I've been out of pocket for a few days, Skypair. Think about this.
Quoting Skypair:
1) Doesn't it make more sense to you that the Holy Spirit of God (His mind, emotions, and will) would commune with our spirits (mind, emotions, and will) even in conviction of sin before salvation?
The Holy Spirit of God is the Third Person of the Trinity. Mind, emotions, and will, have nothing to do with that. God is Spirit. Our spirits are not mind, emotions and will. Our spirits have right standing before God because of Christ. Mind, emotions, and will have nothing to do with our spirit. Mind, emotions, and will equal soul. Combined, they are a function of brain. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. That means that the person who never receives Christ will die in his/her sin.
2) What dies when we sin, DQ? Who are we separated from? Our soul dies ("The soul that sinneth, it shall surely die.") Right? But we're NOT brain dead at that point, are we? We are "conscience dead" to God. We begin to go about doing everything by our own standards, not God's, when we first sin. It's called picking the "expedient" way instead of God's way whenever any good in our conscience objects.
Don't confuse separation from God in this life and eternal separation. The separated soul in this life is simply that: separated, lost. In eternity, the soul (mind, will, emotions, a function of brain) dies; the person is eternally separated from God. The nature of the entity that endures eternal torment is mindless, will-less, emotionless torment, sort of like a person in a coma. And entirely alone.
Alone. No ability to think of ways of escape. No will to escape. And remember: no tormentor with a pitchfork or bowls of hot oil will be permitted to survive God's judgment in order to torture you. That's heresy. The torment is of your own making. Outside of God's protection for eternity = torment. We simply cannot find enough words to describe that horror.
3) Indeed, I find that we are made in God's triune image -- God/soul, Spirit/spirit and body/Christ. And that is how we are saved -- first the soul is justified (given "the righteousness of GOD). Then our spirit is sanctified by the indwelling SPIRIT whereby we have "the mind of Christ." Finally, our bodies will be glorified by Christ at His return.
Well, your analysis is a little labored. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are soul (brain), inhabiting a body, until we receive Christ as Savior. His righteouness is then imparted to us (spirit) so that when he looks at you he does not see sin, He sees the sacrifice of Jesus. Yes, we will receive glorified bodies when we are caught up to meet Him in the air.
4) Ergo, the soul corresponds to God and our soul, being the "throne" of our lives is where God ought to sit. Our spirit (intellect, emotions, will) is where we hear and process the Word and where a decision is made to repent and receive (reorient our conscience) OR reject (keep living as if there is no Higher Power than our own standards). This makes our spirits the "battlefield" between God and Satan just as the Bible states! Lastly, our bodies are to be "conformed to the image of Christ" both in this life and "when we shall see Him!"
Again, your analysis is flawed. The soul does not correspond to God. That is heresy. Our spirit is not our intellect, emotions, will. It is the spirit of righteousness imparted to us, utterly without spot or blemish. You are correct that God communicates through our spirit. However, He completely bypasses intellect, emotions, and will. We do not make a decision to repent or to deny
from the spirit, since no spirit has been imparted to us prior to our repentance, or
more specifically, prior to that point where we become aware of the Holy Spirit coming alongside to minister to us about God's amazing grace.
At that point the Holy Spirit strives to convince us that God is who He says He is and that all His promises are true -- that He is, in fact, our one-way ticket out of this miserable placed called earth. We can believe it and instantly be born again (the spirit of righteousness imparted to us), or we can continue on our pathway to the Great White Throne Judgment and eternal separation. If we believe, repentance is incorporated into our belief -- our outlook is instantly changed, our feet planted permanently on higher ground, often without an altar call or "sinner's prayer." There is great joy for some, often tears of joy. For others it is the gentle awareness of His Presence. Whoa! Sweet awareness! The radiance of the inner splendor! Wow!
The battlefield, then, is between the old nature (the flesh) and the new nature (the spirit). Satan fires broadsides at the flesh (the mind, will, emotions, functions of brain), God builds (underline builds several times) hedges of steel around us, continuously enabling us to resist until that day when Satan's broadsides merely bounce off, or are thrown back at him. The image of Christ that we are conformed to is the spirit of righteousness within.
When we yield to the flesh, to sin, we open up our steel barrier to Satan's onslaught. Through prayer, quoting scripture, meeting with the saints, Bible study, we close the barrier again. In short, we confess (1 John 1:9) that we blew it, and He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness, restoring that spirit of righteousness to loving Holiness. The image that we are conformed to for eternity is indeed a Holy new creature, our entire being the essence of holiness.
Take a couple of days to sort this out. Don't fire off a response right away. And ignore the naysayers, please. 1 Corinthians 2:1-16.
