I'm relating this question to purgatory.
When we are regenerated, is our soul/spirit totally pure while we are still sinful in body/flesh? This is how I view the reality of regeneration......
RCC usually notes that no unclean thing will enter heaven, hence their understanding of the need for purgatory.
Of course Jesus has paid the price for our sins....but is the reality of the situation that our soul/spirit is made pure and enters heaven upon natural death while the flesh goes to the grave until the day of glorification????
There is some difference of opinion among Reformed believers on this subject. Here is my understanding:
At regeneration, there is a radical change of the soul/nature; a new predisposition which takes precedence over the old nature. There is a remnant of sin that still exists, cf. Rom 7. The "body" (Gr.
sarx) does not have any ability to sin but this tendency to continue to sin, which Scripture is indisputable clear, originates from our soul/nature. Upon physical death, the soul is purified yet is incomplete without the body. And finally, at the last Judgment the elect souls are rejoined with their new incorruptible body, aka: glorification.
May I highly recommend perhaps the most thorough treatise ever written on this subject,
Human Nature in its Four-Fold State, by Thomas Boston. He writes that there are four "states" of human beings:
1. The State of Innocence (pre-Fall)
2. The State of Nature (post-Fall)
3. The State of Grace (regeneration)
4. The Eternal State
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