More on Spirit vs. Soul

In The Church today we take for granted that if we are doing things that look spiritual they must be spiritual. Unfortunately soulical things look spiritual to the uninitiated, untrained or inexperienced. Those statements taken together may offend some. Should you be one who is offended by those simple facts, it is time for some introspection and perhaps some input from one who is farther along in spiritual life than you are. Just my thoughts on the matter. After all, that is the purpose of blogs in general. In this one, we answer to a higher authority. So while the thoughts may be ours, we hope they are directed by the Holy Spirit. Having said that, let us try and explain what we mean by the first two sentences.

Let us first examine our practice of worship. To give greater definition to that term, we are discussing the time during a church service when the primary activity is group singing, praise, and hopefully worship. Surely those are spiritual things? Wait a minute. Let us carefully consider our answer to that question.

We sing. People without Christ sing. Some of them sing very well. Are they performing a spiritual exercise when they sing? They cannot possibly be. Their spirits are yet dead in sin. Why then would we think our singing is a spiritual exercise when theirs is not? We would give you pause to think, but this format is not really conducive to that. You might want to consider the question before proceeding. The defining factor here is that when our singing comes out of our spirits, it is a spiritual activity. We cannot help you any more than that at this point.

Well then, what about praise? Surely praise is a spiritual activity? Let us answer that question with a question just for rhetorical effect. Have you ever given a compliment, or been complimented? That is the essence of praise. In praise we give glory, a compliment, to God for any of his various works that come to mind. The mind is part of the soul. We have likely all had people without Christ give us praise for something. They praise. We praise. One is not automatically a spiritual activity and the other not. Do not stop reading yet. It gets better--we hope.

Singing is not necessarily a spiritual activity and praise is not necessarily a spiritual activity. Worship, however, is always a spiritual activity. By definition, we can only worship in response to God calling forth worship from us, that is from our spirit. Our spirit links with God's Spirit and we communicate directly with Him. Sometimes this seems to be a random act of God, but we can learn to do it intentionally anytime we desire. A dear saint of God told me many years ago she was opposed to the idea that God was like a faucet we turn on when we want something. God is always on. We have to turn on our own spirit to commune with Him in worship.

The problem with saying that worship is always a spiritual exercise is that what passes for worship many times is really nothing more than us attempting, or wanting to worship. We never actually get past our soul into our spirit. Hence, we never actually worship. We do not accurately discern spiritual activities from soulical activities. We may think we are worshiping because someone has told us that what is going on is worship. We think we are doing what everyone else is doing so we must be worshipping. Most people do not understand that worship is one on one time with God, giving Him the glory due Him for being God. This can never be done corporately. We can sing and we can praise God together, but to move into real worship, we must come face to face with Almighty God and give voice to our spirit's yearning to worship. In worship we give glory to God for being God with all that incorporates. Of the items we are discussing, only worship incorporates spirit, soul, and body together in the same activity.

What we have been discussing so far is the vertical activity of worship. There is a horizontal, soulical activity we usually think of as being spiritual. We even often use the Greek word rather than the English word. Using the Greek word must make it spiritual. It is taken directly from the Bible after all. The word and the activity we are discussing is, of course, koinonia, the Greek word for fellowship. We have fellowship one with another. We do not really need to do the whole, people without Christ thing again do we?

Someone has defined koinonia as, "Any church gathering with food." That is a fanciful definition, but unfortunately not too far off the mark. Many churches consider any gathering outside the routine, scheduled services in the church building to be koinonia. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, our suspicion is that most believers have never experienced koinonia. Koinonia is one on one, face to face, spirit to spirit interaction with another believer. It gets interesting here because, unlike worship which is only one on one with the one God, we can have koinonia in groups. What passes for, and is usually called koinonia is often nothing more than friendly, soulical interaction. There is nothing wrong with friendly, soulical interaction. It just is not koinonia. When two or more people are gathered together in Jesus' name, He promised to be in their midst. (Matthew 18:20) When our spirits are tuned to Him, we are also linked to each other by the Holy Spirit. It is only at that point we have acheived koinonia.

Both worship and koinonia function as closed loops. The difference is that in worship the closed loop is God and each of us individually. In koinonia, the closed loop incorporates God and everyone else who is linked to him in the same place. The disciples in the upper room, waiting for the arrival on earth of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1) were said to be "in one accord". They were enjoying one another's fellowship in the presence of God. Think of the loop as coming from God, running through each of the believers in the room and returning to God. That is the essence of koinonia.

In summary, soulical activities often look like spiritual activities. We have given but two examples although those two incorporate our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with other people. In a sense, we might say those two activities include everything we can do. We need to be aware that simply because something may look spiritual does not necessarily mean it is. Of course we also need to learn to function in the spirit intentionally and often. The more our activities are spirit centered, the more abundant our life will be.