According to the book of Romans, the Spirit of life is doing a fourfold work within us, a work of four aspects. First, the Spirit of life liberates us; that is, He sets us free. Romans 8:2 says, “The law of the Spirit of life has freed me in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and of death.” The Spirit of life within us today is liberating us all the time. Christians speak of identification with the death of Christ according to Romans 6. Then they learn to reckon that they are dead (vv. 6, 11), believing that it is by this reckoning that they will be freed from sin. However, this does not work. Our liberation is not in our reckoning; it is in the Spirit of life. When we walk in the Spirit of life, we are freed. There is no need merely to try to identify with the death of Christ or reckon that we are dead. More than thirty years ago I reckoned in this way very much. Eventually, I found out that this simply does not work. Liberation is not in identification or in reckoning but in the Spirit of life.
Moreover, liberation is not in any kind of doctrine. It is not even in the doctrine of the Spirit of life. It is not doctrine or teaching that liberates us. Rather, it is the Spirit of life Himself. We must walk and have our being in the Spirit of life. Whether or not someone knows this doctrine, as long as he is in the Spirit of life, he is freed. We may compare this to electricity. Whether or not someone knows the power of electricity, if he simply touches the electricity, he will be burned. It is not knowledge that liberates us; it is this Spirit of life. Therefore, we need to pray, not that the Lord would liberate us but pray ourselves into the liberation, that is, to pray ourselves into the liberating Spirit. The Spirit of life liberates us from every kind of bondage. When we are in the Spirit of life, we are released.
Second, the Spirit of life is the delivering Spirit. To be delivered is different from being liberated. On the one hand, we are bound, and on the other hand, we are fallen. Because we are bound, we need liberation, but because we are fallen, we need deliverance. To be delivered is to be saved from the fall. In one sense we have been saved already, but in another sense we are still in the process of being saved. Even up to the present time I still need to be saved. Many times I realize that there is still the element of the fall in my motives, thinking, and feeling. My way of thinking, my mentality, still needs to be delivered from the fall. Also, our physical bodies need deliverance from the fall. We have been saved in our spirit, but we still need to be saved in our soul and in our body.
Romans 5:10 says, “We will be saved in His life, having been reconciled.” If we walk in the Spirit of life, all day—even every hour—we will have the sense that we are being saved. In our emotion, in the way we love, and in our conversation there is the element of the fall. Simply consider our attitude. If we are in the Spirit of life and in the light, we will realize how much deliverance we need concerning our attitude. The element of the fall still remains in our attitude, motives, intention, thinking, loving, hating, decisions, and in many other matters. Although many things may not seem wrong, there still may be the element of the fall in them. If we are in the Spirit of life, we will have a deep conviction that in all these matters we need more and more deliverance.
It is not simply a matter of being set free from besetting sins, such as a bad temper. Even within our good temper there is still the element of the fall. We all need to be delivered from our good temper. We truly need deliverance! We need to be delivered out of our temper, disposition, way of thinking, way of loving, way of hating, and many items. Throughout the day, whenever I pray, I spend more time to confess to the Lord than to ask the Lord to do something for me. Whenever I am in the Spirit of life, there is an ever-deepening conviction within me that I need deliverance. The Spirit of life liberates and delivers.
Third, as the Spirit liberates and delivers, He also sanctifies. In the book of Romans to be sanctified means to be saturated through transformation with all that God is (6:19, 22; 12:2). Originally we were worldly; we were common without anything of God. However, now God has come into us, and our whole being is being permeated and saturated with God. In this way we are becoming holy; that is, we are sanctified by being saturated with God. This is the correct meaning of sanctification. The Spirit of life not only liberates us from bondage and delivers us from the fall but also saturates us with God.
Certain Christian teachers have taught that to be sanctified is to be set free from sin. This is not the proper meaning of sanctification. In Romans, sanctification is to be saturated with God. Thus, sanctification equals transformation in 12:2, which says, “Be transformed by the renewing of the mind.” To be sanctified is to be transformed by being saturated with God’s divine nature. A cup of plain water may be clean, but it is colorless. However, if I permeate the water with orange juice, it becomes orange. This is an illustration of the proper meaning of sanctification. Even if we are clean and pure, we are still not holy. To be clean and pure is one thing, but to be holy is another. To be holy is to be sanctified, to be saturated with God.
Eventually the Spirit of life will glorify us (8:30). On the negative side, the Spirit of life within us sets us free and delivers us, and on the positive side, He glorifies us through sanctification and transformation. Eventually He will saturate us with and bring us into the glory of God, not in an objective way but in a very subjective way. We may illustrate glorification with electric lights. All the lights in our meeting room are “glorified” with electricity. We may say that they are saturated with electricity until they shine in the glory of electricity. One day the Spirit of life will saturate us with the glory of God to the extent that we will be glorified in His glory. The Spirit of life liberates, delivers, sanctifies, and eventually glorifies us.