Search
Concerning the creation of man, Genesis 2:7 says, “Jehovah God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” In this verse three things are mentioned. First, God formed man from the dust of the ground; this was the forming of man’s body. Second, God breathed into this body the breath of life, and third, man became a living soul. In this account of the creation of man, man’s body and man’s soul are clearly identified; however, it is not clear what the breath of life is that was breathed into man’s body.
First Thessalonians 5:23 says, “The God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This verse portrays man as having three parts: spirit, soul, and body. The body is the outermost part of man’s being, the spirit is the innermost part, and the soul is the medium between the body and the spirit. In this verse the breath of life mentioned in Genesis 2:7 is clearly identified as the human spirit. This is confirmed by Job 32:8, which identifies man’s spirit with God’s breath.
The three parts of man correspond to the three realms in the universe: the physical realm, the spiritual realm, and the psychological realm. In the physical realm there are the material things, which we can contact through the body with its five senses of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching. In the spiritual realm there is God, who is a Spirit (John 4:24). There are also the angels of God, who are spirits (Heb. 1:13-14); the enemy, Satan the devil, and the rebellious angels of Satan (Matt. 25:41), who are evil spirits; and the demons, who are unclean spirits (12:22, 24, 43). We can contact the spiritual world, in particular God as the Spirit, by means of the human spirit within us.
In order to contact anything, we need a certain organ to sense and substantiate it. For instance, it would be impossible to substantiate the sound of a voice without a hearing organ. If we were to lose the function of our ears, it would seem that the many voices around us did not exist, because we would have no organ that could substantiate them. Likewise, if we were to lose our sight, we could not substantiate color, and it would seem that such a thing as color did not exist. Although we might know that color exists, to our senses it would not exist, because we would not have the organ to substantiate color. This explains why unbelievers say that there is no God. To them there is no God simply because they have lost the function of their spirit. People who have lost the function of their spirit cannot substantiate God, because God is a spiritual being. We need to use the right organ to substantiate God, and that organ is our spirit. The Lord Jesus tells us in John 4:24 that “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit.” If we would know God, touch God, contact God, sense God, and substantiate God, we must use the right organ, that is, our spirit.
God created the stomach as the organ for us to receive food and water. In a similar way, He created the spirit as the organ for us to contact Him and receive Him. We would emphasize the fact that to sense and substantiate anything requires the right organ. For the physical world, God created our body with its senses, and for the spiritual world, in which God is the foremost item, He created a spirit within us. It is by this spirit that we can contact God. For this reason, when we pray, we need to stop our whole being and exercise our inner organ, that is, our spirit. We should pray not by our memory, nor by our mind, will, or emotion, but by the deepest and innermost part of our being, our spirit.
Many times we have experienced that the more we think and consider, the more we feel that the Lord is absent. If we exercise our mind and our reasoning too much, we may reach the point where we doubt that the Lord exists. But when we stop our whole being and exercise our innermost part, we sense the Lord’s presence, because we are using the right organ to substantiate Him.
The soul is the medium between the body and the spirit. The word psychology comes from the Greek word psuche, which means “soul.” Thus, psychology is related to the soul, and the psychological realm is the soulish realm. The soul is an organ by which we can sense and substantiate the psychological realm. Reasoning, anger, and joy belong to this realm. Both the Scriptures and our experience confirm that man is of three parts: spirit, soul, and body.
Hebrews 4:12 also speaks concerning the three parts of man: “For the word of God is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” This verse says that the soul and the spirit can be divided, showing that the soul and the spirit are not identical but are two separate parts of man. It also speaks of the joints and the marrow, which are parts of the body. It goes even further to speak of the heart with its thoughts and intents. The heart is different from the soul and from the spirit. Ezekiel 36:26-27 says, “I will also give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you...And I will put My Spirit within you.” In these verses three things are mentioned: a new heart, a new spirit, and God the Spirit. We need to differentiate between the soul and the spirit and also between the heart, on the one hand, and the soul and the spirit, on the other hand. Furthermore, verse 27 tells us clearly that God has put His Spirit within us.
When we received the Lord Jesus as our Savior, we were regenerated in our spirit. John 3:6 says, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” This proves that it was in our spirit that we were reborn, regenerated. When our spirit was regenerated, the Holy Spirit of God came into our spirit to enliven it and bring the Lord Jesus Christ into it as life. From that time forward the divine life of God, the eternal life, has been in our spirit (Rom. 8:10). Our spirit was regenerated with the life of God by the Holy Spirit.
Before we were regenerated, we already had the human life. The human life is primarily the life of the soul. This is the reason that in the Bible men are called “souls” (Exo. 1:5, lit.; Ezek. 18:4). After God formed man’s body from the dust of the ground and breathed into it the breath of life, a living soul came into existence. Man is a soul because the human life is mainly a matter of the soul.
Therefore, before we were regenerated, we were human beings with a human life mainly in the soul. The soul is the personality, the very self, of man, whereas the body is a vessel to contain the soul, and the spirit is an organ by which the soul can contact God. Before we were regenerated, we lived by the soul, by the human life, using the body as a vessel and the spirit as an organ. Now that we have been regenerated, there is another life in our spirit. This life is the divine, eternal life, which is Christ Himself (John 11:25; 14:6). Today we must realize that we have two lives: the human life in the soul and the divine life in the spirit. According to the human life in our soul, we are human beings and sons of men, and according to the divine life in our spirit, we are children of God and sons of God.
We have not only two lives but also two men, the old man and the new man. Ephesians 4:22 says, “Put off, as regards your former manner of life, the old man.” We must put off the old man because it can never please God (cf. Rom. 8:7-8). It has already been condemned by God and put on the cross, crucified with Christ (6:6). Then Ephesians 4:24 says, “Put on the new man.” These verses make clear reference to two men: the old man in the soul and the new man in the spirit. The old man has the human life, and the new man has the divine life. After our regeneration, our spirit is no longer merely an organ; it is a new man with the divine life. Hence, we must realize that we are persons with two lives and two men. We have the human life for the old man and the divine life for the new man. As Christians who are reborn children of God, our problem today is this: do we live by the human life or by the divine life, by the old man or by the new man? Herein lies the secret to the Christian life.
The Bible tells us that the old man has been crucified and that we must deny the self (Matt. 16:24; Luke 9:23). The self refers to both the old man and the soul. We need to deny the soul, and we should not live by the old man any longer, because the old man is condemned before God and has been crucified by the Lord on the cross. The “I,” that is, the old man, has been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer this old “I” who lives, but it is Christ who lives in the new “I,” the regenerated new man (Gal. 2:20). Our spirit is now a new man; hence, we must deny our self and live by the divine life in our spirit, which is to live by the new man.
We can know the difference between the soul and the spirit from our experience. The soul consists of three parts: the mind, the emotion, and the will (Prov. 2:10; Psa. 139:14; 1 Sam. 18:1; Job 7:15). We have a mind to think, to consider; an emotion to love and hate, to be happy and unhappy; and a will to make decisions and choices. These three parts together compose the soul. Many times as a Christian you may have considered doing a certain thing. According to your reasoning, it was right; it was also desirable, and eventually you made a decision to do it. In the process, you exercised all three parts of the soul: your mind to consider and reason about it, your emotion to like and desire it, and your will to decide on it. Yet at the same time deep within you there was a feeling against it. That was your spirit. This proves that there is something other than the mind, emotion, and will within us; there is something much deeper than the soul, and this is the spirit. By the soul, which has the human life, we can live as the old man. By the spirit, which has the divine life, the life of the Triune God, through regeneration, we can live as the new man.
How can we live by the divine life as the new man instead of by the human life as the old man? On the negative side, we must deny the old man, the soul, which means to deny the mind, the will, and the emotion. On the positive side, we must exercise our spirit, which means to exercise the deepest part of our being.
We can apply this principle to the matter of prayer. Many Christians pray by using their soul, not by exercising their spirit. Some pray by their emotion. When they are happy, they pray, “Lord, You are so good to me.” Many others pray according to their memory, according to what they remember concerning their husband’s business, their children, the church, and the gospel work. Instead of exercising their spirit, they exercise their mind to recite many things from memory.
In order to pray by exercising the spirit, we must forget about everything and come to the Lord to contact Him. For this we need to stop our whole being, including our memory, our thoughts, and our considerations. Then when we exercise our spirit, the Holy Spirit will work and move within us to energize us. At that time we will sense what the Lord’s mind is, and we will not pray from memory but from our spirit.
Some sisters recite a certain set of prayers to the Lord day after day. Consequently, rather than feeling refreshed and satisfied within, they feel tired and grow weary of praying. However, if we pray by exercising our spirit, the more we pray, the more we will feel satisfied and refreshed. We will feel that we have been contacted by the Lord and that we have also contacted the Lord. From this we see that there are two ways to pray: by our mind or our emotion, and by our spirit.
The principle is the same with reading the Bible. There are two ways to read the Bible. Many read the Bible using only their mind. However, if we know how to contact the Lord, we will change the way we read the Bible. When we read a verse, we will exercise our spirit to digest it. For instance, after reading Genesis 2:7, we will immediately pray with our spirit to digest the verse. We may pray, “Lord, I praise You that You have created me with three parts. You have created a body for me, and also a spirit and a soul. Lord, I thank You for this body, through which I can sense and contact the physical world. And, Lord, I thank You even more that I can contact You because You are a Spirit and have created a spirit within me.” In this way, we will exercise our spirit to eat the word. To exercise our mentality to understand and remember the word is tiresome, but to exercise our spirit to pray and to digest what we read strengthens, refreshes, and satisfies us.
The words in the Scriptures are spiritual food (1 Pet. 2:2; Matt. 4:4). In the matter of eating, what is important is not how much we understand but how much we take in. It would be foolish for me to ask someone what he understands concerning eggs, milk, meat, or lettuce. Instead, I need to ask him how many cups of milk he has taken in. To understand food is one thing, but to eat it is another. Likewise, to understand the word is one thing, but to take the word in, to eat and digest it by the spirit, is another. Jeremiah 15:16 speaks of receiving the Lord’s words by eating them, and in the New Testament the Lord Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). The word of God is spiritual food that we must eat, not merely understand.
Furthermore, there are two ways to contact people. One way is to contact a person by our mentality or by our emotion. The other way is to contact the person by our spirit. In the morning while we are with the Lord, we may become burdened and very concerned in our heart and our spirit about a certain brother or sister. Then sometime during the day or in the evening we may contact that person not by our mentality or our emotion but by our spirit. This is the proper way to contact people.
Similarly, there are two ways to minister the word. One way is to use our mentality in knowledge, and the other way is by exercising our spirit. When we minister by our mentality, we can touch only people’s mentality; we can never touch the spirit within them. But when we minister by exercising our spirit, our word will touch their spirit.
Because we have two lives, the soulish life and the divine life, there are always two ways for us as Christians to do things. We can do things by the human life in our soul or by the divine life in our spirit. We can also act either as the old man or as the new man. The way to live for the Lord, following and obeying Him, is to not exercise our soul — our mind, emotion, and will — but to exercise our spirit. Our spirit is the innermost part of our being; it is deeper than our mind, emotion, and will. In order to live and walk by the spirit, we must learn to reject, to deny, the mind, the emotion, and the will. If we practice this, gradually we will realize that it is simple. Whenever we exercise a certain organ, it becomes stronger. Education teaches people how to exercise their mentality, but today we must realize that we need to learn how to exercise our spirit. Usually, when Christians come together, very few are strong in their spirit to utter a prayer or a praise to the Lord. Because they do not exercise their spirit in their daily life, they are very weak in their spirit. However, if we exercise our spirit day by day, our spirit will become positive, active, living, and strong. Then when we come to the meetings, it will be easy for us to express something either by giving a short word or by offering a prayer or a praise. Let us exercise our spirit to follow the Lord, to obey Him, and to live by and for Him.
To exercise our spirit, on the positive side, simply means to use our spirit. Our spirit is full of feeling and consciousness because the Holy Spirit is always working in our spirit. First John 2:27 says that the anointing which we have received from God abides in us. This anointing is not merely the Spirit as an ointment; it is the working and the moving of the Spirit in our spirit. The Holy Spirit as the ointment is always working, moving, and acting within us. The feeling of the anointing comes from this working and moving. Because we neglect the exercise of our innermost part, we do not take care of the inner feeling. But if we pay attention to our innermost part, we will sense that there is always a certain kind of feeling or moving, and we should go along with that feeling. This is the positive side of exercising our spirit. On the negative side, by exercising our spirit we will automatically deny our natural man, our natural way of thinking, our natural emotion, and our natural will.
If we exercise in this way, we will be normal Christians. The normal Christian life is a life lived in the spirit, where there is victory over sin, the self, Satan, the world, and worldly things. Some may say that we must substantiate our crucifixion with Christ through faith. However, all the things that the Lord has accomplished on the cross can be realized only in and through the Spirit, who dwells in our spirit. When we are in our spirit, all the divine facts that the Lord accomplished through His death and resurrection become real to us. If we are not in our spirit but in our self, it is not possible for us to experience what the Lord has accomplished on the cross. We need to walk in the spirit, which means that we must exercise our spirit.
Furthermore, we must learn to distinguish the life of the soul from the faculties, or functions, of the soul. The soulish life must be put away, but the functions of the soul must remain. For example, if I am a clerk in an office, I must exercise the function of my mind; however, I should use my mind as an organ not by the life of the soul but by the life of the spirit. Then if my boss becomes unhappy with me, I can still work normally by using my mind as an organ. However, if I am living and working by the life of the soul and my boss becomes unhappy with me, I will become unhappy with him and will find it difficult to continue working normally. Therefore, as a clerk I must work by the organ of my mind, yet I should work not by the soulish life but by the life that is Christ Himself in my spirit. Since the natural man, the soulish life, has been crucified, we must reject and deny it; nevertheless, all the organs of the natural man still remain for us to use. To repeat, we must reject the soulish life but not the soul’s faculties. Indeed, the more spiritual we are, the more we will function properly by the faculties of the soul.
We may also illustrate this by the love between a husband and a wife. The genuine love of a wife for her husband can be seen when the wife lives not by her own life but by her husband. She uses all her faculties but gives up her life in order to live by her husband. This is genuine love. As a husband, I know that to love my wife in a sincere way, I must always put my life aside in order to live by my wife. Divorces take place when husbands live by their own lives and wives live by theirs. Likewise, although God created us as independent human beings, He demands that we not live by ourselves but by Him. Moreover, although He created a life for us, He requires us to give up that life and take Him as our life. This is a wonderful matter.
The principle is the same with prayer. Genuine prayer is initiated from the spirit. When we come to the Lord in prayer, we must forget about our mind, emotion, and will and exercise our spirit. This affords the Holy Spirit the opportunity to burden us with certain prayers. Then automatically the human faculties of the mind, emotion, and will come into function. Sometimes as we come to the Lord, rejecting our mind, emotion, and will and exercising our spirit, the Holy Spirit energizes us within concerning certain matters, but our mind does not understand them. At such a time we need to pray, “O Lord, I simply do not have the utterance. Lord, be merciful; I simply do not know how to pray.” It is at this time that the Holy Spirit in our spirit intercedes for us with groanings which cannot be uttered (Rom. 8:26).
Wherever I go, people ask me, “Brother Lee, please pray for me in this matter.” I very seldom answer these requests affirmatively, because I am not sure whether the Spirit will lead me to pray in that way or not. I simply say, “If the Lord leads, I will do so.” Genuine prayer is initiated not by us but by God on the throne. The Holy Spirit transmits to our spirit what the throne initiates, for us to sense as a burden in our spirit. If our mind has been transformed, it can interpret the burden in our spirit. When we utter that interpretation in words, we pray a genuine prayer, a prayer initiated by the throne of God and transmitted into our spirit.
Do not try to understand all these things thoroughly; it is impossible. The food we eat day by day can never be understood thoroughly. According to our experience, the simplest way to live the Christian life is to forget about our mind, emotion, and will and to exercise our innermost part to go along with the Lord. This is effective. For example, the more I think about a certain brother, the more unhappy I feel about him. This means that the more I exercise my mind concerning him, the more unhappy I feel about him in my emotion. But if I am following the Lord, I must forget about my mind and emotion and exercise my spirit to contact the Lord. I may pray, “Lord, I praise You. What should I do concerning this brother? In my spirit, Lord, energize me to love him.” If we contact the Lord in such a way, our mind and emotion are still there, but something is different.
We can never explain this clearly or analyze it thoroughly, but it is nevertheless a fact. We must take the simplest way to experience this glorious fact. For our physical life, if we daily take milk, toast, and other good foods into us, we will receive the good things that we need in order to live, and day by day we will grow and be strong. The Lord Jesus said, “I am the bread of life...He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (John 6:35, 57). The Lord is edible, and His desire is that we would eat Him. To eat the Lord is to exercise our spirit to contact Him. We must practice this. Our mind, emotion, and will must always be secondary, and our innermost part, our spirit, must always be primary. In all things in our daily life we must exercise our spirit to contact the Lord. Then we will experience the Lord in a real way and will be constantly energized by Him. If we continually exercise our spirit throughout the day, we will be holy. Sanctification will be ours, and victory over all things that oppose God will also be ours (Rom. 8:35-39). We will be spiritual and have power, energy, strength, light, and life because in our spirit we will experience all the riches of Christ. In the beginning we may feel that this is not simple, because we are not used to it. Learning to drive a car is awkward at the beginning, but after practicing for a time, it becomes easy. The Lord today is within us as life and as everything; hence, there is no need for us to struggle in order to be victorious, holy, or spiritual. We must exercise ourselves to apply the Lord to all the things in our daily lives. This is the way to be spiritual, holy, and victorious.
