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Scripture Reading: Titus 3:5; Eph. 4:23; 2 Thes. 2:13; 1 John 2:27; Gal. 5:22, 25; John 14:17; 16:13-15; 2 Cor. 13:14
In chapter 12 we saw something concerning the Spirit of life in Romans, 1 Corinthians, and 2 Corinthians. In this chapter we want to continue our fellowship concerning the Spirit of life.
Titus 3:5 refers to the renewing of the Holy Spirit. Transforming and renewing are very much related to one another (Rom. 12:2). The more we are transformed, the more we are renewed. The more we are renewed, the more we are transformed. We have pointed out that transformation is not merely an outward change but an inward change of life, a metabolic change. Transformation is a very subjective change from within by life. The renewing of the Spirit is also not an outward renewing but an inward renewing of life. The divine life that is imparted into us renews us.
Everything related to our natural being is old. Ephesians 4 tells us that we need to put off the old man, be renewed in the spirit of our mind, and put on the new man (vv. 22-24). No matter how young a person is, his very being, the created and fallen man, is old. The old man is the man of the old creation which is in Adam. Even a little babe has an old man that needs to be renewed. Our mind is an old mind, our nature is an old nature, and our life is an old life.
Adam became old immediately after the fall. The old man is of Adam, created by God, but fallen through sin. Because of our inherited oldness from Adam, we need to be renewed with all the items of God. Whatever God is and whatever God has is new. Whatever we are and whatever we have is old. God is very ancient because He is infinite, but He is never old. He is ancient yet always new. Because we are so old, we need to be renewed by our new God.
To be renewed means to be replaced. Our mind has to be replaced by the mind of Christ, our nature has to be replaced by the nature of Christ, and our life has to be replaced by the life of Christ. Whatever we have is old. Whatever Christ is, is new. When Christ comes in to replace all that we have and all that we are, He renews us. We need to be renewed with all that Christ is in the way of life. A dentist may replace a person’s teeth with some false teeth, but this is not the renewing of a person’s teeth, because they are not replaced in the way of life. The Spirit of life renews us in the way of life with all that Christ is.
The New Testament tells us that we were sanctified by the blood of Christ (Heb. 13:12; 10:29). Even the Old Testament has the thought that the redeeming blood can sanctify us (Heb. 9:13; cf. Lev. 16:18-19). Sanctification by the blood is merely a change in position and condition outwardly, not a change in disposition inwardly. Before we were saved, we were one among many unsanctified sinners. When we confessed our sins and accepted Christ as our Savior, the blood of Christ sprinkled us and sanctified us, changing our position. The blood separated us from the sinful people in the world. We were sanctified unto God positionally by the blood of Christ.
Before we were saved, our condition was that we were under God’s condemnation. But by the Lord’s blood, which has been sprinkled upon us, our condition has also been changed. We are no longer under God’s condemnation, but we have been justified in the eyes of God by the blood of Christ (Rom. 5:16, 18; 3:24-25). Our condition is now one of justification, not one of condemnation. The blood of Christ has changed our position and our condition before God. We have been justified and reconciled to God.
The blood, however, does not change what we are in our nature, in our disposition. This is why we need another aspect of sanctification. We not only need the outward sanctification by the blood, but we also need the inward sanctification by the Spirit. Second Thessalonians 2:13 speaks of the sanctification of the Spirit. Sanctification in this verse is something in life. The Spirit sanctifies us subjectively and inwardly by changing our disposition. The Holy Spirit sanctifies us inwardly in our disposition with the substance of Christ, with what Christ is, with the essence of God.
A good illustration of dispositional sanctification is the making of tea. When a tea bag is placed into plain water, it “teaifies” the water. When the tea bag is placed in the plain water and remains there for a period of time, the plain water becomes the same in essence, in nature, in appearance, in color, and in odor as the tea. The plain water becomes one with the tea because the tea gets into the water. The more the tea gets into the water, the more the water is teaified. Just as the plain water is teaified, we need to be sanctified, or “Christified.” The Holy Spirit comes into us to sanctify us with Christ, to Christify us. The Spirit puts more and more of Christ into us so that we become mingled with Christ just as the tea is mingled with the water. If the tea bag remains in the water for a long time, the teaification becomes intensified. We need to allow Christ to dispense Himself into us in a full way so that we are sanctified, or Christified, in an intensified way.
Romans 6:19 tells us that we need to present our members “as slaves to righteousness unto sanctification.” Holiness is the essence of God’s divine being. John Wesley interpreted holiness as sinless perfection, a perfection without sin. Holiness, however, is not sinless perfection. The way God makes us holy is to impart Himself, the Holy One, into us so that our whole being may be permeated and saturated with His holy nature.
To purify water and to teaify it are two different things. If you are going to serve me a cup of tea, you may purify the water first and then teaify it. Purification is included in teaification, but purification is not teaification. In like manner, sinless perfection is included in holiness, but sinless perfection is not holiness.
People who are under the concept that sinless perfection is holiness put themselves under many regulations. They may have outward regulations concerning their dress and conduct in order to make themselves “holy.” When I was a young Christian, I met with a group of Brethren believers who were very strict. The men had to cut their hair very short. If your hair was very short, you were considered a most spiritual person. Furthermore, the sisters were not supposed to wear anything modern. They all had to wear old-fashioned clothing. One day I realized that the unsaved people who lived in the countryside in China had the same outward practice that we did. The men cut their hair very short, and the women all wore old-fashioned clothes. Seemingly, they were as “spiritual” as we were. It was then that I realized that the teaching of holiness as sinless perfection was wrong.
Holiness is God’s divine essence, the essence of God’s divine being. For water to become tea, the substance of tea must be placed into the water. Holiness is when we are “teaified” with God as the divine tea. When something of God’s divine being is dispensed into us, we are sanctified; that is, we are made holy with God’s very essence. The sanctification of the Spirit is not an outward change but an inward addition of God’s very essence into our being. A mortuary has the job of making dead persons look good outwardly. That is an outward beautification that has nothing to do with life. Our conduct, or our outward beauty, must be an expression of the inward life. The sanctification of the Holy Spirit is not something outward but something absolutely inward of life.
The Spirit of life is also the anointing Spirit (1 John 2:27). The Spirit of life is liberating, transforming, renewing, sanctifying, and anointing. The anointing is the moving and working of the indwelling, all-inclusive life-giving Spirit. The Spirit anoints us with all the divine elements of the Divine Trinity. The anointing is like the repeated painting of some article. When coat after coat of paint is added to something, the elements of the paint are added to the thing painted. The Holy Spirit anoints us with the divine paint, with Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God. The anointing of the Holy Spirit is not merely a cleansing but a painting of the divine elements of Christ into our being. God’s desire is to add Himself into us, to dispense Himself into us. While the Holy Spirit is anointing us, He kills the negative things in our being, and He purifies and cleanses us with all that Christ is.
The holy anointing ointment in Exodus 30:23-25 is a full type of the compound Spirit of God with which we are anointed. The ingredients of this ointment include all that Christ is, all that Christ has accomplished, all that Christ has attained, and all that Christ has obtained. This all-inclusive, compound ointment is the very paint with which the Holy Spirit paints us. All the ingredients of the compound ointment are the essence of Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God. The more the Holy Spirit anoints us, the more we become the same as Christ in life and in nature.
If we want to change the color of a dark house to green, we need to paint it with green paint. We are like a dark house, and Christ is the green paint. Green signifies God’s rich life. The more the Holy Spirit anoints us with Christ, the more we become the same as Christ and the more we become Christ. We become Christ because the essence and the element of Christ have been anointed into us, have been added into us. The anointing is altogether a matter in life.
Ephesians 3:16 says that we need to be strengthened into our inner man through the Spirit. Many times when I am hungry, I feel weak, so I need to eat some food to be strengthened. I feel weak because I am empty within. I need the inner strengthening. After eating a good meal, I am fully strengthened and energized from within. Physically, we need to be strengthened by taking food into our being. Spiritually, we need to be strengthened into our inner man with Christ through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brings more and more of Christ into our inner man, and we are energized and strengthened. This means that we gain more life supply.
In 1948 I was laboring in Brother Watchman Nee’s hometown of Foochow, which was a place famous for producing oranges. I stayed there for about three weeks and labored day and night in the Lord’s work. When I became tired after a meeting, I would drink a glass of fresh orange juice; within a short period of time, I was energized, strengthened, and refreshed. In the same way that our physical being receives the life supply from orange juice, we need the life supply of the Spirit, the inner strengthening of the Spirit. Many times we may feel weak or depressed. At these times we need to open ourselves to the Lord and say, “O Lord, Amen.”
We need to learn to breathe in the Lord deeply from within. When we breathe in the Lord, we can sense the inner strengthening and energizing of the Holy Spirit. When we call on the Lord, the Holy Spirit strengthens us with Christ as the life supply. I cannot define the elements that are within a glass of fresh orange juice, but I can enjoy its nourishment and refreshment. There is some element in the orange juice that nourishes, energizes, strengthens, and refreshes. There are also some real, divine, heavenly, spiritual elements in the breath of the Holy Spirit. When we breathe Him in, we get strengthened into our inner man.
The more that we are transformed, renewed, sanctified, anointed, and strengthened by the Spirit, the more life supply we enjoy and the more growth in life we will have. The husky and tall American men have grown in their human life because they have enjoyed the riches of America. Likewise, our spiritual weight and growth in life come from the riches of Christ. As the Spirit of Christ daily liberates, transforms, renews, sanctifies, and anoints us, He adds Christ into us so that we gain an additional weight of Christ. This addition of Christ into our being issues in our growth in life.
By taking in all the rich food of America, an American child will grow and be changed metabolically over a period of time. As the Spirit of Christ adds Christ into our being, we grow and are transformed metabolically. The Spirit liberates, transforms, renews, sanctifies, and anoints us for the one purpose of putting Christ into us so that He can be the very element of our inward being. We need to cooperate with the Spirit of life, who is dispensing more and more of Christ into us little by little in many ways. We are not interested in mere teachings, because teachings can never replace the ingredients of Christ Himself. We trust in the life-giving Spirit because this Spirit works to liberate us, transform us, renew us, sanctify us, and anoint us, bringing Christ into us and adding Christ into us little by little and day by day. As we cooperate with the work of the life-giving Spirit, we are increasing in the riches of Christ, and we are gaining more life so that we can grow in life.
Galatians 5:22 refers to the fruit of the Spirit. Fruit is the expression and the outflow of the inner life. Out of the inward renewing of the Spirit comes the fruit of the Spirit. As Christ is added into our being through the transforming, sanctifying, and anointing Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit will come forth from us. This fruit is the outward expression of the inward working of the Spirit, which is the Spirit’s renewing. The more we are renewed, transformed, sanctified, and anointed by the Holy Spirit, the more fruit we will bear of the Spirit. The Spirit brings forth fruit full of life through our inward enjoyment of Christ.
The fruit of the Spirit is singular, but the expression of the fruit is listed in Galatians 5:22-23 with nine items as illustrations. The fruit of the Spirit has other aspects, but only these nine are listed in Galatians 5. The fruit of the Spirit is Christ Himself in many aspects expressed in love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control. This fruit of the Spirit is the one Christ expressed in many aspects. The fruit brought forth by the Spirit is simply Christ. When Christ is brought into us, He is the nourishment. When Christ is brought forth out of us, He is the fruit. The working of the Spirit of life is to bring Christ into us and to bring forth Christ out of us. The fruit of the Spirit is absolutely a matter of life.
To live by the Spirit is to have our life dependent upon and regulated by the Spirit. To live by the Spirit in Galatians 5:25 equals to walk by the Spirit in verse 16. To live by the Spirit, to walk by the Spirit, is a matter of life. Living by the Spirit is not a matter merely of outward behavior or conduct but is an inward matter of life. To live does not mean to act. Many times parents tell their children to behave themselves. For the children to behave themselves is to act in a way that may be different from what they are. It is possible for a monkey to be trained to act like a man. I once saw a demonstration of a monkey who was trained to eat food with a fork. He was dressed with a little cap on his head and a jacket, and he was trained to walk on two feet instead of four. After the demonstration, the monkey began to behave the way he normally did. He took off the cap and the jacket, threw away the fork, and began to walk on all fours. He was taught to behave, or act, like a man, but in his being he was still a monkey. We Christians should not be ones who act or behave in a way that is different from our being. We need to live by the Spirit.
Many of us may behave, or act, in a Christian meeting. Outside of the meeting we may live in a different way. Just like the monkey who behaved like a man, we may behave like a “man” in the meetings and like a “monkey” outside the meetings. This is wrong. We Christians should not be those who act or who try to behave ourselves. We need to be those who live by the Spirit, who walk by the Spirit. We should not live by ourselves, by our old man, but we need to live by the Spirit.
The book of John refers to the Spirit of reality (14:17; 16:13). The reality is Christ (14:6). In the entire universe Christ is the one reality of all. The real light is Christ. The love that we have is not the real love. The real love is Christ. The Bible tells us to honor our parents, and we need to realize that the real honor is Christ. If we do not have Christ, we cannot have the real honor to our parents. The real honesty is Christ. The real patience is Christ. Our patience is not the real patience because after a certain amount of testing, our patience is gone. Our patience is limited, but Christ as patience is unlimited because He is the real patience. Christ is the reality, and the Spirit of life is also the Spirit of reality. If we have the Spirit of life, we have Christ as reality. Today the Spirit of reality is within us (v. 17). We have to realize this indwelling Spirit of reality in a practical way. Day by day we should be able to testify that the Spirit is so real within us.
In John 16:15 the Lord Jesus said, “All that the Father has is Mine; for this reason I have said that He receives of Mine and will declare it to you.” The reality and the fullness of the Father are Christ’s. The Father passes on all His riches and His fullness to the Son. Then the Spirit receives all the things from Christ to show us. All that the Father is and has is embodied in the Son (Col. 2:9), and all that the Son is and has is revealed as reality to the believers through the Spirit. What the Spirit shows to us is not a kind of teaching but the things of the Father. The things of the Father are Christ’s, and the Spirit receives all the things of the Father from Christ to show us. The reality is the Father’s, the Father passes on the reality to the Son, the Spirit receives this reality from the Son, and He shows us this reality. The Spirit of life brings all that God is in Christ to us as the reality. In this reality is all that we need. This reality includes life, light, patience, love, humility, kindness, wisdom, and knowledge.
Second Corinthians 13:14 says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” We should not consider this verse merely as a benediction. We should read this verse with a realization of God’s economy and of God’s dispensing. The love of God is God Himself, the grace of Christ is Christ Himself, and the fellowship of the Spirit is the Spirit Himself. Love is the source, grace is the course, and the fellowship is the flow. In the divine dispensing, God’s love as the source is manifested in the grace of Christ as the course and transmitted into us as the fellowship of the Spirit, the flow of the Spirit. The love of God, the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Spirit are not three separate matters but three aspects of one thing. As long as we are in the flow of the Spirit, we have the grace of Christ with the love of God. We enjoy the grace of Christ with the love of God in the fellowship of the Spirit, in the flow of the Spirit. This enjoyment of the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity is absolutely a matter of life.
Second Corinthians 1 tells us that God has anointed us with this Spirit (v. 21); chapter 3 tells us that this Spirit is the Spirit who gives life, liberates, and transforms; and the conclusion of 2 Corinthians tells us that this Spirit is the Spirit of fellowship. The Spirit of fellowship is the Spirit of life who gives life and who anoints, liberates, and transforms us. The Spirit of life communicates and transmits all that God is in Christ into us for our enjoyment so that we may gain God in a full way.
