If you just gave your heart to Christ, this is one of the very first things you should know. And if you've been a Christian for years, let it be a reminder. You need to understand what has happened to you.

Christianity is the beginning of a new life. You have crossed over from darkness into light. And it isn't a small life. It's a full, abundant life in which we are promised to reign. Romans 5:17 says that "they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ." That isn't just a promise. It's the reality of every believer who has received Jesus.

But if you want to live the fullness of that life, you need to know three things: what your status was before, what your new status is, and how it all began.

Two Truths to Start With

The first truth is that there is a Supreme Being called God. He is almighty and sovereign. He is generous, loving and kind, and He is the source of every good thing. He isn't just loving; He is love. He isn't just kind; He is the source of kindness. Humans can be kind and loving too, but the ability to be loving and kind lives in Him. He is the measure of everything that is good.

His sovereignty doesn't mean He makes everything happen. Can He? Yes. But He has limited Himself to His Word and given man free will. We make our decisions, and the results of those decisions are our responsibility.

The second truth is that God made all men, and He made them in His image and likeness. Genesis 1:26 says:

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."

God Replicated His Life in Man

Think about what that means. God made man to resemble Him, to be like Him. He gave man the same kind of spirit He has: a spirit that can think, reason, decide and create. He gave man a body to function on the earth. And He gave man a soul to mediate between his spirit and his body.

In other words, God replicated His own life in man. Look at creation, the beauty, the intelligence and the brilliance of it, and then realise that this super-creative Being made a clone of Himself. That tells you how important man is.

It also changes how you treat people. Every human being, whether in Africa, Europe or America, whatever their race, tongue or appearance, came from Adam. There's no group of people who weren't made in God's image. So you don't look down on anyone. Every person you meet carries the image of God.

What Really Died in Adam

God gave Adam one instruction: don't eat from a certain tree. "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). Adam disobeyed. And yet he kept living. God still came and spoke with him. So how did he die?

He died in his spirit.

Here's how it happened. Man is a spirit, he has a soul, and he lives in a body. The soul is reached through the five senses: what we see, hear and touch. Satan deceived Eve with words, and she convinced her husband. Once Adam's soul accepted that information, it instructed the body: take it and eat. The body acted, and God's law was broken.

The fruit wasn't poisonous. The problem was disobedience, and the consequence of disobedience was death. But what died wasn't the body. It was the spirit, the spirit that came from the living God.

Think of an operating system, Windows on a PC or Android on a phone. Once a virus gets in, it no longer works the way the manufacturer designed it. It starts to malfunction. That's what happened to Adam's spirit. It became corrupted.

At first, nothing seemed different in his soul or body. They had already learned how to function, so they carried on as usual. But over time they began to change, because the spirit God had put in man was no longer there. The body started falling sick. Spiritual death, which had happened long before, began to show up physically. Adam lived 930 years before his body finally died, and Methuselah lived 969.

With a corrupted spirit, the soul started thinking differently from how God designed it. Man became selfish and wicked. That's where sin and death came from. It got so bad that God destroyed the earth with a flood and saved only Noah's family.

A Brand-New Spirit

Now here's the good news. When you are born again, that corrupted spirit is taken out and you receive a brand-new one. It's the spirit Jesus brought to man when He rose from the dead. He died, He was buried, and after three days He came back to life, bringing new life, eternal life.

The principle is simple. Romans 10:9 says:

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."

When you confess Jesus as Lord, you may not feel anything. Nothing obvious happens in your soul or your body. But in your spirit, a change happens immediately. A new operating system is installed.

And in that new spirit is everything you need for life and godliness: health, peace, guidance and everything required to fulfil the purpose God created you for. Salvation is like a package, a box with many things inside. To unwrap all of it, you have to walk in the spirit, because every instruction you need is in your spirit.

Your Mind Is the Transformer

There's a catch. The spirit works with codes that are alien to this earth.

The real you is a spirit. But to function on this planet you need a body, because the body is the only part of you adapted to life here. It's like astronauts who need special suits and oxygen to survive away from Earth. The body was designed for this planet, and the things of the spirit don't automatically make sense to it. There has to be a converter.

That converter is your soul: your mind, your feelings, your instincts and your intuition.

A computer stores everything as ones and zeros. If you looked at that raw binary on your screen, it would mean nothing to you. The processor converts it into an image you can understand.

Or think about electricity. The power generated at the station isn't in a form your home can use. It passes through a transformer first. Only then can you plug in your charger and charge your phone.

Food works the same way. Rice and beans don't enter your bloodstream as rice and beans. Your digestive system breaks them down into something your body can absorb.

Your mind does exactly that for your spirit. It decodes what God has placed in your spirit so your body can act on it. If that conversion doesn't happen regularly, much of what is in your salvation package will go unused, because the instructions are never decoded.

Renew Your Mind with the Word

Teaching your mind to understand the things of the spirit is what the Bible calls renewing the mind. And the way your mind learns is by taking in the Word of God.

"For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Romans 8:6).

A spiritually minded person is one whose mind has learned to decode spiritual things, accept them and act on them. That's when spirit, soul and body are in sync. And the more those three work together, the more you experience the abundant life.

It mirrors the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit work together in perfect unity. When your spirit, soul and body work together the same way, you'll find your body where it should be at the right time, strong and free of sickness. "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit" (Romans 8:11).

Your Takeaway

You were made in God's image. In Adam, that image was corrupted at the level of the spirit. In Christ, you received a brand-new spirit with everything you need already inside. What's left is for your mind to catch up.

So this week, pick one promise from Scripture, about peace, health, guidance or purpose, and feed your mind on it every day. Read it, think on it and speak it until your mind decodes it and your life begins to show it.

You are not who you used to be. You are a new creation, made to reign in life.

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God bless you,
Michael Adegoke