Romans 8:14 says, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” In this chapter we need to consider what are the constituents of the leading of the Spirit. In principle, everything is composed with some things. We have to find out what the leading of the Spirit of God is composed with. How is it constituted? How could we have such a thing that is called the leading of the Spirit of God? According to Romans 8:14, there is such a thing within us as the leading of the Spirit of God.
Through all the centuries most Christians have not been so clear about the matter of God’s leading. Christians have mostly considered the matter of God’s leading in somewhat an outward way. For example, they would seek the Lord’s leading concerning a trip to New York. Although we were not taught properly concerning the matter of leading, we have a lot of concepts concerning the matter of leading. We are always concerned about what courses we should take in school, about how much money we should spend, or about the matter of marriage. Concerning these kinds of things we always like to have the leading of the Lord.
Actually, the leading does matter a lot in our daily life. If you are a Christian, and yet you do not care for the leading of God, you are not a proper Christian. If you are a proper Christian, you surely like to know what is the Lord’s leading. You want to know whether you should rent or buy a house. You want to know what street you should live on. You want to know how you should get your hair cut. If you would do this, it would indicate to some extent that you might be a good Christian. I hope that when you go to buy a pair of shoes, you do consider what color and what style. If you do not consider these matters, you are just a careless Christian. You are not so careful, so sober, as you should be.
We consider the matter of leading mostly an outward thing. I also did until I began to pay so much attention to Romans 8. Then I began to realize that out of all the sixty-six books in the Bible, perhaps no other chapter unveils to us the spiritual experiences in as much detail as Romans 8. Of course, the longest chapter in the Bible is Psalm 119. It tells a lot concerning the praising of the Lord and the contacting of the Lord by the Old Testament saints. There is some help to be found in that psalm, but it is somewhat old and in the old covenant. The longest and most detailed chapter concerning spiritual experience is Romans 8. In this it is unique. Since I began to realize this chapter with all the details, I began to see a lot of things that I had actually already experienced but without much knowledge of them. I had little knowledge concerning these matters because such teachings have not been stressed among the Christians.
We may illustrate this matter with vitamins. Hundreds of years ago our forefathers ate a lot of vitamins but without much knowledge. Without taking in the proper vitamins, a person cannot be healthy. Although vitamins had not been discovered many years ago, people had the experience of living by eating the vitamins.
In Romans 8 there is such a thing that is called the leading of the Spirit of God. You have to realize that it is not mentioned in verses 1 through 13. Rather, it is mentioned in the fourteenth verse. This means that certain verses have gone before. And of course, more verses follow verse 14. Verses 15 through 23 have a lot to do with the matter of leading in verse 14. So before verse 14 there are thirteen verses, and after verse 14 there are another fourteen verses, all of which are related to the matter of the leading of the Spirit. If you are going to understand adequately the leading of the Spirit, you must get into all these verses.
In principle, the leading of the Spirit must be composed with some thing or things. There must be some things as the constituents of the constitution of the leading of the Spirit. Basically, the leading of the Spirit of God is composed of three elements, all from verse 2: the law, the Spirit, and life.
Verse 14 may be considered as a conclusion of the preceding thirteen verses. So verse 14 begins with the little word for to indicate that something has preceded it. Of the foregoing verses, the most crucial and the most basic is verse 2. These three elements—the law, the Spirit, and the life—are the very constituents that constitute the leading of the Spirit. In those thirteen verses the first few verses talk about the law and the function of the law. In previous chapters concerning the law, we have pointed out that the law is a person, that is, the Triune God. The law is the Triune God, who after being processed, has become the indwelling Spirit as the law. The law of the Spirit of life is just the processed Triune God as the indwelling Spirit working in us. The law indicates the function, the working principle. This is the first item of the constitution, or the composition, of the leading of the Spirit.
From verse 6 through verse 11 life is defined. Verse 6 says that to set your mind on the spirit is life. Verse 10 says that when Christ is in you, the spirit is life. Then verse 11 says that the Spirit will give life to your mortal body. This means that life gets into your spirit, into your mind or soul, and into your body. So the second section of the foregoing verses defines the matter of life.
In the third section the definition is mainly concerning the Spirit. So there is the definition of the law, the definition of the life, the definition of the Spirit, and then verse 14 as a conclusion. This indicates that these three—the law, the Spirit, and the life—are the constituents, or the composition, of the leading of the Spirit.
In the past few chapters I said that if you add the residing, the life giving, and the putting to death together, you have the leading. These three things added together equal the leading. This is right, but it does not mean that the leading of the Spirit is composed of these matters. It means that the leading is realized in this way. Actually, the residing, the life giving, and the putting to death are the realization of the leading. How do you realize the leading of the Spirit within you? It is by the residing of the indwelling God, by the life giving of such a God, and by your putting to death. In other words, the leading is carried out by God’s residing, God’s life giving, and our putting to death. But that does not touch the nature, the composition, of the leading of the Spirit.
What is the very essence, the very element, of the leading? Substantially speaking, essentially speaking, the leading is composed with these three elements: the law, the Spirit, and the life.
Let us illustrate once again with a dog and a cat. A dog lives a dog’s life, and a cat lives a cat’s life. Both of them have a kind of leading within them composed of the dog life and the cat life. Life refers to some substance with a nature. The dog life has the dog substance with its nature, and the cat life has the cat substance with its nature. The human life has the human substance with a human nature. Even with a human life there is a difference; there is the male life, and there is the female life. The male life has its characteristics, and the female life has its characteristics. These characteristics are mainly the nature and the substance.
What then is the law? The law is the automatic function of the life. It is the working principle of the life. A dog life just works that way. There is a law, an automatic regulation and direction. There is an automatic control working in a dog or in a cat or even in a human being. Every dog is led by its life and its law of life. Every cat is led by its life and its law of life. And every human being is led by the law of the human life. More particularly, every human female is led by the female human life with its law. Every human male is led by the male human life with its law. It is hard for a man to live like a lady. He has to perform. When I speak, I speak according to my leading, composed with my male life. When my wife sings or talks, she has her leading composed of her female life. These are natural leadings of natural living creatures including dogs, cats, and human beings.
But we Christians are wonderful people. We have not only the divine life with its divine law but also a divine person within us. This divine person is the Spirit, and this Spirit bears, or carries, two things: the law and the life. So there is such a term: the law of the Spirit of life. The leading of the Spirit is composed with these three things. It is composed with the divine life and with the divine life’s law and with the divine person, the Spirit. These three things began to be within us at the time when we believed in the Lord Jesus. Since that time these three things have subsisted in our being. They are here to be the leading; they are here to be the lead of our life. They remain together in us. These three things are a composition, which we may term the leading of the Spirit.
Since the day I received the Lord Jesus, the leading of the Spirit began to remain in me, and it has been there all the days and all the time. If you are a genuine believer in the Lord, I have the full assurance that you also have experienced this. Even while you are sinning, such a thing is there leading. When you go to the department store to buy something, the leading is there. Because in the past we were taught wrongly and instructed superficially, we did not have the knowledge of the existence of such a thing within us, so we just put it down and neglected it and put it aside. We have prayed concerning what kind of tie we should buy or what kind of shoes we should buy. Actually, we do not need to pray, because we already have a leading within us. If you would not seek the outward leading but would take care of this inward leading, you would be clear.
With the sisters the hair style is sometimes a problem. The more you go on with the Lord, the more you may be bothered by your style of hair. But because you have not been taught in the proper way, you would forget about this inward leading. Instead, you would seek and pray concerning your hair style. Eventually, you pick up some kind of leading, and you label it the leading of the Lord. Actually, that is not the leading of the Lord. Actually, the real leading, the genuine leading, is already there. The leading concerning what you should say to people, where you should go, what kind of people you should contact, and how you should respect and honor your parents is already within you. In the past I wasted so much time in seeking after the Lord’s leading. Eventually, I found out that those seekings were in vain because the leading was there already.
This is like a dog seeking whether or not it should bark or like a cat seeking whether or not it should catch a mouse. We are not dogs or cats, but we are the sons of God. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” In the Greek language the expression is very strong. It could read, “These sons are of God.” They have the very God who is the Spirit within them. And they have this One’s divine life and this One’s divine law. These three things—the person, the life, and the law—are within them to be the leading. The leading of the Christian life is nothing less than these three: the person, the life, and the law. Because these three are within you, you do have the leading. In Romans 8 Paul does not exhort us to seek after the leading. He only mentions the fact. You do not need to seek, and you do not need to receive the leading. The leading is just there.
We have seen that the constituents of the composition of the leading of the Spirit are three: the law, the Spirit, and the life. Now we need to further analyze these three elements. We have to admit that all three are to some extent difficult to analyze because the life is the divine life. It is not our human life. Its nature is different from our human life. Its tastes are different from our human life. Its intentions, its likes, and its dislikes are all different from our natural life. It is absolutely a different life. It is the life of God, the divine life. Every life has its substance, its nature, its tastes, its tendencies, its likes, and its dislikes. This is why to follow the leading of the Spirit is not so easy for us, because we were born of and with the human life. But now another life is within us to be an element of our daily living, and this life is absolutely different from our natural life in its substance, in its nature, in its taste, in its tendency, in its likes, and in its dislikes. So it is not so easy for us to follow this leading.
Among the three, the law is the easiest one for us to follow because it is a kind of automatic power. It really regulates. Sometimes it constrains you. Not only does it forbid you, but it also sometimes constrains you and restricts you. Sometimes it just would not let you go. All of us have experienced that when we were intending to do certain things, there was a strong automatic forbidding within us. There was a strong automatic restriction within us. Something within us restricted us from doing the thing we intended to do. So even though we were not willing to follow, we had no way, no alternative, but to follow, because there was a kind of constraining power within us. That is the law. Our desire and our preference may be so strong that temporarily they conquer the law of the Spirit of life. But eventually the law of the Spirit of life will overcome.
Now we come to the person. This is the hardest thing for us. Do you prefer to have a person living with you all the time? As human beings, we all like to get married, but we all can testify that in married life there is a big problem; that is, there is always another person, sometimes praising you but often interfering with you. Sometimes not only the complaints but also even the praises of the wife are not so pleasant. On the one hand, we like to have a spouse, but on the other hand, we do not like to have someone with us all the time. There is always the bothering, telling us what to do or telling us how much to eat.
We are different from the dogs and cats and even the unbelievers because we have another person, Christ the Spirit, living in us. It is so bothersome because He, another person, takes the lead. I do not believe many Christians have realized what kind of bothering person the Holy Spirit is. He is really bothering because our intention, our preference, our desire, our aspiration, is always absolutely different from His. This may sometimes cause us to be tired of being a Christian, but we just cannot quit. Whenever we were tired or bored and wanted to quit, Someone said no. He is a real person contradicting us all the day long in the things that we do. Sometimes even in our reading of the Bible, He would not agree with the portion we want to read. He wants us to read another portion.
The leading of the Lord within us is composed with these three elements: a law, a life, and a person. This person is very strong, very unique, very absolute! The longer you go on in the spiritual life, the more you will realize that this is true. If you were saved in a proper and normal way, you probably experienced the leading of the Lord. At the beginning of the enjoyment of God’s salvation, you may have been simple and to some extent thorough, so you may have experienced the Lord’s leading in a good way. But not many can maintain that normal situation for a long period of time. After that initial period of time of the enjoyment of God’s salvation, most drift back and the struggle between them and the inward leading begins. Actually, our Christian life after the initial period of salvation is a struggling life. It is not so simple. Between your desire, your intention, your preference, and your choice, there is such a thing that is termed the leading of the Spirit. The struggle of your Christian life is just your preference struggling with this matter of the leading of the Spirit.
Do not forget that the leading of the Spirit is a composition with three things: a life with a law and a person. Most of the time you have been so strong that even such a composition could not put you down or convince you or overcome you. Most of the time you conquered this composition. Of course, this composition never fights wildly as you may have done. We were not instructed or taught concerning such a leading within us, so we have not had the knowledge concerning the leading of the Spirit. But anyhow it was there all the time with a person.
It is a very unique thing that the Triune God today as the all-inclusive Spirit indwells you. This is not a small thing. Even to have a strong person stay in your home is something, to say nothing of a strong person who is indwelling your inner part. We have a strong One who is quite active and living and working and speaking and all the time repeating His word within us. He is here within you, and this is the leading. We know this by our experience and by Romans 8:9-11. This person within us is not so simple. He is not just the Spirit. He is the Spirit with the Father, and He is the Spirit with the Son. When He lives here, the other two also are with Him. Eventually, this one is three, and these three are one. Such a One lives in you with His life and with the law of His life to be your leading.
