What Is the Spirit?

Question 5031.

The human spirit is the dimension of you that was made for God Himself, and it is the least understood part of human nature. We hear plenty about the body from the gym and the doctor, plenty about the soul from the therapist and the poet, but the spirit rarely gets a mention, even in church. Yet Jesus said the Father is seeking people who will worship Him “in spirit and truth” (John 4:24), and Paul prayed for believers to be kept blameless in “spirit and soul and body” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). So what exactly is it?

Breath, Wind, Spirit

The Old Testament word is ruach, the New Testament word pneuma, and both mean breath or wind before they mean anything else. The imagery is built into the vocabulary: the spirit is the God-breathed life in man, invisible as wind yet unmistakable in its effects. Zechariah says the LORD “formed the spirit of man within him” (Zechariah 12:1), and at death “the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Breathed in at the beginning, breathed back at the end.

Context decides whether ruach or pneuma refers to the Holy Spirit, to wind, or to the human spirit, and translators capitalise accordingly. Our concern here is the third use: the created spirit within each person, the deepest room in the house of human nature.

How the Human Spirit Differs from the Soul

Scripture often uses spirit and soul in parallel, and many godly teachers treat them as two names for one immaterial nature. I respect that view, but I am persuaded the Bible distinguishes them. Hebrews 4:12 says the living word of God pierces “to the division of soul and of spirit”, a strange statement if no division exists. Paul lists “spirit and soul and body” as three (1 Thessalonians 5:23). And 1 Corinthians 2:14-15 contrasts the natural man, the man of soul (psychikos), with the spiritual man (pneumatikos), as I have unpacked in are we two parts or three?.

Put simply: the soul is the self-ward life, mind, emotion, and will; the human spirit is the God-ward faculty, the capacity for knowing, hearing, and worshipping our Maker. The soul looks in and around; the spirit looks up. Animals possess soul-life in the biblical sense, but nothing in Scripture ever calls an animal to worship. That window only exists in man, because man alone bears God’s image.

What the Human Spirit Is For

Watch the spirit’s functions in Scripture. It is the organ of worship: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24); Mary’s soul magnified the Lord while her spirit rejoiced in God her Saviour (Luke 1:46-47). It is the seat of deep self-knowledge: “what person knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him?” (1 Corinthians 2:11). It is where God communes with His child: “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16).

The human spirit also registers spiritual atmosphere. Paul’s “spirit was provoked within him” at Athens’ idols (Acts 17:16); Jesus “was troubled in his spirit” before Judas’s betrayal (John 13:21). And it interacts with conscience, that inner witness I have examined in the Spirit and the conscience. Proverbs 20:27 calls “the spirit of man” the “lamp of the LORD, searching all his innermost parts”. Your spirit is the room where God turns the light on.

Dead Towards God

Now the tragedy. God warned Adam that in the day he ate of the tree he would surely die (Genesis 2:17), yet Adam lived on physically for centuries. What died that day? Fellowship with God, life towards God, the spirit’s communion with its Maker. Ever since, we are conceived “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1), physically alive, soulishly active, spiritually unresponsive. The natural person, Paul says, “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

This explains the modern world perfectly. Brilliant minds, rich emotional lives, formidable wills, and a great hollow where God should be, filled with substitutes: careers, causes, chemicals, celebrities. The house is lit on two floors and dark on the top one. Man without God is not half a man; he is a man with his highest faculty switched off.

Born of the Spirit: The Human Spirit Made Alive

This is why Jesus told the devout, theologically trained Nicodemus, “You must be born again” (John 3:7). Religion decorates the dark floor; only God relights it. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). In the new birth, the Holy Spirit gives life to the human spirit; the believer is “made alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5), and “he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Corinthians 6:17).

In my understanding, faith precedes this regeneration in logical order: it is the one who believes who is born again, not the born-again person who is then enabled to believe. Whoever trusts Jesus receives life, and from that moment the Spirit of God takes up residence and the whole inner man begins to be reordered from the top floor down. Renewed spirit, renewing soul, and one day a resurrected body: salvation reaches every storey of the house.

Keeping the Spirit in Repair

Scripture treats the state of your spirit as something to steward. It can be wounded: “a crushed spirit dries up the bones”, and “who can bear a crushed spirit?” (Proverbs 17:22; 18:14). It can be proud or humble, and God announces His address: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit” (Isaiah 57:15). It can be steadfast or unruly; David prayed, “renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10), and Proverbs warns that a man without rule over his own spirit is “like a city broken into and left without walls” (Proverbs 25:28).

The human spirit thrives on what it was made for: worship, prayer, the word of God, obedience, and honest confession when we sin. Neglect those and the top floor grows cold again, even in a believer. “Fan into flame the gift of God” (2 Timothy 1:6) is top-floor maintenance language.

The Human Spirit in Worship and Prayer

Because the human spirit is the organ of communion with God, it takes the leading part in worship and prayer. Paul says, “I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also” (1 Corinthians 14:15), and of his service to God he writes that he serves “with my spirit in the gospel of his Son” (Romans 1:9). True worship engages the whole person, but it rises from the deepest room; singing that never gets below the vocal cords, and prayer that never gets below the vocabulary, leaves the human spirit unemployed in the very work it was made for.

This is also where the Holy Spirit meets us. He bears witness with our spirit (Romans 8:16), helps our weakness when we do not know what to pray (Romans 8:26), and pours the love of God into hearts He indwells. The Christian life is lived spirit to Spirit, the creature’s small flame kept alight by the divine fire.

Guard, then, what you expose your spirit to. Bitterness, occult dabbling, and cherished sin all foul the air of the inner room, while the word of God, thanksgiving, and quick repentance keep it clear. Blessed, said Jesus, are the poor in spirit, and the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

And remember where your spirit is heading. At death it does not dissipate like the breath it is named after; it “returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7), and for the believer that return is a homecoming into the presence of the Father of spirits. The part of you the world has never seen is the part God will receive first. It would be strange to spend a lifetime grooming the visible man and neglecting the very dimension that will stand before God ahead of the rest of you.

So, now what?

Stop living as though you were only body and soul, because the deepest room in you was built for God, and nothing else will ever warm it. If you have never been born of the Spirit, that is the one renovation you cannot perform on yourself; ask the Lord Jesus for it today, for He gives life freely to all who trust Him. And if you are His, tend your spirit as deliberately as you tend your health: worship, pray, feed on the word, keep short accounts with God. The lamp of the LORD is meant to burn, not smoulder. How bright is yours burning this week?

“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23, ESV)