A few weekends ago my wife and I were blessed to spend an evening with friends. We had dinner together, then hung out in the living room for a while talking about a variety of things, but one subject that stuck out to me was inner healing. Inner healing is very important to me, as I believe it is one of the primary ways we become able to step into the fullness of all that Christ has for us. It’s not so much that inner healing helps us grow, but it removes all of the hindrances that keep us stagnating in our spiritual walk so that nothing can prevent us from moving forward. What struck me about the conversation wasn’t the subject as a whole, although I did learn a few things, but something specific that my buddy Steve pointed out.
He noted that Jesus was sinless, so the power of death wasn’t at work in him, which isn’t new information, but what struck me is that Steve also pointed out that Jesus didn’t have any emotional wounding, and therefore his soul wasn’t fragmented—he was possibly the only human alive who has ever remained totally whole. While this might not sound significant to some people, it was deeply meaningful to me. (For some background, read “An Introduction to Soul Fragmentation“).
In my ongoing pursuit of immortality in Christ, I keep my eyes and ears open for information and revelation on the subject, and when I heard this, I knew it was an important key. However, for it to make sense, one has to understand something else Steve was explaining—how the enemy uses the mechanism of a fractured soul to afflict us and prevent us from living in the fullness Jesus purchased for us. When we have parts of our soul still under demonic bondage, we cannot fully live out everything that God has for us. Furthermore, demons cause ongoing death, loss, and destruction (John 10:10), so it should be of little surprise to us that having parts of our soul being tormented by the enemy can harm us as a whole. In fact, because each part of our soul possesses a portion of our free will, it is actually possible for a part of us to sin in some way even though the rest of our being is uninvolved, and we all know that sin causes death (Romans 6:23).
I should clarify here before moving on that I do believe there are men and women alive on the earth today who have lived for hundreds of years, and recognize their souls may or may not still be in some level of fragmentation (Having not met any of them personally, I don’t know one way or the other). I think that these individuals have probably touched on various aspects of this revelation of immortality in Christ, and as such are living out of the fruit of that revelation, whatever it may be. It’s also entirely possible they have hit on this point as well, but it’s not likely all of them have. Why do I say this? I don’t want anyone to think that having one’s soul made whole is a prerequisite to immortality, because I don’t think it is. However, I do think that as we pursue this revelation, that every key moves us one step closer to the goal.
In nursing and medicine, when treating people’s pain we do something called “multimodal pain management.” What that means in simple terms is that we will give someone a few different medications, each of which do different things and connect with different receptors, all with the ultimate goal of managing pain. One medication works on nerves, another on inflammation, another on relaxing muscles that are influencing the pain, and still another on the actual sensation of pain in the central nervous system. All of these together do a better job of pain management than simply using one of them, but any single one of those medications when used by itself will still help reduce pain.
How this relates to immortality is that I personally believe in a sort of multimodal approach to immortality in Christ. Some people firmly believe in taking communion daily as the key. Others focus on getting an inner revelation and mind renewal. Still others believe that growing our faith in this area is the way to go. As my buddy Steve helped me identify in this conversation, inner healing is yet another key to walking out this revelation. I personally believe that all of the above are relevant, and that we should make use of any and all of them.
If you want to learn more about this subject, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my book “The Gospel of Life and Immortality,” on Amazon, available on both Kindle and in Print. You can also check out my articles in the Resurrection and Immortality category here on the site.
