His Spirit with my spirit

Today I’m again reminded how Paul signed his letters to the churches with statements rich in spiritual truth. “Yours truly” doesn’t quite do the same for me as, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.”

This benediction is given at the end of Galatians, 2 Timothy and Philemon. It reminds me that when Jesus Christ came into my life, He took hold of the part of me that had been dead in sin, separated from God and unable to function as it was intended, and then transformed it.

Watchman Nee, a martyred Chinese Christian, taught that man is a triune being. The body is our physical person, but we also are soul and spirit. He said the soul houses our intellect, emotions, and volition or will power, and the spirit is our innermost heart. In the natural man, our decisions, emotions and thoughts are rooted in or governed by the desires of our body, but that is not what God intended.

Nee taught, as does the Bible, that the spirit was supposed to be the source of what we do. This innermost faculty is our human ability to be deeply aware and convicted of sin, to know and understand God, to communicate with Him, and to have faith. However, because of sin, the spirit does not function. It can only work as it should when Christ gives us His life. When He is “with our spirit” then our spirit is made alive and starts working as God intended.

In John 3:6-7, Jesus talked to a religious man named Nicodemus. He said to him, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”

Nicodemus knew all the religious laws of his Jewish heritage, but because his spirit was dead, he could only interpret them with his natural mind. The Bible says over and over that the natural mind, or the carnal mind cannot understand the things of God. 1 Corinthians 2:14 puts it this way, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

While the idea of “born again” gets a bad rap these days, it is an important truth, and totally misunderstood by those with ‘dead’ spirits. Without the regenerating power of God to make alive the human spirit, no one can know the things of God. As Jesus said, we cannot see or enter His kingdom unless we are given new life and our spirits are reborn.

Jesus also said, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). There is an amazing power in the Word of God combined with the Spirit of God. When someone reads Scripture, God is able to produce new life in that person’s dead spirit.

This is not automatic. I read the Bible for sixteen years without anything happening. My spirit remained dead as a stone for that entire time. Yet one day, without any action on my part, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ joined with my spirit and I became a new person. Even though it happened more than thirty-five years ago, I still weep with joy when I think about this event.

I learned that God works from the inside out. He speaks to the inner person, the spirit, and the spirit directs the soul. This enables a Christian to know and choose God’s way, think God’s thoughts (the Bible even says, “We have the mind of Christ”) and feel God’s emotions. As the Spirit of God governs my spirit and soul, my body is to submit to this new order of things and stop running my life. If I get things backwards, I will make decisions “according to the flesh” and they will be sinful.

As my devotional reading today says, this is not a subtle distinction, but a very important truth. Unless I know the difference between the two natures, the spirit and the flesh and the way the Lord works from the heart, I will be in bondage looking for holiness in the flesh. It will not, and cannot, happen.

The grace of my Lord Jesus Christ is with my spirit. He breathes from time to time upon that inner part of me, moving and acting in such a way that there is a gracious and spiritual union between the two. I can “no more live without the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ than the earth can live without the sun.” When He shines, I have light. Because He lives, I have eternal life. Because He lives in me, I am being changed to be like Him.

What a wonder that the grace of God can actually be with the spirit of a sinner like me so I can praise Him, enjoy Him in this life, and be with Him forever in eternity.