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We hope you enjoy this BfA staff member’s testimony about discovering her human spirit and the profound impact it had on her.
The blog post “The Immense Significance of the Human Spirit” really touched me because it talked about exactly what I have experienced. Ever since I began to see in the Bible that I have a human spirit and then to actually experience the Lord who lives there, my life has never been the same.
Before then, I had always felt deep within that something was missing in my Christian life. After you believe in the Lord and get saved, then what? What did God want? What was being a Christian all about? For a period of time, I thought that maybe the Lord wanted me to help people. I thought of becoming some kind of doctor or joining the Peace Corps. And then other times, I thought He wanted me to pursue and fulfill my dreams.
There’s a very specific moment in my life after graduating from high school that I’ll never forget. I laid in bed next to my two younger sisters, tears streamed down my face as I tried not to wake them up. I was so desperate for something real. So I cried out to the Lord, “Lord, You have to be real to me! I can’t go on if You aren’t real to me!”
[[Free Study Bible]]
The Lord answered that prayer when I went to college. There, I met a group of believers who showed me in the Bible that God has a purpose, and that in order to fulfill this purpose He created man with a human spirit to contain and contact Him. Even though I had grown up as a Christian, I had never heard about this crucial truth. These believers helped me to see that the moment I believed in the Lord, He came to dwell in my spirit!
I was also helped to realize that God wants people to experience Him. He wasn’t this impersonal, faraway God that I had to try to please by doing good or by doing something for Him. No, the God of the universe was someone I could turn to, fellowship with, and live by, by contacting Him in my spirit. God became so real to me!
For so long, even after I received the Lord, there had been an emptiness within me that I could never explain or fill. But when I learned to touch the Lord in my spirit, that emptiness disappeared. There was a sense of, “This is it! This is why I was created!” Mankind was created to receive the Lord Jesus and enjoy Him as the Spirit in our spirit.
I am so thankful to the Lord Jesus that this crucial truth was revealed to me, and that I’ve been able to experience Him in my spirit. My prayer is that many others would also discover their human spirit, and that the Lord would become as real to them as He is to me.
Have you ever noticed that in addition to the Holy Spirit, the human spirit is mentioned numerous times throughout the Old and New Testaments?
In other posts, we’ve looked at the three parts of man: the spirit, soul, and body. We also examined the difference between the soul and the spirit in more detail. In this post, we’ll focus specifically on the immense significance of our human spirit, the deepest part of our being. We’ll see the monumental place it occupies in both God’s purpose for humanity and our Christian life.
Let’s first see how God views the human spirit. Zechariah 12:1 says:
“Thus declares Jehovah, who stretches forth the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him.”
It’s easy for us to appreciate the awe-inspiring, God-created heavens and earth. We can’t help but be struck by their grandeur when we look up at the stars, or see images that capture the beauty of nature.
But Zechariah 12:1 shows us that in God’s eyes, the spirit of man is equally important. It is ranked on the same level as the heavens and the earth.
Notice also that this verse doesn’t just say that God “forms man” in a general sense, but that He “forms the spirit of man within him.” This indicates that the spirit is the most outstanding part of our being.
But why is our spirit so important to God?
First, let’s look at how and why God formed the spirit of man.
When the mighty God created the universe, He stretched forth the heavens and laid the foundation of the earth with His power. Jeremiah 32:17 says:
“Ah, Lord Jehovah! It is You who have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm. Nothing is too wonderful for You.”
The creation of the heavens and the earth was a tremendous event. Through it, God displayed His awesome power. But when it came to creating man, Genesis 2:7 gives us these details in contrast:
“Jehovah God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”
In Hebrew, the original language of the Old Testament, the word translated as breath is neshamah. In Proverbs 20:27, this same word, neshamah, is translated as spirit:
“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah.”
These verses indicate that the breath of life became the spirit of man.
The creation of man’s spirit was an intimate act of God. God breathed into man after forming him from the dust of the ground. This is much more personal than His way of creating the heavens and the earth, which was by His great power and outstretched arm. He imparted His very breath into man. This breath, which became man’s spirit, came from within God’s very being. How precious our spirit is to God! He took such care in forming it.
[[Free Study Bible]]
God created the heavens, the earth, and the spirit of man because He had a purpose in His heart that He wanted to fulfill. It was for this purpose that God created us not only with a body and soul, but also with a spirit.
God's purpose is to impart Himself into us, sharing His divine life with us and becoming everything to us. This is how we and God can have an intimate and personal relationship. God desires that He and man share one life inwardly and one living outwardly. By receiving the life of God and living by it, mankind would express God in every way.
To accomplish God's great plan, our human spirit is indispensable. It’s the part of our being that can contact, receive, and contain God. No wonder our human spirit is so important to God!
John 4:24 says:
“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.”
This verse shows us that God’s very nature is Spirit. As we’ve seen, our human spirit corresponds closely with what God is. So we need to use our spirit to contact God, who is Spirit.
When we believed in Jesus as our Savior, we were regenerated—that is, born again—in our spirit with His divine life. That’s why John 3:6 says:
“That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
Now God isn’t far away from us—He’s living in our spirit. We can use our spirit to contact Him and continue to receive more of Him.
Our God-formed and God-designed human spirit is truly marvelous. Without our spirit, we could only know and worship God objectively as our Creator. But because we have a spirit, God can impart Himself into us so that we can experience Him inwardly as our life.
Realizing the importance of our human spirit should revolutionize our Christian life. The Lord isn’t far away from us; He’s dwelling in us, in our spirit. Now, no one can be nearer or more available to us than He is. At any time, in any place, under any circumstance, we can contact Him, receive Him, and enjoy fellowship with Him.
When we experience Christ in this way, the words of 2 Timothy 4:22 will be most precious to us:
“The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.”
All our personal, subjective experiences of Christ are possible because He’s living in our human spirit.
When it comes to the Christian life, the New Testament doesn’t tell us that we must try our best to live up to certain outward regulations. It actually emphasizes our human spirit again and again, even exhorting us believers to walk by our spirit—that is, to live by our regenerated spirit. When we live by our spirit, the living Christ within us with all His wonderful virtues is lived out of us. That is how we express Him in our daily lives.
But living by our spirit and experiencing Christ as our life is not just for our own individual spiritual growth. Actually, this is how God will gain His corporate testimony, which is composed of all the believers. The New Testament calls this corporate testimony the church and the Body of Christ, and this is what will fulfill the desire of God’s heart.
To be God’s expression is the meaning of our human life and our Christian life, and this is what will satisfy both us and God.
If you live in the US, you can order a free copy of the New Testament Recovery Version here to learn more about the significance of our human spirit.
After we were saved, we probably had the realization that we should live in a different way than how we lived before. Certainly God wants us to express Him in our daily life. But how do we do that? What should our Christian walk be like?
Our walk involves our entire way of living: how we live, how we conduct ourselves, what we say, what we do, and where we go. In this post, we’ll focus on Romans 8:4 and helpful notes in the New Testament Recovery Version to see the walk God wants us believers to have.
Romans 8:4 says:
“That the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit.”
This verse speaks of two different ways we can walk: according to the flesh or according to the spirit.
First, let’s see what the flesh is.
When God created Adam, he was sinless. But when Adam disobeyed God, Satan injected his sinful nature into mankind, and our God-created pure body was transmuted into the sinful flesh, full of lust.
Even after we’re saved and born again in our spirit, our flesh is still with us and remains just as sinful as it was before we were regenerated.
Many verses in the New Testament confirm this. In fact, Paul wrote the epistle to the Romans to the believers who lived in Rome, not to unbelievers. And in Romans 13:14, he strongly exhorts them:
“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts.”
Since Paul wrote this to believers, it shows that we still have the sinful flesh even after we’re saved, and we must be careful not to make any provision for it.
So although we’re saved, we can still be people who walk according to our fallen flesh. Of course, when we walk according to our flesh, we invariably sin.
Now let’s see what the spirit that’s mentioned in Romans 8:4 is.
In the Recovery Version, note 3 on spirit in this verse explains:
“It is difficult to discern the word spirit used in this chapter, in Gal. 5, and in other places in the New Testament, unless it is clearly designated to denote God’s Holy Spirit or our regenerated human spirit, as in v. 9 and v. 16 of this chapter. According to the usage in the New Testament, the word spirit, as used in this verse, denotes our regenerated human spirit indwelt by and mingled with the Spirit, who is the consummation of the Triune God (v. 9). This corresponds with 1 Cor. 6:17, ‘He who is joined to the Lord [who is the Spirit—2 Cor. 3:17; 1 Cor. 15:45] is one spirit’—one mingled spirit.”
God created us with a spirit that can contact and receive Him. Our human spirit is the deepest, innermost part of our being.
Here in Romans 8:4, walking “according to the spirit” doesn’t refer to our human spirit alone, nor to the Holy Spirit alone. It’s referring to our regenerated human spirit indwelt by and mingled with the Spirit of the Triune God.
This mingled spirit came into being when we repented and believed in Christ. That’s when we were regenerated, or, born again, and Christ as the life-giving Spirit came into our spirit to dwell there. Now His Spirit and our spirit are no longer separate and distinct, but are mingled together.
First Corinthians 6:17 says:
“But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.”
Through faith in Jesus, we were joined to Him. Our regenerated human spirit and the Spirit became one, mingled spirit.
So in Romans 8:4, to walk according to the spirit means we live and do everything according to this wonderful mingled spirit.
[[Free Study Bible]]
Christ did so much to enter into us to be our life. Now that He’s in our spirit, His desire for us is not that we would try our best not to make mistakes or be on our best behavior outwardly; He wants us to walk according to our spirit.
Romans 8:4 also shows us what happens when we walk according to the spirit:
“That the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit.”
The verse doesn’t say that the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled by those who try their best to live a good Christian life. It says that the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us, who walk according to the spirit.
Note 1 on fulfilled explains:
“Not consciously kept by us through our outward endeavoring but spontaneously and unconsciously fulfilled in us by the inward working of the Spirit of life. The Spirit of life is the Spirit of Christ, and Christ corresponds with the law of God. This Spirit within us spontaneously fulfills all the righteous requirements of the law through us when we walk according to Him.”
Christ lived the most excellent life on earth. He alone fulfilled all the requirements of the law. In all of His living, He expressed God.
And through His death on the cross, He redeemed us back to God. Then in resurrection, He became the life-giving Spirit; by believing in Him, we were joined to this wonderful Spirit in our spirit.
So when we walk according to our mingled spirit, the Spirit spontaneously fulfills the requirements of the law in us and for us. Our words, behavior, attitude, and actions have as their source the Spirit in our spirit. As a result, what people see isn’t a person behaving outwardly in an ethical, upright way. They see something much higher than that: God Himself expressed in our living.
This is how God is expressed through us, which is His heart’s desire.
First of all, we have to see that our spirit is mingled with the Spirit. When we see this, we’ll appreciate how precious our spirit is and how near and available the Lord is to us.
Then we have to realize that to walk according to the spirit means we have to be in our spirit, and not in our flesh. Our spirit should be the focal point of our whole being. So we need to practice turning from the flesh to the Lord in our spirit all the time.
One very practical way to turn to our mingled spirit is to call upon the name of the Lord Jesus. This is something we can do anytime, anywhere, whenever we find ourselves not walking according to our spirit.
First Corinthians 12:3 says:
“Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking in the Spirit of God says, Jesus is accursed; and no one can say, Jesus is Lord! except in the Holy Spirit.”
Note 3 on this verse explains:
“This indicates that when we say with a proper spirit, ‘Jesus is Lord!’ we are in the Holy Spirit. Hence, to call on the Lord Jesus is the way to participate in, to enjoy, and to experience the Holy Spirit.”
By calling upon the Lord’s name, “Lord Jesus,” we’re brought into our spirit where we enjoy all that He is. As we enjoy Him in our spirit, we spontaneously walk according to our spirit, and the wonderful life of Christ is expressed in our walk.
In this post, we could only briefly discuss what it means to walk according to the spirit in Romans 8. If you live in the US, we strongly encourage you to order a free New Testament Recovery Version so you can read all of the insightful notes in this crucial chapter.
