As Christians today, we all have been very much influenced in our human culture by religion. Even those who claim to have no thought about religion, the atheists, cannot stay away absolutely from the influence of religion. As long as you are a human being, born as a descendant of Adam and living on this earth, you are under the influence of religion. Religion is a very big matter. Even in the constitution of many countries, there is a part concerning religion. Religion is so common to human culture. It is natural to human culture. In a sense, religion is more natural than marriage. In human history and among human societies a good number of persons were never married. But no one has ever escaped the influence of religion. Religion is a big influence. I would liken the influence of religion to a thick, strong box. All the descendants of Adam have been put into this box.
Although we have given more than twenty-five messages on Romans 8, it may be that you still consider Romans 8 as something religious. For example, when we talk about the leading by the Spirit, spontaneously you may consider that you need to seek after the Lord’s leading concerning a business trip or concerning getting married or concerning what school you should attend. This is the religious understanding. To consider that the leading by the Spirit is just a matter of our activities, our actions, our programs, our enterprises, our education, our housing, or our car, is just according to the religious understanding.
I am afraid that many of the brothers and sisters have at least three kinds of lives—the family life, the church life, and the meeting life. Are you the same in your home life, in your church life, and in your meeting life? It might be that you talk one way at home but then talk another way in order to prepare yourself for the meeting. This means that your living in your home life is one way, and your living in the meeting life is another way. When you read the newspaper, you may live in one way, and when you read a Life-study message, you may live in another way. You may consider that the Life-study messages bring you into the Lord. If so, this means that when you read the newspapers, you are outside the Lord. So you have two lives, or two livings. One is in the Lord, and the other is not in the Lord.
As a little minister of the Word, whenever I am speaking, I am also exercising simultaneously to sense the condition of the dear saints who are the listeners. The more I speak in these Perfecting Meetings, the more my realization is that the speaking may make the audience more religious. In other words, I am afraid you may understand what we are speaking on Romans altogether in a religious way. Why? Because you do not apply what you have heard in this meeting to your home life. You do not apply what you have heard in these meetings to all the small avenues of your daily living. You do not apply what you have heard in these meetings to some of the corners of your private life. It may be that you have applied some of the points to your living. But your kind of application makes the speaking religious.
In the past we have given a definition of religion. Religion is to do something for God, to worship God, yet without the Spirit. Now I would add something more to this definition of religion. When we say something is religion, we also mean that you have more than one way to live in your human living. In one of the ways for living, you do not apply the spiritual teachings to your life. You live a life without God. You just live it by yourself. But because you are religious and you are loving God, you would not do anything grossly sinful. This means that in your living there are two sections: one is the secular section. It is not bad or sinful. The other is the religious section.
It seems that with your human life there is the outer court, and there is the sanctuary. Some of the things you do in the outer court, and other things you do in the sanctuary. In the meeting you are all very religious, but when you are dismissed, the religious atmosphere changes. It becomes only a little better than the atmosphere at a ball game. This means that unconsciously you have made the spiritual things from Romans 8 religious. All these things have not become your living. They are still in the realm of your performance. As long as you make a spiritual thing only a section of your daily living and not your whole daily living, that is a performance. That is religion. Today human society everywhere is filled with performance. Politeness is performance. In the offices and in the schools people are nice and polite and regulated. But if you go into the back room, and if you check their weekend life, you may see something different.
Sometimes a brother may act one way with the brothers at the meeting and another way with his wife at home. With the brothers he is so gentle and nice, but he may treat his wife as if she were a slave. This means that he has two ways of living. One way is the way of living with his wife, and the other way is the way of living with the brothers in the church.
We must be those all the time living our life in one way. Whether we are at home, in the church matters, or in the meeting, we live our life one way. Most of the brothers do not apply Romans 8 to the way they talk to their wives. I do not mean that the husbands are mean or bad. They may be very gentle and very nice, but their gentleness is not according to their application of Romans 8. If you do not apply Romans 8 when you talk to your wife, the Perfecting Training has been in vain. It has been mainly helping you to be more religious. Romans 8 is altogether a chapter on the genuine and proper Christian life. It is an extraordinary chapter. Its style, its composition, and the way of its presentation are altogether extraordinary. The more you get into it, the more you would appreciate it in this way.
Romans 8 is not a chapter full of teachings. It is just a mentioning of a life, or of a living. It shows the genuine living of a collective people who have the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—to be such an all-inclusive life-dispensing Spirit, dispensing Himself all the day long into their tripartite being. This is to saturate their spirit, their soul, and their body. This is to transform them and to build them all together into one Body. This chapter describes such a people. As such a people, they just live.
All the human beings are genuine descendants of Adam. Whether we are American, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Indonesian, French, or English, we are genuine descendants of Adam. We are born of him, and spontaneously we all live a life of Adam.
But when you come to Romans 8, after the first thirteen verses, it says, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” In other words, they are descendants of God. No human beings have to perform to live a life of Adam. Their politeness and other things are a performance, but their genuine daily living is not a performance. That is a living of Adam. We are sons of God. We have a new birth. We have a new life and a new nature. Even we have been made a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). So, on the one hand, we are descendants of Adam, the sons of Adam. On the other hand, we are the sons of God.
The problem is here: Do we live as the sons of God or as the descendants of Adam? Romans 8 is not a kind of teaching or exhortation or charge. It is just a depiction of the living of the sons of God. These sons of God are still a tripartite man. They have a spirit, they have a mind representing the soul, and they have a body.
Also in this depiction, it shows us how God has been processed, and after this process He as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is now the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit indwelling our spirit to saturate our entire being with what He is. He is indwelling us to infuse us with all His being so that we may become His sons to live as He lives, to have a living not as the descendants of Adam but as the sons of God. As such, we are led all the day by the Spirit of God. This is a living not just in the meeting and not just in the church life. It is not a living just in the time of pray-reading or in the time of studying the Bible. It is a living all the time. We just live this way.
We need to consider once again the eleven positive items in Romans 8:1-14. The first item is the law (v. 2). This law is the law of the Spirit of life. We have pointed out in other chapters that the law of the Spirit of life is just the Triune God working, operating, moving, and anointing within us. He is the law. So the first item of the positive things is a person working within us as a law. Most Christians have never realized that the law of the Spirit of life is the Triune God, a wonderful person. Too many times when Christians talk about the Spirit, they do not consider a person. This person who is the Spirit is not only the Spirit, but He is also the Triune God.
The second item is the Spirit, and the third is life (v. 2). This person who is working within us as the law is the Spirit. He is also the life within us. He is the law, He is the Spirit, and He is the life. All three are one person. The Spirit denotes mainly the person; the life, this person’s life; and the law, the function of His life. Every life is a law. Animal life is a law; plant life is a law. The peach life is a law. No one teaches the peach tree to bring forth peaches. The peach life is a law regulating the peach tree to produce peaches. Every animal has a life, and that life is its law. Even our human life is a law. So actually, the law, the Spirit, and the life all refer to the same person. This same person is the law, He is the Spirit, and He also is the life.
Fourth, there is the spirit (v. 4). This means our human spirit. Today this spirit is not merely our human spirit. It is our spirit mingled with the life-giving Spirit. It is mingled, strengthened, enriched, uplifted, and empowered by and with the divine Spirit. If you fully realize that the Triune God is within you as the law, that you have His Spirit, that you have Him as the life within you, and that now your spirit has been strengthened, empowered, enriched, and uplifted by and with the Spirit, surely you would be beside yourself.
Next are the things of the Spirit (v. 5). Following this, is the mind set on the spirit (v. 6), followed by the peace (v. 6). After this you come to the Spirit in three aspects: the Spirit of God (v. 9), the Spirit of Christ (v. 9), and the Spirit of the resurrecting One (v. 11). These are not three Spirits but one Spirit with three aspects: the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of the resurrecting One. Finally, there are the sons of God (v. 14).
Are these items of religion? Are these items for our activities or a program? No! These are the items for us just to live a life. These are for us to live everywhere and at every time. These are for us to live a meeting life, a church life, and a home life. Our living is constituted with all these constituents.
We do not need teachings or exhortations, but we need to see all these constituents of our genuine and proper living as sons of God. We do not need to try to live this way, but we need to realize all these items. My! A law who is the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—is working, operating, moving, and anointing within us! This must be the first constituent of our Christian living. We must have our living thoroughly saturated with this law. We should not apply this law simply to certain parts or sections or avenues of our living. To apply this law only to certain sections of our life is to be religious. It would not give us the proper and genuine Christian living as sons of God. We need a living as the sons of God.
For us to have such a living, the first thing we must see is that the law within us is a person. He is within us all the time working and anointing and living and moving. Also we have the Spirit, and we have the life. We also have a wonderful mingled spirit within us. So we surely can have the things of such a wonderful Spirit. Our mind should be on this spirit. Then we have peace. Following this we experience and enjoy and participate in the wonderful Spirit in three aspects: the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of the resurrecting One. The Spirit of God indicates the origin, the source—the Originator and the Father. It is the Spirit of that Originator, of that Planner. The Spirit of Christ indicates the Spirit of the One who has gone through all the processes to accomplish and to finish whatever the Originator has planned. The Spirit of the One who raised indicates the One who has brought everything that the Father planned and that the Son accomplished into our being in resurrection. Otherwise, Paul would not have used interchangeably different expressions denoting the same Spirit.
The issue of the experience of all these items is that we are sons of God. We are such a constitution. This is not an activity or something of religion. This is not a kind of performance. This is the spontaneous, genuine, and proper living of the sons of God. In such a living there is no need to overcome sin. We are far away from sin. Sin is in another world, and now we are in this world, in the kingdom of the sons of God. In our kingdom there is no sin. Satan is in his kingdom, and we are in our kingdom. We are the sons of God. Do we need to seek holiness? No! Our God, the triune One, the processed One, the One who has become such a life-giving Spirit, is our holiness. He is our everything. We are the sons of God inheriting all that He is.
This is the genuine living of the proper Christian life, of the sons of God. If this is our way of living, we are not religious. We will not have different kinds of living in our home, in our school, in our office, in the church life, or in the meeting. Our living in all those places will be exactly the same. It will be the genuine and proper living of the sons of God.
