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Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 4:7, 10, 16
In the previous chapter we saw how to serve in spirit and how to serve God by exercising our spirit. Therefore, we must reject our soul. We also saw that the soul is composed of three functions: the mind, the emotion, and the will. If we would reject the soul, we must reject these functions of the soul. Although they are good, we still must reject them. We should not serve God by these organs. In the service to God these organs have their positions, but they should not occupy the first place. We should allow only the spirit to have the preeminence in our service to God. If we serve God by the mind, emotion, or will, then our spirit will definitely be suppressed and depreciated and will not have its proper position. If these functions dominate our service to God, then our spirit will lose its position and will not be able to manifest its function.
We should never allow our service to come out of our soul. We must always judge, condemn, and reject the soul. All our services should have the spirit as their source. They should all come out from the spirit and allow the spirit to be dominant, to have authority, and to control everything. This does not mean, however, that our mind, emotion, and will are of absolutely no use in our service to God. These faculties still have their place, which is secondary and not primary. They should not take the lead; rather, they should be under the control of the spirit.
This matter, however, is somewhat difficult. Because we are too accustomed to living in the mind, emotion, and will, it is hard for us to get out of them. We are in these faculties even when we pray or read the Bible, not to mention when we are doing other things. We have lived in our mind, emotion, and will too deeply and for too long, so it is not easy for us to be saved from them or to get out of them. Moreover, these items are basically man himself. Just consider this: How can a person get out of himself? This is a difficult thing! It is easier for us to get out of sins and the world because these are from outside of us. It is very difficult, however, for us to not live by the self because it is not merely inside of us, but also it is simply us. It is truly hard for us not to live by the self—the mind, emotion, and will—and to live without the self by rejecting the functions of the soul. It is relatively easy not to do the things that are evil or wrong but to do the things that are good and right. However, it is truly difficult not to do things by the self or the soul but to do things by the spirit.
We must know, though, that if we do not do things by the spirit, then what we do in our service to God does not have much weight or value. Furthermore, if we do not live by the spirit, it is difficult for us to grow in the spiritual life. This may be considered a very crucial point. Whether our service will have any value and whether our spiritual life will have any growth, all these questions depend on whether we can be delivered from the self, whether we can reject the soul, and whether we can live and serve by the spirit instead of by the soul.
If we would reject the things of the soul, then we must clearly see before God that anything that comes out of our mind, emotion, or will is a hindrance and an enemy to the spirit. If we see this, we will condemn and reject our mind, emotion, and will. In the past we loved and appreciated these things. Perhaps you were one who had imagination, intelligence, and cleverness. Maybe you were one who was rich in emotions and could easily sympathize with and care for others. Or perhaps you were one who was strong in will and had backbone and opinions. In the past you boasted in these things, and you appreciated and thought highly of them. Now, however, you realize that although these things are good, they are spiritual hindrances that prevent you from touching your spirit. If you appreciate and think highly of these things, you will not be able to learn to exercise your spirit, to really touch your spirit, or to serve God in spirit. Once you have this realization, you will hate your thinking and cleverness, your sympathy and concern for others, and your views and opinions. You will condemn all these things. In the past you considered these things to be your advantages, but now you see them as your problems. This is why you condemn them. Moreover, every time you meet with some situation, you are in fear and trembling, being afraid that your mind, emotion, or will may come out first. Therefore, in every situation you do not dare to use these items first. Rather, you reject them.
Only at this time and only under such circumstances, can you truly return to the spirit. Only then can the spirit in you have the opportunity to let you touch its feeling. Thus, you can walk by the spirit, exercise the spirit, and serve God in spirit. One who serves God in spirit must be one who hates, condemns, and judges the self and who fears the self much more than he fears sin and the world. Thus, he will be able to serve God by contacting Him, touching Him, and fellowshipping with Him in spirit.
No one can contact God with the things of the soul. Since God is Spirit, if we want to contact Him, we must use our spirit. We can contact Him and fellowship with Him only in spirit. Whenever we live in our soul, we cannot contact God; instead, we lose our fellowship with Him. When we live according to our mind, emotion, and will, then we lose God. Thus, we must hate, condemn, and reject the things of our soul. If we are willing to do this, then we can return to our spirit to contact God and touch His feeling, thereby serving Him.
Our service must be the issue of our contact with God in spirit. However, this is not the case with most of our service. For example, when we preach, sometimes we speak only from our mind and our clear thinking, without having fellowship with God in our spirit and without touching His feeling. This kind of preaching, which is from the mind of the soul, does not require us to contact God and fellowship with Him. On the contrary, in this kind of preaching we have lost our fellowship with God and have become disconnected from Him.
There is another kind of preaching, however, which comes from God as the issue of one’s contact and fellowship with God. Every sentence gives people the sense of touching God. With this kind of preaching, it is a secondary matter whether the listeners are moved, but the speaker himself surely is moved, touches God, and speaks out of his fellowship with God.
With respect to these two different kinds of preaching, the first kind does not require the denial of the self, fellowship with God, hating of the self, or contact with God. It is possible that the speaker has gone for a long time without fellowshipping with God or contacting Him, yet he is able to speak a message according to his mind. This kind of preaching is similar to a worldly person’s making a speech; the only difference is the topic. The worldly people cover secular topics, whereas this kind of preacher covers scriptural topics. Just as the worldly speechmaking is from the mind, so also this kind of preaching is from the mind. It does not require contact or fellowship with God because the mind is sufficient.
Before God, however, this kind of preaching is more filthy than sin. The reason is that this kind of preaching belongs to death. Before God, death is more filthy than sin. The Old Testament shows that the greatest offense to God is death. Sin offends against God’s ways, and death offends against God Himself. Therefore, when the Old Testament people touched death, they had to purify themselves for a long time. Any service rendered apart from one’s contact with God in spirit is dead in God’s eyes and is something belonging to death; hence, in God’s view it is very filthy.
The preachings and prayers according to the mind seem to be spiritual and holy. In God’s eyes, however, they all belong to death and come out of death, and they also come from man, from the soul. Hence, they are very filthy and void of God’s Spirit, life, or element. If we have been enlightened before the Lord, we will fear this kind of preaching and prayer more than we fear committing a gross sin. If we have the light before God, then we will fear the self doing anything of service to God even more than we fear committing a sin.
Many problems of the children of God today are right here. Many services, works, preachings, and prayers have not passed through God. They are not of God, from God, or the result of the fellowship and contact with God. Moreover, it seems there is no need for them to pass through God or contact God. Rather, human cleverness, human thinking, human decisiveness, human perseverance, and human zeal are sufficient for man to do these works. Man does not need to contact God, fellowship with God, or depend on God in doing these works but is fully able to declare his independence from God. These works, however, are of the soul, of man, of man’s self, and in God’s eyes they are as filthy as death.
Our Lord said that we can bear fruit only if we abide in Him and He in us, because apart from Him we can do nothing (John 15:5). This does not mean that we cannot do anything at all, but that even if we can do many things, they do not count before God. Whatever we can do by ourselves without needing to fellowship with God or to contact Him in spirit is neither of the spirit nor of life and is incapable of ministering life. Hence, it has no value and does not count before God. Not only so, it is even condemned by God. Therefore, we must learn to come out of this kind of work and turn within to contact God in spirit. Unless we do this, we would rather not do any work. We must force ourselves to such an extent that we absolutely must contact God in spirit. Otherwise, regardless of how much we can do, our work will still be condemned by God and will not be acceptable to Him.
For this reason God often disciplines us through outward circumstances. He arranges persons, matters, or things to deal with our being, including our mind, emotion, and will. For example, you may be a person who is very thoughtful and who always likes to use the mind. Your mind always comes first in your dealing with any matter. Unless God deals with you severely, it will be difficult for someone like you to realize how terrible your mind is. If you do not allow God to enlighten you to such an extent so that you see that your thoughts must be condemned before Him, then it will not be easy for you to put them aside. Therefore, God raises up certain environments to do a breaking work on you. When you look back on some of the things that happened to you, you will become clear that they were solely to deal with your mind with its thoughts. You are a person with a thoughtful mind, so God allows you to encounter some situations that are beyond your comprehension. God especially uses these situations to deal with your thinking, your intelligence, and your cleverness. People like you, who are so clever and have much intelligence and who like to use their minds, must be dealt with by God if they do not allow Him to enlighten them. If God is not successful in trying to enlighten you by His light, then He must strike you with the environment to deal especially with the clever mind, which you always love to use.
A person might be very clever formerly, but after he has been dealt with by God, even though we cannot say he is no longer clever, his cleverness has been broken. Such a person cannot use his cleverness any longer. When you touch him, you can still tell that he was born a very clever person, but you feel that his cleverness has been broken by God. When he faces any situation now, he does not dare use his cleverness; rather, he is afraid of it. This is not to say that he is no longer clever, but he is afraid to use his cleverness. He has been struck and dealt with by God. He has suffered in his cleverness. His cleverness is still here, but it has been broken. In this breaking, there is the release of the spirit. When he encounters any situation now, he uses his spirit to feel. Instead of using his mind, he uses his spirit first, and instead of acting according to his thinking, he acts according to the sense of his spirit.
With someone who is rich in emotion and who lives in his emotion, God will also raise up environments to strike and touch his emotion. In this kind of dealing, God’s hand usually strikes precisely and heavily. After a person has been struck by God in his emotion, whenever he touches the Lord’s work or meets with certain situations again, he will be afraid of his emotion and will not dare use it. This does not mean that he becomes a wooden person. Rather, it means that his emotion has been dealt with and broken by God and can no longer occupy the first place within him. Once the emotion is broken, the spirit within can come out and have a chance. This is God’s purpose in raising up environments to discipline us.
Someone may have a very strong will and live entirely according to his will. With such a person, his will becomes his spiritual problem. His will hinders him from living in spirit and disables him from serving God in spirit. He may have some sense regarding this problem and may even have been enlightened by God, but he is not willing to learn to reject his will in every situation. Therefore, God arranges and raises up some circumstances to deal with him until his will has been broken and subdued. When you touch him after this, on the one hand, you can sense that he has a strong will, but on the other hand, you can also feel that his human will has been struck and broken. You can see that his spirit is released and strong. Whenever he touches the service of God, it is his spirit instead of his will that comes first.
The sufferings we face and the circumstances we encounter are mostly to deal with our natural man and the things in our soul. Many times our mind, emotion, and will all require God’s environmental dealings. These things are not easily broken without the dealings in our environment. If these things are not broken, then the spirit within, the life within, which is our inner man, cannot be released. In order to release our spirit from within, God often uses the environment to break our outer man, our outer shell.
This is shown in 2 Corinthians 4, which says, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels” (v. 7). We know that this treasure denotes the Lord’s life. The Lord’s life is truly a treasure that we have obtained. However, since this treasure is put into an earthen vessel, it is not easily manifested, so God must come in to break the earthen vessel. The earthen vessel refers to our outer man. God uses the environment to deal with our outer man, that is, to break the earthen vessel. Through the environmental dealing and breaking, God puts to death our outer man. The afflictions we have due to God’s dealing and breaking are just like death working in us to break us as earthen vessels. This is to break our outer man, which is our soul and all the things of our soul. After our outer man passes through the breaking of death, the Lord’s life, which is the treasure in us, and our inner man, which is our spirit indwelt by the Lord’s life, are released. Although the outer man is decaying, the inner man, the regenerated spirit, is being renewed and is growing stronger day by day. The outer man is broken, but the treasure in the inner man is released.
Regardless of how good the things released from our outer man—our soul—are, they are not the treasure within us. Rather, they frustrate that treasure from being released. For this reason, while we are pursuing the growth in life, God often raises certain circumstances to do a work of breaking, consuming, and tearing down in us. If you are a thoughtful person, God will raise up circumstances to deal particularly with your mind in order to break it and tear it down. If you are one who is rich in emotion or one who loves to use your will, God will arrange environments to deal specifically with your emotion or will in order to break them and tear them down. Whichever part of your soul is especially prominent, that is the part that God will come in to deal with specifically, and you will experience particular sufferings in that part. This may be compared to our face hitting a wall; the part of our face that hits first and suffers most is our nose, the most protruding part of our face. Whatever part is especially prominent or strong will be especially touched by God when we meet with His dealing, and that is the part that will truly feel the pain. If your will is especially strong, then it will be the first part touched by God’s dealing, and it will be the part in which you feel the most pain. If your emotion is especially rich or your mind exceptionally sharp, then they will be the first parts touched by the circumstances given by God. You will suffer particularly in the point in which you are strong. Wherever you suffer the most is the place where you most need to be broken, because that is the point that has become a hindrance and an enemy to your spirit. If that particular point is not broken or torn down, then there will be no possibility for your spirit, your inner man, and the Lord’s life within it to be released. This is why God must come in to break and tear down that particular point.
After we are saved or revived, in our pursuit of the spiritual growth, God comes to us not to build up but to tear down what we originally had. He will tear down our mind with its cleverness, our emotion with its zeal, and our will with its opinions. Oh, brothers and sisters, God’s salvation is not to build up the things of the self in us. No, God’s salvation is to build up His own things in us, to build up the things of Christ, the spiritual things, so that the spirit of life in us, that is, our new inner man, can grow stronger day by day, and the things we had originally, that is, everything of our old man, can be torn down and broken.
If we see this point, we will clearly know where our service should be: not in the outer man but in the inner man; not in the soul but in the spirit; not in the mind, emotion, or will but in the spirit of life. If we know this and have this experience, we will be able to discern if a person’s service is from the spirit or from the soul. We will not try to determine someone’s worth before God according to what he is and does outwardly. We will be able to touch a person’s inner parts to know if his living today is in the soul or in the spirit and to know if he is living in the soul or in the spirit.
A great deal of man’s praises today are immature and inaccurate. For example, a certain brother may have some good points or strong points, which are all of the self. Many brothers and sisters, however, praise him as being very spiritual. His living and what he is and does have not touched the spirit but are all in the soul and the self. Therefore, the brothers and sisters who praise him as being spiritual are inexperienced. Simply because he has strengths and good points does not mean that he is spiritual. Just because he does the right thing does not mean that he has acted spiritually. We still must ask and touch whether his strengths, good points, and being right are from the spirit or from the soul. Has his soul truly been broken by God? Has God dealt with his mind, emotion, and will? Has God torn down the self in him? Has he ever met God? Has he ever been touched by God? If you have had these kinds of experiences, then when you touch others, you will be able to tell if they are living in the soul or in the spirit. You will be able to sense that this brother, although he is good and right, is living actually in the soul and has never been broken. He is altogether a natural man. All his living may be well-disciplined and perfect, but it is from the self and not from God. You can discern this; you have such a discerning ability.
Some may ask, If our mind, emotion, and will are all broken, will we not become simpletons? No, God breaks our mind, emotion, and will but does not nullify them. We still have them. Furthermore, the mind of a truly spiritual person is many times sharper than it was before, his will is many times stronger, and his emotion is many times richer. The more spiritual a person is, the sharper his mind, the richer his emotion, and the stronger his will. The spiritual man, however, does not allow these things to take the preeminence. Rather, his spirit takes the first place. Whenever he encounters a situation, he lets his spirit come in first, and only then does he use his mind, emotion, and will. When he rejects his mind, emotion, and will and allows his spirit to come first in this way, the result is that his mind becomes sharper, his emotion richer, and his will stronger. The Spirit of God has the ground within him and rules not only in his spirit but also in his mind, so his mind becomes sharper and wiser. This is the natural outcome. The more a person denies himself, the wiser his mind will be. If a person only wants the Lord and rejects himself, he will be the wisest person because the Spirit of God is in him, and no one can be wiser than the Spirit of God. In this universe, is there anyone wiser than the Spirit of God? Since the Spirit of God reigns in him and enters into his inward parts to such an extent, it is no wonder that he is wise! He has the Holy Spirit not only in his spirit, but he has the Holy Spirit even in his mind. Because the Holy Spirit has gained the ground in him to enter his mind, his mind becomes very wise.
It is the same with the emotion. The most spiritual person must be the one with the richest emotion. The emotionless ones are the nonspiritual ones. Suppose a person sees something good but cannot appreciate it, encounters a sad situation but cannot cry, meets with a happy event but cannot laugh, or does not know what difficulty and ease are, because to him suffering and joy, difficulty and ease, make no difference. In this case, he has no way to be spiritual. Every spiritual person is rich in emotion because the God who has entered into him and filled his emotion is rich in emotion. Because such ones allow God to reign in them, His Spirit can enter into their emotion. Therefore, they are definitely abounding in emotions. Many times they shed more tears than others, and they also laugh more joyfully than others. Like the spiritual apostle Paul, they are truly joyful when they are happy and truly sorrowful when they are sad. Although they are richer than others in emotion, they are not wild but restrained. They are directed and governed inwardly by the Holy Spirit. When you touch their emotion, you sense that they are full of the presence of God within them. Although they are rich in emotion, they do not live in their emotion; instead, they live in their spirit.
In the same way, a spiritual person also has a very strong will. This is because the Holy Spirit reigns in him to strengthen his will. The more spiritual a person is, the stronger his will. At the same time, the more spiritual a person is, the more pliable his will. The will of a spiritual person is strong, on the one hand, and pliable, on the other hand. It can stand up, and it can also bend. It is truly both strong and pliant. Such a person submits to God’s authority, allowing the Spirit of God to enter and rule over his will so that his will is balanced between strength and pliancy. When he should be firm, he is firm; when he should bend, he bends.
Thus, it does not mean that if one lives in and by his spirit, then he loses his mind, emotion, and will. On the contrary, the more a person lives in and by his spirit, the sharper his mind is, the richer his emotion is, and the stronger his will is, because the Holy Spirit dominates him and reigns in him. The Holy Spirit within him has the ground and is able to enter and reign in every part of his being, including his mind, emotion, and will. Thus, every part of his being, under the strengthening and control of the Holy Spirit, not only becomes stronger but also is used properly.
Therefore, we must see that once we live in the spirit and allow it to have the proper ground in us, the mind, emotion, and will of our soul will be strengthened and made normal. We must remember, however, that they are of secondary importance and that the spirit is of primary importance. They are under the direction of the spirit as the source, the preeminent part, and the dominant part. In every matter we should begin from the spirit, allowing the spirit to come in first. Then we should allow the spirit to direct and control every part of our being. If we do this, and only then, our living and service will be of the spirit, in the spirit, touching the spirit, and supplying others with the spirit. May God bless us in this way!
