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Scripture Reading: Zech. 12:1b; Prov. 20:27; Job 32:8; John 4:24; 2 Tim. 4:22a; Rom. 8:11; Eph. 2:22; Rom. 8:4b; 12:11; 1 Cor. 2:11a, 15a; Acts 17:16; 19:21; 20:22; Rom. 1:9; Rev. 1:10; 4:2; 17:3; 21:10; Acts 18:25
We need to be impressed with the proper knowledge of our human spirit. We have seen that in God’s creation, God paid the most attention to the creation of our spirit. Genesis 1:1 tells us that God created the heavens and the earth. Then verse 2 shows how the universe was damaged because of Satan’s rebellion, telling us that the earth became waste and emptiness and darkness was on the surface of the deep. Genesis 1 goes on to show how God recovered the damaged universe. He recovered the earth by bringing in the light, and He caused the dry land to appear on the third day. Then He created all kinds of plant life and animal life. When God was creating man, the environment for man’s existence had been fully prepared.
In God’s creation He also prepared a garden for man. God brought man into that garden, indicating that this garden would be man’s residence. The garden of Eden was full of trees that were pleasant to the sight and good for food. Man was placed in the midst of this garden before the tree of life, alongside of which was another tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:8-9). This garden was a complete scene of the entire earth. The tree of life signifies God, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil signifies the evil one, Satan.
God brought Adam into that garden and charged him to be careful about his eating. He indicated that all the trees were good for food, including the tree of life. But there was one tree of which Adam was not to eat—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (vv. 16-17). Knowledge, good, and evil are three negative things. Life is the unique positive thing. Eventually, knowledge, good, and evil issue in death. The tree of life will lead you out of death, but the tree of knowledge, good, and evil results in death.
God created man in a marvelous way so that man could contact God, contain God, and receive God as life to express God. Genesis not only tells us that God created man in His image and according to His likeness, but it also tells us how He created man. First, He created a frame for man with the dust from the earth. Then He breathed into this human frame His breath of life (v. 7). God’s breath of life is the highest material that He can use to create anything. What else is as precious as the breath of God, the breath of life? And that breath of life from God was breathed into the human frame. What a wonderful thing!
After the breath of life entered into man’s frame, it became a part of his human constitution. We were constituted first with the dust outwardly and second with the breath of God inwardly. The outward frame is man’s body, and the inward breath of life has become man’s spirit. Man’s body and man’s spirit came together to produce a living soul (v. 7). The same Hebrew word for breath in Genesis 2:7 is translated “spirit,” the spirit of man, in Proverbs 20:27. In Job 32:8 man’s spirit is in apposition to the breath of God. A human being is a soul with two organs. The outward organ is the body; the inward organ is the spirit, which is the breath of life. Thus, in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 we are told that a whole man is composed of spirit, soul, and body.
Now in the whole universe there are two big categories of things. The first category of things is material, physical. The second category of things in the universe is spiritual. To contact anything physical, you have to use your body, your outward organ. To contact God as the Spirit with all the spiritual things, you have to use your spirit, your inward organ. In the modern culture of today’s world, people mostly care for the physical things and neglect the spiritual things. But the Bible uplifts the spiritual things and depreciates the physical things. The Bible even tells us that we need to put to death the practices of our body (Rom. 8:13) and take care of our spirit. We have to uplift our spirit.
If a human being lives by the body, he is very mean, like a beast. But if a human being lives by the spirit, he is very high, higher than the angels. Many unbelievers live in a very low way by their body. Most of them do not know their spirit, but some know one part of their spirit, that is, their human conscience. Some among them live according to their conscience. This is to live partly by the spirit, so these people are higher. Today we believers are charged to deny ourselves, our soul, and to put to death the practices of our body. Then we live by the spirit, walk by the spirit, and do everything according to the spirit. Romans 8:4 says that we need to walk according to the spirit.
Now we want to see the importance of our spirit. In the whole universe, first God is important to us. God has the preeminence. Besides God nothing is as important as our human spirit. For something to be important means that it is indispensable, that you must have it. With all other things besides God and besides our spirit, we have a choice. Whether or not we have them is not vitally important. But we must have God and our human spirit. First, God is the Spirit to us. Then we have a human spirit to contact God the Spirit, to receive Him, and to contain Him. He lives in our spirit to be one with us.
In the eyes of God, our human spirit is ranked with the heavens and the earth. There are two verses in the Bible concerning this one point—Zechariah 12:1 and Isaiah 42:5. Zechariah 12:1 says clearly that God stretched forth the heavens, laid the foundations of the earth, and formed the spirit of man within him. The heavens are for the earth; the earth is for man; and man has a spirit to contact God. We can contact God only by using our spirit.
Our human spirit is important in our contacting God, and our contacting God is our worship to God. We cannot contact God without worshipping Him. God is the object of human worship, and the human worship must be carried out by contacting God. If we worship God, we contact Him. We can contact God by using our spirit. The Lord Jesus told us purposely in John 4:24 that God is Spirit and that we must worship Him in our spirit. We worship Him by exercising our spirit. If we are going to live a meaningful life, we should contact God. He is our source, and our spirit is our spiritual organ for us to contact Him.
We live physically by exercising our body. But to merely live physically is no higher than the living of a beast. If we are going to live a super life, a higher life, we have to do it by exercising our spirit, which came from the origin of God’s breath of life. This spiritual organ within us is mainly for us to contact God, to worship Him.
We must be deeply impressed with this basic knowledge of the holy Word. We are being trained to be normal believers in Christ. A normal believer’s life implies the service, the worship, that he should render to the Triune God, and in all our service we must contact God in our spirit.
Our human spirit is important because it is in this spirit that Christ and the Spirit indwell us, taking our spirit as God’s habitation (2 Tim. 4:22a; Rom. 8:11; Eph. 2:22). If you do not have God in your spirit, your soul will also be empty. The soul was made to be a vessel to contain God as the contents. Romans 9 tells us clearly that we human beings are vessels to God, containers to contain God as our contents (vv. 21, 23). Today the Triune God is embodied in Christ and realized as the Spirit. Both the embodiment and the realization of God indwell us, remaining within us to be our contents in our spirit. Because of Their indwelling, we human beings become God’s habitation.
The contents of man should be the very creating God, the Triune God. He created us with an organ to receive Him, to take Him in, and to contain Him so that He can come into us to be our contents. If you have a house without a dweller, that is a pitiful house. Our Dweller is the Triune God. The New Testament says that God abides in us (1 John 4:16), and it goes on to give us even more details. To merely say that God dwells in us is still too general. God has to be embodied, and God has to be realized. When God is embodied, He becomes Christ (Col. 2:9). When God is realized, He becomes the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). So today we have Christ and the Spirit dwelling in us, taking us as Their habitation (Eph. 2:22). How wonderful it is to have Christ living in me! How sweet and how pleasant it is to have the life-giving Spirit dwelling in me! We should declare, “Christ lives in me, makes His home in me!” (Eph. 3:17). “The Spirit dwells in me!”
Since Christ and the Spirit indwell us, we become top beings in the whole universe. Our rank is now with God. We become on the level of God and are much higher than the angels. We should be happy because we are the highest beings, ranked with God. We need to realize that we are on the same level with God because we have been born of God (John 1:12-13). If you are born of a cat, you become a cat. One is the originator, and the others are the children. The children are in the rank of the mother. If the mother is a human being, surely all the children are human beings. We are born of the great God, so we become God in His life and nature but, of course, not in His Godhead. We are ranked with God. He is our great Originator, and we are His children. He became a God-man so that man can become a man-God. Eventually, He and we are in the same category, of the same kind, and on the same level.
In our Christian walk we need to walk according to our spirit (Rom. 8:4b). When you ask me a question, I should not answer you from my soul. I should answer you from my spirit. Then I become a spiritual man. Our Christian walk is a spiritual walk. Our soul should be under our spirit’s direction with our body under our soul’s usage. Then we are spiritual men who walk, live, and have our being according to our spirit.
Paul tells us that he served God in his spirit (1:9). Then he charges us to be burning in our spirit so that we may have the top service rendered to God (12:11). Without the exercise of our spirit we cannot live the Christian life, and we cannot serve God.
First Corinthians 2 tells us that the spirit of man knows the things of man (v. 11a) and that the spiritual man discerns all things (v. 15a). Without our spirit we cannot know who we are. The unbelievers do not know who they are, where they came from, or where they are going. In order to know the things of man, man needs his spirit. Confucius taught that if man is to live the highest life, he must take care of his conscience. If you take care of your conscience, you can realize that it is related to Someone in the heavens. Our conscience is a part of our spirit, and our spirit is related to God. Without our spirit we cannot understand the things of man. If we use our spirit to understand the things of man, this will guide us to God. This will lead us to contact God. Our human spirit is the spiritual organ for us to know the things concerning man and eventually to know the things concerning God.
We can also see the importance of our human spirit in the living of the early apostles. They all lived in their spirit.
The apostle Paul was a person who lived in his spirit (Acts 17:16; 19:21; 20:22; Rom. 1:9).
John says four times in Revelation that he was in his spirit. He was in his spirit when he saw the vision of the churches (1:10). He was in his spirit when he saw the vision of the destiny of the world (4:2). He was in his spirit when he saw the vision of the great harlot, Babylon the Great, which is degraded Christianity (17:3). Then he tells us that he was in his spirit when he saw the New Jerusalem (21:10). To see these four great things John needed to be in his spirit. We need to be in our spirit to see all the heavenly visions.
Acts 18:25 says that Apollos was fervent in spirit. He was burning in teaching the Bible. This shows us that all the apostles lived in their spirit. We have to follow their example by living in our spirit—behaving, acting, and walking in our spirit—doing things, thinking things, and speaking things altogether in our spirit. Then eventually, as 1 Corinthians shows, we become a spiritual man (2:15a). Then we can have a proper church life and have the proper and profitable church meetings.
