Last week I suggested, based on Scripture references, that God’s Spirit, a Holy Spirit, was in Jesus, creating our triune God, Son and Holy Spirit in one union. The question then arises, do you and I have a spirit, and if so, what is its nature? How do we think about it? Does Scripture help us?
In Genesis, God acknowledges that God’s spirit does abide in humankind, but God was displeased with the humankind creation, and vowed “‘ My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh…'” (Gen. 6:3). Commentators on this passage assert that “spirit” refers to the breath of life present in all animal life (see Gen. 7:15). The psalmist and prophets used the term ‘spirit’ to reference a human attitude or a state of mind that God alone was capable of strengthening (see Isa. 57:15-17; Ezek. 11:19; Ps. 34: 18; Ps. 51:10). Suppose that God’s breath of life is indeed a spirit, a tiny part of God’s Holy Spirit, that is provided to each human at birth to abide in the biological flesh created in the womb of woman.
The brightest and most articulate Christian apologist of the twentieth century, C.S. Lewis, certainly thought so. He recognized a moral law of nature imbuing in every human being the knowledge of right from wrong. This we know because we are humans and therefore have inside information. “And because of that,” he writes, “we know that men [and women] find themselves under a moral law, which they did not make, and cannot quite forget even when they try, and which they know they ought to obey.” (Mere Christianity, 23) He argued further that there must be somebody or some force behind this reality because it prevails in all human society everywhere for all time. Yet it is not physical matter that can be identified or quantified. And it is not a force that must be obeyed. It is simply there. In our time, George Lucas magically brought The Force to us in wide screen adventure.
There is something in each of us that cannot be explained by science. It is not biological. We can only describe it as spiritual, a force that affects our biology because it affects our brain, but does not emanate from the brain. We think it emanates from the heart, though there is no scientific evidence. Ezekiel had the vision that God would put a new spirit in God’s people, giving them a new heart (Ezek. 11:19). At Gethsemane Jesus made reference to a willing spirit in conflict with a weak flesh (Mt. 26: 41) which likely refers to that part of humanity that God’s spirit enters to direct us to overcome the lower more corrupt aspect of our human nature. (see Davies and Allison, Matthew, Vol. 3, 499). So if the spirit of God is in us…..some modicum of spirit from God that speaks to us of the “oughts” as C.S. Lewis opined, and provides us with an entry point or portal in our human existence for the Holy Spirit to enter, what would this awareness mean for you and me?
More of this next week.