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Let us try something different. This introduction will summarize the main points of the entire book in just a few pages. If the Reader already understands the summarized information, and does not require the supporting discussion and references, or want a deeper level of understanding about spirituality, then there would be no need to read the entire book. Fair enough? But you may be surprised, because this is one of the most confused subjects in the Bible, and the root causes go back over 400 years. It is the entire purpose of this book to make the subject of Biblical spirituality clear because it is so important and also very widely misunderstood.
At the most foundational level, spirituality requires living out of the human spirit, not out of the human soul, although very few understand what that means. Never heard of the human spirit? You are not alone. Most believers, including many pastors and theologians, do not understand the human spirit. And it is not another name for our soul, or a generic reference to our entire immaterial inner human. The human spirit exists alongside the soul as a separate, distinct, and very specific component of our inner self which only believers in Jesus Christ possess, and it makes us capable of interacting with God, since He is Spirit, and the Bible says it takes spirit to interact with Spirit. It is reborn when we are "born again" at salvation, because it died when the original humans sinned, causing them to die spiritually, and also their descendants. Therefore only those humans who are saved by faith in Jesus Christ have a human spirit, which means unbelievers do not have one. And only believers can be spiritual since they have both a soul and human spirit, while unbelievers have only a soul.
However, simply having a human spirit as the foundation of our spiritual life does not automatically provide spirituality. Achieving spirituality is the reason we remain on earth after salvation.
But why is there such a lack of understanding regarding spirituality? And how does the human spirit lead us into a state of spirituality? Explaining these issues is the purpose of this book and makes it worth reading since spirituality must be developed, and that requires knowledge of the subject.
The Bible describes spirituality as more than simply having eternal salvation, although that is a necessary first step because salvation provides regeneration or rebirth of the human spirit.
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Rather, spirituality is using God's power from inside the human spirit, which must first be filled with spiritual information found only in the Bible if it is to function properly. Therefore the power source of spirituality is the Word of God, but only when it is inside our human spirit, not simply inside our soul as with general information. At this point we can define spirituality as living out of our human spirit using the power of the Word of God to have a right relationship with God. This is counter to living from a soul filled with human learning and backed by the sinful nature in conformity with the thinking and desires of the world. And it is important to note that spirituality is not continuous, because all believers sin and fail. But when we fail we must regain our focus on God and His plan, to live by faith in Him through our human spirit, and make progress toward a closer relationship with God and our Savior. It is also important to understand that our eternal rewards will be based on the level of spirituality we achieve.
There is a big difference between the soul and human spirit, although both are immaterial. All humans are born with a soul, but without a human spirit. That is the primary consequence of the original sin of Adam and Eve, that they lost their human spirits, and also chose the same fate for all their descendants. The human spirit is only regained (regenerated) at salvation through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, and this is what being "born again" means. At that moment the human spirit is regenerated by the Holy Spirit, making the person a spiritual being, but without spirituality because the human spirit is imparted as an empty vessel. In order to actually use the human spirit it must be filled up with spiritual information, since a spiritual vessel can only contain and use something which is also spiritual. Just as with a baby at birth who must learn a lot of human information in the soul before it can function as a human ought to function, so also with the spiritual rebirth, the new believer which the Apostle Paul called a "babe in Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:1) must set out on a long journey to learn vast amounts of Truth from the Word of God to fill up the reborn human spirit with Biblical information, which is the only way to grow spiritually and enable spirituality. Spiritual Truth must have a spiritual residence, and that Truth can only reside in the human spirit where the Holy Spirit also indwells the believer, since Spirit must reside in spirit, and only spirit can commune with Spirit. Spiritual information cannot be housed in the soul, except as memorized information with no power, because the soul is not a spiritual vessel. Therefore living out of the human soul cannot result in spirituality. Only when the human spirit is filled with spiritual Truth can the believer live a spiritual life, because the Word of God becomes the power from God when it resides inside our human spirit. And it is the only power source God accepts as spiritually pleasing to Him. Sadly, most believers are trying to please God from their soul, even though the soul cannot meet that requirement without the backing of a human spirit filled with Truth. [Note that "Truth" is capitalized to denote learned Biblical information as the Word of God transformed by the Holy Spirit into spiritual power inside the human spirit.]
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After the human spirit is gained at salvation the basis for being spiritual then exists, but that does not make us spiritual in the sense of a close daily relationship with God. That means we are a spiritual being after the human spirit is regenerated, but without spirituality until we have accumulated spiritual power. The accumulation of spiritual power requires learning the Word of God and then applying it. But if this learning of Truth never happens, the human spirit remains empty or nearly so, and the believer lives a non-spiritual life out of the soul, just like any unbeliever. Such a believer has salvation, and although they are a spiritual being, they do not have spirituality. And striving and straining to be moral using the soul is a life of avoidance, not the positive Christian way of life, and therefore is not spirituality, which is a day-by-day relationship with God which pleases Him, not perfectly, because we are all sinners throughout our lives. So spirituality is only possible if the human spirit, which is gained at salvation, has been filled with Truth from the Word of God to a sufficient degree, and then applied to life. But if we do not put spiritual Truth into our human spirit, then we believers are not capable of living out of our human spirit since it lacks the power source God has provided, therefore it remains an empty and weak vessel. No growth in the Word means no progress toward spirituality and a lack of eternal rewards.
Therefore, spirituality first involves learning the Word of God to put Truth into the human spirit by the power of the Holy Spirit, and then living out of the human spirit to drive the soul to interact with God and the world around us. The Bible says "The Word of God is alive and powerful" (Hebrews 4:12), and we must use that power from God to live a spiritual life. When the human spirit is filled with Truth and then applied to daily life, everything the believer does within the plan of God becomes part of their spirituality, meaning our spirituality is not about doing something specific, or avoidance of certain things, but rather living from the human spirit filled with the power of the Word. This means a person can have high levels of spirituality even when living what appears to be a rather mundane and uneventful life. It is not about specific actions and appearances, but rather it is consistently applying God's power from the human spirit to daily life. Whatever that might be for each individual.
However, most believers are attempting to be spiritual by living a life of negatives, trying to please God by what they avoid doing. Such believers live generally as they had before salvation, with maybe a little more restraint thrown in, trying to be a "good person." But trying to be a good person, or even achieving such as status, is not spirituality. Many unbelievers are relatively good people who are generally moral and law abiding, help others, treat people well, love their families, and so on. But they do not believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior, so they do not have salvation and do not have a human spirit, therefore they 7
cannot be spiritual in any way. They have no relationship with God at all. Therefore spirituality is not straining from our own human capabilities from the soul to be a good person and live a life relatively free from sin. That is an avoidance approach and self-improvement. Rather, spirituality is using our spiritual side, our human spirit, filled with spiritual Truth from the Word of God as the power source to live a life pleasing to God. That becomes a consistent spiritual relationship or "walk" with Him using divine power from the Word. Although this includes morality and much more, it is motivated by a positive approach which results from living a life out from the human spirit based on the Truth stored in it, which motivates a right relationship with God. Spirituality is not using the soul alone to try to conform to Bible mandates (the "avoidance" approach), but rather using the human spirit filled with Truth to direct the soul to fulfill what God desires of us in a positive spiritual sense.
Believers must stop living out of the soul, and instead live out of the human spirit, where the Holy Spirit also resides as our Mentor helping us learn from the Word of God to fill up our human spirit so we can apply the power of God from His Word to our daily life.
Therefore we can only have spirituality from a human spirit filled with Truth, which drives us to live the entire spectrum of what God requires of us, far more than mere morality, avoidance of sin and other negatives. Only our spiritual side can please God. Of course the human spirit must use the soul to communicate to the outside world, but to be spiritual the human spirit must be in control of the entire person, especially the soul. And that is the primary issue: what controls our soul? There are two opposites at war inside every believer -- the human spirit and the sinful nature. One or the other will be in overall control of the soul, because the soul cannot remain in neutral for very long in between the two. But that is precisely what most believers do in their attempt to be spiritual, since their human spirit is empty, or nearly so, therefore they cannot use it properly to achieve spirituality. Without Truth the human spirit has no power, and is as helpless as a baby. Such a believer therefore uses their soul to attempt to resist the sinful nature, which will result in failure since that is using human power, not divine power. God is not impressed with using the soul to merely avoid certain types of sins, or to become a better person. Avoidance and self-improvement are not the significant issues in spirituality, but rather using the human spirit filled with spiritual information which provides divine power for everything we do -- that is spirituality.
The sinful nature drives sin and many other types of wrong thinking and behavior contrary to the will of God. That includes arrogance from morality, which also displeases God. The believer with an empty human spirit will inevitably gravitate to the sinful nature and think mainly like the unbeliever thinks, and therefore will act like an unbeliever acts. The soul is like a moth to the flame, since the sinful nature cannot be resisted for long without significant Truth in the human spirit. It is the human spirit which must resist the sinful nature, but only 8
when it is sufficiently filled with Truth from the Word of God. The soul alone does not have the power to do so, and what little power it has to resist is only human power, not spiritual power from God. Divine power is the power which impresses God. Without Truth in the human spirit, the believer is a spiritual baby crawling through life without any spiritual power.
Therefore the soul resorts to trying to please God by avoidance, trying to be a generally nice person, trying to avoid certain sins or stray thoughts, straining from human power from the soul, but not using God's own power which must be stored in the human spirit. While most believers consider what they do to be the key to their spiritual life, or even how they feel, the Bible says it is what we think which is the primary determiner of spirituality.
Additionally, those who teach that the Holy Spirit "fills" and controls or directly empowers the soul of the believer and enables a spiritual life miss the point entirely. It is not the Holy Spirit who empowers us directly with His own divine power, but rather He mentors us when we study and learn from the Word of God, turning Truth into divine power inside our human spirit. Then we must apply Truth to life from our human spirit. So it is the Holy Spirit who uses the Word of God to build up spiritual strength in our human spirit which gives us the ability to live a life of spirituality, which is an indirect approach used by the Holy Spirit, not a direct empowerment or control over our soul. The human spirit must be continually filled up with the Word so that we can apply the power of Truth to enable our spiritually, and also to keep our sinful nature in check. The Holy Spirit takes the Word of God as we study from a pastor schooled to properly teach it, and fills up our human spirit in a manner whereby that Truth is actually converted into spiritual power. This is a long process requiring much study, as the Holy Spirit mentors us in the Truth so we can then apply that Truth from our human spirit to life, and keep the sinful nature from running the soul as much as possible.
Spirituality is a life of positive impact from the human spirit using divine power, not one of avoidance using only the soul and human power.
And spirituality has a destination, called the "rest from God." After a long and overall successful trek toward the goal of nearly continuous spirituality, the believer can finally enter into a status of spiritual rest. This is the final stage of spirituality where the believer enters into a restful stage of the spiritual life, and life becomes much smoother and more restful in a spiritual sense. At that point the believer has "the peace which passes all understanding."
(Philippians 4:7) This stage is seen by very few believers, but the eternal rewards for those who achieve it are greatly enhanced.
So if the Reader thinks they already knew all this, those very few are dismissed. Otherwise, the rest of us are going on a fascinating and enlightening journey. There is much more to 9
understand, and this book will explain concepts related to spirituality which go much deeper and into more detail than Seminaries teach, while providing supporting documentation from the Bible. And it will be done as simply and clearly as possible. We will need to dispel misunderstandings about the subject, while also explaining issues and concepts which are both enlightening and amazing. This is a spiritual journey, if you are willing to come along.
Do you want to live a life of spirituality, or do you simply want to strive on your own apart from God's power? And by the way, how has that striving worked out so far? God has a much better way, and He provides all the power we need to achieve spirituality if we will simply accept it.
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THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALITY
As the overview indicated, most Christians do not understand the basics of spirituality, let alone advanced concepts. Spirituality for Christians ought to be a well understood concept, but the key to our spirituality, the human spirit, is either unknown or vaguely understood by most believers. And if the key component of spirituality is not understood, the entire subject will be unclear. Therefore, this book will explain spirituality in detail, from the basics to advanced concepts, and make clear what it means to be spiritual as a Christian. In doing so it will also challenge some long-held beliefs which are misguided, and the reasons for those misunderstandings may seem astounding, as they go back many centuries and involve early mis-translations in the Bible. But we must start with the fundamentals of the subject of spirituality, then work our way through to more advanced information.
We have defined spirituality as living out of our human spirit using the power of the Word of God to have a right relationship with God. It is the opposite of how most believers live, which is conforming to the thinking and desires of the world from a soul filled with human learning and backed by the sinful nature, which is failure to use the human spirit. It should be alarming to believers that we could have the basis for spirituality and yet ignore it, living a life apart from spirituality just like any unbeliever. But that is exactly what most believers do, living a life from the soul only, striving and straining by their own power, and never pleasing God. The spiritual life of the believer is a war inside our immaterial self, namely, the sinful nature trying to prevent spirituality, while the human spirit tries to enable spirituality. And the human spirit lacks ammunition to fight if it has not been filled with Truth from the Word.
This internal war continually pulls believers in two opposite directions. After salvation by faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior, we believers are required to live in spirituality in order to please God and earn eternal rewards. But it is a process, not something instantaneous, and there are many failures along the way. And we must use God's power, not our own. While salvation is not earned, eternal rewards are indeed earned, but not in the way most believe.
Eternal rewards for the believer are earned by living a life of spirituality, which the Bible refers to as producing "gold, silver, and precious stones," which are highly prized and will endure for all eternity. (1 Corinthians 3:12)
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The Bible says "God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24) Here we see the Bible identifies the two components of spirituality as "spirit and truth,"
which are the human spirit and the Word of God inside our human spirit. Our interaction with God must therefore be a spiritual one, which means we are required to use the spiritual component of our inner human, the human spirit, along with the spiritual power source God has provided, which is Truth from the Word of God, to interact with God and live a spiritual life. [Note that "Truth" is capitalized to denote learned Biblical information as the Word of God transformed by the Holy Spirit into spiritual power inside the human spirit.] Truth provides divine power for believers to live a spiritual post-salvation life based on the power God provides, not from 0ur own power. The more Truth inside the human spirit, the more spirituality will be exhibited in the life. And that is the key to spirituality, using what God has provided, mainly the human spirit and the Word of God, and these two combine as the only means of empowering a life of spirituality which conforms to God's plan. The end result of maximum Truth inside the human spirit is called "wisdom" in the Bible. Wisdom is not from human learning, but rather from learning divine Truth, which becomes spiritual power from God since it is converted by the Holy Spirit into power available for our use inside our human spirit. Recall that the Bible says "the Word of God is alive and powerful," but only inside our human spirit, not as words in book form, and not as memorization in the soul. Remember that the soul is not a spiritual component. Therefore our primary goal in life as a believer must be to live by spiritual Truth from the human spirit, not by human knowledge from the soul. It is critical to understand that God requires us to use His power to live the spiritual life, not our own human power. Even if the results are the same, that which results from Truth inside the human spirit is pleasing to God, and that which results from human power from only the soul is displeasing to Him. Both salvation and spirituality require acceptance of what God has done for us, not trying to do it ourselves using our own human striving.
If we try to use only our soul, which is a non-spiritual component, along with human learning, which has no spiritual power, we cannot worship or please God. That rules out striving and straining to please God merely by avoidance of sin and trying to do good, since those are soul efforts when the human spirit is not involved. God has provided power in the form of the Word of God for us to take into our human spirit, which is the storage location for all spiritual Truth, so that our human spirit can be strengthened with divine power to direct our soul in a spiritual way. So we can see that although the human spirit uses the soul to get to the outside world and to God, the issue is whether the soul is driven by the human spirit filled with Truth, or acts on its own apart from Truth by using soul knowledge. The former has divine power and the latter has only human power. The first has spirituality and the second does not, regardless of the outcome.
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Sadly, most believers neglect to take hold of the power God has provided for us, and will live generally like unbelievers using only the soul, which is a life without spiritual impact. While a moral life as a decent person may sound like it would please God, our eternal rewards are based on something far beyond that. Even an unbeliever is capable of morality by avoidance of certain types of sins, performing good deeds, and acting as a good and decent person, but they have no spirituality. Understand that this is not promoting immorality, since that is clearly the wrong approach. The point is that although all believers will end up living with God forever, most will have very few or no rewards because they failed to live a life of spirituality, even though many were very good and moral people. But most believers live such a life fully expecting to be highly praised, blessed, and rewarded by God, so there will be considerable shock when rewards are handed out. After salvation such believers neglect their human spirit by never learning the Word, so their human spirit remains empty, powerless and ineffective. Instead they live a life based on striving and straining from the soul alone and never achieve even a basic level of spirituality. And that will make a huge difference in eternal happiness, as well as how much we glorify our Savior during both our time on earth and eternity. To further emphasize the rewards issue, there will be significant differences in levels of happiness and status in eternity. While salvation is the most important issue in the life of any person, after a person is saved, spirituality becomes primary. And it is not just about our eternal happiness, but also about pleasing God and glorifying our Savior.
Unfortunately, there are some long-held misunderstandings regarding spirituality which remain embedded in Christian teachings. As a result, far too many believers fall short in their spiritual lives. This book aims to clarify what the Bible says about spirituality and will attempt to make the issues clear and understandable. But it will take some patience and also willingness to re-examine long-held but incorrect notions regarding spirituality in order to understand these issues as the Bible intended. Having discussed the foundations of spirituality, let us now begin to dive deeper into the issues regarding spirituality, because we are not born into it, nor are we "born again" into it, but rather we must seek to attain it. And God has provided all we need, if we will only accept and use His provisions.
Spirituality is something like walking a narrow path between two opposites, which are carnality and legalism. Both outcomes are displeasing to God. On one side of the narrow path there is a life of carnal sin, and on the other side there is a life of self-righteousness, which is also sin. They are simply two different forms of living without spirituality. God only accepts the narrow path as pleasing to Him, because a life of spirituality is living by His power trusting in His plan and accepting His way as the right way. Of course, none of us are perfect, and all get off the path at times. When we deviate from the path, it is not so relevant which side of the path we fall into, because God finds both repugnant, and rejects both equally. But 13
God never closes off the path. He is always ready to welcome us back onto it. That is the message of the Prodigal Son parable, showing us that He is eager to help us along the way, and to get us back on track any time we are ready to stop living from our soul alone, and seek to take His power into our human spirit and live by it. And as the Prodigal Son said to himself: "What was I thinking?" Exactly right. Been there, done that. Every one of us. God simply wants us to get back on the path and keep moving.
Even though we have already begun discussing the human spirit, we must now look at it in more detail to understand what it is, how it functions, where it is located, and why we need one to be spiritual. And we must also differentiate between our two immaterial components, soul and human spirit. The information in this next chapter is understood by very few, but is critically important for achieving spirituality.
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THE HUMAN SPIRIT
The human spirit is probably the least understood component of the inner human, even though the Bible reveals many fascinating things about it. We will now discuss what it is, what it does, and why we need one. The short version is that humans cannot interact with God in any way unless they have a human spirit, since it makes us spiritually alive. Humans are born without a human spirit, so all are born spiritually dead. It is only by salvation that we gain a human spirit, therefore believers have two parts to their immaterial being, both a soul and human spirit, which are separate but connected. And unbelievers have only a soul, and cannot be spiritual or interact with God.
Christians generally understand that humans have a soul, but the human spirit is misunderstood or unknown. The human spirit and soul are differentiated as two separate parts of the inner human in both the Old Testament and New Testament since there are different words for each in both original languages of the Bible (Old Testament Hebrew: nephesh (soul) and ruach (spirit); New Testament Greek: psuche (soul) and pneuma (spirit). God created the original man and woman with both a soul and human spirit, but their human spirits were lost when they rejected God by sinning. The soul interacts with God's creation, while the human spirit interacts with God, and without a human spirit there can be no interaction with God because the soul is not a spiritual entity. Note that being
"immaterial" is not the same as being "spiritual," since one is physics and the other is about relating to God.
The human race is divided into two overall categories in the spiritual sense: those who have a human spirit and those who do not. The difference is salvation, since believers are given a human spirit at the moment they are saved by faith in Christ as Savior, then they have both a soul and human spirit forever. Receiving a human spirit at salvation is called regeneration, also referred to as being "born again," since it is the human spirit which is reborn at salvation, making us a spiritual being. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." It is the human spirit which transforms us as believers into a new creation, because it makes us into a spiritual being, and then we belong to God and can interact with Him. The human spirit is the center 15
of our spiritual life, and enables us to have spirituality. Since unbelievers have only a soul but no human spirit, they cannot be spiritual in any way, and cannot interact with God. This single issue of the human spirit divides the human race into those who are spiritually alive, and those who are spiritually dead. Unless an unbeliever is saved before they die, they will be spiritually dead forever.
There is an important difference between the human soul and the human spirit, which are separate and distinct immaterial entities. The Bible makes it clear there is a difference between the soul and human spirit. Hebrews 4:12 says: "For the word of God is alive 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." 1 Thessalonians 5:23
says: "May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Romans 8:16 says: "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children." 1 Corinthians 2:14 says: "The person without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God." And Isaiah 26:9 tells us "My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you." The soul and spirit are therefore separate and distinct immaterial entities with different functions and purposes. The human spirit is not the same as the Holy Spirit indwelling and mentoring the believer, but rather it is a second portion of the immaterial life of the believer, and although it is interconnected with the soul it is entirely separate.
Therefore, the soul is primarily the humanity part of a person which enables interaction with God's creation while the human spirit is the spiritual part of a believer which enables interaction with God. "God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
(John 4:24) Therefore the human spirit is the center of our spiritual life, the part of us which makes interaction with God possible. Everything which is thought or done from the human spirit is spirituality, because it is a spiritual entity, and therefore cannot do any wrong. As Galatians 5:16 says " So I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." The human spirit is the only perfect part of us, which is why it is the only source for our spirituality. Spiritual Truth from the Bible as the Word of God is stored in the human spirit, not in the soul, and it is the Holy Spirit working within the human spirit which turns Bible information into a spiritual form of knowledge and power. Growing in God's Word is not like other learning which results in knowledge of the universe, because Bible information is literally "alive and powerful" as Hebrews 4:12 says. Unlike learning math or physics or a hobby, the Word has spiritual power in and of itself, which can only be unlocked and harnessed by the Holy Spirit so that it can reside in the human spirit, where the Holy Spirit indwells. 1 Corinthians 8:1 says "We know that we all possess knowledge. But knowledge puffs up while love builds up." As used here, love is a specific reference to maximum Truth in 16
our human spirit, and is used to define the peak of spiritual attainment as we grow to truly love God and our Savior. Therefore it is learning the Word and growing by it which gives us power from God to live a life focused on God's plan for us. Growing spiritually allows us to have greater and greater fellowship with God, and to actually love Him on the basis of knowing Him. Only spirit can interact with Spirit, so it is our human spirit which interacts with God. However, the human spirit must use the soul to reach God, so these two parts of the inner human are required to act in unison. This is why the human spirit must control the soul, rather than the soul being controlled by the sinful nature. We must pray and worship and apply spiritual truths out from our human spirit, which in turn uses the heart of the soul to reach God. And the Holy Spirit indwells our human spirit, not our soul, so when a believer is living the spiritual life that person is living out of their human spirit, the location of both the Holy Spirit and spiritual Truth from the Word. The human spirit filled with Truth must therefore direct the soul, so that we do not live from the soul alone as unbelievers live.
Although the human spirit makes a person a spiritual being, simply having one does not provide spirituality, which is about our day-to-day interaction (or lack of it) with God. That interaction requires filling the regenerated human spirit with Truth from the Word of God, which is a long process of spiritual growth and increased levels of spirituality. So the task outlined for each believer after receipt of a human spirit is to achieve spirituality, where we can live under an optimal, although always imperfect, level of consistent interaction with God from our human spirit. And the goal becomes to achieve spiritual maturity, although that will take years of learning and applying the Word. Therefore we see that spirituality is not a singular level, but rather the believer who has very little Truth in their human spirit can only achieve a minimal level of spirituality, while higher levels of spirituality can be achieved with higher levels of Truth inside the human spirit. Of course, the believer must also make consistent decisions to live by Truth out from the human spirit.
A human spirit must be gained by salvation, or we could say it is "regained," since Adam and Eve chose for all of us when they lost the human spirit through sin. That is what regeneration means, because the human spirit was lost through the original sin by Adam and Eve, and is only regenerated or restored at salvation in their descendants. John 3:3 says: "Jesus replied,
“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again." Being
"born again" is the rebirth or regeneration of the human spirit at the moment of salvation.
This is why salvation must be a gift from God, not something to be earned over time, since no unbeliever can please God in any way or earn anything because they lack a human spirit. No human is a spiritual being until they are first saved and regenerated, and the human spirit is given all at once, not gradually over time. Only God can make humans into spiritual beings at the point of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, not as a result of anything the person does to try to 17
earn it, or by avoiding certain sins, since salvation cannot be earned or deserved. At the moment of belief in Christ as Savior the human spirit becomes regenerated, and that is the event which makes us a spiritual being and locks in our eternal salvation. Forever. Once it is regenerated, the human spirit can never again be lost by sin. This is why salvation is permanent and irrevocable.
On the other hand, spiritual death at the most basic level means the person lacks the key component which makes humans capable of spiritual interaction with God, which is a human spirit. The Bible says "God is Spirit, and we must worship Him in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24) The results of the original sins of the first two humans are passed down to all their offspring, which means the human spirit is missing at birth, so we lack the means of being spiritual, and cannot interact with God. More specifically, it is the original sin of Adam which is passed down to all his descendants, who are born without a human spirit. However, Jesus Christ was the exception because He did not descend from Adam, but only from the woman.
Being "born again" at salvation is a spiritual rebirth, and the person becomes a spiritual being as the Holy Spirit imparts a human spirit, making the new believer spiritually alive. That which is reborn at salvation is the human spirit, which makes believers alive to God and sets the starting point of potential spirituality. At the point of salvation the new believer is spiritually alive, but not yet living a spiritual life since that spirit is empty, as with any newborn.
The human spirit is therefore necessary to be able to understand spiritual information and to have interaction with God. The focal point for interaction between God and humans is the human spirit, since only spirit can interact with Spirit. That is why the Holy Spirit must indwell the human spirit, not the soul of the believer. God cannot interact with unbeliever humans who lack a human spirit, including prayer, worship, thanksgiving, good works or any other spiritual matter since they have no spirit interface. So the most an unbeliever can have are soul thoughts about God in a general sense, but they are not spiritual thoughts, since that requires a human spirit. And they cannot understand God in any meaningful way or understand His spiritual Truth, because as 1 Corinthians 2:14 says "The person without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the spirit."
Unbelievers have no human spirit, and are not spiritual beings, only soulish beings having no interaction with God. If unbelievers never believe in Christ as their Savior, they never gain a human spirit (except for those who die as children and those with very low mental function, who are given a human spirit at the point of death due to lack of opportunity for salvation --
God is fair). That is why unbelievers cannot ever have interaction with God, either while alive on earth or during eternity. They can only interact with what God has created in the universe 18
by using their soul. If they want to become a spiritual being, they must first accept the salvation offered by God through belief in Jesus Christ, at which point God gives that person a human spirit. Note that it is a belief which saves us. Beliefs are powerful things.
So how do the soul and human spirit interact? How and where do they connect? Once again the Bible provides the answers. We have seen that Hebrews 4:12 says: "For the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow." The "joints and marrow" reference is instructive regarding how the two are separate but work together, and also how they are designed. I have not seen anyone adequately explain what this means, so we must proceed as the verse says, to look at the joints and marrow, and how they are designed and interact.
It is quite fascinating to look at this analogy and how it relates to the inner human design of the soul and human spirit. Note the word order in the verse above is "soul and spirit, joints and marrow" setting up the analogy with the soul analogous to the joints, and the human spirit analogous to the marrow. The specific sections of the body in view are the hip and shoulder joints, which are the major joints of the body, and also have marrow. The structure of both the shoulder and hip joints show that the bones involved, which are the femur (upper leg) and humerus (upper arm) bones, have marrow housed inside them near the joint.
Therefore the structure of the shoulder and hip joints and associated bones provide a picture of the human spirit inside the soul, but not part of it, since they are distinct and can be divided. Joint is not marrow, and marrow is not joint. One is bone and the other is a spongy blood-making tissue.
While children have active "red" bone marrow throughout the long bones of their legs and arms, adult humans have much less active red marrow inside those particular bones, concentrated mainly at the hip and shoulder joints near the ends of the upper leg and upper arm bones. While there is also marrow inside the pelvis, sternum, and a few other locations, these are not "joints" as in this analogy. And it is the red marrow which makes the blood cells which flow throughout our bodies, giving it sustenance, delivering oxygen, and providing immune protection. The long bones such as the upper leg (femur) and upper arm (humerus) have ball-and-socket joint connections, with marrow inside the bone near the ball joint, so these are the ones in view in this Bible verse. The "dividing joints and marrow" is an analogy to how the soul and human spirit are related by design, since the verse discusses how they are separate and distinct, yet closely related.
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This analogy would indicate that the human spirit is fully contained inside the soul just like the marrow is located fully inside the joint bones. However, the human spirit is severable from the soul, as shown when Adam and Eve lost their human spirits. But a soul without an incorporated human spirit has an empty space inside of it, something missing which should be there. Recall that humans are born with only a soul, but not a human spirit, so there is an
"empty space" where the human spirit is later inserted if the person becomes a believer and is regenerated, meaning the human spirit is put in place into a specific space originally designed for it inside the soul. Believers have that "empty space" filled by a regenerated human spirit which is provided at the point of salvation, which is the "new birth" or being "born again"
relating to the rebirth of the human spirit, which makes the person spiritually alive and therefore capable of interacting with God. Without this analogy from the Bible we would have assumed the soul and human spirit were completely separated, and only connected at a single interface, somewhat like a dumbbell connected by a bar or two balloons tied together.
Instead, the Bible shows the human spirit fully inside the soul, but still separate and distinct in a separate chamber designed to hold it.
Adam and Eve were created with both a soul and human spirit. And their souls were created as male and female as well as their bodies. Genesis 1:27 says: "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." And this was before the woman Eve had been formed out from the DNA of Adam, so it is discussing the creation of the soul and human spirit, not a female body. This passage in Genesis therefore refers to the inner human as the image of God, not the body, when male and female are mentioned as being created. When these two eventually sinned by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the one forbidden tree, their human spirits are what died, but not their souls or bodies. At that point they had a soul but no human spirit, so they were
"spiritually dead." As God had warned them if they ate from it "you will surely die" (Genesis 2:17), and God meant their human spirit would die, causing spiritual death, resulting in no ability to interact spiritually with God. This is what defines spiritual death, that the human spirit is dead and the person only has a soul. They remained physically alive after sinning, so it did not mean physical death. Both eventually regained their human spirits when they accepted the salvation offered to them by God through the "seed of the woman" which was the original reference to the Messiah in the Bible, who would eventually be Jesus Christ. (Genesis 3:15) Old Testament salvation was by believing the promise from God that a Messiah would be sent in the future, and after the cross salvation is by believing the Messiah Jesus Christ has been sent and completed the work of salvation. Again, this shows the importance God places on beliefs.
As the first humans showed, a person can live without a human spirit since they did not 20
immediately die physically after sinning, but a person cannot have a relationship with God without a human spirit. After they sinned the two spiritually dead humans hid from God because they had lost the ability to interact spiritually with Him. Then God offered salvation which they both accepted, and at that point their human spirits were revived. But as a result of their original sin, the descendants of Adam and Eve are born without a human spirit, and salvation is required to obtain one by regeneration. Therefore all people are born with a soul but no human spirit. The only exception was Jesus Christ who was born perfect with both a soul and a human spirit (spiritually alive) therefore He did not need salvation, which made Him qualified to be the Savior.
Angels also have soul and spirit components. This does not refer to the bodies of angels, who are often called "spirits," which is a physical issue. Elect angels have both soul and spirit, while Satan and fallen angels have only a soul without a spirit since they lost it when they sinned and revolted against God. The story of fallen angels and fallen humans is the same --
loss of the spiritual part of the being, leading to spiritual death. This separates God's elect angels from Satan and his fallen angels, just as humans are separated by the same issue.
Therefore fallen angels have no ability to have a spiritual relationship with God. Angels have the exact same soul (and spirit for elect angels) as humans, just in a different type of body.
That is because mankind was created to resolve the conflict between God and Satan, and the only fair way to do it was by having the exact same immaterial components in both humans and angels, although in very different bodies.
The human spirit of the believer is empty at salvation when it is regenerated, and also in the believer who has never grown spiritually. If the soul goes to the human spirit for spiritual information but finds little or nothing there since it is empty or nearly so, there can be little or no spiritual expression by the heart. This is why studying the Word of God is so crucial, because it is the basis of spiritual growth and puts information into the human spirit which can be accessed and used by the soul to produce spirituality. 1 Peter 2:2 says "Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation." Salvation gives us eternal life, but then filling up the human spirit with Bible Truth is required to give us spiritual power with which to think and form beliefs consistent with the Word of God. Only then can our spirit-soul processes function in alignment with God's plan for our lives. But if the believer is focused on living under the power of their soul, and is not using their human spirit, the spiritual processes inside the believer are severely restricted, and both the human spirit and Holy Spirit are effectively ignored by the soul.
Therefore a spiritual life is only possible through use of the human spirit, which has four main 21
1) First, it makes the person spiritually alive and therefore enables interaction with God, since only spirit can interact with Spirit. The soul cannot express spiritual thoughts apart from the human spirit. And the human spirit relies on the soul to deliver its outputs toward God.
2) Secondly, the human spirit enables the indwelling and mentoring of the Holy Spirit, so that He can help us understand, store, and utilize spiritual Truth from the Word of God. As Romans 8:16 says: "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children"
which shows how the Holy Spirit interacts with our human spirit, first to mentor believers who want to learn the Word of God, and then to help that person apply the spiritual information contained in their human spirit. This builds up our faith through an understanding of God, which builds trust and love.
3) Thirdly, the human spirit makes spiritual information from the Word of God understandable. No person can truly and deeply understand spiritual doctrines apart from the human spirit but "considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them." For this purpose the human spirit has its own memory designed for spiritual information only. The human soul cannot store spiritual information since it is not designed to do so. Therefore spiritual information must be stored in the human spirit (where the Holy Spirit also resides in us, or indwells) whereby spiritual information becomes usable in the life of the believer.
4) Finally, the human spirit is the source of spiritual direction to the heart and mind of the soul. When the human spirit is filled with spiritual information from the Word of God, it can provide direction to the soul which causes the person to live the spiritual life God wants us to live. Not perfectly, just greatly enhanced because the human spirit gets its power from the Word.
As mentioned, the human spirit cannot directly interface with God or the outside world, but must go through the heart and mind of the soul. The spiritual information in the human spirit can be accessed by the mind and used by the heart, and that is the interface between soul and spirit, namely that the heart and mind of the soul access the spiritual information which resides in the human spirit and apply it to provide a life of spiritual impact. Which brings up the point that the human spirit has sub-components just as the soul does. The human spirit has a mind as well, which processes the spiritual information received into the human spirit and stores it in the Memory of the human spirit. So the human spirit's mind and Memory are necessary to process and store spiritual information inside the human spirit, which is aided by the Holy Spirit who indwells the human spirit. While the human spirit is focused on the spiritual, the human soul is the center of human life and interfaces with the material world.
Therefore the believer can interface with God because the soul is supported by the human spirit. This is important to understand, that the human spirit must be present in order for 22
God to recognize the right of a soul to interact spiritually with Him.
When the human spirit controls the outputs from the soul to a maximum degree it is called
"living out from the human spirit" which is the essence of spirituality. This means the believer's soul and spirit work in unison, and this working relationship becomes more powerful and effective as the believer grows spiritually, building up the storage of spiritual Truth inside the spirit which then flows out through the soul. And that storage of spiritual information in the human spirit is not in a simple form, but rather the human spirit guided by the Holy Spirit manufactures a complex interconnected web out of the spiritual information it receives, combining simple concepts with more advanced principles, which builds up faith as a person matures spiritually. This is what the Bible means when it says the Word of God is
"alive and powerful," but only from inside the human spirit.
This further shows how spiritual thoughts originate in the human spirit and flow out of the soul through the heart toward God and people, and spiritual learning flows back into the human spirit through the heart and mind. The heart decides whether to allow information to enter the soul and human spirit, and can either accept or reject it, so the heart acts as the gatekeeper of information for both the soul and human spirit. In all of this the heart is not just passing everything through, but rather the heart decides what gets through. If the heart is distorted by accepting advice from the other soul components when they are in revolt against spiritual Truth, the human spirit will not receive inputs of spiritual information and will become malnourished and cannot function properly. It will also be prevented from getting spiritual information out through the heart. The result is a dysfunctional spiritual life because the human spirit is shut down by the heart. This is called "hardness of heart" in the Bible because the human spirit is shut off.
Spiritual information must be stored and structurally assembled inside the human spirit with the mentoring of the Holy Spirit in order to have the power God designed His Word to have in us. The Holy Spirit turns information learned from studying the Bible into a spiritually powerful form which is then usable to empower the spiritual life. But this does not occur all at once, and requires a long term commitment to the study of the Word of God. For new believers who know very little spiritual information at first, there is not much that can be applied to the life. But as the believer grows spiritually -- assuming the believer actually wants to grow -- the human spirit becomes filled up with the knowledge of the Word of God, which itself is called "alive and powerful" in Hebrews 4:12. Initial spiritual growth results in a basic level of spirituality for that believer, beginning to fulfill God's plan, and a basic level of glorification of God through Jesus Christ. Feeding more and more spiritual information into 23
the human spirit is the only means of increasing this faith to advanced levels, providing for a spiritual impact which works under testing and pressure. Not perfectly, and not all at once. It takes time and persistence in learning the Word, which is our spiritual food for spiritual energy. Therefore believers must grow up spiritually by building up spiritual information inside the human spirit. The process is slow and requires continual learning and applying of God's Word to the life, first small issues and tests, then becoming real faith as the believer reaches higher and higher levels of spiritual maturity. The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians who had not grown spiritually after he had started them on the right course "I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready." (1 Corinthians 3:2) Spiritual information must be built up like a wall -- brick upon brick.
The mentoring ministry of the Holy Spirit, who resides in the human spirit of the believer, enables the learning, storage, and use of that spiritual information inside the human spirit, providing spiritual power in the life of the believer. The Holy Spirit helps us by ensuring we can understand the spiritual information we learn by putting it into a usable form inside the human spirit where it is stored, categorized, and turned into an interlocking web of spiritual Truth which becomes increasingly usable in our lives. But if the believer ignores spiritual growth, the Holy Spirit is said to be "grieved," as the Bible says "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God." (Ephesians 4:30) The Holy Spirit does not impart power directly to the believer, but rather helps the believer learn spiritual Truth and grow in grace and knowledge, which then provides power from inside the human spirit. This enables the believer to put to use the power of the Word from the human spirit through the soul. As the believer matures spiritually, the human spirit becomes the dominant influencer of the inner human, and that believer starts consistently living life out from the human spirit rather than merely out of the soul as unbelievers live. It is therefore the spiritual information stored in the human spirit which provides the power for the spiritual life, and enables the believer to live a life which pleases God as we live according to God's Word, resulting in eternal rewards as well. Without maximum spiritual information in the human spirit the believer attempts to live the spiritual life out of the soul rather than the human spirit, which fails to please God. The soul is not spiritual without the backing of a human spirit, and the human spirit cannot function without the Word of God inside it.
Soul Memory can store facts about God and His plan, but that is not spiritual information since it is only in the soul, therefore it is purely informational. Only the human spirit stores spiritual information which is usable in a spiritual form. That is because the Holy Spirit works within the human spirit, where He indwells, to make the Word of God into spiritual understanding and wisdom. The more advanced the understanding of spiritual information, the greater the spiritual power. There is a difference between simply knowing something from 24
the Bible in the soul and truly understanding and believing it in the human spirit, where it has spiritual power because of the Holy Spirit. A believer can recite a Bible verse such as 1 Peter 3:9 "Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing"
but then not be able to truly apply that verse to their life because it only resides in the soul, and is not embedded as spiritual information inside the human spirit. But when Bible information is stored in the human spirit by continual learning from the Word of God and built into a matrix of advanced spiritual understanding, then slowly over time the believer will gain spiritual maturity and spiritual strength as the human spirit becomes filled up with wisdom. Then the mandates of the Bible can be fulfilled in our life. This is spiritual growth, the build-up of spiritual information into a spiritual form and format which becomes more and more an integral part of the life of that believer. Hebrews 6:19 says about the human spirit filled with the Word of God: "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain." The human spirit is the "inner sanctuary" comparing the layout of the Temple of Israel, whereby the human spirit is analogous to the Holy of Holies which housed the presence of God. So the soul of the believer is like the outer areas of the Temple where interaction with the outside world occurred, and the human spirit is like the Holy of Holies where personal interaction and communion with God occurs, and the Holy Spirit indwells.
The unbeliever seeks to understand the world from a soulish viewpoint but comes up empty in many ways since the unbeliever is totally incapable of understanding God or spiritual truths from the Bible, which is where real Truth is obtained. Life has no real meaning since the true meaning of life is based on spiritual principles and having a relationship with God.
Unbelievers generally live on worldly Cosmic System thinking under the influence of the sinful nature since they cannot understand or use spiritual information. The exception is that God has set up a system of divine laws for all mankind to live under, which includes family, marriage, work, law and order, and general freedom to live life, and the unbeliever can enjoy these gifts from God to all mankind if they accept what God has established, even though it is not spiritual Truth to them. But many nations which are primarily filled with unbelievers reject God's system in favor of Satan's Cosmic System, overthrowing God's divine laws in favor of Satan's chaos. It is no coincidence that in such places people live hard lives at a basic level of subsistence.
Having no human spirit makes unbelievers especially vulnerable to the influences of the sinful nature. Unbelievers can often be moral and humble and have loving relationships and accomplish great things in their lives, and give money to charity, but none of it impresses God in any way. They cannot interface with God -- who is Spirit -- since the component God originally gave humans to interface with Him is missing in them. They are spiritually dead to 25
God. They require salvation and activation of a human spirit before God will have anything to do with them, or take notice of anything they do which is moral, nice, useful, helpful, and on and on. God has provided a way for them to escape from their spiritual death, but they have refused it. Therefore God cannot help them if they will not simply believe and accept the only Savior. Anyone who rejects God's free gift of salvation has by default accepted the alternative, and they never gain the human spirit, which is required to have an interface with God, during life or eternity, in any way, shape or form.
Let us now look at the enemy within us which fights against our human spirit, and continually attempts to gain control of our soul and derail our spiritual life.
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THE SINFUL NATURE
Now we come to the primary enemy of our spirituality which opposes our human spirit at every opportunity. The sinful nature is a real component of our inner self, but was not part of God's original creation, since He created humans as perfect beings. However, when Adam and Eve sinned two very bad things happened to them immediately, namely, they died spiritually by losing their human spirits, and they also gained a sinful nature. At that point they became imperfect beings by losing the human spirit, while the sinful nature replaced it as the dominant force in their lives. Therefore the sinful nature was acquired as an add-on attachment to the human soul when Adam and Eve sinned. Saying it is "attached" to the soul means the sinful nature is much like a barnacle on the hull of a ship, or a leach on a person. It was not meant to be there. God did not create it or design it. It was a human "creation" of the original man and woman when they first sinned and revolted against God. Rejecting God had enormous consequences not just for them but also for all their descendants.
The long term effects of that one act of disobedience has been monumental, and has resulted in misery during the life of every person, and also eternal misery for many of them. God held Adam directly responsible for the original sin, because Eve was deceived into it, while Adam chose deliberately to sin with full knowledge of his actions. Therefore it was Adam who understood what he was doing when he chose to sin, so his sinful nature was passed down to all his offspring. It is attached to the soul of every human except for Jesus Christ, who was not conceived from a male descendant of Adam, which avoided Adam's sinful legacy from being handed down to Him because He was not from Adam, but rather was "the seed of the woman." (Genesis 3:15) That is the significance of the virgin birth, that Adam's sinful legacy to the human race had no effect on Him, and He was born with a human spirit and without a sinful nature and therefore was a sinless and perfect human, just like the original humans were created. His sinless perfection made Him qualified to be the sacrifice for the sins of all humans, to redeem the human race from sin. For the rest of us we are condemned because of our sinful nature, not because we commit any specific sins.
The sinful nature is what tempts humans to disobey God, to revolt, to misbehave, to be arrogant, to disregard the normal functions of the soul and instead act irresponsibly. It is 27
more instinctive and animalistic than the soul was intended to be as designed by God. And it is also the legacy of the revolt of Satan against God. When Satan sinned against God, and also the angels who joined him, each of them acquired a similar sinful nature at that point. So the sinful nature actually pre-dates humans, since it is an ancient legacy of the revolt of Satan against God. And Satan tempted the first humans into sin in order to pull them toward himself and away from God, therefore humans were lured into accepting the sinful nature which Satan had invented by his original sin. The sinful nature is what makes all who have it sin and disobey God. It is indeed the enemy within each of us. After salvation we regain the human spirit lost by the original sin, but retain the sinful nature. But we can begin to fight against the sinful nature if we fill our human spirit with Truth and then use the power of God's Word in our daily life. This is the essence of our spirituality, that we must use our human spirit filled with the power of the Word of God to wage war against our sinful nature, and at the same time grow to love and worship God and our Savior.
The fact that the soul is the source of so many negatives also proves that the sinful nature is attached to the soul, even though not inside the soul. The sinful nature is that add-on part of the soul which Satan "owns" since he was the source of its creation at the fall of man. So the sinful nature is how Satan's Cosmic System influences people, and this is true for both believer and unbeliever. Genesis 8:21 says “every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood” because every person is born under the control and influence of the sinful nature.
And as a person grows up mentally as a human being, the sinful nature develops faster than the soul's logical advisors, and this is especially evident during the teen years. Therefore human "mental growth" is less about brain development than soul development, since soul development is the only way to develop the logical advisors of the soul in a way which opposes the sinful nature's influences on the heart of the soul. This is the battle as a person grows up to human maturity, for unbelievers as well as believers, as the human soul fights to gain logical advantages primarily in the conscience over the sinful nature in order to keep the sinful nature under control to some degree. And illogical thinking and actions come from the soul, not from the human brain.
The Bible refers to the sinful nature in several ways. Although the phrase "sin nature" is sometimes used, the primary word used is "flesh," as something carnal which was not originally part of the soul, and this is also where the phrase "fleshly desires" originated. The word "sin" in the singular and "sinful" are also used for the sinful nature, as well as several other terms. The following Bible verses refer to the sinful nature, and they are provided so the Reader can understand more about the sinful nature by reading through them without additional commentary. There are quite a few of them, but this is an important issue to understand since it is about the enemy of the soul. (Note: the bolded items are references to 28
1 Cor. 3:11–15
"Whatever is done in the power of the sin nature, is “wood, hay, and straw” and has no lasting value."
1 Pet. 2:11
“Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.”
Galatians 5:17
"For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do."
Ephesians 2:3
"Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."
Galatians 5:16
"But I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh."
Ephesians 4:22
"To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires"
Galatians 5:19-23
"Now the works of the flesh are evident..."
Romans 8:3
"For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do."
John 3:6
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."
Romans 13:14
"...make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires."
Romans 8:3
"For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit."
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"For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God."
Colossians 3:9
"Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices"
2 Peter 2:18
"For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error."
Romans 7:22-25
"For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me."
This is just a representative set of verses, and there are many more. But we can see from the above verses that the sinful nature is discussed often in the Bible. With the sinful nature attached to the soul, it influences the person in multiple ways, all negative. The term "base instincts" applies to the low level conniving, arrogant, and immoral influences which are promoted from the sinful nature. Its primary path is to use the emotion of the soul to influence the mind and heart, since the emotion is a non-thinking responder to the mind and heart. The heart is the decision maker of the soul, and coordinates all soul functions and keeps order within the soul. The emotion of the soul is used by the sinful nature to attack the heart and mind because what it proposes is not Truth or moral or even logical. Instead, the sinful nature peddles instinctive gratification of lust, arrogance, and other base desires, which entices the emotion into a relationship with it, if the heart is not diligent in preventing such an alliance. If the heart gives in to the sinful nature too often and in destructive ways, the heart can become hardened, and mental illness can result. (The Author has an entire separate book on how the soul is organized and functions titled "Thought & Belief" which is freely available to all, so this is just a short summary of the subject.)
Therefore the sinful nature works primarily through a system of arrogance and lusts. The arrogance part lures the person into thinking of themselves in vastly superior terms, far above reality. Arrogance therefore becomes a primary means of rejecting that which does not come from self, since only self matters, and only self is all-knowing. The second part, the lusts, take many forms, and are not always the carnal or lascivious type as most think of them. Lusts can be carnal, but more likely, and more destructive, are the lusts for power, wealth, status, 30
superiority over others, and even self-righteousness regarding one's own type of sins as compared to others. It may seem odd, but the sinful nature of each person has unique preferred sins and also non-preferred sins. Each sinful nature is different. This is because certain types of sins do not line up with the particular lusts the individual prefers, which the sinful nature has acquired along the way. It may also come as a surprise that people who look down on others for the sins they commit, because they are "less refined" than their own sins, are fulfilling a lust for superiority from the sinful nature. Whenever another person is regarded as a lesser human than self, the sinful nature is exercising its lust to be superior in its own view. This often leads to sins of the tongue against another person. James 3:6 says "The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell." The reference to
"hell" refers to the sinful nature as being a part of Satan's domain, since he is its originator.
The various lusts motivate behaviors which are counter to the plan of God, and interfere with the normal function of the soul as God designed it. And most people have conflicting lusts since the sinful nature is not logical, but rather is often instinctive. Recall that God did not give humans instincts to live by, but when humans sinned against God they chose instincts, which were introduced into the soul through the sinful nature. These lusts are what makes humans instinctive and even animalistic although God did not design humans to function that way. God designed us to think in the soul, not to live by instincts.
The sinful nature cannot act on its own and requires that the heart validate its desires. At first this is not an easy task for the sinful nature, and treachery is required. If the sinful nature makes progress in getting its way, the process becomes much easier. If this continues, the sinful nature can even stage a successful coup against the heart, whereby the heart essentially becomes the hostage of the sinful nature. The heart cannot shift the blame to the other parts of the soul and say "it wasn't me who did that" when it gives in to the desires of the sinful nature. Usually the emotion is involved with the sinful nature, and the heart finds it difficult to refuse the emotion, because the emotion provides the heart with feelings such as joy and elation, which the heart enjoys. The sinful nature abuses this relationship between heart and emotion to its advantage, and presents its lusts first to the emotion, and in turn the emotion presents them to the heart in the form of enticing emotional fulfillment. These base instincts are from the sinful nature, but it is the heart which must approve them to be released from the soul, therefore the heart must first validate the inputs from the sinful nature/emotion and make the final decision before any desires from the sinful nature are executed as a decision.
But the more the heart gives in to the desires of the sinful nature, the easier it is for that sinful nature to have its desires approved by the heart. Over time the base desires essentially become instinctive. When this happens, the heart can be hardened into a position of evil as it 31
becomes instinctively predisposed to accept the desires of the sinful nature as the policy of the soul.
Of course, it does not need to be that way. The heart can heed the advice of the mind and its conscience and reject the overtures of the sinful nature. And we will see that when the human spirit is filled with the Word of God, the human spirit can be the most powerful opponent of the sinful nature. In a practical sense we know when the sinful nature is fighting for control over our soul in many cases. Doubts are a key attack from the sinful nature. Of course lusts are attacks on the soul, many of which are not carnal, but rather more "refined" types based on legalism. The most insidious attacks come in the form of pressure to think in ways destructive to the soul, such as worry, anxiety, panic, fear, and many forms of detrimental thinking. These break down faith, and can interfere with the spiritual life in ways which can be more destructive than carnal sinning. But God has provided a way to escape, but it is only through salvation followed by filling up the human spirit with Truth, which provides the power to live a life of spirituality.
Therefore the sinful nature is the enemy within, attached to our soul, working constantly to distract, derail, pull us in the wrong directions, cause emotional reactions against right actions, and lure us into revolting against the plan God has for our life. These mental sins become both inwardly destructive and also harmful toward others, including outward expressions as sins of the tongue. For believers the relationship with the sinful nature ends at the point of physical death when it is removed from us like a barnacle from the ship hull, or a leach on the skin, and it is gone from us forever. But for unbelievers it will remain part of them eternally, and will increase their torment.
Proverbs 4:22 says "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." The
"guarding" refers to the attacks from the sinful nature, which is an illegitimate advisor to the heart, and is the source of temptations which attempt to get the heart to decide in favor of things the heart knows to be wrong, or should know to be wrong. When the heart is primarily listening to and heeding the advice of the sinful nature the soul is working contrary to the design of God. The sinful nature is the ally of Satan, and allowing it to control the soul is a particularly disastrous state for believers. It keeps the believer out of the will of God unless it is reversed. And the negative influences from the sinful nature includes much more than sin, but also all manner of thinking in opposition to God's plan for our lives.
As believers there is a constant war in our soul, the battle of good versus evil. Our spiritual 32
side, the human spirit, wars against the sinful nature, and vice versa. Unfortunately, the sinful nature wins on a more regular basis in most believers. It is a sad fact, but for those who seek to please God during their time on earth, they will study the Word of God and fill their human spirit with spiritual learning, and thereby will grow in spiritual power from the Word.
As this growth continues, the believer has greater ability to resist the sinful nature and to fulfill the plan of God. No believer will be perfect while alive on earth, and the sinful nature often gains certain advantages from time to time, but the key is to keep moving forward and continue to grow in the Word in order to fill the human spirit with as much knowledge of Truth as possible. This provides divine power to the human spirit to influence the soul's mind and heart to follow the will of God and resist the sinful nature, and that is the primary purpose of the life of the believer after salvation. We believers remain on earth to grow spiritually, to live out of our human spirit to influence the soul to make right choices, and to defeat the sinful nature in our daily walk with God. The growth in Truth inside our human spirit is what enables us to love God, appreciate our Savior Jesus Christ, and generally to live as He wants us to live. Then eternity is full of rewards for such a believer.
For unbelievers, they can choose to keep their sinful nature under some degree of control, especially because they are not subject to the same pressures on the soul which believers face.
They can live with their soul working rather normally if they develop a good conscience, or they can give in to their sinful nature and degenerate into a state of revolt against the natural laws which God set in place for all humans to live by and under. The unbeliever can use the mind to figure things out rationally, with the heart listening to the advice of the mind and its conscience, the emotion appreciating the experiences the soul enjoys, and that unbeliever can generally live a moral life, being a good citizen, helping their fellow humans in time of need, and being an overall decent person. They are still unsaved, but their life is generally "normal"
and stable to a certain degree, even though apart from God. That is the gift God has given them while they are alive, respecting their choice to refuse salvation. But after their short life is over their eternity is a very different matter, since unbelievers will retain their sinful nature and all its negative motivations for all eternity, as the Bible says, they will have anguish, regrets, anger, remorse, fears, weeping and all manner of negative thoughts which will make them even more miserable. The believer will have none of these. But for the unbeliever the sinful nature will be a secondary source of soul pain during eternity, along with the intense physical pain. Unbelievers will live eternally with the same soul they had while alive, including their sinful nature, but they will never have a human spirit. Therefore they can never interact with God.
Now that we are beginning to understand how our human spirit must fight against the sinful nature, and how that must be done with the Word of God as the power source, how do we 33
know when we are living out of our human spirit? How does it seem different to us than living out from our soul? These are important questions, and the answers are complex. The following chapters will deal with these issues and explain how the human spirit actually works to drive the spiritual life of the believer, and put us into a regular state of spirituality.
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LIVING OUT OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT vs. LIVING OUT OF THE SOUL
This is where our understanding of spirituality begins to become clear, because we can now see it as an inner battle over control of the soul, our human spirit battling the sinful nature, and this is a continuous war from salvation until our death. As a believer in Jesus Christ who has eternal salvation, we must decide whether to live a life inside God's plan or to live like any unbeliever focused on the world. And it is a choice, or actually a continual series of choices, over our remaining lifetime. We have previously discussed the human spirit in detail, and how it must continually fight against the sinful nature by using the Truth of God's Word as its source of power. Now we see that this war over control of the soul either results in a focus on the world using our sinful nature, or on God because the soul is driven by our human spirit filled with spiritual Truth. Although we must live in the world, we must not conform to it, but the sinful nature will continually try to focus our attention on what the world has to offer in place of what God has offered to us. The decision maker of the soul is called the "heart" in the Bible, so it is the heart which must make continual decisions to choose in favor of Truth in the human spirit rather than to choose in favor of the desires of the sinful nature. This is what is meant by the word "yield" as the heart needs to refocus and yield to the human spirit filled with Truth, not to the sinful nature, in order to achieve spirituality.
We have therefore defined spirituality as living out of our human spirit which has been filled up with spiritual information to have a right relationship with God while not conforming to the thinking and desires of the world. The sinful nature persistently tries to have us focus on the world and our own desires in order to distract us away from a spiritual life. And we must remember that we are not working our way into Heaven because eternal salvation is a free gift to the undeserving because of Jesus Christ, while eternal rewards are earned by using God's power, namely Truth inside our human spirit. But to gain spirituality we must first learn Truth, and that is where the Holy Spirit mentors us as we study under a well-prepared pastor.
The result should be a human spirit filled with spiritual Truth, which is the power from God to live a life of spirituality. God sent a Savior for us when we were lost in sin, and He sent the Holy Spirit to save us from a life of subjection to our sinful nature.
The human spirit is a spiritual entity, and the Holy Spirit must be involved in the process of 35
storing spiritual information into it, where He also resides as He indwells us. It is a spiritual process which results in spiritual power. But it takes time, and the process of spiritual growth can seem to be quite slow. Therefore our life is a spiritual battle for control of the soul, and our armament is the Word of God. The Apostle Paul said "take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:16-17) The importance of learning the Word over our lifetime after salvation cannot be overemphasized.
Therefore the primary issue in spirituality is living a life directed from the human spirit filled with Truth from the Word of God, instead of living out of a soul filled with human learning and focused on the desires of the sinful nature. It is simultaneously that simple and that difficult.
In the lifelong battle between the human spirit and sinful nature over which one will control and direct the soul, the struggle begins after salvation with the human spirit at a complete disadvantage since it has little or no Truth. At best we have a very little appreciation for our salvation, and not much more. Galatians 5:16 says: "So I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. 22 But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." [NOTE: all uses of the word "spirit" in this part of Galatians refer to the human spirit, so have been changed to lower case "s" in this quotation. We will address the reasons for this in a later chapter.]
There are three stages to becoming a believer, and living as a believer in Jesus Christ. These are called by theologians justification, sanctification, and glorification. Do not be afraid of these terms, because they are simpler than they would seem. Essentially, these three refer to salvation (justification), followed by gaining spirituality (post-salvation sanctification of the inner human) during our time as believers on earth, then after death an eternal future with God in glorification and having rewards, if earned. The first enables the second, and the second (spirituality) determines how much the believer pleases God during life, and also what rewards will be given in eternity. And while salvation is a moment in time, gaining and living spirituality is a lifelong process. Then eternity is forever, so our spirituality while on earth, or lack of it, has significant eternal consequences.
Therefore Bible study becomes the number one priority after salvation, since it provides the power from God to live a life of spirituality. The Bible describes spirituality as more than 36
simply having eternal salvation, although that is a necessary first step because salvation provides the critical component to becoming spiritual, which is regeneration or rebirth of a human spirit. At that point we have a spiritual component of our inner human, which was lacking before we were saved. But after salvation, spirituality is a second step which provides a day-by-day relationship with God which pleases Him, not perfectly, because we are all sinners throughout our lives. And spirituality is not about making ourselves more acceptable to God, because at the moment of our salvation God Himself makes us perfectly acceptable to Him because of what Christ did, not because of what we have done or will do. Rather, spirituality is using God's power from our human spirit to direct our soul to think and make decisions in accordance with God's plan for our life. And that process is more of a zig-zag than a straight line, because there will inevitably be failures along the way.
It is important to note that spirituality has two components which work together, which are 1) the status or state of being spiritual/not spiritual, and 2) the level of spirituality, from low to high. The state of spirituality means we are either spiritual or not spiritual at any given time.
This means we are at any moment either using our human spirit to control our soul (spirituality), or we are not using our human spirit but rather using only our soul backed by our sinful nature (non-spirituality). Then the level of spirituality is a range from low to high, and means that when we are actually living in spirituality, we are either living at a lower or higher level, from a spiritual baby to spiritual maturity. This is important and also difficult to describe, and has led to significant misunderstandings about the subject. First, there is the
"spirituality/not in spirituality" or "in or out" part. This first part is about whether we are living in a state of spirituality. The question to answer here is: are we using our human spirit to control our soul? If yes, then we are in a state of spirituality. But that is not the entire issue. There is also the second question: what level of spirituality are we at when using our human spirit? So if we are in a state of spirituality, there is a level which is based on how much Truth is in our human spirit. That would be the difference between a newly saved believer, one in the intermediate stage, and one who has studied the Bible intensively over a lifetime. That is a continuum from baby to adult phases.
Spirituality is like walking a narrow path between two opposites, which are carnality and legalism. Both outcomes are displeasing to God. On one side of the narrow path there is a life of carnal sin, and on the other side there is a life of self-righteousness, which is also sin. They are simply two different forms of living without spirituality. God only accepts the narrow path as pleasing to Him, because a life of spirituality is living by His power trusting in His plan and accepting His way as the right way. Of course, none of us are perfect, and all get off the path at times. When we deviate from the path, it is not so relevant which side of the path we fall into, because God finds both repugnant, and rejects both equally. But God never closes off the 37
path. He is always ready to welcome us back onto it. That is the message of the Prodigal Son parable, showing us that He is eager to help us along the way, and to get us back on track any time we are ready to stop living from our soul alone, and seek to take His power into our human spirit and live by it. And as the Prodigal Son said to himself: "What was I thinking?"
Exactly right. Been there, done that. Every one of us. God simply wants us to get back on the path and keep moving.
The Apostle Paul wrote of his own occasional failures to measure up to spiritual expectations, and giving in to the sinful nature even though he was one of the most spiritually advanced believers to ever live. Romans 7:14 says:
"We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin [sinful nature] living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin [sinful nature] living in me that does it."
Whenever Paul failed (as we all do) and his sinful nature took over, he ceased to live by his human spirit and instead lived by his soul backed by his sinful nature. At such points in time he was not living in a state of spirituality, even though he was one of the most spiritually mature believers of all time. That is the "in or out" part of spirituality, and he is describing the times when he was "out" of spirituality. But after a short time he would return to living from his human spirit filled with the massive amounts of Truth built up over many years, and would function once again "in" spirituality, where his maturity was at the highest level of spirituality. That is the "level of spirituality" part. So we can see that spirituality is both a state (in or out) and level (from baby to mature). Paul could lose spirituality for a while, but when he returned to it, he resumed at a very high level, essentially where he had left off. Most believers are generally in the "out" status of spirituality, and for those short periods when they are "in" spirituality, it is at a baby level. Some believers spend more time "in" spirituality and at a moderate level. And a very few spend most of their time "in" spirituality and at a mature level. This mix of state and level is a very important concept to understand.
Another example of this dual aspect of spirituality would be a new believer who has not yet learned any Bible Truth beyond the salvation message. That believer might enter into Bible 38
study and learn some basic Truth, but at this early point the believer would only occasionally use the very little Truth learned to be in a status of spirituality, but only at a very low "baby"
level. When a new believer stops using the human spirit due to lack of adequate Truth in it, which is very often at first, the spirituality status would be lost until it is regained by turning away from the sinful nature and back to using the small amount of Truth in the human spirit.
At that point the believer would once again be in a state of spirituality but still at a very low level. So also the believer who had been saved for many years but never learned any Truth, but decided to start studying the Bible. Once again we see there can be a very intermittent status of spirituality, but only at a "baby" level since there had been no spiritual growth in Truth for many years after salvation. As an additional example, a believer who seeks and learns only false information about the Bible (mysticism or other forms of non-Truth) there cannot be any status or level of spirituality since they are living by false information, which can only be stored in the soul, not in the human spirit, since it is not Truth.
Spirituality is therefore not automatic after salvation, since it requires a pursuit of Truth in order to provide power for the human spirit before it can function. The early stages of spiritual growth are the most hazardous, and many get discouraged and fall away. Spirituality is also not continuous, because all believers fail in one way or another, whether by sin, becoming focused on the world, or simply ignoring God and focusing instead on the world and what it offers. We can also see that spirituality is a continuum with many levels of maturity.
The believer who has very little Truth in their human spirit can only achieve a minimal level of spirituality when using their human spirit, while higher levels of spirituality can be achieved when the human spirit contains higher levels of Truth. Therefore it takes consistent, ongoing decisions to fill up the human spirit with Truth, and also decisions to use the human spirit to direct soul thinking and actions. These two work together to determine the impact of one's spirituality. Higher levels of spiritual maturity means higher spiritual impact, greater interaction with God, and greater eternal rewards. But those believers who live a life of limited spirituality, both intermittent (out more than in) and at low levels of maturity (remain a spiritual baby due to failure to learn Truth) will have little or no rewards. And their time on earth will be one of divine discipline for their failures. This is why it is so important to learn as much spiritual Truth as possible. Both our interaction with God and eternal rewards depend on how much time we spend in spirituality, and the level of spirituality we achieve.
As we discussed, the believer must make consistent decisions to live out of the human spirit instead of heeding the sinful nature which constantly seeks to lead us astray. And that
"leading astray" is much more than just sin, as it uses many forms of distraction to get us to ignore God and His plan. It is a lifelong battle with many failures along the way. Remember the "not perfectly" phrase or guilt and disappointment will bring you down. God wants us to 39
be focused on what we will decide right now, today. Will we admit our weakness without Him and use the power He has provided, or will we languish under the control of our sinful nature?
Too many believers fail to move forward spiritually because they are focused on what they have done wrong, not what they should do next. God is forgiving of any and all of our failures.
Many other believers may live a very moral life and think they are being spiritual because of what they avoid doing. That is as misguided as the one focused on a life of sin. The issue is what you do at this moment in time, either turn to the power of Truth inside the human spirit to drive the soul, or allow the soul to be driven by the sinful nature and drift through life like an unbeliever.
Recall our earlier discussion about the Apostle Paul when he said in Romans Chapter 7: "15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do...17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin [sinful nature] living in me." The noted Bible scholar C.I. Scofield who is known best for his Scofield Reference Bible said of this passage:
"It is a very common mistake to suppose that we could be holy if we only wanted to.
We think our difficulty lies in bringing the will to act on the side of what God requires, and that if we really put forth sufficient will power we should enter upon a spiritual life.
But here is a man [the Apostle Paul] who makes the amazing discovery that the spiritual life is something above the reach of his will at its highest stretch. He cannot grasp spirituality and bring it down into his life by willing to do it. And this was the experience, let us remember, of one of the strongest wills that ever was lodged in a human character. The Apostle Paul was not a weakling; he was endowed with immense will power...But here was a seemingly simple thing that he was not able to do; but now he has before him an ideal which is unattainable by the power of his resolution. "To will is present within me," he says, "but how to perform that which is good, I find not."
He cannot will himself into spirituality." C. I Scofield, "The New Life in Christ Jesus"
pp. 34-35
The Apostle Paul then went on to write the most amazing concepts and doctrines related to the use of the human spirit to attain the highest levels of spirituality, which he indeed achieved.
And this is the issue in spirituality which many believers cannot get past. They want to do it for themselves, under their own power. They want to perform great deeds for God. They think their power is sufficient for the task of bringing themselves into a state of spirituality.
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But God's plan is one of using His power, and the Bible tells us "the Word of God is alive and powerful." (Hebrews 4:12) It is only when we admit our weakness that we can accept the power from God to bring us into spirituality. Any other method is rejected by God as "wood, hay and straw" to be burned, not rewarded. (1 Corinthians 3:12) It is therefore the height of human arrogance to go through life ignoring God's power from the Truth while simply being moral and doing good deeds, thinking God will be impressed with our own human power.
The reward level for such a person will be equivalent to those who spent their life in carnal sins. Both are equally unacceptable to God, because both reject the Word of God as the power from God to provide spirituality.
Therefore, if the human spirit is empty of Truth, no spirituality is possible until Truth is first learned. All humans have a soul, and human learning enables it to function in the universe.
We slowly build up knowledge about the world which eventually allows us to function without a parent doing everything for us. But only believers have a regenerated human spirit, and it must be slowly filled up over time with knowledge of Truth from the Word of God. This alone tells us the human spirit is there to interact with God, since He is Spirit, and we must approach Him by spirit, which means using our human spirit. God cannot interact with humans who come to Him using their soul without the backing of the human spirit, because the soul is not a spiritual entity. Interaction with God must be spirit to Spirit. And for this interaction to be effective, the human spirit must be filled with Truth from the Word of God by the indwelling Holy Spirit, who resides inside (indwells) our human spirit. This is the key role of the Holy Spirit in our lives after salvation, namely that He is our mentor for learning Truth and He turns such learning into divine wisdom and power in our human spirit. We should begin to understand that learning Truth from the Word of God is not just an academic process of learning, but rather it is an empowerment process of filling up our human spirit with spiritual fuel and power to interact with God at an ever-increasing level of effectiveness.
Spirituality is living out of the human spirit filled with Truth from the Word of God, instead of living out of the soul filled with human learning. Until the human spirit has enough Truth to begin to be effective, it will not have enough power to defeat the sinful nature, which seeks to inhibit the spiritual life. Everything the human spirit does is spiritual, because it is incapable of doing anything else. It cannot contain any false information, because the Holy Spirit will refuse to place it there. So the human spirit is kept pure by the Holy Spirit, but it can also be empty or nearly so if the believer refuses to learn Truth. Therefore false information which we believe to be spiritual Truth is stored in the soul, not the human spirit, as the Holy Spirit sorts out spiritual Truth from falsehood regarding what we believe. The soul contains a mixture of correct and incorrect beliefs, but the human spirit can only contain pure Truth, because the Holy Spirit makes it so.
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However, the Holy Spirit does not circumvent our learning processes, and only participates when actual Truth is learned from the Word, and then the Holy Spirit will ensure it is stored in the human spirit, and combined with other Truth to enable spiritual growth, which becomes the power of God inside our human spirit. The human spirit is the repository of spiritual Truth, not the soul, and this is the key to spirituality, filling the human spirit with the Word of God and then living out of the human spirit using divine Truth, applying it to our daily lives. This is also where the Holy Spirit resides as He indwells all believers. God gives us His power to enable our spirituality, because our own striving and straining is not acceptable to Him, since those are soul functions. And that is spirituality -- living out of the human spirit using Truth which has been mentored to us by the Holy Spirit who dwells inside our human spirit, to minimize the impact of the sinful nature in our life so that we can live a positive spiritual life. While that involves controlling sin, it is done in a positive spiritual way, not by human straining from the soul.
The Holy Spirit does not directly apply Truth for us, and He does not use His own divine power to directly control our soul or empower our life apart from the Word. Therefore He does not war against the sinful nature directly for us, but rather gives us the power to do so, but only if we expose ourselves consistently to learning Truth from the Word. If we do, the Holy Spirit mentors our human spirit and fills it up with Truth as we learn it, and then we can live a spiritual life out from our human spirit by applying divine Truth to drive our soul to make positive decisions to live by the power from God, not by our own power from the soul alone. Trying to use our own human power apart from the Word is rejecting the grace plan of God, which will fail and result in little or no eternal rewards. This process of spiritual growth requires learning Truth so that the Holy Spirit has something to use to populate inside the human spirit. This is what the Bible refers to as "filling in the spirit" which has often been mistranslated as "filled with the Spirit." (Ephesians 5:18) We must be filled with Truth in the human spirit--the Holy Spirit does not "fill" us with Himself but rather He fills up our human spirit with Truth as it is learned. Then the believer can live by Truth out of their human spirit.
The mis-translation of spirit with Spirit would assume the Holy Spirit lives our spiritual life for us, or empowers us directly. The Holy Spirit is indeed very important in our spiritual life as our mentor, therefore He enables our spiritual growth so that we can have power from Truth to live a spiritual life, but not expect Him to live our life for us. This false doctrine has pervaded Christian teaching for hundreds of years to the detriment of spiritual growth of many generations of believers.
So we see that gaining a human spirit at salvation enables the ability to become spiritual, but simply possessing one does not result in instant spirituality. That requires filling that human spirit with Truth from the Word of God, which results in a process of spiritual growth leading 42
to a state of spirituality. Some believers will use their human spirit to pursue spirituality, but most will not. The believer must make consistent and ongoing decisions, day by day, to gain and then live by Truth in their human spirit. It is a process which takes considerable time and effort, and is the primary test God gives us for the remainder of our life. Most will reject it and live instead from their soul, while some will succeed to a lesser or greater degree, although no believer is perfect. Our spirituality will always be an imperfect execution of God's will. But when we fail we must pick up and move on, returning to the Truth inside our human spirit and make decisions from it. God has already forgiven us of every sin through Jesus Christ, so we must simply regain a focus on Truth and make decisions to live by it from our human spirit.
The foundation of being spiritual begins with salvation when a person believes in Jesus Christ as their Savior. At that moment the person goes from spiritual death to spiritual life when a human spirit is given to that new believer. This is called regeneration, because what was lost at the fall of Adam and Eve -- the human spirit -- is regenerated or made alive by the Holy Spirit. The loss of the human spirit caused our original parents and all their descendants to go from spiritual beings to a status of spiritual death. Therefore all descendants of the original parents are born spiritually dead. Of course, Jesus Christ is the only exception, as we will discuss in detail later. For the original sinners spiritual death occurred at the point of their first sin, since God had created them with a human spirit. For all their progeny spiritual death occurs at birth, therefore all humans are born spiritually dead, having no ability to interact with God unless they regain a human spirit. This is a key point, that there are two parts of the immaterial human, the soul and the human spirit. The unbeliever has only a soul during their entire life, but the believer has both a soul and a human spirit beginning at salvation, as we shall soon discuss in detail. And it is the human spirit which makes a person into a spiritual being, and makes it possible to eventually have spirituality. A person can be a spiritual being (saved) but not have spirituality (a close relationship with God.) Without the human spirit a person can only interact with the creation of God, but not with God Himself. This point cannot be overemphasized, that to interact with God requires a human to have a spiritual component, which is the human spirit. And since the soul is not spiritual, but rather an immaterial component which interacts with God's creation, no human can interact with God unless their soul is backed by a spiritual component, namely the human spirit. That spiritual component must be regained before a person can be spiritual in any way.
Recall that the Bible says "God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in Truth." However, gaining a human spirit is only a first step toward spirituality, since the spirit is imparted empty and must be filled up to become useful, and it can only be filled with divine Truth. Therefore, once a person has become a believer and has gained a human spirit, 43
that person must then develop and live a spiritual life from within their human spirit, the component of the inner human which makes a person capable of understanding spiritual information as Truth from the Word of God, and also enables interaction with God. Our spirit must interact with God on a spirit level. The soul is not spiritual, although it is immaterial in our sense of the word, so the soul cannot interact with God unless it is backed by a human spirit. The key difference between unbelievers and believers is that unbelievers have no human spirit, and believers have a human spirit. Unbelievers cannot interact with God, or be spiritual in any way. Believers have the basis of spirituality at the moment of salvation, but only achieve actual spirituality over time by filling their human spirit with Truth from the Word of God, the fuel for spirituality.
But how did our understanding of spirituality become so confused, and why? The following chapters will begin to explain.
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THE EARLY CHURCH: HOLY SPIRIT SPECIAL EMPOWERMENT
Many Christians are confused about descriptions of how the Holy Spirit directly empowered the Apostles and certain other early Church leaders soon after the cross, when the Church Age was just getting started. Additionally, there was an emotional response displayed during the initial Holy Spirit empowerment of the new Apostles on the day of Pentecost, causing some present day believers to incorrectly tie the Holy Spirit to emotion. As a result, many take what God did to get the Church started and misapply it to the entire Church Age, especially how the Holy Spirit directly empowered the Apostles and a few early leaders. These few were able to heal the sick, speak in Tongues, write divinely inspired epistles, prophesy, and perform other miraculous actions which came directly from the Holy Spirit empowering that person.
However, this direct empowerment by the Holy Spirit which was provided to a select few ceased to be available once the Church was on a firm foundation and the New Testament had been completed, and before most of the Apostles had died. The direct empowerment from the Holy Spirit was provided only long enough to assure the Church would become established, and to enable the writing of the New Testament. After a rather short time, even the Apostles no longer had most of these direct empowerments from the Holy Spirit. But many believers incorrectly attempt to apply what happened during the startup phase of the Church to their own spiritual lives today, and therefore fail to understand spirituality during the Church Age.
It is also important to note that these direct empowerments were not a part of the spirituality of the individual, since it was the Holy Spirit who was performing the miraculous actions, and the person was simply a means to achieve the actions. In order to be personal spirituality, the action must be done by the individual using Truth in the human spirit, not by God as a direct empowerment.
So the question is, if the Holy Spirit directly empowered the Disciples as they became the Apostles, and also a very few others during those early critical times, why not us as well? The answers are in the Bible, and we will now examine such information and see why the early descriptions of Holy Spirit direct empowerment cannot be applied to us today, since the two conditions are very different. In short, when God needed to give a boost to the fledgling Church as it was starting out, He provided demonstrations of great power for the world to see, such as miraculous signs which a human could not possibly perform. Also, the New Testament needed to be revealed and written, which required direct empowerment. But that 45
direct empowerment from the Holy Spirit did not last for long, because God's plan requires current believers of the Church Age to obtain their power from the Word of God, and to live by that power to live the most advanced form of spirituality God has ever made available.
Descriptions in the Book of Acts show a disorganized group of former Disciples who were suddenly Apostles, without the leadership of Jesus, and no actual Church yet in existence, as they all struggled to establish some sort of ministry to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Savior. Jesus had just been crucified, and the Disciples were mostly in hiding trying to decide how to move forward. Jesus had told them to watch, wait, and pray, but they were lost and afraid. They were in hiding because the Jewish leaders were attempting to squash all attempts to hold together what Jesus had started. Then Jesus began appearing in His resurrection body to encourage them, and He promised just before His Ascension to send the Holy Spirit to sort it all out and to provide the extra boost of power needed to establish the Church. But that power was temporary, as we will discuss.
During these early days when the Holy Spirit directly empowered a very few early Church leaders, the Holy Spirit is described in Acts as being "upon" them. This is the same phrase used for Old Testament prophets when they prophesied, as the Holy Spirit was "upon" them, and being "upon" meant the Holy Spirit imparted His direct power to complete specific tasks, such as writing the Bible, leadership, great strength such as with Sampson, artisan abilities for making Temple furniture, healing powers, prophesying and so on. Note that this term "upon"
is not used in any Epistles to the Church when the Holy Spirit is discussed, and was only used in the Gospels and Acts when the Holy Spirit directly empowered a very few believers for specific purposes, and for a short period of time. But direct empowerment ended once the Church became more firmly established, and Paul and others discussed the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for every believer, instead of the Holy Spirit being "upon" a few. Therefore the direct empowerment of a few early Church leaders cannot be compared or made analogous to what happened after the Church had become established, and especially after the Apostles were all gone. The last direct empowerment was for writing the New Testament, and after John wrote Revelation, it ceased entirely. Direct empowerment by the Holy Spirit is not available today to any believer, however the Holy Spirit ensures we have the power to live a life of spirituality through the Word of God, as He mentors us and makes the power of the Word available to those who fill up their human spirit with it. God has a special plan for the Church, which is to show God's power through the Word as sufficient for believers to live a life of great spirituality. Our spirituality is designed to show the world how God can change us from the inside, not how He can directly control and empower us to perform tasks. The Church is called on to live a much more complex and powerful form of spirituality than was available in other periods of time.
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Therefore the Book of Acts describes how the early Church began, with direct empowerment from the Holy Spirit beginning on the day of Pentecost, which was 50 days after the crucifixion of Jesus, and 10 days after Jesus ascended to Heaven. The Lord had been back on earth in His eternal body demonstrating the reality of His resurrection from the dead, but then ascended to Heaven while the Disciples watched. Ten days later on Pentecost in Jerusalem, and only in Jerusalem, these new Apostles and some other leaders were given direct empowerment from the Holy Spirit to accomplish miracles and perform other supernatural tasks. These included healing powers, speaking in foreign languages ("tongues") which they did not know to evangelize foreigners visiting Jerusalem, prophesying, and other miraculous capabilities to establish their credentials as leaders and to show the power and legitimacy of Christianity. This power was not continuous for these few, and had limits. But for the Church to gain a firm foothold, there needed to be a very different show of great power unlike any other religion, especially Judaism as it had refused their Messiah.
As the Church spread into other regions, these miraculous powers from the Holy Spirit were used during missionary journeys to foreign lands to plant the seeds of Christianity, gain converts, and set up new Churches as described in the Apostle Paul's missionary journeys into Asia and southern Europe. However, once the Church had gained a foothold, most of those direct empowerments from the Holy Spirit were ended, even for the Apostles. Paul lost the power to heal, as had all the others before him. Only Tongues continued during the spread of the Gospel into foreign lands, but then it ended. The last direct empowerment from the Holy Spirit was for the writing of the New Testament, but when the last Book was written, that also ended. And once this happened, which was in about 96 AD, all direct empowerment from the Holy Spirit to believers ended, and there is no longer any direct empowerment of believers by the Holy Spirit. His power to Christians after salvation is now behind the scenes to enable us to learn and apply the Word of God and to put it into a usable form inside our human spirit.
That is why He now indwells the human spirit of every believer, something which had never happened for any believer during Old Testament times, although a very few had the Holy Spirit "upon" them, but not indwelling them prior to the Church Age.
Those who teach that the Holy Spirit directly empowers us to live a spiritual life are therefore attempting to apply what God did for the early Church leaders to our spiritual life today. But God has a higher calling for the Church, which is to require us to learn His Truth and fill up our human spirit with the power of the Word, so that we can live our spiritual life from our human spirit using this advanced form of God's power. And that is our basis for spirituality today, and is much more than was ever given to any believers previously. Old Testament 47
believers had a very basic spirituality, but God has given us a tremendous gift of empowerment from His Word, called the "mind of Christ" in us. But we must take hold of that power by learning the Word on a continual basis, and make it our lifelong mission to understand it and seize its power. It is therefore not a direct empowerment from the Holy Spirit, but rather something which leads to great reward for those who fulfill their spiritual destiny, since if the Holy Spirit did the work, it would not be us who earned eternal rewards.
As has been stated several times, the Holy Spirit accomplishes great and wonderful things for us, especially at the point of our salvation when He regenerates our human spirit and then indwells it. Then the Holy Spirit requires us to use the power He gave to us in the Word to live our spiritual life. It is only then that we have the power to live out from the human spirit instead of out of the soul. This is the highest and best form of spirituality ever given to believers from God, to have the most powerful form of the Word of God as written in the New Testament, which can develop the highest and best levels of spirituality in us. Therefore we must use the power which God provides through His Truth, and only the Holy Spirit can enable the learning and storage of that Truth inside our human spirit, which is how God shows the world His power in us.
We can begin to see why it is so important to understand that God has a mission for the Church which goes far beyond God's direct empowerment, and instead uses empowerment out of our human spirit by His Word. This elegant plan was reserved for the Church, and could only happen after Jesus Christ had paid for our salvation and made possible the next stage of expansion of grace, which has been handed to us in the form of New Testament Truth, the most powerful Truth ever given by God.
Attempting to return to the time of the fledgling early Church, and a time before any New Testament books had been written, and therefore a time before the power of Truth was expanded, is attempting to return to an era when the Holy Spirit needed to provide His own power until the power of the Word of God in the form of the New Testament was in place.
Since no New Testament books were written for many years after the cross, written Truth for the early Church was not yet available, therefore temporary empowerments from the Holy Spirit continued. After the written Word was completed we have all the power we need to live a spiritual life, and show the world and Satan himself what God can do for His children with the power of His Word, not by His direct empowerment. The beauty and elegance of His plan for our spirituality is amazing when understood, and leads us to a much deeper love of God and appreciation for our Savior than ever before possible. All the spiritual crutches and props and direct empowerments have been taken away so that we believers of the Church may soar to heights never before achieved by any believers previously. And we do it from our human spirit filled up with the Truth of the Word of God, with the Holy Spirit mentoring us, not 48
empowering us directly. That is power from God in the most amazing, unique, and elegant way, and will result in superior eternal rewards for Church Age believers which will be unlike those offered to any other period of time.
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WHAT SPIRITUALITY IS NOT -- FALSE SPIRITUALITY
We have defined spirituality as living out of our human spirit using the power of the Word of God to have a right relationship with God. This is counter to living from a soul filled with human learning and backed by the sinful nature in conformity with the thinking and desires of the world. These are the two opposing approaches to life for the believer. And it is important to get this right, because our eternal rewards will be based on the level of spirituality we achieve. But believers must choose the correct approach to spirituality, because there are many forms of false spirituality, some blatant and obvious, but many insidious and hard to recognize. Some are taught in mainstream churches, some by false religions, and others are simply mystical inventions. When trying to understand a difficult subject such as spirituality it often helps to define it from both the positive and negative sides, showing both what it is, and what it is not. So let us now take a look at what spirituality is not. This is important because of the significant confusion about this subject among believers.
Spirituality is not simply knowing facts from the Bible, but rather it is understanding the Word of God in the form of Truth inside our human spirit. This requires converting the Word as it is learned into spiritual power by the mentoring of the Holy Spirit, who also resides in our human spirit. The soul alone cannot turn the Word of God into spiritual power, since it is not a spiritual entity. We have noted that the soul is an immaterial entity, but not a spiritual one, and there is a big difference. God can only interact on a personal level as Spirit to spirit, not as Spirit to soul. Although the soul can memorize facts from the Bible, as even unbelievers can do, but that does not provide spirituality. And some believers can recite endless verses and relay many stories from the Bible, but they have no spiritual life because it is soul learning, not spirit learning. Soul learning has no spiritual power. Therefore spirituality cannot be achieved within the soul, but rather must be backed by the human spirit filled with Truth from the Word of God. And that is primarily what separates true spirituality from that which is false. Additionally, while most believers consider what they do to be the key to their spiritual life, or even how they feel, the Bible says it is what we think which is the main determiner of spirituality. And that thinking must be powered by Truth from the human spirit driving the soul to think and act in accordance with God's will.
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Spirituality is not about making ourselves more acceptable to God by our own works. Just as with salvation, at the moment of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior we are saved forever, since God Himself makes us perfectly acceptable to Him because of what Christ did, not because of what we have done or can do. After salvation, the focus of spirituality is also not about cleaning up our life by using our own human power. God is consistent in His approach, that He does not accept human striving under one's own soul power to gain either salvation or spirituality. Rather, spirituality is using God's power from the Word of God inside our human spirit to grow up spiritually and use that power from the Word to interact more closely and correctly with God and others. Spirituality cannot be attained at any level by using human power since that is living out of the soul instead of the human spirit. Living out of the soul and disregarding the human spirit results in a complete lack of spirituality. Our thoughts and outputs from the soul which are not motivated and directed from the human spirit filled with Truth are not spirituality. This is because Truth from the Word of God is only stored in the human spirit, not in the soul, and only the human spirit can cause and enable spirituality.
Note that a human spirit which is empty of Truth or nearly so cannot direct or motivate the soul to express spirituality, so there cannot be any spirituality in that believer's life, even if they end up being generally moral, perform good deeds, and believe they are a good Christian.
And if the believer knows some Truth but fails to apply it to life, there is a lack of spirituality due to shutting off Truth and using human knowledge from the soul instead. And if there is no human spirit (unbeliever) there is no ability to be spiritual in any way, shape or form.
The following paragraphs will introduce specific examples of what spirituality is not. Then we will explore each of these in more detail.
1) SPIRITUALITY IS NOT living out of the soul alone. Only the human spirit filled with Truth can influence the soul and provide spirituality. If no Truth has been learned, there is no power in the human spirit to influence the soul, and therefore no spirituality. And if Truth has been learned, but the believer refuses to use it to control the soul, but instead lives by the sinful nature, there is no spirituality unless the available Truth is actually used to push back the sinful nature and take control of the soul. (However, all believers go back and forth to some degree, and spirituality is never continuous.)
2) SPIRITUALITY IS NOT simply being a moral, good, decent and/or nice person by using the soul, including all types of sin avoidance using the soul without the motivation and backing of the human spirit. Avoidance alone never provides spirituality. Motivation from the Truth of the Word from inside the human spirit is required for spirituality.
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3) SPIRITUALITY IS NOT comparing self with others and declaring self a "better person,"
including legalism about one's own sins (type and quantity) in comparison to other people's sins, and/or living by a system of taboos (non-sinful prejudices). Using a sliding scale of relative comparisons to others is never God's measure of success.
4) SPIRITUALITY IS NOT emotional feelings about God apart from Truth. Sensing God and feeling close to Him is an illusion if not based on Truth from within the human spirit.
emotion is not spirituality unless it is a response to Truth stored in the human spirit.
5) SPIRITUALITY IS NOT imitation of others who are actually spiritual people, including a pleasing or improved personality, gains in respectability, Church attendance without learning the Word of God, reduction of bad habits, and/or other measures of human goodness.
6) SPIRITUALITY IS NOT mystical beliefs about God and His interaction with us. Mysticism ignores the Bible and uses feelings and presumed personal revelations directly from God to self or so-called gurus as a basis to form beliefs. Mysticism seeks a supposedly deeper and higher state of consciousness within self based mainly on personal feelings, and therefore ignores Truth from the Word of God as the only source of knowing God. After completion of the Bible in 96AD, there are no more personal revelations from God or angels. Believers of the Church Age must live by the Word of God as our basis for knowing God's will.
7) SPIRITUALITY IS NOT infused into believers as a result of complying with a pattern of sacraments, or any other multi-step process of religious rituals. God does not infuse spirituality, although certain churches teach compliance with sacraments as a means of building up spirituality by infusion. Certain churches have seven steps, others five steps, but whatever process is used, all are wrong. This is a process of attempting to work one's way into spirituality, instead of accumulating Truth in the human spirit and living in spirituality.
8) SPIRITUALITY IS NOT waiting for the Holy Spirit to control, empower or directly influence the thoughts and actions of believers in order to make them spiritual. There is a misunderstanding of the use of the word "spirit" in several New Testament verses which has resulted in confusing the human spirit with the Holy Spirit. This is due to mis-translations of the Bible from over 400 years ago, plus confusing what happened during the early years of the Church when a very few leaders and Apostles were directly empowered by the Holy Spirit. We 52
have discussed the early Church issues already, and will deal with the mis-translation issue in detail later. But for now, spirituality is not a matter of expecting the Holy Spirit to directly empower or control our spiritual life. Rather, the Holy Spirit mentors us when we study the Word of God and He converts it into Truth in our human spirit. Therefore, Truth in our human spirit is the power from God which empowers us to make our own choices and decisions to live in spirituality. The Holy Spirit is definitely involved in the process if we continually study the Word, but He does not directly supply His own power to cause us to think and act in accordance with what the Bible requires. In short, the Holy Spirit does not act as our direct source of spirituality.
9) SPIRITUALITY IS NOT doing anything in particular, but rather everything done from the human spirit under the power of the Word is part of our spirituality, whether big things or small things. Without Truth, everything is done from the soul alone, and therefore no matter how much it aligns with what the Bible says, and no matter how useful it may be, it is not spirituality.
Although only a partial listing, the number one thing to remember about spirituality is that it requires us to live by and from the human spirit, filled with Truth from the Word of God, which directs the soul to live by that Truth. When this happens, the issues of self-improvement and good deeds and such will certainly become part of the person's spirituality because they are motivated by a human spirit filled with the power of Truth. Therefore we do not throw out changing and improving self, but it must be motivated by Truth in the human spirit, driving the soul to make better decisions based on God's Will and plan. In fact, such actions become more automatic than decision based. Anything which uses only the soul is not spirituality because it is from human striving and power, which is not sanctioned by God. The person may witness for Christ, work in the church, donate money, pray frequently, be a great parent and spouse, be very moral and have a pleasant personality, be kind and forgiving, and a highly respected person, but they are not automatically in spirituality if it is apart from the power God requires us to use. This is hard for many to accept because most of these actions line up with what the Bible says believers should be doing. But trying to fulfill the commands of the Bible by changing the life and doing things differently based on human striving from the soul alone, not on divine power from inside the human spirit, is rejected by God and will not be rewarded in eternity. God requires believers to use His power from His Truth, because
"the Word of God is alive and powerful." (Hebrews 12:4) It bears repeating that any thought, decision or action which is not motivated by Truth from the Word of God inside the human spirit is not spirituality. God rejects soul motivations because the soul is not a spiritual entity.
Only the human spirit can enable spirituality, and only when it is filled with Truth. Then the soul can execute what the human spirit motivates, and only then is the believer living in a 53
state of spirituality. At that point anything and everything which is thought or done from the human spirit is spirituality as long as the human spirit is being used, because it is a spiritual entity, and therefore cannot do any wrong. As Galatians 5:16 says " So I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." The human spirit is the only perfect part of us, which is why it is the only source for our spirituality.
Let us now expand on the various forms of false spirituality which were introduced above.
The most prevalent one is self-improvement, which is trying to please God by being a good person who has the appearance of acting how a Christian is generally expected to act. This is how most believers think God will be impressed, when they use the avoidance approach to spirituality by trying to sin less often and clean up their life. Many changes can be generally good ideas, but are not spirituality of themselves when only the soul is involved and the human spirit remains empty and powerless. Anything done by living out of the soul without a human spirit filled with Truth is not spirituality. That is contrary to 90% of what is taught in Churches, but few understand the subject. While changing certain things in one's life may be a good idea overall, if we think these changes make us more spiritual as a result, but is only done by human power from the soul, it never impresses God. And if it leads to a self-righteous attitude about how good the person is, they are farther away from actual spirituality than before. God requires us to live by His power and do things His way. No Truth, no power, no spirituality, no matter what we do.
Most churches emphasize the experience of being "in church" above the teaching of the Word of God, although teaching the Word is the real reason churches were formed in the first place.
Church experience is often viewed as some sort of mystical cleansing process by which the attendees are cleaned up spiritually for another week. This repetitive mystical cleansing often makes people feel better about having been there, but they go away unequipped for the realities of fighting off the sinful nature, since they have no spiritual power in the human spirit. But when the subject of spirituality is taught, which is rare, the various viewpoints run the gamut from pure emotion to complete control of our spirituality by the Holy Spirit, which is a form of mysticism. In between there are approaches such as sin avoidance, following the Mosaic Law, personality changes, being a good and decent person, loving everyone, constant mechanical confession of each and every sin, getting people involved in projects to help others, self abnegation or emptying of self, monk-like withdrawal, practicing "holiness,"
focusing on specifics such as being a good parent, and other forms of trying to gain the favor of God and people after salvation by using the soul instead of the human spirit filled with Truth. While some of the items listed above might sound like they could improve a person in some way, they do not actually result in spirituality.
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Therefore churches are generally trying to get believers to behave better, feel better, and maybe even think about God occasionally. But they do not teach the Word in a systematic, studious, and consistent way. And that means several times per week, at least, and also supplementing this with online teaching available from good churches focused on the Word.
Studying the Word must be a commitment of both time and effort. Once again, God does not want us to use our human power to try to impress Him. God is impressed with His plan, which requires believers to use His power from the Word inside our human spirit to think and act. Remember, the human spirit is the only spiritual part of us, and therefore is the only means of interacting with God If an unbeliever without a human spirit can do some particular thing, it is not spirituality because it is done from only their soul. But when a believer is using divine power from the Word inside the human spirit, everything they think, say, and do by using that power becomes part of their overall spirituality, because it comes from the human spirit filled with Truth.
A related issue is trying to live by the Old Testament Law to gain spirituality. While avoiding sin to the degree possible is an overall good idea, we are not under the Law. The entirety of Galatians 5 is about this issue: [NOTE: all uses of the word spirit in this chapter refer to the human spirit, so have been changed to lower case "s"]:
"You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. 7 You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? 8 That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9 “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” 10 I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion, whoever that may be, will have to pay the penalty. ..13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. 16 So I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. 22 But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and 55
desires. 25 Since we live by the spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit."
We can see that Paul emphasizes how living by the human spirit is the key to pleasing God, not human works, avoidance, and keeping the commands of the Old Testament. The cross has freed us from the Old Testament law by replacing it with grace. We therefore have the freedom to please God and fulfill His will as a result of appreciation of His grace, not because we are commanded to do so.
Others use a "spirituality by comparison" approach where they look around and compare their life to those around them, finding fault with others and then declaring self to be better by comparison. This would assume that God grades on a curve, and that He uses a comparison scale to decide which believers are more spiritual than others. Of course, He does not. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10:12 says "We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise." Also, some try to be more spiritual by imitation of those who are actually spiritual. This is an approach of having the form and appearance of spirituality without actually possessing it in the human spirit based on Truth.
Spirituality cannot be attained by mimicking those who actually live it, because without the Word of God in the human spirit there is no basis for spirituality no matter what we strive to accomplish from our soul.
The overview also introduced the false approach to spirituality in some churches where a multi-step process or program is used to convince the congregation that it will lead to spirituality. These are based on the belief that working one's way into spirituality is possible, when it is not. It may be based on how many sacraments are accomplished, church attendance, how much money is given, how many times a small prayer is uttered, how many communion wafers are consumed, and on and on. But they all ignore the human spirit and teaching of the Word of God as the only means to spirituality. Churches which are trying to make believers feel like they have done something for God, and that spirituality can be infused into them by a multi-step program of sacraments or actions, are leading their congregations astray. They are supplanting the teaching of the Word of God, which is their primary task, with programs and processes to make people feel better about themselves. The end result is entire churches and denominations filled with people who live their lives without any spirituality. The result will be many believers who do not glorify God and our Savior during their life, and they will also have no eternal rewards.
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In the overview we also introduced spirituality as equated to emotion as being prevalent among believers, although these two should not be related. Many churches are trying to get their congregation into a state of emotion during the service, thinking that is somehow bringing them closer to God because of how they feel. But God deals with us through the soul expressing the human spirit, not by the emotion part of the soul. Spirituality is first and foremost a matter of what we think based on Truth, not so much what we do, and it is certainly not a matter of how we feel. The emotion can be used to appreciate what we know about God, but it is not a means of approaching God spiritually. The emotion is part of the soul, and has no thinking associated with it, but rather responds to thought when used correctly, therefore feeling must follow thinking, not the other way around. And the emotion is easily influenced by the sinful nature, making it a hazardous approach toward life in general. The emotion as part of the soul does not relate directly with the human spirit, and this is a very important principle to understand, that the emotion interfaces with the thinking part of the soul, but not directly with the human spirit. When spiritual issues are in view, the proper approach is for the human spirit to motivate the soul to think in a certain correct manner, and then the emotion can appreciate the soul's thinking. Therefore we must first learn about God and store Truth in our human spirit, and then we can selectively respond with emotion to appreciate God based on Truth as it drives the soul, not based on emotion leading the process. And that is the key, when the emotion is in the background appreciating the thoughts about Truth, it is fine. But when the emotion leads any process, it is a false and hazardous approach because thinking is not involved. This is how many believers give in to temptation, since the sinful nature is quick to take advantage of the emotion.
Mysticism is another false approach to spirituality, and an insidious one. It is the basis of many false religions since it is based on individual interpretations about beliefs using feelings, experiences, and unsupported personal interpretations about God. Mysticism has no real understanding, but rather uses feelings about being spiritual, often seeking to commune with and be aware of the presence of something they call a "higher being" and the universe in general. Mysticism seeks a supposedly deeper and higher state of consciousness within self based on meditation, contemplation, subjective experiences, individual discovery, and personal feelings, and therefore ignores Truth from the Word of God as the only source of knowing God. Many believers have adopted various facets of mysticism in an attempt to make God into what they want Him to be, while rejecting what the Bible says about Him. For example, believing that the Bible is mostly allegorical, or that God guides us into decisions by our feelings, or that all people will eventually end up saved are mystical beliefs based on exalting feelings above the Word of God. Colossians 2:18 describes mysticism as being
"puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind." Once again we see how the emotion can be used to distort spirituality into what we feel God should be like, and therefore how we might want Him to act, but not based on knowing God by what the Bible has actually revealed.
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The final false approach to spirituality we introduced earlier and now must cover in more detail teaches that the Holy Spirit directly controls the spiritual life of the believer. This approach is being taught among many mainstream churches which otherwise teach the Bible in a generally accurate way, which is why this form of false spirituality can be called
"fundamentalist mysticism." It takes several forms, but all center on meeting certain conditions to achieve an instant state of spirituality under the direct control of the Holy Spirit, which becomes a mystical view of interacting with God based on directly receiving (and losing) His power to live a spiritual life. Once again we see how the mis-translation of "spirit"
as "Spirit" in the KJV has led to 400 years of confusion, even among those who should know better.
One form of this approach teaches that a believer must meet the condition of "yielding" or
“total surrender” of one’s life to the Lord’s will in order to be filled with power and spirituality from the Holy Spirit. This surrender process is a tall order for believers, and is in fact a soul process from human works under human power. The presumed filling of the Holy Spirit is seen as an immediate spiritual state and experience, once the condition of “surrender” has been met by the believer, whether that surrender might take the form of sin confession, mental gymnastics, or some other form of yielding or self-abnegation. Under such a scenario the believer can only become frustrated by incessant use of a spiritual mechanic or gimmick to attempt to regain favor from God, especially because no spiritual power actually results from the process. Legalistic taboos and avoidance techniques become the standard as the believer tries to achieve the required conditions of sin avoidance and yielding to the Holy Spirit. This attempt to engage the Holy Spirit to directly control one's spiritual life and infuse His own power directly is an especially destructive form of mysticism among believers who otherwise want to understand the Word of God. This process hinders the believer’s growth in grace through learning and applying the Word of God and filling up the human spirit with Truth, as believers are forced back under the Mosaic Law to constantly deal with their sins from which they have been delivered (Galatians 5 and Romans 6:14).
Among those who teach the "fundamentalist mysticism" form of spirituality, some churches hold to a very rigid mechanical view of the "filling of the Holy Spirit," and teach that all one must do to be "filled with the Spirit" (which is undefined) is to constantly confess each and every "known sin" to God. As we have already seen, the "filling of the Spirit" is a mistranslation, which actually discusses filling the human spirit with Truth. Teaching that we are required to constantly confess each and every sin as they occur to maintain spirituality has as its basic premise that when a believer sins the Holy Spirit withdraws His power and turns His 58
back on that believer until they confess the sin, no matter how trivial. How could God treat His own children in such a manner, when Jesus Christ paid for each and every one of our sins? But the theory goes that when one confesses sin, the Holy Spirit once again “fills" that believer which provides instant spirituality under the direct control of the Holy Spirit. So the believer returns to an absolute state of spirituality, and is fully controlled by the Holy Spirit who will then totally empower and direct the soul of the believer until the next sin happens, and then He turns His back on them again. We can see how this is a mystical view based on trying to plug into God as a direct power source, which subverts God's plan for our spirituality. Therefore under this false approach to spirituality the believer supposedly loses all semblance of spirituality after each and every sin, as the Holy Spirit removes His power and control from that believer due to any minor or major infraction as the believer enters a state of carnality and loss of the "filling of the Spirit." Then the only way to regain the "filling of the Spirit" and reenter a state of spirituality is said to be naming or citing all sins to God.
This misguided approach is based on a single misunderstood verse (1 John 1:9) which is then tied to a mis-translated verse (Ephesians 5:16) where "spirit" is incorrectly capitalized as