We are still looking at the theme – Embracing our Identity in Christ.

Last episode we considered the topic – Seeing Yourself Through the Eyes of God.

The topic for our conversation today is – Embracing Our Position in Christ.

The journey of stepping into and living in the reality of your identity in Christ starts by understanding the truth that our identity in Christ is rooted in the spirit realm.

Understanding and embracing your identity in Christ starts with understanding how God sees you in the spirit realm. And what do I mean by this?

To understand this better, we need to explain the basics of God’s relationship with us. This is something so fundamental which many of us unfortunately do not understand.

In Episode 17, I pointed out that every one of us is made up of 3 parts: you are a spirit, you possess a soul, and you live in a body. Apostle Paul makes reference to these three parts of man in 1 Thessalonians 5:23.

Our spirit is the part of us that God interacts and communes with. It is in the spirit that Adam and Eve were made in the image of God. Our spirit is the innermost part of us.

The soul is the mental part of us. It includes our mind, will, and the emotional part of us.

The body, of course, is the external part of us which responds to our five senses.

As we know, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, the nature of God in their spirits was replaced with the sin nature.

Adam and Eve transferred this sin nature to all men born on earth, so we all came into the world with the sin nature.

However, when we give our lives to Christ, the Holy Spirit regenerates the spirit and brings about a spiritual rebirth. This is what is meant by the Born Again experience.

According to John 6:63, the Spirit of God gives birth to the spirit of man and recreates the image of God in man.

At the point of regeneration, the spirit of man is instantly and radically transformed and totally changed to replicate the image of God. When you received Christ, your spirit took on the nature of God. This event happens instantly. It is not a process.

What am I saying? Your spirit was totally changed and made like Jesus when you received Christ.

2 Peter 1:4 states that we share in Christ’s divine nature. So, in your spirit, which is the part of you that God fellowships and communes with, you are perfect.

However, this instant change, transformation, and perfection took place only in your spirit, which the Bible sometimes refers to as our inner man.

The born-again experience happens only in the spirit. Even after we are born again, the soul and body remain the same. They are not regenerated. Our perfection and oneness with Christ happen only in our spirits.

So many people that are born again still overreact, get easily angry, steal, etc. It does not mean they are not born again. The spirit changed, but the soul – their way of thinking, their emotions which is reflected in their impatience and overreaction to issues – have remained the same.

The soul and our way of thinking may change with time depending on us, but it does not change automatically like the spirit.

Let me reiterate – when you came to Christ and received salvation, you became a brand-new person in your inner man. You received a new identity.

According to 2 Corinthians 5:17, you became a new creature: old things are passed away; all things are become new.

The difficulty most of us face in our Christian lives is as a result of the fact that we do not understand the truth that the divine nature of God and the pronouncement that we have become new creatures happens only in our spirits; that the body and the soul and our physical circumstances remain the same.

It is absolutely necessary that you understand the truth that you are made up of the spirit, the soul, and the body; that regeneration happened only in your spirit; that you became a new creation only in your spirit; that your new identity in Christ took place only in your spirit.

If you do not understand this, Christianity will be a struggle.

This is why the Bible declares that you have a new identity in Christ. When you are asked to declare it over your life, you do, yet you are not living in the reality of this new identity.

Why are you not living in the reality of your new identity in Christ? This is why.

After we are born again with our spirit changed, our walk with God becomes a process of getting our souls and bodies to change gradually so as to align with our spirits.

So the Christian walk is a process of getting those things the Word of God declares about your new identity to flow from your spirit into your soul and become real to you.

The process of drawing out the attributes of your new identity so that they can start manifesting in the physical realm is rooted in the consistent and continuous study of the Word of God.

I cannot overemphasize this and I cannot underemphasize it to make you feel good.

You are not manifesting your new identity in Christ because you are not renewing your mind with the Word of God. You may be reading it from time to time, but you are not studying and meditating on it enough to renew your mind and transform you from the inside.

When you read the Word of God, your mind is gradually being transformed to agree with your spirit. This is what the Bible means when it says in Romans 12:1 that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

Once your mind begins to conform to God’s image of you in the spirit realm – once your mind agrees with God that you are forgiven, justified, free from condemnation, loved by Him, that you are a special person and a member of a royal priesthood, that you are healed, that you are adopted, that you are a joint heir with Jesus Christ, that you will not lack – once your mind is truly renewed and has no doubts to these truths, and you begin to see yourself the way God sees you, your words, your actions, your life will begin to reflect your identity as a child of God.

I want to stress that the difficulty most of us face in our Christian lives and the inability to live in the reality of the blessings, power, and anointing of who we are in Christ is a result of the fact that we do not understand that the divine nature of God has been deposited in our spirit man only, and that we have to work on our minds in order to bring the transformation in our spirit into reality.

Embracing our identity in Christ can only be achieved through the Word of God. It takes conscious effort. There is no shortcut. People try all sorts of shortcuts but it never lasts.

If you are just going to give God a couple of hours a week, your mind will not be renewed. The Word will not be implanted in you. You might know it in your head, but it’s the Word of God in your mind that controls your thinking and transforms your life. It’s the engrafted Word in your soul that would enable you to step into your new identity in Christ.