Reference: Spirit
American
A word employed in various senses in Scripture.
1. For THE HOLY SPIRIT, the third person of the Holy Trinity, who inspired the prophets, animates good men, pours his unction into our hearts, imparts to us life and comfort; and in whose name we are baptized and blessed, as well as in that of the Father and the Son. When the adjective Holy is applied to the term Spirit, we should always understand it as here explained; but there are many places whether it must be taken in this sense, although the term Holy is omitted. See HOLY SPIRIT.
2. BREATH, respiration; or the principle of animal life, common to men and animal: this God has given, and this he recalls when he takes away life, Ec 3:21. See SOUL.
3. The RATIONAL SOUL which animates us, and preserves its being after the death of the body. That spiritual, reasoning, and choosing substance, which is capable of eternal happiness. See SOUL.
The "spirits in prison," 1Pe 3:19, it is generally thought, are the souls of antediluvian sinners now reserved unto the judgment-day, but unto whom the Spirit preached by the agency of Noah, etc., 2Pe 2:5, when they were in the flesh. Thus Christ "preached" to the Ephesians, whom he never visited in person, Eph 2:17.
4. An ANGEL, good or bad; a soul separate from the body, Mr 14:26. It is said, Ac 23:8, that the Sadducees denied the existence of angels and spirits. Christ, appearing to his disciples, said to them, Lu 24:39, "Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have."
5. The DISPOSITION of the mind or intellect. Thus we read of a spirit of jealously, a spirit of fornication, a spirit of prayer, a spirit of infirmity, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of fear of the Lord, Ho 4:12; Zec 12:10; Lu 13:11; Isa 11:2.
6. The RENEWED NATURE of true believers, which is produced by the Holy Spirit, and conforms the soul to his likeness. Spirit is thus the opposite of flesh, Joh 3:6. This spirit is virally united with, an in some passages can hardly be distinguished from the "Spirit of Christ," which animates true Christians, the children of God, and distinguishes them from the children of darkness, who are animated by the spirit of the world, Ro 8:1-16. This indwelling Spirit is the gift of grace, of adoption-the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts-which emboldens us to call God "Abba, my Father." Those who are influenced by this Spirit "have crucified the flesh, with its affections and lusts," Ga 5:16-25.
Distinguishing or discerning of spirits consisted in discerning whether a man were really inspired by the Spirit of God, or was a false prophet, an impostor, who only followed the impulse of his own spirit or of Satan. Paul speaks, 1Co 12:10 of the discerning of spirits as being among the miraculous gifts granted by God to the faithful at the first settlement of Christianity.
To "quench the Spirit," 1Th 5:19, is a metaphorical expression easily understood. The Spirit may be quenched by forcing, as it were, that divine Agent to withdraw from us, by irregularity of life, frivolity, avarice, negligence, or other sins contrary to charity, truth, peace, and his other gifts and qualifications.
We "grieve" the Spirit of God by withstanding his holy inspirations, the impulses of his grace; or by living in a lukewarm and incautious manner; by despising his gifts, or neglecting them; by abusing his favors, either out of vanity, curiosity, or indifference. In a contrary sense, 2Ti 1:6, we "stir up" the Spirit of God which is in us, by the practice of virtue, by compliance with his inspirations, by fervor in his service, by renewing our gratitude, and by diligently serving Christ and doing the works of the Spirit.
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Then they sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives.
a woman was present who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years. she was bent double, and could not lift herself up at all.
"Look at my hands and my feet. It is I! Feel me and see; for a ghost has not flesh and blood as I have."
What is born of the flesh is flesh; and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; the Pharisees affirm them all.
Thus there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus; for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and of death. read more. For God has done what the Law could not do, weakened as it was by flesh. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and on account of sin, he condemned sin in the flesh; in order that the Law might be fulfilled in us who order our lives not after the flesh, but after the spirit. For they who live after the flesh, give their attention to the things of the flesh; But they who live after the spirit, give their attention to spiritual things. To be earthly minded means death; To be spiritually minded means life and peace. For to be earthly minded is enmity against God; For such a mind is not subject to the Law of God, Nor can it be; And they who are earthly minded cannot please God. But you are not earthly, but spiritual, if indeed the Spirit of God is really dwelling in you. If any one does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. But if Christ is in you, though your bodily self is dead because of sin, your spirit is full of life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from dead is dwelling in you, He who raised up Jesus from the dead is dwelling in you, He who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also make your dying bodily self live by his indwelling Spirit in your lives. Therefore, brothers, we are debtors??ut not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh; for if you go on living according to the flesh, you are on the road to die; but if by the Spirit you keep putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For only those are sons of God who are led by God's Spirit. For you have not received a spirit of slavery in order that you should once more be afraid; but you have received a spirit of adoption, in which we cry out, "My Father, my dear Father!" For his Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit, that we are children of God;
to another the powers which work miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits; to another varieties of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.
This is my meaning. Let your steps be guided by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desire of the flesh is against that of the Spirit, and the desire of the Spirit is against that of the flesh, for they two are antagonistic, so that you may not do those things that you wish. read more. But if you are habitually led by the Spirit you are not under law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest; such, for instance, as fornication, impurity, indecency, idol-worship, sorcery, quarrels, party-spirit, jealousy, passionate anger, intrigues, factions, sectarianism, envy, drunkenness, revellings, and things like these. I tell you beforehand, as I have already told you, that those who practise such sins shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the harvest-fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and appetites. If we are living by the Spirit, let us also keep step in the Spirit.
So he came preaching "Peace" to you Gentiles who were afar off, and "Peace" to us Jews who were near;
Quench not the Spirit.
For this reason let me remind you to keep ever blazing that gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.
(It was in spirit that he went and preached the Word to the spirits who were in prison,
if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon an ungodly world;
Easton
(Heb ruah; Gr. pneuma), properly wind or breath. In 2Th 2:8 it means "breath," and in Ec 8:8 the vital principle in man. It also denotes the rational, immortal soul by which man is distinguished (Ac 7:59; 1Co 5:5; 6:20; 7:34), and the soul in its separate state (Heb 12:23), and hence also an apparition (Job 4:15; Lu 24:37,39), an angel (Heb 1:14), and a demon (Lu 4:36; 10:20). This word is used also metaphorically as denoting a tendency (Zec 12:10; Lu 13:11).
In Ro 1:4; 1Ti 3:16; 2Co 3:17; 1Pe 3:18, it designates the divine nature.
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All were amazed, and began to ask one another, saying. "What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits and they come out."
"Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in Heaven."
a woman was present who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years. she was bent double, and could not lift herself up at all.
They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
"Look at my hands and my feet. It is I! Feel me and see; for a ghost has not flesh and blood as I have."
So they stoned Stephen while he prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
but was by his resurrection from the dead instated as Son of God, with power, in respect of his spirit of holiness.
And whatever you do, whether in word of in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God our Father through him.
and then the lawless one will be revealed. Him the Lord will consume with the breath of his lips, and destroy with the brightness of his appearing;
Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth for service in behalf of those who are about to inherit salvation?
to the festal assemblage and church of the firstborn, registered in heaven, to a Judge who is God of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect,
Fausets
Hebrew ruach, Greek pneuma. Man in his normal integrity ("whole," holokleeron, complete in all its parts, 1Th 5:23) consists of "spirit, soul, and body." The spirit links man with higher intelligences, and is that highest part receptive of the quickening Holy Spirit (1Co 15:47). The soul (Hebrew nephesh, Greek psuchee) is intermediate between body and spirit; it is the sphere of the will and affections.
In the unspiritual, the spirit is so sunk under the animal soul (which it ought to keep under) that such are "animal" ("seasonal," having merely the body of organized matter and the soul, the immaterial animating essence), "having not the spirit" (Jg 1:19; Jas 3:15; 1Co 2:14; 15:44-48; Joh 3:6). The unbeliever shall rise with an animal (soul-animated) body, but not, like the believer, with a spiritual (spirit-endued) body like Christ's (Ro 8:11).
The soul is the seat of the appetites, the desires, the will; hunger, thirst, sorrow, joy; love, hope, fear, etc.; so that nephesh is the man himself, and is used for person, self, creature, any: a virtual contradiction of materialism, implying that the unseen soul rather than the seen body is the man. "Man was made" not a living body but "a living soul." "The blood, the life," links together body and soul (Le 17:11).
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What is born of the flesh is flesh; and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from dead is dwelling in you, He who raised up Jesus from the dead is dwelling in you, He who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also make your dying bodily self live by his indwelling Spirit in your lives.
The first man is of the earth, earthly; the second Man is of heaven.
blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that stood against us and was hostile to us, and took it out of our way, nailing it to his cross.
May the God of peace consecrate you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept altogether faultless until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Such wisdom is not that which is descending from on high, but is earthly, sensual, demonlike.
Hastings
The term is applied to God as defining His nature generally (Joh 4:24), and also as describing one element in that nature, His self-consciousness (1Co 2:11). It expresses not only God's immateriality, but also His transcendence of limitations of time and space. In the phrases 'Spirit of God,' the 'Spirit of the Lord,' the 'Spirit of Jesus Christ,' the 'Holy Spirit,' the 'Spirit of Truth,' the third Person in the Godhead is described (see Holy Spirit). The term is applied to personal powers of evil other than man (Mt 10:1; 12:45; Lu 4:33; 7:21; 1Ti 4:1; cf. Eph 6:12), as well as personal powers of good (Heb 1:14), and to human beings after death, either damned (1Pe 3:19) or blessed (Heb 12:23). It is used also as personifying an influence (1Jo 4:6; Eph 2:2; Ro 8:15). Its most distinctive use is in the psychology of the Christian life. The contrast between 'soul' and 'spirit,' and between 'flesh' and 'spirit,' has already been noted in the articles on these terms. While soul and spirit are not to be regarded as separate faculties, yet 'spirit' expresses the direct dependence of the life in man on God, first in creation (Ge 2:7), but especially, according to the Pauline doctrine, in regeneration. The life in man, isolating itself from, and opposing itself to, God, is soul; that life, cleansed and renewed by the Spirit of God, is spirit; intimate as is the relation of God and man in the new life, the Spirit of God is distinguished from the spirit of man (Ro 8:16), although it is not always possible to make the distinction. In Acts the phrase 'holy spirit' sometimes means the subjective human state produced ('holy enthusiasm'), and sometimes the objective Divine cause producing (see 'Acts' in the Century Bible, p. 386). As the Spirit is the source of this new life, whatever belongs to it is 'spiritual' (pneumatikon), as house, sacrifices (1Pe 2:5), understanding (Col 1:9), songs (Col 3:16), food, drink, rock (1Co 10:3-4); and the 'spiritual' and 'soulish' (rendered 'carnal' or 'natural') are contrasted (1Co 2:14; 15:44,46). Spirit as an ecstatic state is also distinguished from mind (1Co 14:14,16), as inwardness from letter (Ro 2:29; 7:6; 2Co 3:6). The old creation
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And when he had called his twelve disciples to him, he gave them power over evil spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and infirmity.
"Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits worse than itself; and they enter in and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it be with this wicked generation."
And there was in the synagogue a man possessed by the spirit of a foul demon. He cried out, in a loud voice, saying.
At that moment Jesus was healing many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and to many that were blind he was freely giving their sight.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
but the real Jew is one inwardly, and real circumcision is heart??ircumcision, spiritual, not literal, praised not by men, but by God.
But now we have been released from the Law, because we are dead to that in which we were held; so that we are now in thralldom in new and spiritual conditions, and not under the old written code.
Thus there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus; for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and of death. read more. For God has done what the Law could not do, weakened as it was by flesh. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and on account of sin, he condemned sin in the flesh; in order that the Law might be fulfilled in us who order our lives not after the flesh, but after the spirit. For they who live after the flesh, give their attention to the things of the flesh; But they who live after the spirit, give their attention to spiritual things. To be earthly minded means death; To be spiritually minded means life and peace. For to be earthly minded is enmity against God; For such a mind is not subject to the Law of God, Nor can it be; And they who are earthly minded cannot please God. But you are not earthly, but spiritual, if indeed the Spirit of God is really dwelling in you. If any one does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. But if Christ is in you, though your bodily self is dead because of sin, your spirit is full of life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from dead is dwelling in you, He who raised up Jesus from the dead is dwelling in you, He who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also make your dying bodily self live by his indwelling Spirit in your lives. Therefore, brothers, we are debtors??ut not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh; for if you go on living according to the flesh, you are on the road to die; but if by the Spirit you keep putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For only those are sons of God who are led by God's Spirit. For you have not received a spirit of slavery in order that you should once more be afraid; but you have received a spirit of adoption, in which we cry out, "My Father, my dear Father!"
For you have not received a spirit of slavery in order that you should once more be afraid; but you have received a spirit of adoption, in which we cry out, "My Father, my dear Father!" For his Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit, that we are children of God;
For his Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit, that we are children of God; and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ; but to share his glory, we must now be sharing his sufferings.
For what man knows the depths of man except the man's own inner Spirit? Even so, also, the Spirit of God knows the deeps profound of God.
The unspiritual man rejects the teachings of God's Spirit; for him it is folly. He cannot understand it, for it is spiritually discerned,
They all ate of the same spiritual bread, and all drank from the same spiritual stream, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.
For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is barren.
For if you in your spirit bless God, how shall he who fills the place of the unlearned say the Amen to your thanksgiving, when he does not know what you are talking about?
The body sown is animal The body is raised is spiritual. If there is an animal body, there is also a spiritual body.
Now it is not the spiritual which is first, but the animal, and then the spiritual.
in which you passed your lives after the way of this world, under the sway of the Prince of the Powers of the Air, the spirit who is now working among the sons of disobedience.
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the despotisms, the empires, the rulers of this present darkness, the spirit-hosts of evil in the heavenly realm.
For this reason from the day I heard of it I have never ceased to pray for you, asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will with every kind of wisdom and spiritual insight;
In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands; even in putting off your sensual nature in Christ's own circumcision, when you were buried with him in baptism. In baptism also you were raised with him, through your faith in the energy of that God who raised him from the dead.
These things are ever bringing down the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience,
Let the word of Christ have its home in you richly, in all wisdom. Teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, ever singing with grace in your hearts unto God.
Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth for service in behalf of those who are about to inherit salvation?
to the festal assemblage and church of the firstborn, registered in heaven, to a Judge who is God of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect,
And yourselves like living stones be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God, through Christ Jesus.
(It was in spirit that he went and preached the Word to the spirits who were in prison,
But you are of God. He who is beginning to know God listens to us; he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we may distinguish the spirit of truth from the spirit of error.
Morish
See SOUL.
Watsons
SPIRIT, in Hebrew, ??? in Greek, ??????, and in Latin, spiritus, is in the Scriptures sometimes taken for the Holy Ghost, the third person of the Holy Trinity. The word signifies also the reasonable soul which animates us, and continues in existence even after the death of the body; that spiritual, thinking and reasoning substance, which is capable of eternal happiness, Nu 16:22; Ac 7:59. The term spirit is also often used for an angel, a demon, and a ghost, or soul separate from the body. It is said, in Ac 23:8, that the Sadducees denied the existence of angels and spirits. Jesus Christ appearing to his disciples, said to them, Lu 24:39, "Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." And St. Paul calls the good angels "ministering spirits," Heb 1:14. In 1Sa 16:14; 18:10; 19:9, it is said that an evil spirit from the Lord troubled Saul: and we have also the expression unclean spirits. Add to this, spirit is sometimes put for the disposition of the heart or mind: see Nu 5:14; Zec 12:10; Lu 13:11; Isa 11:2. Discerning of spirits, or the secret character and thoughts of men, was a gift of God, and placed among the miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost, 1Co 12:10; 1Jo 4:1.
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a woman was present who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years. she was bent double, and could not lift herself up at all.
"Look at my hands and my feet. It is I! Feel me and see; for a ghost has not flesh and blood as I have."
So they stoned Stephen while he prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; the Pharisees affirm them all.
to another the powers which work miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits; to another varieties of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.
Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth for service in behalf of those who are about to inherit salvation?