Life for the Whole Person

The continual guidance of God in the life of the believer opens the way for yet another provision of His Spirit: overflowing life for his whole personality. The relationship between God’s guidance and this all-sufficient life is described beautifully in Isaiah.

“The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones; you shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.” (Is. 58:11)

Isaiah depicts a person so continually guided by God that he has within him a spring of life which overflows throughout his whole personality, refreshing and renewing both his soul and his body.

In the New Testament Paul traces this overflowing life to its source: the Holy Spirit indwelling the believer.

“[Jesus Christ was] declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” (Rom. 1:4)

It was the “Spirit of holiness” – a Hebraic expression for “the Holy Spirit” – who raised up the dead body of Jesus from the grave, thus vindicating His claim to be the Son of God. The Holy Spirit will perform the same ministry for every believer whom He indwells.

“But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” (Rom. 8:11)

This ministry of the Holy Spirit will receive its full and final outworking at the first resurrection, when He will raise up the righteous dead with the same kind of immortal body that Jesus already has.

“He [God] who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus, and will present us with you.” (2 Cor. 4:14)

However, this ministry of the Holy Spirit to the believer’s body also has an intermediate application in the present age. Even now the Spirit of God, indwelling the believer, imparts to his physical body a measure of divine life and health sufficient to arrest and exclude the satanic inroads of disease and infirmity. This is the supreme purpose for which Christ came.

“I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)

It has been said that the first portion of divine life comes through the new birth, but the overflowing of life more abundant comes through the baptism in the Holy Spirit. It is God’s purpose, even in the present age, that this divine, overflowing, abundant life shall suffice not merely for the spiritual needs of the inward man – man’s spiritual nature – but also for the physical needs of the outer man – man’s physical body.

In this present age the believer has not yet received his resurrection body, but he already enjoys resurrection life in a mortal body.