Prayer: Lord, we do have a heart to seek after You and to seek after the living word. Lord, You know that tonight we come to a high mountain. Lord, help us to come up. Lord, we like to get over; we like to see something from You. Lord, do give us another revelation that we may have another clear view concerning Your economy of Your salvation. Lord, do cover us again with Your prevailing blood. And cleanse us. How we thank You for Your cleansing! Even now we may not have gross sins, but we are still so natural. We are still living in the old creation, walking on this earth. Even we are here in this dark age. We have been defiled in many ways, even unconsciously. Lord, we need Your cleansing. Cleanse us that we might be brought into Your presence, into Your anointing, even into Yourself. Lead us, Lord. Lord, You know that we do not have much idea what we have to say. We look unto You that You would infuse us with Your thought, with Your feeling, with Your up-to-date revelation, and with Your fresh utterances. Lord, grant us the liberty and wisdom. Thank You for Your victory. Amen.
In this chapter we need to consider Romans 8:6, 7, and 8. These verses read as follows: “The mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace. Because 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.” For many years I have considered that the problem in these verses is the flesh. I have ministered and taught that the flesh is enmity against God, that the flesh is not subject to the law of God, that there is no possibility with the flesh to be subject to the law of God, and that the flesh cannot please God. I have always considered these negative things to be things of the flesh. But actually, this is not correct. In fact, the first three things are related not to the flesh but to the mind. The enmity against God, the lack of subjection to the law of God, and the lack of possibility to be subject are actually things of the mind. Eventually, verse 8 says that those who are “somewhere” cannot do “something.” In other words, the emphasis is on “those,” not on the flesh. Actually, these three verses do not talk so much about the flesh. Rather, they talk about the mind and “those.”
In verse 6 there are six major things: the mind, the flesh, the spirit, death, life, and peace. In this chapter we want to consider only three of these major things: the mind, the flesh, and the spirit. The crucial word of these three is mind. If the mind is set on the spirit, there is a positive result; if the mind is set on the flesh, there is a negative result. It all depends upon where the mind is set. You have to realize also that your mind and you are the same. When your mind is down, you are down; when your mind is up, you are up. Sometimes we say that our spirit is either up or down, but this is not so accurate. If your mind were never down, your spirit would always be up. Your spirit seems to be down because your mind is down. Actually, it is not your spirit that is down; it is your mind that is down. From this we can see that the problem is always with our mind. But the salvation is also with our mind. When your mind is right, you are right. When your mind has a problem, you are in trouble. Your mind represents you. It is not your body or your spirit or the mingled spirit or even the flesh that represents you. It is your mind. Where you are depends upon where your mind is. If your mind is in New York, you are in New York. If your mind is in hell, you are in hell. You go with your mind, and your mind goes with you. The mind is the leading part, the main part, of the soul. The soul is our real person. Genesis 46:27 says that seventy souls of the house of Jacob, meaning seventy people, went down into Egypt. A person is a soul. The soul is our personality, our person. The leading part of our soul is the mind, so actually the mind represents the soul. In Romans 8 the mind is neutral, being between our regenerated spirit and our fallen body, the flesh. The problem is always a matter of where the mind goes and stays and is. If the mind goes to the spirit and stays with the spirit, everything is fine.
The spirit today is not the original spirit. Our spirit is no more just a human spirit. Hallelujah! Our spirit is now the regenerated spirit. Regeneration means that God the Spirit indwells our spirit. The human spirit has no regeneration, but the mingled spirit has been regenerated because the divine Spirit has entered into our original spirit. When the divine Spirit enters into our human spirit, right away we are regenerated. You have to be assured, and you have to thank the Lord, that you do have something within you that has no problem. Your regenerated spirit has no problem. To say that our spirit is up or our spirit is down is not so accurate. Even to say that our spirit is weak is not so accurate, because our spirit has been regenerated. In our spirit there is the divine Spirit. With the divine Spirit mingled with our human spirit, how could such a spirit be weak? It is not your spirit that is weak; it is you, your mind, that is weak. To say that our spirit is weak would seem to indicate that the divine Spirit could be gone. But the divine Spirit never leaves us, and He is never weak. He is always strong. Once He comes in, He remains for eternity.
Why then do you have some problems? It is because your mind goes to the wrong place. Your mind takes the wrong way. Instead of being set on the spirit, it is set on the flesh. Ephesians 3:16 says that we need to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man. Some translations say “in” the inner man, but the Greek word means “into” the inner man. Your inner man is always so strong, but your being is not strong. You need to be strengthened into the inner man. When you, your being, goes into the inner man, you are strengthened. When you are strengthened into your inner man, there is no problem. But when you get out of the inner man, you are weakened. For example, when you turn on the switch, the entire building enjoys the electricity. But when you turn off the switch, the entire building loses the enjoyment of the electricity. In like manner, when your mind goes to the spirit, you get into regeneration and the enjoyment of the divine Spirit. But when your mind comes to the flesh, you get into the fall, into hell. When your mind goes down to the flesh, you have to prepare yourself to get into hell.
Many philosophers and ethical scholars endeavor to be right and to do good. Sometimes the strong-willed ones may have some success. But most of the time they are defeated because their mind has no place to go for victory. Their mind has to gain the victory by itself. Most of the good philosophers are ethical, and their teachings mainly build up a kind of character; that is, they mainly build up the mind including the will. They endeavor to build up the mind to have a success. But the problem is that they do not have a regenerated spirit. At most they have a dead spirit with a dormant conscience. Even many of the teachings among Christians are simply sermons or speeches to edify the mind. According to many Christian concepts, Christian growth means to get more and more knowledge into the mind and to make the mind more knowledgeable of the spiritual things. They do not emphasize their regenerated spirit. When they talk about regeneration, they always consider that to be something of the “Holy Ghost” who is far, far from them. They do not realize that regeneration is something in their spirit. Even most of them do not know that they have a spirit. So they simply do their best to edify their mind. Actually, many Christian teachings today are very much the same as the philosophical, ethical teachings. They have no spirit for their mind to go to. But praise the Lord! We have a place we can go to. We have our regenerated mingled spirit. We have such a destination, and we have such a situation.
But the pitiful thing is that we do not go to our spirit. Either we stay in ourselves, in our mind, or we go down to the flesh. When you are quiet and calmed down and nice, you are in your mind, in the “central station.” But after a while your husband or your wife may cause you to react and to stir up your mind to go down to the flesh. Then you lose your temper and have a failure.
Sometimes, though, you are really in Romans 7. You make up your mind that you will do good. You will yourself to do good. But as long as you do not will yourself to do good, sin in you is dormant. The lust in you is dormant. But when you will yourself to do good, you just wake up the dormant lust. Then there is a fighting, a warring. Whenever there is such a warring, your mind is always defeated by the flesh. This is the reason Paul puts chapter 7 of Romans before chapter 8. By reading these two chapters carefully, you could see that chapter 8 is a real continuation of chapter 7. In chapter 7 there is no way because there is no spirit. This means there is no better station that you can go to. But when you come to chapter 8, you have a better station. It is not the central station but the upper station, the spirit. You have a spirit, so from chapter 8 Paul talks about the spirit. Actually, all of chapter 8 is talking about the spirit. The spirit is our refuge, our rescue, our upper station. When we reach that, everything is okay. It is better even for us to stay there in our spirit. In 8:5 it seems that there is the matter of going to the spirit, and in verse 6 it seems that there is the matter of staying with the spirit. But we know the problem: our mind is not flat or square. It seems to be round with a lot of oil and water upon it. It is so easy for this round slippery ball to slip away from the spirit. The more you try to get your mind to remain on the spirit, the more it slips away. This is why we need the following verses in chapter 8. All the following verses give us many items to keep the mind set on the spirit and to make the mind stand with the spirit.
You have to realize that this kind of speaking is not a general speaking concerning God’s salvation and so forth. Rather, the speaking in this Perfecting Training is very fine. This was also Paul’s way of speaking in Romans 8. Romans 8 is a long chapter mainly on the law of the Spirit of life. Even this title indicates that it is not a rough teaching. It is a fine teaching, a kind of diagnosis of our sick person and an analysis of our being.
This means that there are five things related to our being: First, there is our spirit. Second, it is not a natural spirit but a regenerated spirit, mingled with the divine Spirit. Third, there is our body. Fourth, there is the fall related to our body, causing it to become the flesh. According to Romans 8:23, one day we will experience the redemption of our body. But that is not today. Today our body is not the original body created by God; it is the fallen body, the flesh. The flesh indicates the fall, and the redemption of the body is still not yet. It will be in the future. That will be the full sonship. At that time we will be fully sonized. Today, because we have been regenerated, our spirit has been sonized. Our spirit has been made a part of the Son of God. But our body has not yet been made a part of the Son of God. Our body still remains flesh.
The fifth item related to our being may be considered as a neutral part, our mind. You have to realize that the Bible does not indicate that our mind has been saved. Nor does it say that our mind will be transformed at the coming of the Lord. The Bible shows us that the transformation of our mind is occurring right now. Our spirit has been regenerated, and our body will be redeemed. But our mind is neutral. In a sense, it is somewhat blank. We have to realize that we are a tripartite man. One part—our spirit—has been rescued, saved, regenerated. One part—our body—remains the same. But another part—our mind—is neutral. Today the problem is this: to what part should we go, or to what part should our mind go? To say what part we should go to means to say what part our mind should go to. We all must go to the spirit and even remain in the spirit. But our mind is a kind of round and slippery thing, always moving. So we need the grace that is revealed in the following verses of Romans 8. This will make our mind stable and stop our mind from turning and moving. Sometimes we say that we make up our mind to do something. We must realize, though, that God does not want us to make up our mind to do something. God wants us to use our regenerated spirit. Whenever we pray to contact the Lord, spontaneously our mind turns to the spirit through the praying. Whenever you mean business in calling on the name of the Lord Jesus, right away your mind is turned to the spirit. Before you called, your mind may have been rolling away, but now it is set on the spirit. At other times you may fellowship with the saints or sing to the Lord and find that something in your being is turned to the spirit. This means that the mind is turning to the spirit. At other times you may pray-read the Bible, or you may read some of the messages, and spontaneously you find that your mind is turned to your spirit. You get nourished and watered in your spirit. When you remain in your mind, you starve and dry up. But when you turn to your spirit, water and food are there. All these spiritual experiences are just the matter of the mind turning to the spirit. It is good for the mind to be turned to the spirit, but it is not the best. Why does your mind need a turn? Because it is away from the spirit. It is best to keep your mind remaining in the spirit. Many times when you call on the Lord’s name, sing, pray, fellowship, read the Bible, or read the messages, you have the feeling that they do not turn you. They just keep you there. They strengthen your abiding there. They strengthen your abiding in the spirit. We need to learn to do these things habitually and in a continuous way. Do not just do them occasionally but as a practice, a habit. Under any kind of circumstances and at any time you can pray. Sometimes you have wanted to pray, but you could not because your mind was rolling like a round ball. But eventually something happened within, and you were able to pray and to praise the Lord. This means that your mind was brought back to the spirit again.
When the mind goes down to the flesh, you are just an enemy to God. It is not just your flesh that is an enemy, but you yourself are an enemy. The mind set on the flesh is enmity against God. That is you. When our mind goes to the flesh, we become wild and rebellious. We could never be submissive.
Furthermore, when your mind goes to the flesh and remains there, you become “those” who are in the flesh. When your mind goes to the spirit and remains there, you are “those” who are in the spirit. When your mind goes down to the flesh and remains there, you are “those” who are in the flesh, and you cannot please God. We all have to see this. The mind is a problem. It is the mind that can make us either in the spirit or in the flesh. When the mind remains in the spirit, we are in the spirit. When the mind remains on the flesh, we are in the flesh; we become those who are in the flesh. What kind of person we will be depends upon where our mind goes and stays and remains. We all have to practice the matter of praying and calling on the Lord’s name and fellowshipping and pray-reading the Word of God and reading the life materials and singing and attending the meetings in order to bring our mind to the spirit and keep it there. If you practice these things, they will either turn your mind to the spirit or keep your mind in the spirit. There is no other way. It will not work simply to make up your mind to be in the spirit. You have to practice these things. If it is hard for you to practice these things, you have to pray, “Lord, have mercy upon me. I am sick. Have mercy upon me.” Furthermore, we have to pray for one another. I pray for all of you quite often. Although I may not remember all your names, when I pray for you, I have your faces before me. We have to pray for each other. There is a law in the spiritual world that God’s works need our prayer as a kind of cooperation. When we pray, God works. When we pray, He operates. When we stop praying, His operation also stops. So we have to pray. I believe we all could testify that many times spontaneously from within we wanted to pray, we wanted to call on the Lord’s name, we wanted to come to the meeting, we wanted to read the Bible, and we wanted to sing, to praise, and to read the life material. We all can testify that we have been preserved by the Lord in such an aspiration. This kind of aspiration is a kind of preserving to us. Practicing these things will keep our mind remaining on the spirit.
