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Scripture Reading: 1 Thes. 5:23; Heb. 4:12b; Gen. 2:7; Zech. 12:1b; Isa. 42:5; Luke 9:23-25; Job 32:8; Prov. 20:27; John 4:24; 2 Tim. 4:22a; Gen. 2:9b; 1:27; 1 Cor. 6:17; Rom. 9:1; 8:16; 1:9; Luke 1:47; 1 Cor. 2:11; Mark 2:8
In the previous chapters we have seen the definition of the Spirit. In order to help us see the truth concerning the Spirit in a full way, I would encourage us to read and even to study a small booklet we have published entitled The Spirit of the Glorified Jesus. This booklet is a reprint of chapter 5 of Andrew Murray’s book The Spirit of Christ. Andrew Murray points out that today’s Spirit has not only the divine element but also the human element. This is an extraordinary revelation. In the Spirit there are also the elements of Christ’s death and resurrection.
Today the Spirit is not only the Spirit of divinity but also the Spirit of Christ’s humanity. In 1971 we gave a number of messages on the significance of the meal offering in the book of Leviticus. In those messages we stressed that the meal offering refers to Christ’s humanity (see the book entitled Christ as the Reality). In those messages we coined a new term by saying that we should be “Jesusly human.”
In resurrection Christ, who was the only begotten Son of God in His divinity, was born of God in His humanity to be the firstborn Son of God (Acts 13:33; Rom. 8:29; 1:4). His humanity was “sonized,” made divine. This “sonizing” in resurrection sanctified, uplifted, and transformed Christ’s humanity, which He put on in incarnation. Today such an uplifted humanity is in the Spirit and can be our enjoyment in the Spirit.
I hope that we could spend some time to study the previous messages that we have released concerning the Spirit. If our understanding and apprehension of the Spirit are limited, we will not enjoy the Spirit as much as we should. Our learning and our study of the divine revelation will help us to participate in, to enjoy, the all-inclusive compounded Spirit, in whom we have Christ’s divinity, Christ’s humanity, Christ’s death, and Christ’s resurrection. Andrew Murray says that the humanity of Jesus has been interwoven into His divinity. He uses the word interwoven, as in a textile. We use the word mingled, as in the mingling of the fine flour with oil in the meal offering (Lev. 2:4).
Our study of the Spirit of God in the previous outlines and messages was simple, but I believe it was all-inclusive. Those outlines and messages are the produce, the abstract, and the crystallization of the proper understanding of the Spirit of God according to the holy Word. Without such a Spirit the humanity of Christ uplifted through resurrection could not be ours. Today the Spirit is the instrument that conveys all the elements of Christ’s person and Christ’s work into our being. Christ’s divinity, His humanity, His death with its effectiveness, and His resurrection with its power remain in us. But due to our lack of the proper understanding, we do not know how to enjoy them. This is like having groceries without knowing how to cook them so that we can eat them. We need to see that today all the elements of Christ’s person and work can be our enjoyment in the Spirit.
Now that we have seen the definition of the Spirit, we want to see the definition of our human spirit. This definition is very simple, but we should not minimize it. It is very simple yet very vital and crucial in the divine and spiritual realm. God is a Spirit. This is strongly and emphatically taught by the Bible. The Bible also strongly stresses and teaches us concerning the human spirit. This is a big “missing” in today’s Christianity. They miss the human spirit even more than they miss the proper understanding of the Spirit of God.
When I began to minister in the United States in 1962, a number of people told me that they had never before heard that man has a spirit. Many teachers and preachers do not know or believe the truth concerning the human spirit. In 1954 I was invited to hold a conference and training in Hong Kong. A certain Brethren missionary came to Hong Kong to attend my conference. After the conference he told me that he appreciated what he heard in the meetings but that he could not agree with the teaching about the human spirit. He said that the spirit and the soul are synonymous, referring to the same thing. I asked him about 1 Thessalonians 5:23, where Paul refers to our “spirit and soul and body.” Paul uses the conjunction and twice in this phrase. This shows that man’s spirit and soul are two distinct items. Furthermore, Hebrews 4:12 says that the living word of God can divide our spirit from our soul. After I pointed this out to him, he still said that he could not believe that we have a human spirit. Many dear saints today are like this. Some do not care about the spirit and the soul. They feel that this is too abstract to talk about. It is no wonder that they cannot be spiritual. Actually, you can never be spiritual if you do not know that you have a spirit.
John 4:24 says that God is Spirit. This means that God’s substance is Spirit. This verse goes on to say that those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit—the human spirit. The divine Spirit and the human spirit are both mentioned in John 4:24. The Gospel of John has another verse that refers to the two spirits. John 3:6 says, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In this verse the first Spirit is the begetting Spirit; the second spirit is the begotten spirit. Romans 8:16 says that the Spirit witnesses with our spirit. The pronoun our is used in this verse, referring to our human spirit. God is Spirit, but if we had no spirit, we could not join to Him as one spirit. This is mentioned emphatically in 1 Corinthians 6:17: “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” These are the strong verses in the New Testament that convey the revelation to us concerning both God the Spirit and our spirit.
If God were not a Spirit, how could He be our life? If we did not have a spirit, how could God be contacted, touched, received, and contained by us? This would be impossible. Our spirit is the organ with which we can contact God the Spirit. We must use the proper organ to contact God. In order to see, we must use our eyes. We cannot appreciate colors if we do not use the proper organ—our eyes. People say there is no God, because they are unaware that they have a particular organ within them with which to contact God. They deny this organ and do not use it, so they cannot know God. God is a Spirit, and He made a spirit within us so that we can contact Him.
In the record of God’s creation in Genesis, God did not give us many details concerning the heavens because the heavens do not have that much direct relationship with us. But concerning the earth, God gave us a number of details. Genesis 1:2 through Genesis 2 gives us the details of the earth. First, God caused the dry land to appear on the third day. Then He made the plant life and the animal life. Eventually, God told us that He made man.
In God’s creation He mostly spoke things into being, but in His creation of man He used two substances. Genesis 2:7 says that He used the dust to make man’s body and His breath of life to form man’s spirit. The breath of life is not God Himself, God’s life, or God’s Spirit. But it is very close to God, very close to the life of God, and very close to the Spirit of God.
Before the breath of life entered into man, he had just a lifeless frame. But when the breath of life entered into man’s frame, man became a living soul. The soul was not created by God out of a certain substance. The soul was the issue of the breath of life entering into man’s body. The soul is man’s being, man’s self. Exodus tells us that seventy souls of the house of Jacob went down to Egypt (1:5, lit.). These were seventy persons. A person is a soul. This shows us that the soul is our very person, our being. The soul is between the outward frame, the body, and the inward organ, the spirit.
In studying the definition of our spirit, we must be clear about God’s creation. We have been created by God as a tripartite man. As we have seen, 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12b are the most basic verses in the Bible concerning man’s three parts. Man’s body formed from the dust is his outward frame (Gen. 2:7a). The minerals in our body are the minerals of the dust.
We also have a spirit produced of God’s breath, as our intrinsic organ, ranked with the heavens and the earth (v. 7b; Zech. 12:1b; Isa. 42:5). I do not use the word made or created but produced. The breath of life produced the spirit. Actually, it was the breath of life becoming the spirit. In Genesis 2:7 the Hebrew word for breath, neshamah, is the same word used for spirit in Proverbs 20:27, which speaks of the spirit of man.
We have two main organs. One is the body as our outward organ, which is full of functions. But we also have an intrinsic organ within us—our spirit. We can substantiate all the things in the divine, spiritual, and heavenly field by our spirit. If we do not use our spirit, we become very low, like the beasts. The difference between man and the other living creatures is that only man has a spirit (Job 12:10). The spirit distinguishes us from all the animals, so we must study our spirit and exercise our spirit. If we do not care for our spirit, we can never enjoy God, we can never be spiritual, and we can never grow in the divine life.
The soul is not a substance. It is an issue of two substances coming together. When the breath of God came into the body of dust, an issue came out. This issue is our soul as our self in between our body and our spirit (Gen. 2:7c; Luke 9:23-25). The more that we experience the spiritual life and enjoy God, the more we realize this matter of our soul being between our body and our spirit. Whether we are for the body or for the spirit depends upon what we let our soul do.
Let us suppose you have a choice between two things. One thing would cause you to lose your temper, but the other thing would cause you to praise God. Which thing would you welcome? This is up to the decision of your soul. In the evening you may have the choice between two things. You can either go to the church meeting or stay home and watch television. Which would you choose? At that juncture it is very clear that going to the meeting is the spirit’s intention, whereas staying home to watch television is the fleshly desire of your fallen body. This shows that the soul is between our body and our spirit.
Day by day we are confronted with things and situations in which we must decide whether to follow our fallen body or our regenerated spirit. Sometimes we may have a choice between making a telephone call or making a “call to the heavens” to pray. We may be addicted to gossiping with someone who is our friend. This kind of talk is in our soul with our body. The desire to make a call to the heavens, to talk to the Lord, is of the Spirit and in the spirit. Quite often, however, we may choose to make phone calls instead of calling to the heavens. When we make vain phone calls, our spirit will be deadened. When we do this, we should confess, “Lord, forgive me. Today I disobeyed You in making many calls that were not according to You. Lord, I realize that those telephone calls were of the flesh and selected by my soul.” These illustrations show that the soul is between the spirit and the body.
Genesis 2:7, a short verse of the Bible, gives us three points. First, God made man from the dust. Second, God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life. Third, a living soul, a human being, came out as an issue. The making of the body and the issue of the soul were not as important as the producing of the spirit. The most crucial thing was the producing of the spirit. If we had only a soul with a body, we would be like the beasts.
Most people live by the soul with the body. The newspapers always give reports of people who are involved in evil things, such as robbery, stealing, fornication, divorce, and murder. These are people who are living by their soul with their body. We need to be different. We should endeavor to live by our spirit with the Spirit. We should deny our ugly, contaminated soul and reject our dirty, fallen body.
The Bible tells us to deny the soul because it has been corrupted (Matt. 16:24-26; Luke 9:23-25). One day when Peter was talking to the Lord, Satan came out of him, even through his loving of the Lord (Matt. 16:22-23). The soul is ugly, and we should hate it. The body is dirty, and we should reject it. We Christians who are under God’s teaching should always endeavor to live by our spirit with the Spirit. It is in our spirit that we have the real rest. We are different than most people. While they live by their soul with their body, we live by our spirit with the Spirit.
Job 32:8 says, “There is a spirit in man, / And the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding.” According to the poetic structure of this verse, the spirit and the breath of God, the Almighty, are in apposition. Thus, the spirit is the breath of God, and the breath of God is the spirit. Job 32:8 shows that God made our spirit with the breath of God.
Proverbs 20:27 says that the spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah. When God created man, He put a lamp into man. Among all the creatures, only man has an inner lamp. God created a spirit within man as God’s lamp, but this lamp does not function. This is why most of the human race is in darkness, without light. One day, however, we were saved by repenting and believing into the Lord Jesus. When we did this, we began to feel that something within us was shining to enlighten us. That was the functioning of our spirit as the lamp of the Lord.
In ancient times a lamp burned to give forth its light by the oil within it. The oil typifies the Spirit of God (Isa. 61:1). We have our spirit as a lamp, and we always have to contact God through this lamp. Then this lamp will be refilled all the time (Eph. 5:18). The light shining in the lamp comes from the oil, the Spirit. Furthermore, when the oil burns in the lamp to shine, the oil has mingled itself with the lamp. When the oil soaks the wick, the oil and the wick become one. Then they burn together. On the one hand, the wick is burning; on the other hand, the oil is burning. Without the wick, the oil could not burn, and without the oil, the wick could not burn. They must be mingled together by soaking. This shows that we can be soaked by God and with God in our spirit, which is the lamp of God.
Our spirit was created by God as our particular organ for us to worship God—to contact and contain God (John 4:24; 2 Tim. 4:22a). We cannot worship God without contacting Him. To worship God is actually to contact God. John 4:24 says that those who worship God must worship Him in spirit. Then 2 Timothy 4:22a says that the Lord Jesus is with our spirit. How could someone be with our spirit? I can be with you, but I cannot be with you in your spirit. Only the Lord Jesus can be with us in our spirit, because He is the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Our spirit is a container and a recipient of the Lord. Thank the Lord that we have a spirit. First, God created our spirit; second, He regenerated our spirit; third, He strengthens our spirit; and fourth, He refills our spirit.
Such a spirit is for us to receive God as life and to express Him (Gen. 2:9b; 1:27). We are living on this earth for the purpose of receiving God and expressing God.
Eventually, we can be joined to God as one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). In the whole universe, nothing can be higher than to be joined to God as one spirit. The divine Spirit and the human spirit become one spirit. If all human beings were joined together with God as one spirit, the earth would become heaven! The earth is full of bad news because people live by their soul with their body. But we need to be those who live by our spirit with the Spirit.
Our spirit is composed of the conscience, the fellowship, and the intuition. For a further discussion of the functions of our spirit, see chapter 6 of The Economy of God.
In Romans 9:1 Paul says that his conscience bore witness with him in the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:16 says that the Spirit witnesses with our spirit. On the one hand, the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit. On the other hand, our conscience bears witness with the Holy Spirit. This shows that the conscience is a function of our spirit. If we neglect our conscience, our spirit cannot function properly to contact the Spirit. We must learn to take care of our conscience. The conscience regulates us by either condemning or justifying us. Our inner justification and inner condemnation are by our conscience in our spirit.
The fellowship is another function of our spirit. John 4:24 says that God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit. To worship Him means to fellowship with Him. If you are going to fellowship with God, you must do it in your spirit. Outside of the spirit, there is no fellowship with God. In Romans 1:9 Paul says that he served God in his spirit. To serve God is to fellowship with God. The servants and the master always contact each other. They always fellowship. We serve God, our Master, by contacting Him, fellowshipping with Him, in our spirit. Luke 1:47 says, “My spirit has exulted in God my Savior.” To exult in God, to be joyful in the Lord, is also a kind of fellowship.
First Corinthians 2:11 says that only the spirit of man knows the things of man. This is a direct knowledge from the intuition. Mark 2:8 tells us that even the Lord Jesus, while He was on this earth, perceived in His spirit (KJV). He had the Holy Spirit with Him, but He also was a man with His own spirit. He had the inward intuition in His spirit to directly perceive things.
