Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

James 1:21 KJV

James, writing to Spirit-filled, born-again believers, told them that yes, that they needed to be saved.  That’s right, they needed salvation in their souls.

When we are born-again, made new by the Holy Ghost, we are born-again in our spirits, not our souls.  The Holy Spirit, God Himself, comes into our inner most being, further inside than our soul, and makes us new–we are ‘born again’.  But, that does not make our souls or our bodies born-again in the least.

Paul goes to great detail to indicate the difference in several of his Epistles.  In 2 Corithians 5:17, he writes, saying, we are ‘new creatures’.  This is not what was before, but it is something new. Yet, while our innermost being is changed in an instant, we must walk out the work of Grace through our souls.

Consider this difference.

Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

Colossians 2:20-23

Here, Paul is writing about out death with Christ.  Since we died with Christ, we do not live according to the rules and the externally imposed commands of the flesh, as the world tries to.  No code of law has ever restrained sensual indulgence, although it curbed it to some degree, but it never stopped.  If any law could have, it would have been the most perfect, righteous law of God.  So, Paul points out the vanity of all such observances, their fallen-ness, and their worthlessness.  As Jesus said, unless our righteousness surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees, we would in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  Surely, no law could do it, of any kind.

Yet, Paul did not stop there–it gets better.

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.

Colossians 3:1-6

Immediately after his exposition of the co-death with Christ, he goes on to the next greatest thing, our co-resurrection with Him.  Yet, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he strikes at the real core of the issue.  He doesn’t leave the soul helplessly adrift without anything, rather, he instructs them to “Put to death, therefore…”  This is the command of the apostle who wrote nearly half of the New Testament.

Since we died with Him, let us not live in externally imposed ordinances.  And, since we have been risen with Him, let us, by the power of the Spirit, put to death the powers of the flesh.

You see, we do not lose our flesh at conversion.  Our old nature is done away with the cross, the propensity to sin, but both Adam and Jesus did not have a sin nature, but they had their flesh.  Adam later acquired the first sinful nature, but it was not his original state.  Adam had his flesh, and it was his flesh that led him to sin.  For Jesus, while He did not succumb to it, it was His flesh that did not want to the cross in the Garden, yet, through prayer and faith, He submitted His will to the Father’s, and became our salvatoin.  While we do not have the old nature, the proclivity or tendency towards sin in the same way any more, we must, by the Word of God, receive with meekness the engrafted Word which is able to save our souls.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

Romans 8:12-13

Writing to the brethren, meaning born-again Christians who were attempting to live the Christian life, Paul warned them that if they did indeed live according to the flesh, they would die.  There is still a war, if you will, to choose to live according to the Spirit, but, as we submit and yield, and allow Him to change and conform us to His image, we are changed from glory to glory, and we receive the goal of our faith, the salvation of our souls (1 Peter 1:9).  Of course, those who stumble, and fall on the mercy of the cross, in humility and repentance will always go away cleansed, but those who deliberately refuse to walk in righteousness should in no wise expect even salvation from the Lord.  According to the apostle, if we live according to the flesh, we will die.

Now, some might say, and do say, that they do not want to insult the spirit of Grace, and to diminish the power of the cross, but this is precisely what they have done.  Refusing the cleansing power of the cross, they have exchanged it for mere doctrine, words.  Some want to claim that they see the cross as somehow ‘more powerful’, that it somehow miraculously changes our souls and our minds, making our every impulse pure and holy.  Yet, what they have done is deny the very power of the cross itself in doing so!  In denying the ‘beauty of holiness’, they have either denied what holiness is or that men can live in it.  In claiming to be wise, they have become fools, and denied that the cross is powerful enough to save them even from sinning.  Claiming liberty, they demonstrate themselves to be slaves, for whoever sins is a slave to sin.  In so doing, some have trampled upon the blood of Christ.  They deny the power of the cross over the life of sin in the believer, and instead make excuses for it.  There is, of course, no righteousness except the cross.  And, as Colossians (above) shows, while it is not in the power of rules, the result is a holy life–not only in position, but also in conduct.  This is the glory of the cross–true liberty and freedom, and deliverance from sin, on every level.

Yet, what this little demon spirit has done is to insult the spirit of Grace altogether, and say that the cross, indeed, has no real power over sin itself, in my heart, and in my deeds.  It has declared, hypocritically, that the cross is impotent when it comes to real salvation to the soul.  Denying it, they nullify the words of Paul in Colossians 3 and the power of the resurrection.  In the power of the resurrection, we do not simply make laws governing our hearts, saying do not do this or that.  No, the power of the cross raises the Sword of the Spirit, and, we take action.  We take the Spirit, and by it, we put to death the real culprit–the flesh-life.  This is not the job of the cross, but of us.  Not of the Holy Spirit Himself, but by our decision in cooperation with His self.  This will not happen any other way, according to Paul, and if we fail to do it, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?  But, since we are raised in His life, we put to death by the Spirit the sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, and so forth.  We do not make rules to keep ourselves out of them, nor do we continue to live in them.  And, the end result is a holy life.  As Jesus said, if your right hand offends you, cut it off.  It is better to enter life maimed than to be thrown whole into eternal fire.  If it were truly the hand that were the issue, we should take such action, but, Paul, for us, clarifies, and points to the inner workings, the desires of the flesh, and directs us where to cut.  This then, is the power of the cross, to live free from sin and the desires of the flesh.  This is life and peace and joy and happiness, the goal of every man.

Paul said, that if we live by the Spirit, we will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature, Galatians 5:16.  Anyone who does not desire to live holy and without sin is not born again, but is damned and still living by their old nature.  Likewise, all who attempt to attain to their own righteousness without Christ will by no means see life.  But, rather, as James instructed the body, there is an answer.  Receive with meekness the engrafted Word.  It is able to save your soul.

The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul:

Psalm 19:7