The believers need to discern their spirit from their soul by the living, operative, and sharp word of God (Heb. 4:12). God’s word always puts down our soul and uplifts our spirit. Galatians 2:20 says, “I am crucified with Christ.” This is to put down “I,” to put down the soul, the natural man. Galatians 2:20 goes on to say, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” This is to uplift our spirit. The “I” is of the old creation. The “me” in whom Christ lives is a new creation. “I” was the soul, “me” is the spirit.
The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 16:24-25, “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his soul-life shall lose it; but whoever loses his soul-life for My sake shall find it.” In Luke 9:24-25 soul-life is replaced with himself, indicating that our soul-life is our self. The Lord tells us to put down the soul and follow Him. The One we follow is the divine Spirit indwelling our human regenerated spirit. This shows that the words of the Bible always uplift the spirit and put down the soul.
God’s living word pierces to the dividing of the believers’ soul and spirit, as their joints and marrow are divided. God’s operative and sharp word is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of their heart. 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.
Let us apply this truth to our daily life. When we go shopping, do we buy things which the soul wants or which the spirit wants? We may wonder how we can discern the difference between what our soul wants and what our spirit wants. This is why we need to prayerfully read the Bible, the living Word. Day by day, the more we read the Bible, the more discerning ability we have. The people in the world may decide to buy something according to whether or not they need it. But this should not be the case with us. We have to say, “What I should buy should be okayed by my spirit.” Within us there is an ability to discern that our spirit is not for certain things. If our spirit does not give us the okay to buy something, we should not buy it. Such a teaching is very practical and very deep.
The way that we cut and style our hair must be okayed by our spirit, not by our soul. We must check ourselves by this principle. We may wonder how we can know the difference between the spirit’s “okay” and the soul’s “okay.” We should never forget that the spirit of our being is the deepest part of our being. Our soul is always on the surface. What comes from the surface must be something of the soul. What comes from “underneath” must be something from our spirit.
When we go shopping, we may see many things that we would like to buy, but we do not buy them, because we do not have the money. If we had the money, however, we would buy them. This is not to be checked by our spirit but to be checked by our checkbook. Many of us are not checked by our spirit according to the Word but by our checkbook.
In order to discern our spirit from our soul, we need to pray-read the Bible until it pierces into our being. For example, 1 John 2:15 says, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.” If we pray-read such a verse, we will see that there are many things of the world which we still have. We may have some neckties which we did not buy according to the spirit. If so, those neckties are worldly. We must do everything according to our spirit. If a young brother is choosing a university to go to for his further education, he should choose it by exercising his spirit. We must live, walk, and have our being absolutely according to our spirit.
In the old creation, your spirit was only the reality, but your soul was the person. Since the day you were transferred from the old creation to the new creation through regeneration, your spirit became your person. Now you must be a person in the spirit, not a person in the soul. The soul is now the organ. The Bible tells us that we need to deny our soul. To deny the self is to deny the soul.
Some may ask, “How can we live if we deny our soul? If the soul is denied, how can we think?” We must remember that the soul as the person, not as the organ, should be denied. We deny the person, not the organ. A spiritual person must be very strong in the mind, that is, in knowing and discerning things. But in God’s new creation, the spirit of the believers becomes their person because the spirit becomes the inner man (Eph. 3:17), and their soul becomes only an organ. You would not ask your finger whether or not it agreed with you if you wanted to buy something. In the same way, you should not consult your soul, because your soul is an inner organ. Do not regard your soul as your person. The person is your spirit. What you do is not up to your soul’s “okay.” If the spirit does not give you the okay, you should not do it.
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.
The Spirit is the way God takes to execute His dynamic salvation and apply this salvation to fallen sinners. At one time the Spirit was not yet (John 7:39), but today the Spirit as the Spirit of life is here. Thus, the Spirit of life is God’s way to execute His salvation and apply His salvation to us, and our human spirit is the way to receive, experience, and enjoy God’s dynamic salvation.
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.
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.
What the Lord has burdened me to release here is an up-to-date vision. These intrinsic things are in the New Testament, but they are not seen by many. So to release such a word, there is the need of a struggling, a battle, a spiritual fighting.