Title: What is the Spirit? (John 6:23)
Contents
What is the Spirit / John 6:23
We talk a lot about spiritual life, spiritual training, and spiritual grace while we are living our life of faith. A believer cannot live apart from spiritual things. And if you don't know this spiritual thing clearly, you will see many side effects and wrong results.
So, you must know clearly what the spirit is, how the spirit works, and what kind of fruit is produced through spiritual experience.
In the beginning, the Word was God, and through the Word all things were created, and it is said that there is life in the Word (John 1:1-4). In other words, if we put it back together, we can get the definition of Word = God = Life ⇒ Creation. And in John 6:63, “It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63).
The Lord is saying that the words I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. In other words, it can be defined as "word = spirit = life". Also, Romans 4:17 says, “As it is written, I made you the father of many nations, in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that do not exist as though they were” (Romans 4:17).
Abraham believed that God is the One who gives life to the dead and calls things that do not exist as things that do not exist. In other words, it can be defined as God = calling (word) = creation (making). Also in 1 Corinthians 15:37-38,
“And what you sow is not a future body, but only grains of wheat or something else, and God gives him a body as he wills, and to each seed his body” (1 Corinthians 15:37-38).
The Apostle Paul explains the resurrection and says that God is the One who gives form (trees, etc.) to life (seed). It can be said that God = life ⇒ giving form. Also, in Hebrews 4:12, it says that the word of God is alive and has power. If we classify these words, we can classify them as first the Word of God, then life, movement, living, and creation, form, and making things that do not exist.
Taken together, God is a Spirit, and the Spirit works through the Word. The Word must appear as kinetic power, and when this kinetic power is shown as life, things that do not exist will come into existence. This is the definition of the Spirit.
In other words, the spirit transmits kinetic power through the Word, and the spirit makes things that do not have kinetic power into existence. Today, when we talk about the life of faith and the spiritual life, we emphasize only the Spirit too much, but if we emphasize this too much, it is easy to become abstract.
That is why today's heretical theology says to the extreme that there is no spirit. What makes this argument seem convincing is that it does so because spirits do not appear to be abstract. But the Spirit is working through the Word. Also, if you emphasize the Word too much, it is easy to fall into human theories and logical traps.
“For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power” (1 Corinthians 4:20).
However, as we emphasize the Word too much today, we deny the movement and power of the Spirit, and the concept of the Spirit is blurred, making it easy to fall into the logical theory of man. Therefore, a clearer biblical understanding is needed to properly understand spirituality.
The spirit is the movement force and life. The word kinetic force comes from the Greek word 'Energeia'. In other words, the word energy in English comes from this word Energia. So, to have energy means to have movement and to have life.
However, if you move too much or emphasize your abilities, you will ignore the Word and you will have problems. You become an activist and push forward with the power of action unconditionally. So it becomes easier to get out of the Word. Of course, there is power in the Word of God. Also, God has the ability to create, but if you emphasize this too much, it is easy to fall into efficiencyism.
God's creativity is to bring things into existence. It refers to appearing as if giving shape in the seed. Therefore, God's work begins with the invisible spirit and is made visible through the movement force (faith) of the Word. The Spirit of God is invisible, and no one has seen God (John 1:18). However, God's work must be revealed. It is called the God of Creation.
When God works, it is supposed to appear physically. But if you put too much emphasis on what you see, you become a realist. Even in the church, too much emphasis is placed on what is visible, so it has nothing to do with God or the Word, but only blindfolds, resulting in only trying to look good.
So, when we unify all these things uniformly, we can see that the perfect spirit, word, movement, and shape of God work as one. God is spirit and invisible. However, it is spiritual work that the kinetic force (the Spirit, the life of God) comes into us through Christ Jesus, the Word, and salvation is concretely experienced and known. These are called wonders, miracles, and also fruits. That is why God's work of salvation and His Word are to appear realistically.
Everything in this world can be divided into the visible and the invisible, and the visible is the visible and the invisible is the invisible. What the world sees is what the world calls reality. People in the world value only what they see and try to solve problems only in this reality, and try to explain the phenomenon by weighing the cause and effect. It is called a causal relationship. The scientific way of thinking is to examine the cause and effect with the reality seen in time and to investigate the causal relationship.
Science does not deal with invisible spiritual things, but explains the cause and effect by only appearing. But the Bible clearly states, "By faith we know that the world was created by the word of God, so that things that are seen were not made out of things that are visible" (Hebrews 11:3).
Today, even if science finds the cause and solves it, it does not solve the problem. Soon the problem is creating another problem. No matter how brilliant a person is, if he deals only with what he sees, the spiritual cause cannot be known and the problems of reality cannot be solved.
In the Bible, it is said that reality (visible: phenomenon) does not come from appearance (appearance), but comes from the kinetic force of God's Spirit (actuality). Science is nothing more than a doctrine (opinion) that tries to explain the cause and effect of what is seen. So, in science, it is not called truth, but doctrine. It's just an explanation. Because new theories will continue to emerge in the future.
The Bible says that all things came to be revealed from God as Spirit, through the Lord as the Word, and through the creative power (life) of the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 11:3). Scientists even know that phenomena (matter) in this world have become energy. But they don't know where the energy came from. They say it happened automatically.
Only the Bible says that energy comes from the Word. When we solve problems in real life, we must not judge only by what people look like in the world, but solve them by faith through the Word of God.