Chapter 3: A New Spirit I Will Give You 

The entire human person consists of three parts, body, soul, and spirit. Many Bible students and teachers say that man has only two parts, body and soul, and that spirit and soul are used interchangeably in Scripture. This may be so in some cases; I haven’t looked at every scripture where the word spirit is used. But I do know that in Scripture soul and spirit are treated as distinct parts of the human person o\in several passages of Scripture. For example I Thessalonians 5:23 seems to make a clear distinction between soul and spirit: 

“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through [or, entirely]. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

We tend to think of ourselves from the outside—as body, soul, and spirit. Paul was thinking of sanctification, a process that begins on the inside and works outward.  So he thinks in terms of spirit, (the deepest part of man), soul (the conscious personality of man), and body (the physical, outer part of man). Clearly Paul believes that spirit is distinct from soul. 

Now let us look at Heb. 4:12-13: 

“For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. 13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”  Soul and spirit can be divided, so they are not the same thing. 

Another, albeit indirect, evidence of the distinction between soul and spirit is found in First Corinthians chapters 2 and 3. 

I Cor. 2:13-15:  “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. [Or Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to spiritual men] 14 The man without the Spirit [KJV the natural man] does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment.” 

The adjective “spiritual” here is pneumatikos, from the word pneuma, spirit.  But the phrase “the man without the Spirit” uses the adjective, psychichos, from the word psyche, soul.  In order to properly express Paul’s meaning the translators would have had to coin a new, rather unattractive word, soulish. A literal translation would have read as follows. “The soulish man does not receive the things of the Spirit...because they are spiritually discerned.  The spiritual man makes judgments about everything...”  In other words, the unconverted man is a man of soul, a soulish man, one who is ruled by his natural, unredeemed soul.  The spiritual man is now ruled by his spirit, which is indwelt by God’s Spirit; he has been born again of the Holy Spirit. 

In the next chapter, I Cor. 3:1, we read the following: 

“Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ.” 

I can see no good reason the NIV translate this as “worldly”; what it says is “fleshly” (sarkikos). In this passage  “spiritual” refers to a person who is saved and being led by the Spirit; a fleshly person is one who is saved (Paul calls them brethren), but is being led by his flesh, his unconverted part. 

So we see a soulish man is dominated by his soul, and a spiritual man is ruled by his spirit, and by the Holy Spirit within him. A carnal person, whether a believer or not, is still controlled by the natural, fallen condition of humanity. 

Now let us look at the creation of man: 

In Genesis 2:7 we read that “The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [literally the breath of lives], and the man became a living being [or a living soul--nephesh].”  We see here the three parts of man in man’s creation. God formed the body out of the dust, breathed into him His own breath or Spirit, and the union of Divine breath and Adam’s body gave rise to a living being, or soul.   

It was the joining of God’s life-giving breath or Spirit infilling the body that made man a living soul, a living person conscious of himself as a being separate from other beings. The           soul is the point of union between body and spirit. Through the body and its five sense man relates to physical reality. Through his spirit he relates to the spiritual world, spiritual reality, and to God.  His soul is himself, his life, the instrument of his consciousness, thinking, choosing, emotions, and reason. For ordinary practical purposes man is a soul in a body; but in reality man is a whole: he is spirit, soul, and body. Man is not complete without a body; that is why God is going to resurrect our bodies.  The body without the spirit is dead.

The words for soul, nephesh (Hebrew), and psuche (Greek) are often translated “life” because our soul is our conscious life. 

God told Adam that he would die in the day that he ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree. Satan told Eve that she would not die. Adam and Eve ate and lived another 600 years or so, and then died.  So what can we conclude?  Was Satan correct and God wrong?  No, Adam and Eve died spiritually; their spirits, by which they communed with God (Who is Spirit), were somehow cut off from God on the very day that they disobeyed. Not that they lost their spirits; for the body without a spirit is dead. And only after many years were their souls and spirits separated from their bodies; then they died physically. But they died spiritually in the day that they ate, and all their children are born bearing their spiritual death: their spirits must be regenerated, their souls must be converted, and their bodies must be resurrected. 

The human spirit, separated as it is from God, is no place for the Holy Spirit to dwell.  It needs to be renewed, reborn: “That which is born of the [Holy] Spirit is the spirit [the human spirit].” Let us turn to a wonderful Old Testament prophecy, which promises to restore the human spirit so that it can be a proper dwelling place for God’s Spirit: 

Ezek. 36:24-27:  “For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh [here contrasted with stone, not with spirit]. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” 

God can only put His Spirit in man to abide there permanently if first he gives man a new heart and a new spirit. 

We find a similar promise under the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34: 

“‘The time is coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,’ declares the LORD. 33 ‘This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the LORD. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, “Know the LORD,” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’” 

Though Jeremiah doesn’t mention the human spirit here, or even the Spirit of God, he is clearly speaking of the same condition as we find in Ezekiel. God is going to do something on the inside of man that will enable him to  “Know the LORD” directly. 

The spirit is the highest (or deepest) part of man, for it comes directly from God.  It is nowhere said in the Bible that God created the spirit, as He created the soul and body. Rather it is said that He breathed the spirit into Adam. In Hebrews 12:11 God is called “the Father of our spirits,” not the Creator—the Father. So it seems that there is something uncreated and God-like in man, who is made in God’s image. The spirit is the seat of our God-consciousness. 

Inasmuch as our spirits come directly from God (and God is Spirit), it is fitting that the renewed spirit should be the place of residence of the Holy Spirit. And that is just what Scripture teaches.  The spirit is the deepest part of our soul, called “the hidden man of the heart,” called “the inward man,” and the “innermost being.” 

John. 7:37-39: “On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38Whoever believes on me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him [belly or innermost being] .’ 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given [to abide forever], since Jesus had not yet been glorified.” 

This is a very interesting verse of Scripture. 1) In it we find that the Spirit could not permanently come to abide until Jesus was glorified. He had to perfect our human nature, take our human spirit (cleansed and made suitable for God) to heaven; then, and only then could the Holy Spirit take up His permanent abode in the church. 2) The word used here for the location of the Spirit is very interesting.  In the KJV the word is translated “belly,” and that is much more accurate than “from within him,” a phrase that has none of the rich suggestiveness of “belly” or “innermost being.” What Jesus literally said was, “Out of his body cavity will flow rivers of living water.” It means a hollow place.  It refers to what we would call the abdomen. We refer to the “solar plexus,” whatever interesting origin that might have. The Greek word is related to the word for heaven in Latin, suggesting the curved empty space of the heavens.  Whether this should be taken literally or figuratively, the pit of the stomach does seem to be the seat of a lot of inner activity—emotions, intuitions (‘I have a feeling in my gut’), spiritual aspirations (‘the heart’). Many of our strongest and most important experiences seem to originate in the ‘pit of the stomach.’  What is it that tumbles turbulently when we are upset? The abdomen does indeed seem to be the seat of our spirit. 

I’ve heard it said, and partly I believe it, that the spirit is vastly larger than the body, for it is connected with God and the whole Spiritual Realm. And it would have to be pretty large to contain the whole Trinity. John, you remember, on the Isle of Patmos, was “in the spirit on the Lord’s Day.” I take that to mean that his consciousness had left his waking soul and had entered into his spirit.  Read the book of Revelation to find out what he saw there, in his spirit.   

I realize that “in the spirit” could mean something other than what I have said. This is just speculation, so don’t trouble yourself with it.  I offer it for your contemplation.   

In the New Testament the word spirit is sometimes written in lower case, little s, and sometimes in upper case, capital S. In the Greek there is no such distinction. Every translator has to decide whether the writers are speaking of the human or the Divine spirit.  But for all practical purposes, though, it hardly matters when we speak of  regenerated souls.  The Holy Spirit has come to reside in OUR spirits, so that He becomes the life of our life, the Spirit of our spirit. He lives in us, in a sense, AS US.  He produces His fruit in our character. 

The trouble distinguishing His Spirit from our spirits is especially evident in prayer. We are told to pray in the Holy Spirit. When we pray, He helps us as we pray; and we pray as He prays in and through us. 

Rom. 8:26-27: “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.” 

 Who can say from this and other scriptures where the Holy Spirit ends and the humans spirit begins? 

Jude 20: “But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.”

Eph. 6:18:  “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.” 

In actual experience I challenge anyone to distinguish the Holy Spirit in our spirits from our spirits themselves: 

Ro. 8:16: “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” 

This merging of the Holy Spirit with our spirits is further born out in the passages on spiritual gifts. 

1 Cor. 14:1-3:  “Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy.  2 For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit [clearly the human spirit]. 3 But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort...” 

1 Cor. 14:14-16: “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays [human spirit], but my mind is unfruitful. 15 So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. 16 If you are praising God with your spirit...” 

See how it makes little practical difference whether we operate in our spirit or in the Holy Spirit since the Divine Guest has set up permanent residence in our spirit? 

Summary:  The human spirit is the deepest part of man, by which he is meant to know the spiritual world directly. Man’s spirit fails of that purpose because of sin. In regeneration man’s spirit is cleansed and reconnected to God  (so to speak) and thus becomes a fitting temple for the Holy Spirit.

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