workers should become familiar with this truth. They should be able to discern at once whether a person is dominated by a demon or not.
In my work in praying for the insane, I have seen much of the depths of Satan and how he gains absolute mastery over the reasoning faculties through the natural human spirit.