The greetings from Paul to the churches that we collected in the last message were an interesting exercise, wasn’t it? It contained an element of encouragement to the reader and glory to the Lord. One thing that came out a number of times was very interesting to me though. It was the words: “The grace of the Lord be with your spirit.” It is our spirit that represents us to the Lord, for He is Spirit. In other words He sees us in our spirits.
Our bodies are temporary and harm to it will not have eternal effect, but our spirits live eternally and need to be pure before God in order to be with Him in heaven and therefore need grace. It is our spirit that needs to be born again before we can enter eternal life (John 3:3,5) and that needs to be sanctified before we can see God (Hebrews 12:14). We need to be more concerned about our spirit and the realm in which it lives than about our bodies and the realm in which it lives.
That is why the Lord Jesus didn’t bother about material comfort and care for Himself, was very outspoken against materialism and didn’t blink an eye when He prepared us for persecution of the body and soul. Although He does heal the body and meets its material needs, since we need to be cared for if we want to be effective servants of the Kingdom, the body is only a vehicle that houses the spirit. Our priorities should reflect this. We should be more concerned about activities that can harm the spirit than about harm to the body.
To the world it is all about appearances and the visible. The body must look good and be decorated, what we do and own have to be impressive and how we act should be remarkable. The apostle Peter however put it well in 1 Peter 3:3-5 when he addressed women: “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewellery and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful.”
Our spirit communicates with the Lord and is interlinked with our body and soul. We receive through our spirit into our soul what the Holy Spirit communicates with us, and the soul in turn instructs the body to be obedient. Sin that we do in the body, and through our mind, will and emotions (our soul) get signalled through our spirit to God and affect our relationship with Him. When Adam and Eve sinned the Lord told them they would surely die. Satan told them that God lied and that they would not die. The problem was that Satan turned their focus to the physical and in Adam’s eyes he was actually right – they didn’t die physically. This is the problem with us today as well. Our focus is turned to the physical and we do not consider the spiritual sufficiently.
When the Lord warned Adam and Eve, He meant they would die spiritually, in other words they would be dead to God - their spirits would be unable to communicate with the Lord. This is why we need to be born again. Our spirits need to become alive again to communicate with the Lord. We who were born again can testify that when we consciously gave our hearts to Jesus everything suddenly became alive. At that moment we understood God, the Bible opened for us and we were awed by the insight we suddenly had.
Those who feed their spirits with the Bible, who purify their spirits through obedience and who activate their spirits through faith are the ones who sanctify themselves and who will see God (Hebrews 12:14). We must consciously focus away from the physical towards the spiritual. Eternal life is spiritual. If we neglect the spiritual inheritance for the sake of a temporary physical inheritance we will be eternally poor, having very little treasure in heaven (Matthew 6:19-20).
Lord, let your grace be with my spirit.
Thank you Lord that your Word went out from your mouth, via your servant’s pen, and it will not return to you empty, but will accomplish what you desire and achieve the purpose for which you sent it.
Please pass this on if you think others may benefit by it.
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