Body truth

Most people think they are their body and so the American advertising machine keeps everyone focused on who they are in their flesh.

 “If I was the devil, I’d try to convince you you were your body so you’d pamper it, bathe it, clothe it, exercise it, feed it, educate it, make investments for it and live for it,” says Jordan. “That’s what I’d do if I was the devil; I’d teach you you are your body.”

Satan’s program is to keep a person’s life so busy with things that don’t make a difference that people don’t devote the time to even consider the things that do make a difference for eternity.

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A person’s soul is the seat of self. It’s what makes us self-aware. One of the facets of the soul is volition, so the soul is not only the seat of our will, it’s the seat of our emotions. The emotions are designed to stimulate activity of the will.

“Your inner man lives inside a house—a tabernacle, a house of skin—that is the vehicle that carries this inner man around,” says Jordan. “This is your home for the inner man. Death is your inner man leaving your outer man and that produces physical death.

“It’s obvious soul and spirit are not separated when they leave the body—they go together. Your spirit is part of your personality; a part of your person. It’s not a generic thing that you can share with everybody; it’s a distinct part of you that shares your mentality—your thinking processes—and that’s why it’s called the inner man.”

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The battlefield is always in people’s minds and Satan’s goal, knowing this, is to corrupt the mind.

Paul’s statement in II Cor. 11:13 sums it up perfectly: “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”

“I think that’s one of the great statements about the Christian life,” says Jordan. “I’ve noticed through the years that people want the Christian life to be so complicated. Go to the bookstore and there’s all these how-to books—how to pray, how to have victory over this problem or that problem.

“I’ve actually had people tell me, ‘I worry about worrying.’ They get all balled up, so they want answers that are complicated. Sin complicates life.

“You know, it’s the old thing about how if you tell a lie, then you’re going to have to tell another lie to cover it up and another lie to cover that up and pretty soon you can’t remember the lie you told? Pretty soon you don’t know the truth from a lie? It just gets like a ball of string that’s all tangled up.

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“You never find an answer to your problems talking about your problems. All you’re talking about is your problems. You want an answer—talk about the answer. The answer is, ‘It’s not I but Christ.’ Any questions? Well, let’s stand for the benediction. That’s all there is to say.

“You know that’s all you’re ever going to learn in your Christian life, you’re just going to learn it more thoroughly; learn it a deeper level? All the premises of all the psychologists and sociologists and economists and politicians; all their theories are wrong. The answer is in Christ so it’s not I! When you find problems in your life you’re going to find it’s going to be because it was you and the answer’s always going to be, ‘It’s not I, it’s Christ.’ ”