A. J.”Gordon (1836–1895) was an American Baptist preacher, writer, composer, and founder of Gordon College and Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary. In his book In Christ: The  Believer’s Union with His Lord, he described the whole nature of man as spirit, soul, and body.

The significance of this in unsaved man’s depravity:

“The whole course of the divine life is from Christ to self, and not from self to Christ. To begin an expiation in one’s own sufferings, hoping that it may end in fellowship and union with Christ’s sufferings, is not only to transpose, but completely to vitiate the order of grace. There is nothing of ours, soul, body, or spirit, that is without blemish.” (p. 41)

The significance of this in appreciating the believer’s union with Christ:

“Our high endeavor is not to shape our actual life in the flesh into conformity to an ideal life that is set before us in Him. It is rather to reduce our true life now hid in Christ, to an actual life in ourself. And so the summons of the gospel is, not that we behold what is possible for us in Christ, and reach forth to it ; but rather that we behold what is accomplished for us in Christ, and appropriate it and live in it. Risen with Christ, the first-fruits of our spirits already carried up with Him into glory, our life hid with Him in God, how shall not our heart [our affections] be where our treasure is? (pp.64,65)

The significance of this in the believer’s hope of bodily resurrection:

“As our whole nature, body, soul, and spirit, died in Adam, so must our whole nature, body, soul, and spirit, be made alive in Christ before our blessedness can be complete. And if we are in the Lord, our physical restitution is assured to us with equal certainty with our spiritual. For not only is it true that “he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit,” but equally that we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.” [1 Cor. 6:17; Eph. 5:30] (p. 85)

In Christ: The  Believer’s Union with His Lord  (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1872).

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Adoniram Judson “A. J.” Gordon (1836–1895) was an American Baptist preacher, writer, composer, and founder of Gordon College and Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary. He pastored churches in Massachusetts, wrote 16 books and was a  speaker in D.L. Moody’s Northfield conventions.