When we reconcile with God and begin the path toward the being He envisioned before creating us, we must leave behind everything that no longer belongs to the new person born from that reconciliation. When I use these words, I do not mean them symbolically, but as something real and literal. God forms in us a new spirit, a new inner being, and from there the spiritual journey begins—one that passes through varied stages of elevation and ascent until it reaches the final completion of the spiritual human being. On this roadmap, what we must most attend to is our old self, because the old self pulls us downward, the way gravity pulls toward the earth, preventing us from reaching the goal of the new being. The old self is accustomed to our former way of thinking, feeling, and acting; and it moves automatically, unconsciously, by habit, repeating our failed patterns.
If a person who has been reconciled with God does not allow the Spirit to guide them into inner renewal, they will remain like a child who never grows spiritually and emotionally. The beginning of transformation, then, is reconciliation with the Creator. When that happens, God forgives all actions that were not aligned with His integrity and justice. It is the moment when God gives us His Spirit so that we can do what benefits us, what is good for us, and what corresponds to His spiritual law.
I want to make a distinction between the concept of “the old self” in the later texts of Scripture and what I understand that concept to mean. The writer of the letter to the Roman community tries to explain his ideas, but he falls into contradictions. There is an internal conflict in his thinking, very likely the result of tension between a Greek mind and a Hebrew one. The first—shaped by polytheism and philosophy—creates a dualism that cannot be reconciled with the prophetic worldview of the Hebrew realm.
Although the author was of Hebrew descent, his formation and mindset were forged within the Greek cultural environment. For this writer, the old self represents the part of the human being dominated by sin. Evil dwells in the body, and the inner person—or the spirit—is the one who delights in God’s Law. The inner life, where he appears to locate the mind, urges him to reject evil, but the body urges him to practice it. So the writer concludes that the inner part of the person—delighting in God—is good, but the body is bad.
In Greek thought, the body was considered a prison. The soul, descending into the material world, was believed to be trapped in flesh, condemned to suffer passions and desires that pulled it away from divine purity. The body was seen as the obstacle, as the cause of evil. From there came the idea that a person must dominate, deny, or even punish the body in order to reach virtue.
This is the root of the concept of the “body of death” that appears in later writings. But that was not how the ancient Hebrews understood the human being. In original Hebrew thought, the body is not evil, nor is it the prison of the soul. In their ancient writings, corruption was never understood as a problem of the physical body. That idea arrived later, influenced by external philosophical currents that viewed matter as inferior or impure.
For the prophets, corruption is a problem of the spirit and the will, not of flesh as substance. Corruption occurs when the inner being turns away from God—when justice, truth, and compassion are abandoned.
For example, Isaiah does not say, “The people’s bodies are corrupt,” but rather, “Their heart is far from Me” (Isaiah 29:13). And in Jeremiah: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” It does not say “the body is evil,” but that the heart can be corrupted. In Psalm 51:10: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Again, inner transformation—not hatred of the body. In Proverbs 4:23: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” The heart—or the spirit—is the source, not flesh as matter.
When the prophets speak of corruption, they are not referring to flesh as sinful substance, but to the spirit that has turned away from God—the human being who has wandered from the path of light. And here we face a problem: we do not fully understand what we mean when we speak of “light.” It is a word we use to describe God and His domains and His way. The human mind accepts it, but how does it truly understand it inwardly? The Book of the Life of Adam and Eve calls it “radiance,” and because what comes from the sun is bright we use the word “light.” Yet that word is only a material approximation of God’s essence; it is not exact, because light is material and God is not. God is not like us. God is not a man, and God is not matter. He has a real nature that we call spiritual—and in the beginning we had it; that is why it is said we were children of God and bore His image.
The problem is not the body, but the inner life that governs it. That is why God promised, and made known through Ezekiel, that He would give us a spirit—His Spirit—inclined toward what is good. In truth, the “old self” the writer speaks of is not the body, but the way a fallen inner condition governs the mind and actions. The tendency to do what is not beneficial is born inside, not in flesh.
The Master of Nazareth explained this clearly:
“And He called the crowd to Him and said to them: ‘Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that, by going into him, can defile him; but the things that come out of a person are what defile him… For from within, out of the heart of men, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evils come from within and defile a person.’”
So what was He saying? That it is the spirit—the heart, the inner being—that must change. And the older Scriptures told us that God Himself would do it. This was recorded in Ezekiel’s prophecy:
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a sensitive heart. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and to keep My judgments and do them.”
Jeremiah also says: “I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be My people.”
The writer to the Romans—like the writer to the Hebrews—passed over God’s message through the prophets concerning this: that God Himself would address the problem by giving us a new spirit. The reason is simple: it did not serve his argument. From a young age he had learned Greek rhetoric, philosophical reasoning, and dialectical structure, and we see that reflected in his letters. The way he builds and connects his thoughts as an argument is even revealed in how he handles prophecy.
When he says, “Test everything; hold on to what is good,” he is using that principle to filter prophetic speech according to his own criteria. That phrase appears in a context where he is speaking about prophecy. Implicitly it suggests that in prophecy there may be something that does not serve. So he says, “hold on to what is good”—or what you think is good. What does not serve, he ignores. But that is a human procedure, not a spiritual one, very similar to what we see in modern theses: you select what supports your central idea and discard what contradicts it.
The ancients did not treat prophecy that way. For them, the test of a prophecy was not whether it matched their ideas, but whether it was fulfilled. If it did not come to pass, it simply was not from God. Paul’s thinking ignores Ezekiel’s prophecy because he does not believe in liberation from the “body of death” as the direct result of the Spirit acting within us, but as something achieved through a physical or ritual system. His thought remains at the level of human reasoning, where salvation depends on a physical sacrifice rather than on the inner work of God’s Spirit.
In Ezekiel, God promises to give us His own Spirit so that we will walk in His statutes—and His statutes are to walk through life without malice. That prophecy requires no sacrifices and no death, but reconciliation and inner obedience to the Spirit. It is the Spirit of God in us that makes it possible to live according to His will not to do evil. The prophetic word speaks of spiritual renewal and a change that comes directly from God, meant to restore in us the divine image—the spiritual being—we lost.
The old self is not the fallen spirit, because if it were, there would be no need for inner work, healing, liberation, or a change of mind, since through reconciliation God gives us an elevated spirit. Yes—this is exactly what He gives us when we reconcile with Him. When I speak of an elevated spirit, I am not repeating someone else’s expression. I use it because it accurately describes what happens after reconciliation with the Creator. If the spirit was previously fallen—separated, pulled downward by its misalignment with the Source—then after reconciliation it is no longer fallen. To say “elevated spirit” means ascent and a change of direction. The spirit is raised in dignity and purpose. It returns to its natural state with God. It no longer inclines downward toward matter or error, but upward toward truth and light. This is the non-material part of us. As a metaphor, one could say our spirit stops kissing the ground and begins to kiss the sky. This first elevation passes through various stages with the purpose of reaching the full goal of the spiritual being, as God created us in the beginning.
The fallen inner condition naturally leans toward what is earthly, because the physical dominates everything. Not only is the body subject to gravity; the inner life is as well, because the fallen spirit vibrates at the same frequency as matter. This is a spiritual reality with physical effect. Jesus could walk on water because his spirit was not, for a moment, subject to the gravity of matter. His consciousness and spirit were completely aligned with the Source, and matter responded to that new way of living. In the same way, when God gives us an elevated spirit, that inner change alters our spiritual and material condition. The body, though still physical, begins to respond to a higher law: the law of the Spirit. This is real, not figurative. The elevated spirit no longer leans downward because the force that once pulled it—the density of the fallen state—has been replaced by the living energy of God’s Spirit, which lifts and sustains it.
So yes, the spirit changes—but we do not stop being who we are. The old self is not the fallen spirit (because that has already been replaced or lifted), but what remains of the fallen way of being: its mindset, habits, memories, beliefs, wounds, and distorted emotions. The old self is the residue that remains in memory after God changes the old spirit into the new one. That new, elevated spirit naturally leans toward integrity and justice, because it comes from Him. But the old memory remains intact. Those of us who have experienced what is commonly called the new birth know that our memory was not erased.
Suppose you went through a traumatic event when you were very young. Your conscious mind may bury it as protection because it was never processed, healed, or released. Life continues without conscious memory, but the pain and confusion are still there, exerting weight without you realizing it. In the thinking mind, an impulse can still arise that tries to convince you that you are the same as before, because unconscious memory returns in one form or another.
Residue remains—memories, wounds, learned behaviors—that still need to be healed or released. When God gives us a new spirit, something like a spiritual reprogramming begins, guided by His Spirit. That is why it is so important to be sensitive and meek to His voice, because He is the One who helps us let go of old ways of thinking, feeling, reacting, and also helps us heal. The process of inner transformation seeks, among other things, to bring us into balance between mind and spirit. When we achieve that, our whole being is in harmonious equilibrium.
When I reconciled with God, the change of spirit was instant. I received a spirit not of fear or cowardice, but of love, power, and self-control. Those characteristics of God’s Spirit gave me strength to do things I could not have done before because of fear. Yet even while remaining in His Spirit, God still had to heal deep wounds that had been forgotten by my conscious memory and that affected how I reacted without knowing why. The old self carries the memory of our past—conscious or unconscious—that must be healed and restored by the Spirit of God who is now new within us, because that old memory tries to keep us as we were. When God enters our lives, we can no longer remain who we used to be. It marks a before and an after.
This old part of us is accustomed to leading our lives, and it fears dying completely because it is what we know. But it must pass away; otherwise we will never reach the total change that is the spiritual goal. That fear shows up in our mindset because the change is not well understood and we do not know what to do. The process is guided by the Spirit, who carries it out if we are meek—if we allow ourselves to be led.
I will give you a personal example. I am very independent, and it is hard for me to follow others; I trust myself greatly and trust others less. Yet I am meek to the Spirit’s guidance, even when I do not understand why I must follow it. That meekness strengthens and solidifies our trust in Him. And it is that trust that can move obstacles no matter how great they seem, draw prosperity, bring emotional or physical healing, and manifest His promises of blessing in our lives. Firm, secure trust in God is what opens the way for His blessings.
For years, even while already in harmony with Him, I was afraid to say, “Let Your will be done in my life,” because I did not trust that His will would match my deepest desires—because I had a distorted understanding of what God’s will was. That is why Jesus said faith is like a mustard seed that grows. He was referring to the growth of trust we develop in God. And that growth is a process; if we are not meek to the Spirit’s guidance, it remains stagnant.
When we speak of “earth” or “earthly” in relation to spiritual transformation, it does not mean we would stop being earthly or stop belonging to the planet, because we do. It refers to a change of attitude, mindset, and perception—a change from seeing life as we have always seen it. Our mentality and our way of seeing life are largely formed by our family and social environment; we learn how everything is done “on earth.” That is natural, but it is not spiritual. And when people hear the word “spiritual,” they immediately think of religion or religious institutions—but that too is an earthly creation, and that is not what I am talking about.
Jesus showed us that there is another way to live on earth, and that is the spiritual way—the goal we should reach. He was not a religious man. He was respectful of his people’s traditions, which made up their religiosity, but he did not treat them as the Word of God. He believed they were an obstacle to spiritual development. Jesus understood very well the difference between a spiritual person and a religious person.
Spiritual transformation begins when God gives us a new spirit, naturally inclined toward integrity and justice—that is His will. It is not our achievement or a spiritual conquest; it is a divine gift that occurs when we reconcile with the Creative Source. The only thing we must do is accept it consciously; that act of acceptance is voluntary, not forced. From that moment, the process of transformation begins—the reverse path of what our first parents followed.
The new Spirit begins to renew, change, and liberate what was formed under the old order, and this is where the task of releasing the old self arises. It represents our former way of thinking and reacting: the self trained to survive by fear, to justify itself, to seek outside what can only come from God. Releasing it does not mean rejecting our humanity; it means being freed from the fallen way of existing that keeps us trapped in earthly patterns with no way out. The new Spirit guides us to live from a different frequency—the frequency of heaven—without leaving the earth. The change is not a human effort; it is an inner surrender. We let the Spirit do what we could not: replace what is old, heal what is damaged, and lead us into the integrity that was always His purpose.
Jesus said that no one tears a piece from a new garment to patch an old one; if they do, they ruin the new garment, and the piece taken from it will not match the old. He also taught that no one pours new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will spill, and the skins will be ruined. New wine must be put into new wineskins so that both are preserved. Jesus used this image to teach something essential about spiritual transformation. The old garment represents our former nature: a mind formed in separation, fear, and the struggle to survive by human strength. The new garment represents the new being God begins to form in us when we reconcile with Him.
The Master explained that no one takes a piece from a new garment to patch an old one, because that patch not only ruins the new, but also does not harmonize with worn-out cloth. In the same way, the new spirit God forms in us does not come to “repair” the old self, but to replace it. We are not being patched; we are being renewed from within, and the old must be discarded.
Likewise, the new wine symbolizes the life of the Spirit: living, expansive, in motion. The old wineskins symbolize the former inner structure: rigid, limited, unable to contain what comes from above. If we try to pour new life into the molds of the old self—its habits, its way of thinking, its need for control and justification—the transformation breaks and the person loses spiritual clarity. That is why the Spirit works by forming a “new wineskin”: a renewed mind, a heart ready to receive what descends from on high.
This process is not human, but divine. It is not our strength that changes the old; it is the Spirit within us that creates the capacity to release the former things in order to embrace what is eternal. We do not try to repair the old self; we let it go. We do not try to fit spiritual life into old patterns; we surrender so the Spirit can form in us the new structure capable of containing His life. What Jesus showed is that the new does not function inside the old. It is not about improving the earthly person, but allowing the spiritual person to be born and to grow. The new garment belongs to the new being; the new wine requires a new container. Transformation is not a patch—it is a birth.
We are not on this earth by accident or chance, because chance has no purpose; and where there is no purpose, there is no origin. Yet everything in life shows the opposite: there is beginning and order in all that exists. If we talk about numbers, we know that in order to reach one hundred, one had to exist first. No number appears out of nowhere; all proceed from a prior sequence. If we talk about human life, we know that an adult came from one maternal cell and one paternal cell.
Life does not arise from emptiness, but from the meeting of two principles that complement one another. If we speak of a plant, we understand that the seed comes before the fruit. A tree grows, gives shade and nourishment, but its entire existence rests on that tiny, almost invisible principle that contains it in potential. If we speak of words, there is also origin: each word is born from an idea, and each idea from inner understanding. And if we look at the sky, even the stars reveal the same principle: the light we see today traveled for millions of years from a point of origin. Nothing exists without having begun somewhere. Everything in the universe—from numbers to galaxies—obeys the law of beginnings. For that reason, to deny the human being’s spiritual origin is to deny the coherence of the entire universe.
When a human being ignores their origin, they cut themselves off from the root that sustains them. They live, but without direction. They search, but do not know what they are searching for. Without a sense of where one comes from, life becomes a constant attempt to fill an invisible emptiness. People try to fill it with things, relationships, ideas, or achievements, but nothing satisfies, because the emptiness is not outside—it is in a soul disconnected from its Source. That disconnection produces confusion, lack of purpose, and a deep sense of spiritual loneliness. The human being begins to believe that existence is casual or accidental, and by losing the sense of origin, they also lose the sense of destiny. Many of these feelings arise because one does not know their origin—or because they have denied it.
If you think of your own life, you are the child of your parents, and your parents of their parents, and that connection continues until you reach a first father and a first mother. Here on earth, with our limited earthly mind, we arrive at that first father and mother as a logical conclusion because we all know how we were born. There had to be a first pair—but if we do not believe in spiritual reality, we stop there. For those of us who believe, the ultimate beginning of all is the Being we call God, Source, or Father. He is our origin and the origin of all creation. He created us by love and to share with us His greatness and His authority.
When God created our first parents, He established a covenant with them. He did not have to do it—He is Almighty—but He did it to protect us from the misuse of the greatest gift He gave us: freedom. That is why those who think that yielding to God with meekness means losing freedom are greatly mistaken, because the opposite is true: they recover it. God does not force or manipulate us to draw near to Him. Being outside of God is, in reality, captivity, not freedom. That covenant was broken by our first parents, and we were ordered to live on this earth until we learned to remain faithful to His Word—and His will is that we walk in integrity.
Before creating us, God imagines us: who we will be and how far we will go. The traits of our character and personality are the tools He gave us to reach the goal He conceived for us. That character and personality given in the initial creation is altered as we grow, because it adjusts to a life lived only on earthly terms. That is why some call us absurd when we speak of the spiritual—not because the spiritual does not exist, but because it became unfamiliar to them. They left no space for what is truly spiritual—and I am not speaking of religion—throughout their lives.
That goal is inner contentment and deep satisfaction, because that is what we were created for. For that reason, it greatly benefits us to follow His way, because it brings what our hearts truly desire. Yet walking that path requires meekness toward His voice. His voice is gentle, but many times we silence it out of pride, thinking we know more than He does. That mindset of the old self directs our life toward a destiny that is not the one God imagined for us.