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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After the hymn of praise they went out to the Hill of Olives.
there was a woman who for eighteen years had suffered weakness from an evil spirit; indeed she was bent double and quite unable to raise herself.
Look at my hands and feet. It is I! Feel me and see; a ghost has not flesh and bones as you see I have."
What is born of the flesh is flesh: what is born of the Spirit is Spirit.
For while the Sadducees declare there is no such thing as resurrection, angels, or spirits, the Pharisees affirm them all.
Thus there is no doom now for those who are in Christ Jesus; the law of the Spirit brings the life which is in Christ Jesus, and that law has set me free from the law of sin and death. read more. For God has done what the Law, weakened here by the flesh, could not do; by sending his own Son in the guise of sinful flesh, to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order to secure the fulfilment of the Law's requirements in our lives, as we live and move not by the flesh but by the Spirit. For those who follow the flesh have their interests in the flesh, and those who follow the Spirit have their interests in the Spirit. The interests of the flesh mean death, the interests of the Spirit mean life and peace. For the interests of the flesh are hostile to God; they do not yield to the law of God (indeed they cannot). Those who are in the flesh cannot satisfy God. But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells within you. Anyone who does not possess the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. On the other hand, if Christ is within you, though the body is a dead thing owing to Adam's sin, the spirit is living as the result of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells within you, then He who raised Christ from the dead will also make your mortal bodies live by his indwelling Spirit in your lives. Well then, my brothers, we owe a duty ??but it is not to the flesh! It is not to live by the flesh! If you live by the flesh, you are on the road to death; but if by the Spirit you put the actions of the body to death, you will live. For the sons of God are those who are guided by the Spirit of God. You have received no slavish spirit that would make you relapse into fear; you have received the Spirit of sonship. And when we cry, "Abba! Father!", it is this Spirit testifying along with our own spirit that we are children of God;
one has prophecy, another the gift of distinguishing spirits, another the gift of 'tongues' in their variety, another the gift of interpreting 'tongues.'
I mean, lead the life of the Spirit; then you will never satisfy the passions of the flesh. For the passion of the flesh is against the Spirit, and the passion of the Spirit against the flesh ??the two are at issue, so that you are not free to do as you please. read more. If you are under the sway of the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Now the deeds of the flesh are quite obvious, such as sexual vice, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, magic, quarrels, dissension, jealousy, temper, rivalry, factions, party-spirit, envy, [murder], drinking bouts, revelry, and the like; I tell you beforehand as I have told you already, that people who indulge in such practices will never inherit the Realm of God. But the harvest of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, good temper, kindliness, generosity, fidelity, gentleness, self-control: ??there is no law against those who practise such things. Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its emotions and passions. As we live by the Spirit, let us be guided by the Spirit;
he came with a gospel of peace for those far away (that is, for you) and for those who were near,
never quench the fire of the Spirit,
Hence I would remind you to rekindle the divine gift which you received when my hands were laid upon you;
(It was in the Spirit that Enoch also went and preached to the imprisoned spirits
if he did not spare the ancient world but kept Noah, the herald of righteousness, safe with seven others, when he let loose the deluge on the world of impious men:
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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Then amazement came over them all; they talked it over among themselves, saying, "What does this mean? He orders the unclean spirits with authority and power, and they come out!"
Only, do not rejoice because the spirits obey you: rejoice because your names are enrolled in heaven."
there was a woman who for eighteen years had suffered weakness from an evil spirit; indeed she was bent double and quite unable to raise herself.
They were scared and terrified, imagining it was a ghost they saw;
Look at my hands and feet. It is I! Feel me and see; a ghost has not flesh and bones as you see I have."
So they stoned Stephen, who called on the Lord, saying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!"
and installed as Son of God with power by the Spirit of holiness when he was raised from the dead ??concerning Jesus Christ our Lord,
Indeed, whatever you say or do, let everything be done in dependence on the Lord Jesus, giving thanks in his name to God the Father.
Then shall the Lawless One be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his lips and quell by his appearing and arrival ??9 that One whose arrival is due to Satan's activity, with the full power, the miracles and portents, of falsehood,
Are not all angels merely spirits in the divine service, commissioned for the benefit of those who are to inherit salvation?
to the assembly of the first-born registered in heaven, to the God of all as judge, 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: what is born of the Spirit is Spirit.
And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells within you, then He who raised Christ from the dead will also make your mortal bodies live by his indwelling Spirit in your lives.
Man the first is from the earth, material; Man the second is from heaven.
He cancelled the regulations that stood against us ??all these obligations he set aside when he nailed them to the cross,
May the God of peace consecrate you through and through! Spirit, soul, and body, may you be kept without break or blame till the arrival of our Lord Jesus Christ!
That is not the wisdom which comes down from above, it is an earthly wisdom, sensuous, devilish;
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 summoning his twelve disciples he gave them power over unclean spirits, power to cast them out and also to heal every disease and every ailment.
Then it goes off to fetch seven other spirits worse than itself; they go in and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. This is how it will be with the present evil generation."
Now in the synagogue there was a man possessed by the spirit of an unclean daemon, who shrieked aloud,
Jesus at that moment was healing many people of diseases and complaints and evil spirits; he also bestowed sight on many blind folk.
God is Spirit, and his worshippers must worship him in Spirit and in reality."
he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual not literal ??praised by God, not by man.
but now we are done with the Law, we have died to what once held us, so that we can serve in a new way, not under the written code as of old but in the Spirit.
Thus there is no doom now for those who are in Christ Jesus; the law of the Spirit brings the life which is in Christ Jesus, and that law has set me free from the law of sin and death. read more. For God has done what the Law, weakened here by the flesh, could not do; by sending his own Son in the guise of sinful flesh, to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order to secure the fulfilment of the Law's requirements in our lives, as we live and move not by the flesh but by the Spirit. For those who follow the flesh have their interests in the flesh, and those who follow the Spirit have their interests in the Spirit. The interests of the flesh mean death, the interests of the Spirit mean life and peace. For the interests of the flesh are hostile to God; they do not yield to the law of God (indeed they cannot). Those who are in the flesh cannot satisfy God. But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells within you. Anyone who does not possess the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. On the other hand, if Christ is within you, though the body is a dead thing owing to Adam's sin, the spirit is living as the result of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells within you, then He who raised Christ from the dead will also make your mortal bodies live by his indwelling Spirit in your lives. Well then, my brothers, we owe a duty ??but it is not to the flesh! It is not to live by the flesh! If you live by the flesh, you are on the road to death; but if by the Spirit you put the actions of the body to death, you will live. For the sons of God are those who are guided by the Spirit of God. You have received no slavish spirit that would make you relapse into fear; you have received the Spirit of sonship. And when we cry, "Abba! Father!",
You have received no slavish spirit that would make you relapse into fear; you have received the Spirit of sonship. And when we cry, "Abba! Father!", it is this Spirit testifying along with our own spirit that we are children of God;
it is this Spirit testifying along with our own spirit that we are children of God; and if children, heirs as well, heirs of God, heirs along with Christ ??for we share his sufferings in order to share his glory.
What human being can understand the thoughts of a man, except the man's own inner spirit? So too no one understands the thoughts of God, except the Spirit of God.
The unspiritual man rejects these truths of the Spirit of God; to him they are 'sheer folly,' he cannot understand them. And the reason is, that they must be read with the spiritual eye.
all ate the same supernatural food, and all drank the same supernatural drink (drinking from the supernatural Rock which accompanied them ??and that Rock was Christ),
For if I pray with a 'tongue,' my spirit prays, no doubt, but my mind is no use to anyone.
Otherwise, suppose you are blessing God in the Spirit, how is the outsider to say 'Amen' to your thanksgiving? The man does not understand what you are saying!
sown an animate body, it rises a spiritual body. As there is an animate body, so there is a spiritual body.
but the animate, not the spiritual, comes first, and only then the spiritual.
in which you moved as you followed the course of this world, under the sway of the prince of the air ??the spirit which is at present active within those sons of disobedience
For we have to struggle, not with blood and flesh but with the angelic Rulers, the angelic Authorities, the potentates of the dark present, the spirit-forces of evil in the heavenly sphere.
Hence, from the day we heard of it, we have never ceased to pray for you, asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and insight,
in him you have been circumcised with no material circumcision that cuts flesh from the body, but with Christ's own circumcision, when you were buried with him in your baptism and thereby raised with him as you believed in the power of the God who raised him from the dead.
things that bring down the anger of God on the sons of disobedience.
Let the inspiration of Christ dwell in your midst with all its wealth of wisdom; teach and train one another with the music of psalms, with hymns, and songs of the spiritual life; praise God with thankful hearts.
Are not all angels merely spirits in the divine service, commissioned for the benefit of those who are to inherit salvation?
to the assembly of the first-born registered in heaven, to the God of all as judge, to the spirits of just men made perfect,
come and, like living stones yourselves, be built into a spiritual house, to form a consecrated priesthood for the offering of those spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
(It was in the Spirit that Enoch also went and preached to the imprisoned spirits
we belong to God ??he who knows God listens to us, he who does not belong to God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the spirit of truth and 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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there was a woman who for eighteen years had suffered weakness from an evil spirit; indeed she was bent double and quite unable to raise herself.
Look at my hands and feet. It is I! Feel me and see; a ghost has not flesh and bones as you see I have."
So they stoned Stephen, who called on the Lord, saying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!"
For while the Sadducees declare there is no such thing as resurrection, angels, or spirits, the Pharisees affirm them all.
one has prophecy, another the gift of distinguishing spirits, another the gift of 'tongues' in their variety, another the gift of interpreting 'tongues.'
Are not all angels merely spirits in the divine service, commissioned for the benefit of those who are to inherit salvation?