NUMA (Spirit)

WRITTEN BY DREW MATZ

What is the Word?

Few words are more important to our life with Christ and one another than the word spirit. It has so many references in the Bible. It describes God’s immaterial nature. It describes the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. It also describes our spirit, which is an aspect of our nature as human beings. Not surprisingly, the word for spirit, πνεῦμα, has an astounding 383 occurrences in the scriptures. 

How does the Bible use this word?

The Bible utilizes this noun most often to refer to God’s immaterial, omnipresent nature. Interestingly, it also refers to wind and breath – both entities that are active and causal in the world but are nevertheless unseen. Therefore, we must always rely on the context of the passage to determine what sense the Bible is using the word. 

Where in the Bible?

There is often interplay between the multiple senses of the word πνεῦμα, especially in John’s Gospel. One of the best examples comes from Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3:

The wind (πνεῦμα) blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (Πνεύματος).

John 3:8

Here we see the clever word play for both wind and spirit. Even though wind and spirit are clearly different things, they are both alike in certain ways and John draws this out through the clever wordplay we see in this passage.

He does something similar in John 4:23-24:

But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit (πνεύματι) and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit (Πνεῦμα), and those who worship him must worship in spirit (πνεύματι) and truth.

Notice how John connects God, who is spirit, to our spirit. When we worship in spirit we are abiding in God himself. Note also the connection between abiding in God and truth. God wants our worship to be authentic (in the spirit) as well as grounded in his word (the truth, see John 17:17). For Jesus, true worship is always centered on his word, and God makes it a point to tell us that he desires our worship to have integrity.

Abiding in Spirit

Numa is one of those New Testament words that is rich in theology and meaning if we are willing to peer just a little bit deeper into his word. It is in the spirit of God that his church abides. In the Holy Spirit, we have a closeness to one another that transcends even our closest Earthly relationships. Like Jesus tells the woman at the well, he wants us to worship that which we know, and, like he told Nicodemus, we only know God when we are born of the Spirit. Thus, let us always take heed that we are honest in our worship, seeking to ground our life, and doctrine not on our own whims and desires, but upon the solid rock of God’s unchanging word.