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Scripture Reading: Eph. 2:1, 5a; 1 Cor. 2:14; Jer. 17:9; Eph. 4:17-18; Rom. 8:7-8; Matt. 16:24; Rom. 6:6; 7:24; Phil. 3:3
I. Our spirit having been deadened — Eph. 2:1, 5a.
II. Our soul neither receiving the things of the Spirit of God nor being able to know them — 1 Cor. 2:14.
III. Our heart being deceitful above all things and being incurable — Jer. 17:9.
IV. Our mind being filled with vanity and darkened in understanding — Eph. 4:17-18a.
V. Our will being hard — v. 18b.
VI. Our flesh being unable to be subject to God and to please God — Rom. 8:7-8.
VII. Our self needing to be denied — Matt. 16:24.
VIII. Our body being of sin and of death — Rom. 6:6; 7:24.
IX. Learning to have no trust in our natural being in the things of God — Phil. 3:3.
In this lesson we want to see the impotence of our natural being in the things of God. The impotence is the insufficiency. We may be very sufficient in other things, but we do not have any sufficiency, competence, or power in the things of God.
The spirit of fallen mankind has been deadened (Eph. 2:1, 5a), so it is useless in the things of God.
First Corinthians 2:14 says, “A soulish man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he is not able to know them because they are discerned spiritually.” This verse shows that our soul neither receives the things of the Spirit of God nor is it able to know them. A soulish man is a natural man, one who allows his soul (including the mind, the emotion, and the will) to dominate his entire being and who lives by his soul, ignoring his spirit, not using his spirit, and even behaving as if he did not have a spirit (Jude 19). Such a man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, and he is not able to know them. Rather, he rejects them.
According to Jeremiah 17:9, our heart is deceitful above all things and is incurable. In the things of God, our heart is incurable; it is a hopeless case.
According to Ephesians 4:17-18a our mind is filled with vanity and darkened in understanding. Verse 17 speaks of the vanity of the mind, and verse 18 of the darkened understanding. This shows that our natural mind is utterly useless in the things of God.
Ephesians 4:18b speaks of the hardness of man’s fallen heart. This indicates that the will, as a part of man’s heart, is hard, stubborn. Thus, our heart is incurable, our mind is full of vanity with a darkened understanding, and our will is hard, stubborn.
Romans 8:7 and 8 say, “The mind set on the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, for neither can it be. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Our flesh cannot do two things. It cannot be subject to God, and it cannot please God. We need to develop these points in our speaking to the saints. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament tell us that God hates the flesh. God wants nothing to do with the flesh.
In today’s religion of Christianity, most of the service is either in the soul or in the flesh. This is why we have to see the impotence of our natural being for our service. We need to impress the saints that our flesh cannot be subject to God and cannot please God. Then the saints may ask, “What is it to be in the flesh?” We should tell them, “As long as you are not in the spirit, you are in the flesh.”
The New Testament mostly gives us a contrast between the spirit and the flesh, not the spirit and the soul. Actually, not many people are soulish; most people are fleshly. Even the most so-called moral persons are fleshly. At God’s creation, man was called a soul (Gen. 2:7), but after the fall of man, man became flesh (6:3). Thus, in Paul’s writings concerning salvation and justification, he does not use the word soul but the word flesh. He says that out of the works of the law no flesh can be justified before God (Gal. 2:16; Rom. 3:20). Flesh here refers to man himself.
When the Bible says something about people in a positive sense, it uses the word soul as a term for man (Exo. 1:5, lit.). But when the Bible says something concerning man in a negative sense, it uses the word flesh. No flesh, no man, can be justified before God by the works of law. The flesh is the fallen man. If we are not in the spirit, surely we are in the flesh. We should not think that we are so good that if we are not in the spirit, we are in the soul, not in the flesh. Actually, today our soul is one with the flesh, which is the uttermost expression of the fallen tripartite man. So if we are not in the spirit, we are in the flesh, and our flesh is altogether impotent in the things of God. It is unable to be subject to God and to please God.
Matthew 16:24 says that our self needs to be denied. This shows that the self has been condemned by God. God has condemned it, so we have to deny it.
Our body is a body of sin and of death (Rom. 6:6; 7:24). It is very active in sinning, because it is a body of sin, and it is altogether dead in doing the will of God to please God, because it is a body of death. Sin in our body makes us very active to sin, and death in our body deadens us in doing God’s will. Our fallen body can only sin. It cannot do anything to accomplish God’s will or to please God.
After reading the above eight points, we should realize that we cannot have any trust in our natural being in the things of God. In Philippians 3:3 Paul says, “We are the circumcision, the ones who serve by the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh.” To have no trust in our flesh is to have no trust in our natural being.
We have to learn to reject our natural being and exercise our spirit in everything. God’s salvation makes our spirit the inner man (Eph. 3:16). This implies that our spirit is our new person as everything to us. Actually, we should not live another man; we should live only the inner man. Our spirit worships, prays, and should take the lead to do everything in our Christian life and service.
We should not exercise our spirit only when we come to the meeting. We need to exercise our spirit when we speak to our spouse and our children. We should purchase things by exercising our spirit. If we do not exercise our spirit, we are in the flesh. When we come to the meeting, we may act as one person, but at home and in our daily life we may be another person. This is wrong. We need to do everything by exercising our spirit. Otherwise, our meeting is altogether theatrical, and our meeting hall becomes a theater. We do not want to be actors and actresses who merely talk about the things of God in the meeting hall. We want to be those who exercise our spirit, deny the self, and reject the flesh. We should not have a double personality, being one person in the meetings and another person outside the meetings. This is hypocrisy and is wrong. Our entire being must be strengthened into the inner man. We must live the inner man; that is, we must let our spirit do everything, and we must reject everything of our natural being.
Most of the time we remain in the realm of good and evil. We do good things not by the spirit but by our natural being. But God does not want us to remain in the realm, in the field, of good and evil by using our soul to do good and to reject evil. God wants us to deny our natural being and use our spirit. When we use only our spirit, we are out of the field, the realm, of good and evil. Then we are in the realm of life. When we are not using our mind, emotion, will, and fallen body, we are using our spirit. Then we touch only life. The spirit touches nothing except life.
First John reveals that our regenerated spirit, which is born of God, does not practice sin (3:9; John 3:6b), but this does not mean that we do not sin or are without sin (1 John 1:8—2:1). Some teach wrongly that a regenerated person does not sin and cannot sin. They teach the eradication of sin, saying that sin is altogether eradicated from a regenerated person. Of course, there is not such a thing.
Many years ago in Shanghai, there was a preacher who strongly taught the heresy of the eradication of sin. One day he and some of his followers went to a park that required them to purchase tickets in order to be admitted. He bought three or four tickets to be used by a total of five persons. Some of them entered the park with the tickets, and then one of them came out with the tickets and gave them to the others for them to enter. That preacher brought his young followers into that park in a sinful way. As a result of this, one of the young men began to doubt the teaching of eradication of sin. He went to the preacher and asked him if this was a sin. The preacher responded by saying that it was not a sin but a little weakness. But regardless of what term we use, sin is sin, and we are sinners. Although we may call it by another name, it remains sin nonetheless. We should never accept a teaching that says we have become so spiritual that it is impossible for us to sin.
However, even though we are still fallen, our regenerated spirit cannot practice sin. Fallen man has a spirit, which is reserved for God Himself. To repent involves the conscience, and the conscience is a part of man’s spirit (Rom. 9:1 cf. 8:16). For God’s own purpose, He preserved a part of man for Himself, that is, man’s spirit. Our spirit is precious. Only our regenerated spirit does not sin, so we have to live in our spirit.
