Search
Scripture Reading: John 3:6; 4:24; 2 Tim. 4:22; Matt. 28:20
The Scriptures clearly reveal that we have a human spirit and that God created our human spirit for us to contact Him. In John 3:6 the Lord Jesus said, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In this verse there are two spirits. It is easy for us to understand that the first Spirit must be God’s Spirit, but what about the second spirit? The second spirit in this verse is our human spirit. Our human spirit is born of God’s Spirit.
Many of us were taught that because we are so sinful, so evil, and so bad, we need to be born again. Suppose that you are not evil or sinful, but that you are so good, even better than the angels. Would you still need to be born again? The angels are good, but they do not have the life of God. We need to be born again. It does not matter whether you are good or bad. You still need the life of God. Even if you were not sinful, you would still need to be regenerated, to be reborn. Before the fall Adam was perfect, pure, and clean; in him there was nothing wrong, nothing short, nothing too much, nothing damaged, nothing ruined, and nothing corrupted. Adam was so perfect, so pure, and so clean. Such a pure, perfect, clean, original man needed to be born again in order to have God’s life. How could Adam have gotten God’s life? By taking the tree of life into him (Gen. 2:9). If the life of the tree of life had gotten into him, he would have been born again! He would have gotten another life, the life of God. To be born again simply means to get another life.
Even though Adam was so perfect, so pure, so clean, and so good, with nothing changed, nothing damaged, nothing corrupted, or nothing ruined, he still needed the life of God. Adam at the beginning just had one life, but if he had received the life of God, he would have had two lives. Another life would have been added into him. This is rebirth. This is regeneration. To be born again, strictly speaking, has nothing to do with our fall. Even if we are genuine, perfect, complete, pure, and clean, we still need God’s life to come into us. When God’s life gets in, we are regenerated.
The Bible tells us that before we were regenerated, we had our human life. This human life is in the soul. In the Bible this is called the soul-life. The New Testament sometimes uses the word soul for this life. This is why in the King James Version of the New Testament, a number of times the word soul has been translated “life” (Matt. 16:25; Luke 9:24). This word for life in the original Greek text is the very word psuche, or soul.
We also have another kind of life—the biological life. This is the life of the body, which in the Greek text is known as bios. This is the root of the word biology. Bios is in the body. When a person is dead physically, that does not mean his human life in the soul is dead, but it means his physical life, the bios, is dead. In the soul you have the soulish life; in the body you have the physical life. When a person is dead physically, he is dead bodily. This means that his bios is dead, but his psuche, his soul-life, is still existing.
Before we were saved, we did not have life in our spirit. Our spirit was only an organ. When we received the Lord Jesus, He came into our spirit to be our life. In our spirit we have another life, the divine life. The Greek word which the New Testament uses for this life is zoe. Zoe is in our spirit.
Bios is the physical life in our body. Psuche is the human life in our soul. Zoe, referring to the divine life, is in our spirit. This divine life is simply God Himself. This divine life is simply Christ Himself, God Himself, coming into our spirit to be our life. Now we have three kinds of lives. In our spirit we have zoe, in our soul we have psuche, and in our body we have bios. We have a biological life, a soulish life, and the divine life. This divine life, zoe, is simply the Spirit.
Our spirit has been born by God coming into our spirit as life. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6b). Now the divine life is in our spirit. Our spirit was born because God’s life got into it, and this birth has nothing to do with our fall. Even if Adam had never fallen, he still would have needed to be born in this way. He still needed to have God come into him as life. Otherwise, he could not express God. We need to be born again by having the life of God get into us. This life gets into our spirit, and our spirit is born. Now in our spirit there is life, and this life is just God Himself.
Since we have three lives, by what life should we live? By the biological life? By the soulish life? Or by the divine life? We are used to living by the soulish life, but now we need to live by the divine life in our spirit. If we do not know our spirit, we cannot live by the divine life. We all need to know our spirit.
This divine life has been installed into our spirit. If we need to turn on the lights, we go to the switch. What we need today is to touch the “switch” of our spirit because the divine life is in our spirit. Nothing could be more clear or definite than 2 Timothy 4:22: “The Lord be with your spirit.” We do not have to go to other places. We need to come to our spirit. We are used to going other places. Even when we come to the church meeting and the brothers say, “Hallelujah! Amen!” sometimes we would not go to the spirit. We still would keep ourselves in the mind. We may even question: “Do the brothers need to be so loud and noisy?” This is a strong proof that we are used to being outside of the spirit. We are used to being in the mind, but we must turn ourselves to the spirit. Forget about how loud and noisy the brothers are. You have to exercise your spirit. When you get into your spirit, you may be louder. The problem is that we Christians would not turn to the very spot where God is. Where is God today? “The Lord be with your spirit.”
In Matthew 28:20 there is a great promise given to us. The Lord Jesus promises to be with us until the end, the consummation, of this age. This is one of the great promises in the Bible. He is with us to the end of this age. Where is He with us? He is with our spirit.
Everything we need is in our spirit. The divine life in our spirit is inexhaustible and immeasurable. We have the divine life within us, which is just God Himself in our spirit. This is God Himself after incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. Today this very God comes into us to be with us in our spirit with the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ.
We need to turn to the spirit. We need to be strong in the spirit. We need to act and walk in the spirit because it is here that we have God, Christ, and the divine life. The soul-life and the biological life are secondary. We have the divine life which is God Himself. This is not God before incarnation but God after ascension. The very God with His incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension is within us as our life. All the day we should turn ourselves to this dear One by calling on His name (Rom. 10:12-13). We will see the riches, we will see the sweetness, and we will see the refreshment. We will see the power, even the authority.
The human spirit is the strategic point for the inner life. We all have to know our human spirit. It is here that we have been born again, and it is here that we worship God. “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit” (John 4:24), not in the Holy Spirit but in our human spirit. In our reborn human spirit we worship God, we serve God, we fellowship with one another, and we grow in life. We even have the church life here. If we are not in the spirit, we cannot have the church life. The church life is a life absolutely in the human spirit. When we turn to the spirit, you are one with me, and I am one with you. Regardless of how much we talk about the church life, we are still not in it unless we turn to our spirit. When we turn to our human spirit, we are in the church life, and we are one.
