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Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 4:7, 10, 16; 3:5-6
In the previous chapter we saw the distinction between the soul and the spirit. We also saw that a saved person should live before God by the spirit and not by the soul. As we said before, the soul is just the self. Those who live in the soul are living in the self. We further saw that the soul has three main parts: the mind, emotion, and will. One who lives in any of these three parts is living in the soul and in the self. One who lives in the mind is just living in the self. One who lives in the emotion is also living in the self. Furthermore, one who lives in the will is living in the self. Living in the self is living in the soul, that is, living by the soul. Even if one’s behavior is perfect and one’s living is blameless, what is lived out is still the self and not God. It is not the issue of God’s operation from within him. Rather, it is the living out of his own mind, emotion, and will. Therefore, a saved person should not live this way.
I believe, brothers and sisters, you are clear that the purpose of God’s salvation is not merely to save us from sin but even more to save us from our self, from our soul. God does not want us only to live a life of goodness and be a good man. Rather, He wants us to live the life of God and be a God-man, a regenerated man. We should not live in our mind, emotion, or will. Perhaps our mind is sound, our emotion is clean, and our will is not crooked, but they are still the elements of the self. If we live in them, we live in the self. Perhaps they are good, but they are not God living out from within us. Therefore, we must reject them and hate the living that is lived out by them. We must always remember that in His salvation God wants to save us to such an extent that He becomes our life and our living so that we can live by Him and in Him, thereby living Him out. He is in us as our life, and He lives out from within us as our living. He is within us through the indwelling of His Spirit in our spirit. His Spirit and our spirit are mingled together and have become one spirit. Only when we live in this spirit are we living in Him. If we live in the soul, we are living in the self. No matter whether we live in the mind, in the emotion, or in the will, we are not living in the spirit and therefore not living in God. Consequently, what we live out may be very good, but it is either of our mind, our emotion, or our will; it is absolutely not God living out from within us. There are two sources: the spirit and the soul. God is in the spirit, and we are in the soul. If we live in the spirit, God will have the ground in us. If we live in the soul, we ourselves will have the ground in us. If we live in the soul, we will express ourselves. If we live in the spirit, we will express God. These two different sources have two different expressions. One is the spirit, and the other is the soul. One is God, and the other is the self. God is in the spirit, and the self is in the soul. If we live in the spirit, we live out God. If we live in the soul, we live out the self. We must be very clear about these two sources and their two expressions.
The Bible tells us that our soul is our outer man with the mind, emotion, and will. Our spirit, however, is our inner man. Our soul, which is our outer man, has the life of Adam and belongs to the old creation. Our spirit, which is our inner man, has the life of Christ and belongs to the new creation. Our outer man is our natural soul, whereas our inner man is our regenerated spirit. The life of our outer man is the life of man. The life of our inner man is the life of God. Every saved person may be considered a double person in that each one has an outer man and an inner man with an outer life and an inner life. A true Christian certainly is a double person consisting of the outer man and the inner man. The outer man is his self; the inner man is God indwelling him. The outer man has the human life, whereas the inner man has the divine life.
Thus, a Christian has two possibilities of living. One possibility is to live in the outer man, and the other possibility is to live in the inner man. Every Christian must bear the responsibility for either living in the outer man or living in the inner man. As we have said before, this is like having two kinds of lamps in your room; one is an oil lamp and the other is an electric lamp. It is up to you if you want to light the oil lamp or switch on the electric lamp. We have two lives and can live out two kinds of living as two kinds of people. Do we want to live by our human life or by the divine life? Do we want to live in the outer man or in the inner man? It is entirely up to us.
Since we should not live by the soul, we should also not serve by the soul. The apostle Paul says that we are not sufficient of ourselves for the ministry, but that our sufficiency is from God (2 Cor. 3:5-6). To be by the self is to be by the soul. We do not serve as ministers by our soul. As ministers of the new covenant, we serve under the new covenant by the spirit, not by the soul. However, we often think that all we need is to serve and that we do not need to care by what we serve. We often think that as long as our service is right and good, we do not need to worry about anything else because everything is fine without any problems. This is not true! Even a proper or good service may still have a problem. Indeed, many services that are right and good have a problem. For example, a brother may be rich in his emotion and truly care for the brothers. One day he suddenly remembers two brothers who often miss the meetings, so he decides to visit them, and eventually, he goes to see them. I would ask you, is it good for him to visit the brothers like this? Some may say it is not good, but how can you say this? It is not good to go watch a movie or to sin and do evil, but is it also not good to visit the brothers? You cannot say that. It is really good. It is not evil but good. It appears to be a good thing done for the Lord. We have to ask, though, did the brother whom I just mentioned visit the brothers from his soul or from his spirit? Did the Spirit of God send him, or did he go on his own? Some would say he went from his soul. Yes, he went from his soul, not from his spirit. He himself wanted to go; it was not the Spirit of God sending him.
We must ask further: Out of which part of the soul did he go? Some may say he went out of the emotion, others out of the will, and still others out of the mind. These three answers cover all three parts of the soul. Actually, he acted from all three parts. His visiting was initiated in his emotion, passed through his mind, and was decided by the will; therefore, it was entirely out of the soul. Whatever comes out of the urge of the emotion, the consideration of the mind, and the decision of the will is from the soul.
We must also ask whether such a visiting from the soul is carried out through the outer man or the inner man. Naturally, it is through the outer man. Moreover, we must ask whether it is done out of the self or out of God. Naturally, it is out of the self.
Since this going is done out of the self, it is also of the self. Then, is the self good or bad? Some may say it is not good; they are absolutely right. The self is bad. Everyone’s self is bad. Yet it is marvelous that now a good thing can come out of the bad self. How can this be? How can something good be in something bad? How can a good thing come out of a bad thing? How do we explain this?
This shows that the things we think are good can come out of the self. Whatever comes out of the self comes out of the soul. It does not matter how good they are in our eyes, the source is still the soul, the self.
Many times the things that come out of the self are very good, but the source is bad. Therefore, we must see that even the good things in the service, such as visiting the brothers, can possibly come out from the soul. This kind of service cannot be considered the service of the spirit. It can only be considered the service of the soul. This kind of service might be needed, but is it acceptable? Some brothers say that we should not accept it. But many times is our service not this kind of service? We do good things, but they come out from the wrong source. Many times when we serve, we are simply doing the right thing from the wrong source. This should not be. We should visit the brothers, but we should not visit them by our soul. We should not be sent by the soul to visit the brothers.
This kind of visitation is a right thing, yet it is from the wrong source. A right thing should come out of the right source. The matter of visiting the brothers should come out of the spirit to be proper. Both the matter and source must be right. Our problem now is that the brothers and sisters everywhere are almost all doing the right things from the wrong source. It is right to love the brothers, it is right to minister to them, it is right to visit them, and it is right to help them. All these matters are right. But what is their source? Do they come out of the spirit or the soul? Whatever comes out of the spirit is right; whatever comes out of the soul is wrong. We should not merely ask if the things we do are right or wrong. We should also ask if the source is right or wrong. Therefore, we should not only ask, What am I doing? We should more importantly ask, By what am I doing it? From what am I doing it? Am I doing this by the spirit or by the soul? Am I doing it out of the spirit or out of the soul? Oh, brothers and sisters, this question is too crucial in the matter of our service to God! Perhaps what you are doing is right, but you may be doing the right thing out of the wrong source. Therefore, we must check the source of everything we do. Is it from the spirit as the source or from the soul as the source? Whatever is done with the soul as its source should not be done, even if it is right. Whatever comes from the soul, whether it is good or bad, right or wrong, should be rejected and condemned.
Therefore, we must learn to condemn everything that is from the soul and everything that belongs to the soul. We must condemn the emotion, the mind, and the will, which all belong to the soul, and we must also condemn everything that comes out of them. We must realize that our emotion, mind, and will are soulish things and that whatever comes out of them are from the soul. If these things have the ground in us, it is the soul that has the ground in us. If we live in these, then we are living in the soul. If we see this, know this, and understand this, we will condemn these things, and we will not only condemn them, but we will also judge them and confess the fact that the soul has already been put to death on the cross. We will confess that our emotion, mind, and will have all been crucified. Because we have been crucified with the Lord on the cross, everything belonging to us has also been crucified with Him. Just as God put our soul to death through the cross, so also He put all the parts of our soul to death through the cross. Today before God, we also condemn, judge, and apply the Lord’s death on the cross to these things. Before God, we deny that these things have any ground in us. We see that these things have already been crucified, that they were hung on the cross long ago. We consider our emotion, mind, and will as having been hung on the cross long ago. We must judge and condemn all the things of our soul by applying the death of the cross, that is, by experiencing the putting to death of our soul-life through the cross. The more we have this kind of judging and condemning, the better.
Some may think that if we condemn and judge the things of the soul, we will no longer be able to do anything. We need to condemn our emotion, our mind, and our will; as soon as we think about doing something, we need to condemn our thinking. In this way some think that we will become wooden persons or stone persons and will not be able to do anything. However, brothers and sisters, the marvelous point is right here. This is the difference between Christians and the unsaved. If an unsaved person were to condemn his mind, emotion, and will, then he certainly would become a “stone” person. An unsaved person only has the outer man with the outward soul-life; within him there is no life but death. If he were to condemn, judge, and reject the outer man while he is inwardly dead, then he naturally would become a “wooden” person. This is what happens with the unbelievers. But we saved ones have another man and another life within. If we reject our outer man and our outer life, then our inner man and inner life will have the ground in us. If we reject, condemn, and judge our outer man, then God will bear the responsibility and cause His Spirit to live another life out from within us. If we bury a stone in the earth, it will not grow anything; once we bury it, it is finished. If, however, we bury a seed in the earth, something will grow after just a few days. An unbeliever is like a stone that has no life within. If he rejects his outer man and puts his outer life into death, then he will be finished. But we Christians are like seeds; we have a life inside that is the Lord’s life. If we reject our outer life, then our inner life will grow. If we are willing to let our outer shell be broken to pieces, then our inner man will be lived out from within.
The apostle Paul says that within us we have a “treasure,” which is the Lord’s life. He also says that if we always bear about in the body the putting to death of the Lord Jesus, then the life of the Lord Jesus also will be manifested in our body. This means that if we allow the Lord’s death to do a killing work in our body, the Lord’s life in us will be manifested. Moreover, Paul says that our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed. This means that if our outer man is consumed, our inner man will be able to grow. Therefore, if we reject our outer man and put him to death, then our inner man will grow stronger.
We are double people with an outer man and an inner man. Formerly, we lived in our outer man, yet now God wants us to live in our inner man. However, this is not so easy. We have been living in the outer man for such a long time that we have become accustomed to it. Naturally, it will be somewhat difficult for us to make a change now and live in the inner man. Even today most of the brothers and sisters still live in the outer man by the mind, emotion, and will. Very few live before God in the inner man by the spirit. Even though they serve God and do His work, they do it by the soul and not by the spirit, from the outer man and not from the inner man. Now God wants us to learn to turn from the outer man back to the inner man. He wants us to learn to live and serve not in the outer man but in the inner man. This is learning to live or serve not by the soul but by the spirit, since the outer man is the soul and the inner man is the spirit. The secret to living in the spirit and not in the soul is to judge, condemn, reject, and deny our soul. In this way the spirit gains the ground and the opportunity within us and is spontaneously lived out from within us.
For example, if you are going to visit a brother, but you realize that it is something of your emotion, out of your mind, and decided by your will, you must immediately judge, condemn, and reject it before God. You must hate such a thing. Perhaps you will say that if this is the case, then you will not be able to visit the brothers. But it is not so! If your visiting the brothers is of the spirit, it will not be diminished by your condemning and rejecting. If God wants you to go visiting, and if the Holy Spirit has given you a burden, then the more you reject the things of the soul, the more manifest and the heavier the burden in your spirit will be. The more you reject the things of the soul, the clearer the things in your spirit will be. After you have condemned the things of the soul and rejected the activities that are from the soul, there is still a burden and a deep sense in your spirit urging you to visit the brothers. At this time it is the spirit sending you to visit the brother. This kind of visitation is from the spirit, not from the soul; it is spiritual, not soulish. Therefore, this kind of service is called the service in spirit.
In our service a brother may come to you after he has had an argument with his wife at home, and he tells you the problem from beginning to end. While considering which Bible verses to use to teach him concerning the problem, you remember Ephesians 5. So you open your Bible to this chapter and read it to him, reminding him how a husband ought to love his wife. We cannot say this kind of teaching is not good. It is truly good to use the Bible to teach others. To teach the brother in this way is really a good service. However, we have to ask, is this kind of service from the soul or from the spirit? I believe that now we could all know this is from the soul because it comes from your considering. Even though the book of Ephesians was originally written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it now is something you have remembered and applied with your mind. If you truly understood what spiritual service means, then you could not help the brother in this way. You would have to condemn these things from the soul and return to your spirit. When the brother is telling you his problems, you simply return to your spirit and fellowship with God in spirit. You do not think about doctrines or the Bible; rather, you touch and contact God in spirit. Perhaps, in a marvelous way, before the brother is even half-finished speaking, your spirit touches something and feels that while the argument between him and his wife was reasonable, it was too much in the flesh. The more he speaks, the more you feel that he is full of the flesh. While he is speaking, you are not using your mind to think, but your spirit is touching a fleshly person. At this time you would definitely not speak biblical doctrines to him from your mind. Instead, you would say to him from your spirit, “Brother, even though you are right, do you not feel that you are in the flesh when you speak and argue like this? Maybe your wife is completely in the wrong, but are you not in the flesh to argue like this?” When you do this, you are not helping the brother in your soul. Instead, you are ministering to him in your spirit. This is not by considering in the soul but by sensing in the spirit. Your spirit within causes you to touch his inward condition. You are in spirit, so you can touch the things within him and can recognize his flesh that is behind his words and excuses. Thus, you can speak a few living words to him from your spirit that come from God’s inspiration and not from your considering. Perhaps God wants you to say to him, “Brother, God has given you such an unreasonable wife because you are too much in your reasonings. He uses such an unreasonable wife to deal with your reasoning flesh.” At such a time the Holy Spirit often has the opportunity to do a living work. Perhaps when the brother hears you speak such a word, his eyes will fill with tears, and he will say, “I feel that I should not argue, but inwardly I am not willing to submit.” Perhaps you can still say to him, “Brother, you are a person of reasoning. Your flesh is all tied up in reasoning. God wants to break your flesh, so He must break your reasoning. God knows this, so He has especially given you such a precious, unreasonable wife to deal with your reasoning every day. God has prepared this wife for you to break you of your reasoning and arguing.” When you speak to him in this way, you will touch his inner man and point out his problem. If you do this, you may help him break through in this matter. Later, when his wife is unreasonable, he will not argue with her but will rather praise and thank the Lord. His reasoning flesh will have gone out. Wherever the cross and the Holy Spirit are, the flesh is broken. It is really a marvelous matter that the more a person reasons, the more reasonings he has. The more reasonings he has, the more he reasons, and the more he argues, the more he has to argue about. But when he stops reasoning, his wife also stops reasoning. They both have received direct and indirect spiritual help from you.
The situation described above shows that we should not serve by our mind. Now we will go on to see that we should also not serve by our emotion. For example, a sister may be troubled by her husband at home, so she comes to see me, hoping that I could give her some help. When I hear the trouble she has had, I feel very sympathetic to her. This is my emotion being moved. This cannot help her. If my spirit is strong and in a proper condition, then I must judge my emotional reaction and condemn my sympathetic heart. I must have the sense that God has not sent me to sympathize with my brothers and sisters. Rather, He has sent me to minister His life to the spirits of my brothers and sisters so that His life can swallow up all the things of death in them. Therefore, if I am in spirit, I will judge my emotion instead of using it as a means to help that sister or serve the Lord.
Furthermore, we should not only avoid serving by our mind or by our emotion, but we should also refrain from serving by our will. Perhaps I am not rich in emotions or clear in thinking, but I have a very strong will that is as solid as a great mountain. When a brother comes to see me and speaks about his problems, neither my mind nor my emotion is moved. After the brother finishes speaking, I exhort him to be at peace and patient and not to be anxious or frightened. This kind of exhortation is not from the emotion or from the mind, yet it is from the will, so I am still not ministering to him in spirit. Regardless of whether it comes from the emotion, mind, or will, I have no way to make him touch his spirit or enable him to receive the supply in his spirit. Therefore, I cannot solve his problems of life.
We must reject the mind, emotion, and will. We must reject the soul and render help to others out of the spirit in order that we may give them the spiritual supply. Whether we are thoughtful, sympathetic, or calm, we are of the soul. This must be condemned and rejected.
What is the service that is in spirit? It is that whatever comes out of the soul, including the mind, the emotion, and the will, regardless of whether it is bad or good, should be condemned and rejected. Thus, we can serve in spirit, and all our services will be services that are in spirit.
The problem in the church today is not due to sins. Rather, it is due to the fact that many works, even many so-called “sacred works,” seem good and right but are out of the human soul and are merely of man. These works are done for the Lord, but they are from the human soul—from man’s zeal, man’s good intention, man’s perception, and man’s opinion. Apparently, they are scriptural, but their source is neither God nor the spirit; rather, their source is man and the soul. It is this kind of work in Christianity today that is a huge problem. This is because outwardly the works seem good, right, and scriptural, but there is a problem with the source. The problem is not a matter of whether the work is right or wrong, but what the source of the work is and where the work comes from. Does it come from God or man? Does it come from the spirit or the soul? The work may be good, but there is something wrong with it because its source is not God but man. Zeal is frequently the source of the works today. Ideas are also the origin of many works today. Many people serve the Lord merely in their zeal and by their own ideas. If you subtract these things from their service, their service becomes empty, and it equals zero. In their service there is almost nothing of the element of the spirit. This is because their service is neither of the spirit nor through the spirit.
Today our eyes must be opened, and we must be clear inwardly. Our service to God should not come out of our zeal, our ideas, or our determination. We should judge these things and let our spirit come out strongly. We should not serve God by the things of the outward man. We should condemn our zeal, judge our ideas, and reject our vigor, thereby denying everything of our self, our soul. We must stand in the death of the cross, allowing the entire outer man to be put to death by the Holy Spirit with the cross. In this way our spirit will gain the ground in us, and it will become strong and living. Thus, we will be able to serve in spirit. Only this kind of service can help others to touch God, minister life to them, and solve their spiritual problems. May the Lord have mercy on us that we would learn to be delivered from living in the soul to living in the spirit and from serving Him in the soul to serving Him in the spirit.
