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Scripture Reading: Gen. 2:7; Zech. 12:1; Job 32:8; Prov. 20:27; 1 Thes. 5:23; Heb. 4:12; John 3:6b; 4:24; Rom. 8:16; 1:9a; 2 Tim. 4:22a; 1 Cor. 6:17; Rom. 8:4; Eph. 3:5; 2:22; Rev. 1:10; 21:10
The mystery of the universe is God, the mystery of God is Christ, and the mystery of Christ is the church. The church is altogether centered on man. It is wrapped up with man, so man becomes very crucial in God’s mystery. God’s mystery is carried out by His economy, and His economy is just to dispense Himself into man. Man is so crucial to God’s mystery.
What is man? I do not ask, “Who is man?” I do not ask, “Who are you?” but “What are you?” We may say that we are a man. Then what is a man? The Bible tells us that man is a vessel (Rom. 9:21, 23). A vessel is different from an instrument. Man is not an instrument; he is a vessel. A vessel is a container to contain something. As a container this vessel needs the content, and according to the Bible the content of man is the very God. Man is just an empty vessel to contain God as his content. We all must realize that these vessels are living ones. We are living vessels with a mind, with emotions, and with a will. Man today is a living vessel to contain God as the content. For such a living vessel to receive God as the content, there is a recipient, a receiver within man. The radio serves as an illustration of this. Radio waves in the air can get into a radio, and a voice will come out. It is just a little radio, but music and announcements come out of it because something is in the air. The radio waves in the air need a receiver. We are just like little radios. We have to consider ourselves as little radios, vessels to receive the divine radio waves that bring in the divine music, the divine announcement, and the divine declaration. Once we tune our receiver within, the heavenly music comes in.
What is this receiver within man? We all have to realize that man as a living vessel is not so simple. Do not consider that we are so simple. This little vessel created by God is very complicated. Several medical doctors have told me that most medical students spend two years studying the anatomy of the physical body. These doctors all told me the same thing: that after they studied this human body for two years, they had to admit that there is an almighty One in this universe. All the organization and arrangement of the human body is too marvelous! We have to believe that this body is created by God. Who designed such a beautiful face? Suppose the nose were designed with the holes upward. Then rain would come in, and we would be troubled with the rain water. God created two eyebrows as breakwaters to turn the salty sweat away. God also created the hair within our throat to grow upward, but all the rest of our hair throughout our whole body grows downward. If the inner hair were to grow downward, we might choke on our phlegm. All these prove that our little, marvelous body as the shell of God’s vessel is created by the almighty God.
Man is not so simple. What I have been talking about is the physical body, but man is not just the physical body. Within this physical body we have all the things denoted by the term heart. Do you know how many hearts we have? We must realize that we have two hearts. One is so bad, and the other is so good. Without such a good heart we could not be here. If you ask a medical doctor to check my chest, he may say that I am so strong because I have such a strong heart, a good heart. But I would say that my heart is poor, sinful, and ugly. Actually, we are talking about two hearts. The doctor is talking about the physical heart, and I am talking about my psychological heart. Do you realize that we have a psychological heart? The physical heart does not have the ability to love; it only has the ability to pump the blood. The medical doctors do a lot for the physical heart but not for the psychological heart.
Then we have a mind to think with and to consider with. We have the emotions, the will, and the conscience. In addition to this, according to the Bible we have the soul, the spirit, and the inner man. A surgeon could only find the brain. He could not find the mind. Where is the emotion? Where is the will? Where is the conscience? Many times human beings say that their conscience testifies that they are so good. But what is the conscience, and where is it? Man is not so simple. We have the heart, the mind, the will, the emotion, the conscience, the soul, and the spirit. There is such a thing within us that is called the soul. It is also called the psyche. Psuche, the Greek word for soul, is the base word for such words as psychology and psychological.
Then we have the spirit. What is the spirit? It is hard to tell. If you check with the thoughtful people, every one realizes that there is an emptiness within man. What is this emptiness? It is the appetite. The appetite is a kind of hollowness. We have such a hollowness within us, which is the desire for eating, and this desire is termed the appetite. Every thoughtful person realizes that besides the physical appetite there is another kind of appetite. After a man is filled up with the best food, he feels strongly that something within is still so empty. Regardless of whether we are old, young, rich, poor, high, or low, with every human being there is the sense of emptiness. After animals fill up their hunger, they go to sleep; they do not have any other appetite. When all the monkeys, tigers, and lions in the zoo are filled up, they are satisfied.
But the more human beings are filled up physically, the more they become hungry within. This is the very reason why religions have become so prevailing. Strictly speaking, on this whole earth among the human race there is not one atheist. All the atheists are self-deceivers. In their mentality they say that they do not believe that there is a God. While arguing with you that there is no God, deep within they ask, “Suppose there is a God, what should we do?” When they return home to their bedroom, they would think that probably there is a God. They would think, “I should not run the risk to say so strongly that there is no God.” This proves that there is not one real atheist. All the atheists are liars. They lie to themselves because, in fact, every human being has an appetite other than the physical appetite. What is this appetite? It is a deep desire after God. Every human being has something within him. Whether we call that the spirit, the appetite, the receiver, or the hollowness, whatever we call it, there is such a thing.
There is such a thing called the human spirit within every human being. God created us in this way. Genesis 1:26 says, “God said, Let Us make man in Our image.” God did this in the way of forming a physical body with the dust. Our physical body is just dust. It is a composition of chemical elements such as salt, sulfur, copper, iron, and other things. God formed a physical body with the dust. Then God did something that He had not done with any of the animals. God breathed something into man. Here we have two kinds of materials—the dust and God’s breath. The dust was used as material to form man’s physical body.
Besides this, He breathed the breath of life into man. We need to be clear that this was not God’s divine life. This was just some breath out of God’s mouth. After this breath entered into man’s dusty body, man became a living soul. So in Genesis 2:7 we have the body formed with the dust and the soul as an issue that came out of the combination of God’s breath and the physical body. Now we have the body and the soul. No doubt the breath of God that was breathed into the physical body became the human spirit.
In the original Old Testament text, the word for breath in Genesis 2:7 is the very word in Proverbs 20:27 that is translated as “spirit,” which is the spirit of man. The spirit of man is just the breath out of God’s mouth. The dust with which our body was formed is a material matter, but the breath that is the very element for our spirit is spiritual. So we have two kinds of elements. One is the material element, the dust for the body; the other is the spiritual element, the breath of God for our spirit. When this breath came into the dusty body, the issue was the human soul. In this one verse (Gen. 2:7) we have these three things—the body, the soul, and the spirit.
So the apostle Paul tells us clearly in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 that a human being is composed with three parts—the spirit and the soul and the body. We have a body, a spirit, and a soul. God created us this way with a purpose. Just as a jacket is designed to fit the physical body, so man was made not by accident but according to God’s design. Man was made according to God’s fashion with a soul, and the soul is of three parts: the mind, the emotion, and the will. How wonderful is man’s mind! The mind can remember so many words and syllables. The mind also works with the will to make decisions and choices. The emotion, being our inner organ to love, to hate, to be happy or sorrowful, goes along with our mind as well. These three—the mind, the emotion, and the will all go together. However, man has a deeper organ, which is the human spirit. This organ is solely, wholly, and simply for us to receive God. The little receiver within a radio is made purposely for one thing—to receive the electrical waves in the air. We also have such a single-purposed organ within us. That is our spirit to receive God as the spiritual waves from the heavens.
After we were born, we did not use our spirit. We used our body in bodily exercise and our mind for education and schooling, but we were never taught to exercise our spirit. Sometimes a brother and his wife quarrel and exchange words. Both should just be quiet and exercise their spirit! Do not charge the other party to exercise their spirit; you just do it.
The Bible says that God stretched forth the heavens, laid the foundations of the earth, and formed the spirit of man (Zech. 12:1). This word shows us that three things are crucial in this universe—the heavens, the earth, and the spirit of man. The heavens are for the earth, the earth is for man, and man with his spirit is for God. This is altogether for God’s economy. The Bible tells us that the spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah (Prov. 20:27). We all know that the lamp here refers to an oil lamp. The lamp itself does not give light; it is the oil that burns within the lamp. God is the oil, and our spirit within us is the lamp. As the oil burns to shine through the lamp, so God shines through our spirit.
In the Bible there are two spirits—the divine Spirit and the human spirit. Three verses tell us that there are two different spirits. John 3:6b says, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” The human spirit is born of the divine Spirit. The King James Version even indicates the difference by capitalizing the first Spirit in this verse. Then in John 4:24 the Lord said, “God is Spirit [the divine Spirit], and those who worship Him must worship in spirit [the human spirit].” God is Spirit, and we have a spirit within us as an organ for us to worship God, contact God, commune with God, receive God, and contain God.
The third verse is Romans 8:16, which says, “The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit.” These two spirits are working together. The Holy Spirit works together with our spirit to testify that we are children of God. This one verse proves that now the divine Spirit is one with our human spirit, and our human spirit is one with the divine Spirit. Hence, 2 Timothy 4:22 says, “The Lord be with your spirit.” Today Christ is the life-giving Spirit. When the Bible says, “The Lord be with your spirit,” it means that Christ as the life-giving Spirit is with our spirit. This is why 1 Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Hallelujah! We have the divine Spirit, and we have the human spirit. Eventually, these two spirits are mingled as one.
In many verses in the New Testament the word spirit is used to denote not merely the Holy Spirit or simply the human spirit but the human spirit mingled with the divine Spirit. Romans 8:4 says, “Walk according to...the spirit.” The spirit here is the mingled spirit. Surely it denotes our human spirit, but in Romans 8:4 our human spirit is not merely the human spirit. Our human spirit has become mingled with the divine Spirit. This is just like tea. It was pure water, but once tea gets into the water, we have two elements mingled together as one drink. We even call this drink tea. Actually, this is not merely tea; it is tea mingled with water. Two things have been mingled together as one entity. Today the spirit within us is a mingled spirit. As Christians, if we are honest and faithful to the Lord, we have to walk according to this mingled spirit in everything every day. We must walk according to the spirit, not according to religion, doctrine, or any opinion. Then we will fulfill the righteous requirement of the law. It is here, in this mingled spirit, that the holy apostles received the revelation of the mystery of God (Eph. 3:5). The mystery of God could be revealed only in such a mingled spirit.
Ephesians 2:22 tells us that God’s dwelling place is the church. Today the church is to be built up into a dwelling place of God in spirit. It is in our spirit that the church is built up to be God’s dwelling place. We are here for the Lord’s recovery, and the Lord’s recovery is focused on the church, which is the mystery of Christ. This church is built up as God’s dwelling place in our spirit. So in the last book of the Bible the apostle John tells us that in spirit he saw the vision of the local churches with Christ walking among them (Rev. 1:10-13). It was also in his spirit that John saw the New Jerusalem (21:10). It is altogether a matter of the human spirit mingled with the Holy Spirit. God dispenses Himself as the Spirit into our human spirit first by the way of regeneration (John 3:6). We all have to realize that we have been regenerated. We have had a second birth, a rebirth. Now we have to learn how to worship the Spirit in our spirit, how to contact Him, and how to fellowship with Him. To worship God implies to contact Him, to fellowship with Him, to commune with Him, to receive Him, to take Him in, to contain Him, and even to assimilate Him. We have God within us. We have to digest Him into our very organic tissues. This all transpires not in our mentality or in our will or in our emotion. It is altogether accomplished in our spirit. Our God is the Triune God, and the Triune God is the life-giving Spirit. The life-giving Spirit as the ultimate expression of the Triune God has entered into our human spirit to make Himself one with our spirit. Now we and He are just one spirit. It is here that we have been reborn. It is here that we contact Him, receive Him, contain Him, assimilate Him, and take Him in. It is here that we have the church built up, which is the focus of the mystery. How crucial and how important is our spirit!
In Ephesians 5 there is a verse telling the wives to submit and a verse telling the husbands to love, but there is another verse that says, “Be filled in spirit” (v. 18). First, be filled in spirit with God. Be filled in your spirit with the Spirit. When you and I are filled in spirit, surely we can love. If the wives are filled with God in their spirit, surely they can submit. Young men do not need to force themselves to love their wives but should come back to their spirit, exercise their spirit, and be filled in their spirit.
The subject of the book of Ephesians is Christ and the church. Without Christ and apart from the church, we cannot love our wives. I have never found one who really loved his wife without Christ, but I have met a number of husbands who all loved their wives in the church and by Christ. How could the husbands have such good wives in the church but by Christ? We do not need to try to love. We do not need to try to submit. Just live in the church by Christ and in your spirit. It is in our spirit that we are one with the life-giving Spirit. It is in our spirit that we see the vision concerning God’s eternal purpose. It is in our spirit that all the mysteries become open to us. It is in our spirit that we are built as God’s habitation. It is in our spirit that we can see the New Jerusalem. It is in our spirit that we fully realize that the best, the top portion, of God’s blessing is with the church. We can see this because we are in the spirit.
Now, we all can grasp the importance, the vital point, of the human spirit. God today is the life-giving Spirit, and He created us with a spirit. Second, He has regenerated us in our spirit. Third, He indwells our spirit. Fourth, His Spirit and our spirit, these two spirits, are mingled into one spirit. Is this not wonderful? No union, no mingling, is so dear, so real, as this mingling of the divine Spirit with the human spirit. Here we enjoy Christ. Here we partake of all the riches of Christ. Here we are built up together. Here we have the church life. Here we have God’s habitation. This is the real economy of God’s mystery. God’s mystery is carried out in His economy in our spirit. So we must learn all the time to come back to our spirit. While we are gossiping, we have to come back to our spirit. Before we become angry at some brother, we have to come back to our spirit. While we are so happy, we have to come back to our spirit. When we are going to say something to our wives, we have to come back to the spirit. Always remind yourself to come back to the spirit. We have to walk according to the spirit.
This word walk in Greek means to have our being, to do things, to say things, and to go places according to this spirit. Forget about religion, rituals, regulations, forms, teachings, sermons, concepts, and anyone’s opinion. In everything we must walk and have our whole being according to the spirit. We do have such a wonderful spirit. When we walk, have our being, and live day by day according to this spirit, there will be no burden, no problems, and no strain. We will be rested all the time because we have everything in this mingled spirit. It is really wonderful!
In Ephesians 5 there is a verse telling the wives to submit and a verse telling the husbands to love, but there is another verse (v. 18) that says, “Be filled in spirit.” Firstly, be filled in spirit with God. Be filled in your spirit with the Spirit. When you and I are filled in spirit, surely we can love. If the wives are filled with God in their spirit, surely they can submit. Young men do not need to force themselves to love their wives but should come back to their spirit, exercise their spirit, and be filled in their spirit.
The subject of the book of Ephesians is Christ and the church. Without Christ, apart from the church, we cannot love our wives. I have never found one who really loves his wife without Christ, but I have met a number of husbands who all loved their wives in the church and by Christ. How could the husbands have such good wives in the church but by Christ? We do not need to try to love. We do not need to try to submit. Just live in the church by Christ and in your spirit. It is in the spirit of man that we are one with the life-giving Spirit. It is in our spirit that we see the vision concerning God’s eternal purpose. It is in our spirit that all the mysteries become open to us. It is in our spirit that we are built as God’s habitation. It is in our spirit that we can see the New Jerusalem. It is in the spirit that we fully realize that the best, the top portion, of God’s blessing is with the church. We can see this because we are in the spirit.
Now, we all can grasp the importance, the vital point, of the human spirit. God today is the life-giving Spirit, and He created us with a spirit. Second, He has regenerated us in our spirit. Third, He indwells our spirit. Fourth, His Spirit and our spirit, these two spirits, are mingled into one spirit. Is this not wonderful! No union, no mingling is so dear, so real, as this mingling of the divine Spirit with the human spirit. Here we enjoy Christ. Here we partake of all the riches of Christ. Here we are built up together. Here we have the church life. Here we have God’s habitation. This is the real economy of God’s mystery. God’s mystery is carried out in His economy in our spirit. So we must learn all the time to come back to our spirit. While we are gossiping we have to come back to our spirit. Before we become angry at some brother, we have to come back to our spirit. While we are so happy, we have to come back to our spirit. When we are going to say something to our wives, come back to the spirit. Always remind yourself to come back to the spirit. We have to walk according to spirit.
This word walk in Greek means to have our being, to do things, to say things, and to go places according to this spirit. Forget about religion, rituals, regulations, forms, teachings, sermons, concepts, and anyone’s opinion. In everything we must walk and have our whole being according to the spirit. We do have such a wonderful spirit. We just walk, have our being, and live day by day according to this spirit. There will be no burden, no problems, and no strain. We will be rested all the time because we have everything in this mingled spirit. It is really wonderful!
