The Bible speaks about our relationship with the Spirit of God in a detailed way. This relationship involves all the parts of our being. We are persons created by God in His image inwardly and according to His likeness outwardly (Gen. 1:26). According to Genesis 1, each living thing was created according to its own kind (vv. 12, 21, 24). Man, however, was created according to God's kind. The human life and the divine life are two different lives, but they are lives of the same kind.
Outwardly, we were created in the likeness of God. Darwin taught wrongly that man evolved from the apes. The apes are after their own kind, but man is directly related to God. Inwardly, we are in the image of God. Our human life is not in our physical body alone. Our physical body was formed of the dust of the ground, but there was no life in it until the Creator breathed His breath into it. When God breathed into man, man began to have life (Gen. 2:7). The real human life came from the breath of God. God's breath in Genesis 2:7 was not the same as the breath breathed out by the Lord Jesus in John 20:22. The breath in John 20:22 was the Spirit Himself. The Hebrew word for breath in Genesis 2:7 is neshamah, the same word translated as spirit in Proverbs 20:27, which says, "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord" (Heb.). However, even though the breath of God in Genesis 2:7 is not the Spirit of God or the life of God, it is still very closely related to God's Spirit and God's life. The inward human life is related to the breath of God, and the breath of God is the source of our life.
The New Testament speaks much about God as the Spirit dispensing Himself into our being. God dispenses Himself into us in three steps. The first step is His dispensing into our human spirit. John 3:6b says, "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit"; Romans 8:16 says, "The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit that we are the children of God"; and 1 Corinthians 6:17 says, "But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit." The divine Spirit comes into our spirit, and these two spirits become mingled as one spirit. Then He spreads from, through, and with our spirit into our mind (Eph. 4:23), the main part of our soul. Romans 8:6 says, "For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace." If we set our mind on our flesh, we will suffer death, but if we set our mind upon the spirit, we will enjoy life and peace. Eventually, the Spirit even gives life to our mortal body (Rom. 8:11).
Paul said, "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?" (1 Cor. 6:19). The Spirit of God comes to dwell even in our body. Our body is for our human existence, but it bothers us very much. Many of our troubles come from our body. But sometimes we are too influenced by our fallen situation, and we do not consider our body in a positive way. In 1 Thessalonians 4:4 Paul charges us to possess our own vessel, our body, in sanctification and honor. We have to consider our body in a positive way because it is the Spirit's holy habitation. The divine Spirit enters our spirit, spreads into our soul, and even indwells our body. We should be persons touched by the divine Spirit in the three parts of our being.
The Spirit's coming into the three parts of our being is His dispensing. First, God was incarnated. This was the first step in His dispensing. Then God died in the flesh on the cross, not only to take away sins, but also to release the divine life. That releasing of the divine life was also a part of His dispensing. Then His resurrection imparted His divine life into us. Christ's death released His divine life, and His resurrection imparted His life into us. This impartation was also part of His dispensing. Then the Spirit, who is the very pneumatic Christ, entered into us to regenerate us. That was a further, very intimate step in His dispensing of the Spirit into our being. Incarnation was wonderful, but it had nothing to do with us directly. Likewise, His precious death and resurrection did not reach us until the divine Trinity regenerated us. Regeneration was a very intimate step to dispense the Triune God into our being.