CRYSTALLIZATION-STUDY OF THE GOSPEL OF GOD
in the Epistle to the Romans

Message Sixteen

The Human Spirit of the Believers
(2)

Scripture Reading: Gen. 1:26; 2:7; Prov. 20:27; 1 Thes. 5:23; John 4:24; Rom. 1:9; 7:6b; 8:4b-6,
9-11, 15-16; 12:11; Heb. 4:12

OUTLINE

5. The spirit of John the apostle in seeing the four great visions, as the contents of the last book of the Bible, concludes the holy Scripture in the consummation of the New Jerusalem for the fulfillment of God’s eternal economy.
6. The discernment of the spirit from the soul:
   1. The spirit and the soul of man are not synonyms of the same one thing; they are two distinct parts of man’s composition and can be distinctly divided one from the other. First Thessalonians 5:23 confirms this fact, and Luke 1:46-47 strengthens such a teaching. In Luke 1:46-47 Mary said that her spirit had exulted in God her Savior and her soul magnified the Lord. Her word shows clearly that her two parts, the spirit and the soul, performed two different actions, her exulting in God and her magnifying the Lord.
   2. For the New Testament believers to experience Christ for the producing and building up of His organic Body in the consummation of the New Jerusalem for the accomplishment of the eternal economy of God, they need to discern their spirit from their soul—Heb. 4:12:
      1. In God’s old creation, the spirit of man was the reality of man, and the soul of man was the person of man.
      2. In God’s new creation, the spirit of the believers becomes their person, and their soul becomes their inner organ, as their body is their outer organ; they are a spiritual man according to their regenerated spirit with their soul as their inner organ, which is considered as the psychological part of man, and with their body as their outer organ, which is considered as the physical part of man.
      3. In God’s New Testament economy the believers should live, walk, and have their being according to their spirit, which is mingled with the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:4b, 2) and only use their soul as their inner organ for them to live as a human being, as they use their body as their outer organ for them to do things outwardly, but they should deny and reject their soul as their person (Matt. 16:24-25; Luke 9:23-24).
   3. The believers needing to discern their spirit from their soul by the living, operative, and sharp word of God—Heb. 4:12:
      1. God’s living word pierces to the dividing of the believers’ soul and spirit, as their joints and marrow are divided.
      2. God’s operative and sharp word is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of their heart.
      3. They should pray-read the Word of God until it pierces into their spirit that they may be able to discern their spirit from their soul.
7. The concluding word—the book of Romans, as a book on the organic and dynamic salvation of God in Christ, not only presents us a full and detailed definition of God’s dynamic salvation but also gives us the way God takes to execute His dynamic salvation and apply it to the fallen sinners and the way the sinners should take for them to receive, experience, and enjoy God’s dynamic salvation. These two ways are the divine Spirit of life and the human spirit of the believers:
   1. The divine Spirit of life is the Spirit of God processed and consummated to be the life-giving, compounded, and indwelling Spirit, who indwells the believers as the reality of the pneumatic, pneumatized Christ, as the consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God, and as the reality of the divine resurrection. It is through such a Spirit of life that the eternal, only wise God, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden through the ages (Rom. 16:25), dispenses Himself in His processed and consummated Trinity into the believers to be their dynamic salvation as their life and everything.
   2. The human spirit of the believers is the believers’ spirit regenerated and indwelt by the divine Spirit of life and mingled with the divine Spirit of life as one spirit. It is through such a human spirit that the people chosen by God participate in the dynamic salvation of God as their living in this age and their destiny in eternity. Hence, “the Spirit...with our spirit” in verse 16 of Romans 8 (the key chapter of the book of Romans concerning the Spirit of life and the spirit of the believers) is the most crucial secret in the whole book of Romans for God to execute His dynamic salvation and for the believers to participate in it. We all have to know these two spirits in the divine enlightenment that we may enter, by the Spirit of life in our regenerated spirit which is mingled with the Spirit of life, into the intrinsic essence of the dynamic salvation of God in Christ, which is the Triune God processed and consummated to be our eternal inheritance for our enjoyment.

In this message we want to continue our fellowship on the human spirit of the believers.

The New Testament unveils to us only three great, excellent persons. The first person is the all-inclusive, mysterious Christ. The first four books of the New Testament, the four Gospels, are on Christ the all-inclusive One, who was God becoming a man, the God-man. God is a mystery, and man is also a mystery. Christ is the One who combines these two together as one. Christ is neither merely God nor merely man. He is the God-man. Second, there is the mysterious, organic church, which was formed in the book of Acts. Following the all-inclusive Christ, the church came to be the second great person in the universe. The church begins in Acts and then occupies twenty-one books of the New Testament, twenty-one Epistles, from Romans to Jude. Third, the last great person in the New Testament is the New Jerusalem, which is seen in the last book of the Bible, Revelation.

These three great persons all need man to be in one part of his being, his human spirit. In the first four books, the human spirit is not mentioned often. Then in Acts, for the church, the human spirit, the spirit of the believers, is very crucial. The church is constituted with Christ and the believers. Christ is divine becoming human, possessing a human nature with a human spirit, and the church is the aggregate of all the believers as the Body of Christ. The church needs to be altogether in the human spirit. In the book of Acts and in the Epistles, the human spirit is unveiled again and again. Eventually, the New Jerusalem as the consummation is brought in.