Our Inner & Innermost Man

By Arthur J Licursi

Ephes. 3:16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,

John 3:6 ...that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
1 Cor 6:17 But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.
2 Tim 4:22 The Lord be (is) with your spirit.

All genuine Christians have come to know that they needed to receive Christ’s substitutionary work on their behalf for salvation, … but we also need His powerful life in our lives, for righteous living, and to live in rest and peace. Many Christians never go on from this very real, but objective, initial salvation, to the inner subjective “salvation” (Rom 5:20, Greek, sozo, “completion”) of their soul. When a Christian sincerely desires to live righteously they eventually, often only after quite some number of years, come to realize that they cannot live the Christian life in their own strength. This then becomes the second crisis of the Christian’s life, … learning that we cannot live the Christian life, … only Christ can live His life through us; and that, as He wills (Philip. 2:13).

When I speak of His power in our life, I am here speaking of His powerful life expressed through our soul’s life, where “we” do our living, choosing, and our doing. It is in our soul that we, as a self, make our choices as to how we will react to the situations and circumstances of life; will we seek to have our own way in the matter, or will we submit and accept Lord’s leading in the matter?

I’ve written often about anatomy, permit me to now provide a few words here to define our anatomy as regenerated human beings, as a basis of understanding.

2 Cor. 4:16b …but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

John 7:38-39 "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.' " But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. (NASB)

2 Cor 4:16 says, our outer man (our body) is perishing. I’m sure we can agree on this by observing our own body, decaying day by day. Our inner man is to become renewed, day-by-day. Obviously, this is our soul that needs renewal. Paul commends us multiple times to renew our soul’s mind (Rom12:2). Yet our human spirit has no need of renewal, since it is now already fully regenerated, and complete by Christ’s indwelling (Col 2:10, Col 1:27). He gives us His spirit without measure. We can deduce from these Scriptural facts then that our inner man is who we are, as an individual soul.

We thus are tripart beings, similarly as God is triune (Three in one). Apart from the inner man of the soul, our spirit is our “innermost” being (John 7:38-39) and our body is our outward man.

Here in Eph 3:16 we see can that the Spirit (Christ’s Spirit in us) flows out from our innermost being, which is our human spirit, in which the Spirit of Christ dwells (John 3:6, 1John 4:13). Our innermost man is our human spirit, now regenerated by the Spirit of God (John 3:6), it is indwelt by the Spirit of Christ (Col 1:27), and thereby one with the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 6:17, Rom 8:8-10).

By Paul’s prayer in Eph 3:16 (above), we see that we apparently may be, or we may not be, strengthened by Christ’s Spirit in our inner being or inner man, which is our soul, else Paul would not pray for this for the Ephesians. Our soul is initially mostly untouched at regeneration, so Paul tells us that it still needs renewal, which occurs day by day (2Cor 4:16). (Our perishing bodies will one day be exchanged for incorruptible bodies.)

We need to become strengthened in our soul day by day. In order to experience the benefit of the indwelling Christ unto all the fullness of God; we need to be strengthened in the inner man of the soul, which is being renewed. This implies that we need to … position our soul where we can be strengthened through the work of the Holy Spirit. Our soul can be positioned to receive of, and be strengthened by Christ’s overcoming life that indwells our spirit … when our soul self is aligned with, or … subservient to, the Spirit (Rom 8:5-6).

Our mind is the leading part of our soul and our mind-set plays an important role in our living overcomingly, in rest and peace. Romans 8:5-6 For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, (set their minds on) the things of the Spirit. 6For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, (NASB)

We must, as a soul, come under the spirit’s rule; come to the place of trusting Christ, not just trusting Christ for our eternal salvation, but also desiring, and trusting Him to live His life through us as we obeying Him, … while we, as a soul self, have rest and peace.

Because human beings are souls, our personality, our self, our individual person is in our soul. This is the reason the Bible refers to men as individual souls. The body and the soul were made for the purpose of being used by the indwelling Spirit to express Christ’s indwelling life when the soul and body are subservient to the spirit. By example: We may will it, but we cannot love unconditionally as God, except that Christ loves through us.

Therefore, as souls, we have an outward vessel, the body, and also we have our spirit that is filled with Christ, as our innermost life. When we received the Lord Jesus, the Lord came into our spirit and regenerated us with His very own self as our new and innermost life (Col 3:4), intending to become Lord (Greek, kurious, “controller”) of our soul’s life.

Before we were regenerated there was no life in our spirit; we simply had our human life in our soul, and the fallen sin life that reigned tyrannically in our being from its place in our body members (Rom 7:17-23). Our human spirit was then essentially an empty vessel, awaiting Christ to fill it with His very own Spirit of life. Through regeneration we now have the divine life of God, who came in the person of Christ, now as the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2a, 2Cor 3:18, 1Cor 15:45) in our spirit. Therefore, now regenerated, our human spirit is no longer merely an empty human spirit vessel; it has been filled with Christ who has become our real person as Lord of our life; we now possess the life of God in Christ as the indwelling Spirit of life. Our Christ-filled spirit, regenerated with the divine life, is now our innermost person. <END>