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Scripture Reading: Zech. 12:1; Job 32:8; Prov. 20:27; John 3:6b; 4:24; Rom. 1:9a; 8:16, 15, 4, 6, 9-10; 2 Tim. 4:22; Gal. 6:18
The Christian life seems to be very mysterious and abstract, but Paul made it practical by speaking about the flesh on the negative side and the spirit on the positive side. This is the human spirit, not the Holy Spirit. The human flesh and the human spirit are the keys to the practical Christian life. If we are going to experience life in a practical way, we must be clear about the flesh and the spirit.
Not many Christians today are clear about these two things. We may have read Romans 6—8 and may be familiar with the flesh and the spirit as terms, but what we need is a heavenly vision, a divine revelation. Many Christians have read through Romans 8 and have seen the Holy Spirit, but they have not seen that there is another spirit in this chapter. Verse 16 says, “The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit.” This verse speaks of the Holy Spirit and our spirit, the human spirit.
Christians mostly pay their attention to the first Spirit, the Holy Spirit. But we cannot realize the Holy Spirit without our human spirit. Regardless of how wonderful the Holy Spirit is, we must have the proper organ, our human spirit, to realize Him. If we do not have eyes, we cannot realize what light, colors, and beautiful scenery are. Our eyes are the proper organ to realize these things. If we did not have our ears as a listening organ, we would not be able to realize or substantiate any sounds. God is Spirit. If we did not have our spirit, we could not substantiate Him.
In the previous chapter we saw that Satan, sin, and death are all in the flesh. We must be able to present the verses from the Scripture that prove this. Romans 7:17 says, “It is no longer I that work it out but sin that dwells in me,” and verse 18 says, “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, nothing good dwells.” These two verses show that sin dwells in the flesh.
Now we need to consider how we can say that sin is Satan. Verse 21 says, “I find then the law with me who wills to do the good, that is, the evil is present with me.” When sin is dormant within us, it is merely sin, but when it is aroused in us by our willing to do the good, it becomes “the evil.” This means that sin is the evil, and the evil is sin. In the New Testament Satan has another title, and this title is the evil. In John 17 the Lord prayed that the disciples would be kept from “the evil one,” but in the Greek text the word one is not there (v. 15). Who is “the evil”? The evil is Satan, and evil is sin, so sin is Satan.
Sin in Romans is a living person, because sin can kill us, deceive us (7:11), and lord it over us (6:12, 14). It is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I am a person, and sin is also a person. In Galatians 2:20 Paul said, “It is no longer I...but...Christ who lives in me.” Within me, the person, there is another person — Christ. Also within me, that is, in my flesh, there is another person. This person is sin, and sin is Satan. Sin is Satan dwelling in us, and death is one with sin. Romans 8:2 speaks of the law of sin and of death. So as long as you have sin, you have death. These three things — Satan, sin, and death — are all in the flesh.
Our flesh is impure. It is a mixture, a compound. A compound is composed of several elements. Our flesh has been compounded with Satan, sin, and death. Have you ever realized that today our flesh is such a mysterious, terrible compound? Our human spirit is also a compound, but it is a compound in a good sense. In our spirit is Jesus Christ. Second Timothy 4:22 says, “The Lord be with your spirit.” Not only so, in our spirit is the grace of God. Galatians 6:18 says, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”
We may say that the Lord is in our spirit, but in our daily life we do not apply Him. When I was young, not many homes in mainland China had electricity installed in them. One day electricity was installed in our home, but from my youth I had been using the oil lamp day after day. For quite a number of days after the installation of electricity, I would still go to light the oil lamp out of habit. Then when I remembered that we had electricity, I stopped what I was doing and turned on the light. I knew that there was electricity installed in my home and that there were electrical lights hanging from the ceiling, but I forgot to turn on the electricity because I was not used to it.
A number of us have heard messages about Jesus Christ being with our spirit. We may be excited about this, but when we are in our daily life, we forget. We are like someone who picks up the matches and tries to light the oil lamp when he has electricity in his home. We are not accustomed to going to Christ in our spirit. We are used to approaching Him as the One who is high in the third heaven. We are not used to going directly to Him and applying Him to our need.
We have the doctrine of the Lord being with our spirit, but we do not practice the reality. We all have to ask ourselves, “Do we really apply Christ in our daily life?” Most of the time we do not apply Him, because we are not used to it. We are used to applying ourselves. We are not used to applying this “foreign One.” We have a “Foreigner” within us who came from afar, from the third heaven. One day when we said, “O Lord Jesus,” He came into us as a “Stranger.” He will never come out of us, yet we are not used to applying Him.
We may have heard messages about the human spirit, but we do not practice what we have heard, because we are not used to it. After we installed electricity in our home, it took us a long time to get used to it. We had to get used to going to the switch to turn on the light instead of going to light the oil lamp. I desire to see many saints in the church life all get used to “going to the switch” to “turn on Christ.”
But to practice this requires a full understanding, a full realization, that God’s desire is not for us to be moral or immoral, good or bad. He wants us to live by Him and with Him. He wants us to be persons who are full of life. This kind of fellowship may offend people who have been constituted with ethical and moral concepts. But we need to realize that the Scriptures reveal that mere ethics and morality are not what God desires.
In John 15:5b the Lord said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” But we may love others, help others, and do many good things apart from Him. Christ did say that without Him we can do nothing, but actually we do many things without Him. Christ could say to us, “Apart from Me you can do so many things, but nothing you do apart from Me will be recognized by My Father. Whatever you do apart from Me will be burned. My Father will never accept it. Only one category of things that you do will be accepted by My Father. That is the category of things which you do with Me and in Me. What you do with Me and in Me will be recorded in the heavens and will go to My Father’s account.”
When we contact others with and in Christ, we will minister Christ into them. Apart from Jesus Christ, it is impossible for us to minister Christ into others. We may be able to do many things apart from Christ, but these things will not be recorded in the heavenly account. From the point of view of the heavenly account, whatever we do apart from Christ means nothing. Apart from Christ, we can do nothing that will be recognized by the heavenly Father. So the Christian life is not a matter of being ethical or moral. If it were, the Chinese would not need to become Christians. They were taught by Confucius, so they know how to be ethical. We do not need ethical teachings. We need Christ as our life.
The trouble with us is this: We may know that we need Christ as our life in theory and in doctrine, but in our daily life, in our practice, we forget about this. Those from the East would forget about Christ in their practical life because they have been influenced by the teachings of Confucius. Those in the West would forget about Christ because they have been influenced by ethical and moral concepts. We have been taught to be moral, to behave ourselves, and to build up a good character for ourselves. We were taught in this way, were raised up in this kind of atmosphere, and are under this influence.
Before we were saved, we were careless. Now that we have been saved, we might tell the Lord, “Lord, thank You that You have saved me. O Lord, pardon me for all my carelessness in the past. Now I am Your child, heavenly Father. Help me to build up a good character so that I can glorify You in my parents’ eyes and in the eyes of all my relatives. Help me, Lord.” We may pray, “Lord, help me not to lose my temper, not to put You to shame. Help me to be a good brother in the church life.” Many of us have prayed in this way because we are under the influence of the teaching of morality, of good behavior, and of building up a good character. Humanly speaking, there is nothing wrong with this, but this is not what God wants. God wants Christ to get into you.
We may have asked the Lord to help us to be a good person, to be a person who does not lose his temper and is not offended by anyone. After such a prayer, however, we became worse. Before we got saved, we may have lost our temper once a week. After we got saved and prayed in this way, we lost our temper three times a week. Then we wonder why it seems that we have become worse since we were saved. Actually, we are not “worse enough.” We need to be exposed by being worse and worse. I experienced this. The more I prayed to become better, the worse I became. Eventually, I asked the Lord why He would not take this ugly flesh away from me. The Lord showed me that I needed it. Without such a troubling thing, that is, the flesh, none of us would go to the Lord.
We may want to be like Adam before the fall in the garden. Adam was good before the fall; he was innocent and pure. But there was a void, an emptiness, within him that gave the way for the enemy, the devil, to come in. Even if you were innocent and pure like Adam was before the fall, that could not last long. The devil would still come in to fill you up and possess you. We have the flesh with us today as a real trouble, but praise the Lord, this trouble is helpful. I was never so much with the Lord until I experienced this trouble. I prayed again and again that I could overcome this ugly flesh. Eventually, I found out that the ugly flesh is hopeless. Then the Lord showed me that He had no intention to deal with this ugly thing. Rather, He would leave it here, not for our bad temper, but for us to be forced to turn ourselves to the spirit.
For many years I have been alert and aware that day and night this ugly thing is here. When I am talking to the brothers, my wife, or my children, I realize that I am walking on thin ice. I have no confidence that I will be altogether victorious, because of the fact that this ugly thing is always with me. Since this ugly thing is always with me, I always have to be on the alert to turn to the Lord. While I am talking to the brothers, my wife, or my children, I need to pray inwardly, “O Lord, preserve me. O Lord, keep me in the spirit. Save me.” This is because this ugly thing, the flesh, is so close to me. It is as if we are “one-eighth of an inch” away from being in the flesh at all times. If I am not alert that I have to be in the spirit, after two minutes I will be in the flesh. Then I will offend everyone.
Eventually, though, it is not a matter of offending or not offending someone. It is a matter of gaining more of Christ. I gain more of Christ because I have been turning to Him in my spirit all the time. It is not a matter of victory. It is a matter of gaining Christ. God’s intention is to work Christ into us day and night. But we all need a helper to help us to turn to Him. Who is the helper? The most subjective and closest helper is our ugly flesh. Many of us do not realize that we have such an ugly helper.
I am burdened to tell you that within your spirit there is the real help. Within your spirit, there is the source of life. Within your spirit, there is the reality of life. The only problem is that you have been saved for so many years, yet you are still not used to turning to your spirit. So under God’s sovereign wisdom this ugly flesh is left here for the purpose of forcing you to turn to Christ all the day.
If we would open ourselves to the Lord’s enlightening and practice this, in the coming years we will gain more of Christ. Eventually, when we are transfigured in this ugly body, we can tell Satan goodbye. Without his bothering us in our flesh through all the years, we could not have gained so much of Christ. This shows that even Satan is used by God to fulfill His purpose. If we had never fallen that much, we would never appreciate the Lord’s salvation so much.
Now let us consider the importance of our spirit. Zechariah 12:1 says that God stretched forth the heavens, laid the foundations of the earth, and formed the spirit of man within him. In the whole universe only three things are crucial besides God: the heavens, the earth, and the human spirit. This is because the heavens are for the earth, the earth is for man, and man has a spirit for God. Job 32:8 says, “There is a spirit in man.” We have a spirit within us as an organ to contact God and take God in.
Proverbs 20:27 says that the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord. This lamp needs the oil. Our spirit is God’s lamp, and God is the oil for this lamp. John 4:24 says that God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit. If you are going to contact God, to worship God, you need to worship Him in your spirit.
John 3:6 says, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” After being born again, our human spirit is no longer merely a human spirit, because it has the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit in it. The Spirit witnesses with our spirit (Rom. 8:16). This means that the Holy Spirit is with our human spirit. Our spirit also has grace within it (Gal. 6:18). The flesh has sin, death, and Satan in it. But our spirit has Christ, the Spirit, and grace in it. Our flesh is a compound, compounded with sin, death, and Satan. Our spirit today is also a compound, compounded with Christ, the Spirit, and grace.
Man has two organs: the body as an outward organ and the spirit as an inward organ. In between these two organs is our being, that is, the human soul (1 Thes. 5:23). Our soul is our self, our being. The body is the outward organ for us to contact the material things. Our spirit is the inward organ for us to contact God. Through the fall the devil, Satan, came into the outward organ, the human body. But in our regeneration the Lord Jesus came into our inward organ, our human spirit.
We also need to realize that as Christians, we have three persons. The first person is ourself in our soul, our being. The second person is Satan in our flesh. And the third person is Christ in our spirit. This kind of truth has been fully missed today. Most of the teachings and sermons are in the ethical and moral realm, not in the realm that Paul taught in the book of Romans. In the book of Romans there is not the ethical and moral concept but the concept that our spirit today has Jesus Christ, the Spirit, and the very grace of God within it. God does not want us to be merely ethical and moral, but God surely wants us to walk according to this wonderful compound spirit. God wants us to live in this compound spirit and have our being every minute according to this compound spirit.
The Bible is thoroughly consistent. It starts with a man in front of two trees — the tree of knowledge and the tree of life (Gen. 2:9). Eventually, in Romans we see that the tree of knowledge got into man’s flesh, and the tree of life got into man’s spirit. The two trees are within us Christians. The problem today is not whether you behave yourself ethically. The problem is whether you go to the tree of knowledge or come to the tree of life. Day by day do you live, walk, and have your being according to the flesh or according to the spirit? If you do things according to the flesh, that means you are eating the tree of knowledge. To set your mind on the flesh is death (8:6a). Death is the issue, the result, of eating the tree of knowledge. But if you walk according to the spirit, you touch the tree of life. To set your mind on the spirit is life (v. 6b), and life is always the issue, the result, of eating the tree of life.
We need to see that these two trees are within us. We are not in front of the two trees but in between them. Outwardly, we have the tree of knowledge in our flesh. Inwardly, we have the tree of life in our spirit. Now the whole situation depends upon whether we would go to the tree of knowledge or turn to the tree of life. Would we walk, work, and have the church life according to the flesh or according to the spirit? If we have the church life according to the flesh, the result will be death. Then our church life will kill the saints because it is not according to the spirit but according to the flesh.
My burden is that we would see that Satan is in our flesh, and Christ is in our spirit. We have an enemy in our flesh and a dear Savior in our spirit. What shall we do? Would we turn to our enemy and go along with him? Would we coordinate with him or come to Christ and be one with Him? We may say, “Surely, I will not go along with Satan but go along with Christ.” I know you would say this, but this is easy to say. Actually, we need a lot of defeats and failures which will force us to realize that there is no hope in the flesh. The flesh is good only to force you to turn to Christ in your spirit.
Some older saints may tell the young people that they need to learn the lesson of patience. But actually, the young saints do not need the lesson of patience. They need the lesson of failures. They need the lesson of losing their temper. This will make them desperate to turn to the Lord in their spirit. If the older saints teach the younger ones to learn the lesson of patience, none of them will ever make it. No one can graduate from this kind of school. But after two years many of the young ones will graduate from the school of failures. Some would say, “I give up. I can never make it in the brothers’ house. I don’t have that much patience.” I would say, “Hallelujah for your giving up.” You have to give up and turn to the Lord in your spirit.
Our marriage life is also used by the Lord. God’s purpose is to use your marriage life to force you to turn to your spirit. Without our spouse and our children, we could not gain Christ so much. The wives help the husbands to turn to Christ, and the husbands help the wives to turn to Christ. Praise the Lord for the hardship. Praise the Lord for the defeats, the failures. Praise the Lord for the many times we were trying to give up. Praise the Lord for the disappointments. This is because without all these negative things, we would never be forced to turn to the spirit. We would never be alert that we need Christ. We need Christ minute after minute. We need to come back again and again to the spirit.
This is why Paul comes to the conclusion that we need to walk according to the spirit (v. 4). “To walk” is to have our being and our living with all that we say and do. Our living and our being with all that we say and do must be according to the spirit. We have to walk according to the spirit, according to the One who lives in us. This is the Christian walk. We have no more liberty. The Christian walk is not a matter of right or wrong and of loving or hating. It is a matter of walking according to the spirit. Only this life, this kind of walk, can be recorded in the heavens. Nothing else counts in the heavenly account. This is why the Lord said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” What we do apart from Christ can never be recorded in the heavenly account. All the good things we do apart from Christ, regardless of how good they may be, are not a help to the church life.
The walk according to the spirit is for the church life. Only the persons who walk according to the spirit can be the proper members for the building up of a local church. If we do not have such a walk, sooner or later we will be a trouble to our local church. You may say, “I am for the church; I love the church so much.” But you have to walk according to the spirit. If you do not walk according to the spirit, either you will go away or you will be a trouble in the church. No other life can build up the church life except the life that walks according to the spirit. This walk saves us from all kinds of bugs, germs, troubles, dissensions, opinions, and concepts. This walk according to the spirit saves us to the uttermost, making us a profit to the building up of the church, not a trouble. There is only one life with one walk that fits in the building up of the local church. That life is Christ with the walk according to Him.
No doubt, we have an enemy in our flesh, but we do not need to fight against him. We have the Lord within us. We do not need to strive to fight against the enemy, nor do we need to strive to serve the Lord. We should do only one thing. Paul tells us clearly that this one thing is to walk according to the spirit. If we walk according to the spirit, the enemy can do nothing. The enemy is right in your flesh, so close to you, yet he can do nothing to touch you, because you are walking according to the spirit. This walking, spontaneously, is your worshipping, your serving, and your working for the Lord. The Christian life plus the church life is a life of walking according to the spirit. We have the flesh, and in addition to this we have such a wonderful human spirit. Today our human spirit is regenerated, indwelt by Christ, by the Holy Spirit, and by God’s grace. We have such a wonderful human spirit for our application.
