The New Testament reveals that when we were regenerated a great change took place in our constitution. The main part of a natural man by birth is the soul. The soul not only has the parts of mind, emotion, and will, but also is the person. At regeneration the person shifts from the soul to the spirit.
Strictly speaking, we should no longer be a soul. We should only use its parts. I would not say that we should be a spirit, but at least we can say that we must consider our spirit as our person. This is not to say that our spirit is no longer an organ.
In John 4:23 and 24 we are told that God is to be worshipped in spirit. The word in may be considered as an instrumental preposition and can therefore be translated with. We worship with our spirit. This indicates that our spirit serves as an organ. We see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and worship with our spirit. When we say we worship in spirit, we mean that we worship in the realm of the spirit. When we say we worship with our spirit, we mean that the spirit is the part of our being by which we worship. The spirit then has become not only the new person, the inner man, but also the new organ with which we worship God.
The word worship in Greek implies also the thought of service. Romans 1:9 reads, “For God is my witness, Whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel of His Son.” The word serve in this verse is translated worship in some other versions. Whether we say worship or serve, the meaning is the same. Our worship is our service to God; our service to Him is also our worship. When we worship Him, we serve Him; when we serve Him, we worship Him.
The human spirit, as the organ by which we worship or serve God, is largely unknown among Christians. When they come across the word spirit, they understand it as the Holy Spirit.
Brother Nee wrote a book called The Release of the Spirit. Christians who read this title may think that what is meant is the release of the Holy Spirit. If you read the book, however, you will see how Brother Nee stresses that he is referring to the human spirit, not to the Holy Spirit.
Many Christians have a very light regard for the human spirit. In Christian theology there is a school of dichotomy, which teaches that man has two parts, not three. They consider that soul and spirit are synonyms.
This kind of belief affects the way the Bible has been translated. The Chinese version, though it is a good translation, in many verses renders the word spirit as heart-spirit. Such a rendering shows that the scholars lacked a clear vision concerning the human spirit. What is heart-spirit? This is an odd term! Though the scholars knew the language, they did not know the spirit so well. They realized that the word pneuma in John 4:24 does not refer to the Holy Spirit, but to some organ of our being. Thinking that the Chinese mentality would misunderstand spirit, they added another word, making it heart-spirit. They thought that the heart and the human spirit are the same.
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