The Spirit & The Spiritual Realm

Spiritually speaking, there are only two kinds of people on the earth today — dead and alive! God first created man after His own likeness: as like begets like, Spirit begets Spirit. The thing brought forth depends on the seed.

Human Spirit?

There is no specific mention of a “human spirit” in the scriptures. The idea is expressed in a variety of ways, from spirit to heart and kidney in the Old Testament, yet the same word, pneuma, is rendered evil spirit and the spirit of God in the New Testament (for instance, in the first chapter of Mark the word “spirit” is rendered as the Spirit of God, Jesus’s spirit, and unclean spirits). In this case, the scriptures shed surprisingly little light on this issue, except that one of the purposes of the Word is to divide between an individual’s spirit and soul. This is important, in that it clearly differentiates between the two, even if there is no clarification of the boundaries, purposes or destiny of each (there is no mention of an eternal soul, or eternal spirit, for that matter). It is the spirit that communicates with and relates to God. Since we were born dead in our spirit, it took an act of the spirit to enable us to even hear God’s knocking. Without our spirits functioning, we had to make do with what we had control over — our soul (mind, will and emotions) and our body to meet our God-given needs for love, acceptance and value.

Spirit of God

Generally speaking, when we speak of something in terms of its being “spiritual,” what we are really saying is that it has a spiritual source and spiritual attributes. What are these attributes, and where do they come from? If like begets like, and Spirit begets Spirit, what is true of the seed is true of what that seed grows into, even if it appears different. For example, Jesus was begotten of the Father, by the Holy Spirit. What attributes are we speaking of here? Holiness, Righteousness, Peace, Eternal Life, Joy, Omnipotence, Omniscience, et cetera. All of the characteristics or attributes of the Father are found in the Son through the Holy Spirit! So for something to be truly Spiritual, it would have to have those same characteristics. Likewise the spiritual realm would be described in those terms; in the true spiritual realm, there is no shadow of turning, no mistakes, no doubt, no flesh. There is only the Perfect Presence of Love.