God created man with a spirit, although at the time of creation he did not have God’s life. Hence, the Bible says, “There is a spirit in man” (Job 32:8). Twenty-two years ago when I began to minister in this country, I gave message after message on the human spirit. Many saints told me that they had never before heard of this. Andrew Murray and Mrs. Jesse Penn-Lewis both stressed the spirit. God created us not only with a mouth and a stomach to receive physical food; He also created us with a spirit to receive Him.
Inside a radio is a receiver. Without the receiver, none of the radio waves from the air could be received by the radio. Our receiver to receive God is our spirit. The Lord Jesus said in John 4:24, “God is Spirit; and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and reality.” Only spirit can worship Spirit. Because God Himself is Spirit, He created us with a spirit for the definite purpose that we might worship Him. To worship Him includes contacting Him, conversing with Him, and receiving Him. He comes into us by entering into our spirit.
Romans 8:16 says that the Spirit and our spirit witness together. This means that the Spirit of God, upon our believing in the Lord Jesus, comes into our spirit. First Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” At the beginning of the Bible God prepared a man in His image, after His likeness, and with a spirit to receive, contain, and express Him. However, at the time of creation man did not receive God, the divine Spirit, into his spirit.
Every human being has God’s image, God’s likeness, and a human spirit. When the gospel reached us, it touched us in our conscience, which is a part of the spirit (cf. Rom. 8:16; 9:1). By that touch our spirit was quickened, and we repented. We opened our inner being to repent, to believe, and to receive the Lord Jesus; He came into us, and we were saved. Many gospel preachers ask, “Will you open up and invite Jesus to come into your heart?” There is nothing wrong with this, but in order to experience Christ as our life after being saved, we must know that He is now in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22).
God’s purpose is for sonship, and sonship is accomplished by the dispensing of what God is into us as our life. This dispensing is in our spirit. John 3:6 says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Here again are the two spirits. We were not regenerated in our mentality, nor in our body. Nicodemus thought that to be reborn was to be reborn in the physical body, but the Lord Jesus corrected him. To be reborn is to be reborn in our spirit of God the Spirit, not of our parents. Even if we could go back into our mother’s womb and be born physically a hundred times, we would still be flesh. We must be born in our spirit of the divine Spirit.
Zechariah 12:1 tells us that there are three crucial things in God’s creation: the heavens, the earth, and the spirit of man. It says that Jehovah is the One who “stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.” How great is our spirit! The heavens are for the earth. Without the heavens, the earth could not have anything organic. The earth is for man, and man is for God. For man to be for God, he needs a receiver. This receiver is our human spirit. Praise the Lord that we are here under God’s plan and in His plan; that we have been made by Him in His image and after His likeness; that we have a spirit to receive Him; and that He, as the divine Spirit, has entered into our human spirit, making us His sons for His expression! This is His plan.