According to the Bible and to our experience there are four basic factors for the Christian meetings: the mingled spirit, the word, praying, and singing. The first basic factor is the mingled spirit. In many verses in the New Testament, especially in Romans 8 and Galatians 5, whether the word spirit refers to the Holy Spirit or to the human spirit is difficult to discern. Such a spirit in these verses is the mingled spirit. The Holy Spirit indwells and mingles Himself with our regenerated spirit (Rom. 8:16; cf. 1 Cor. 6:17).
The human, God-created spirit of the unbelievers is not regenerated, but as Christians, our spirit has been regenerated (John 3:6). To be regenerated means to have God’s life imparted into our spirit. When God the Spirit regenerates us, He imparts God Himself as the divine life into our being, that is, into our spirit. The unbelievers’ spirit has no divine element, but our spirit does have the divine element because the life of God has been imparted and added into our spirit. The great difference between the believers’ spirit and the unbelievers’ spirit is that we have the divine life as the divine element in our spirit. Because the divine life has been imparted into our human spirit, we may say that our human spirit has been made divine.
In our regenerated spirit, not only do we have the divine life but we also have the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:16). This Spirit is the very consummation of the Triune God. The Father is the source, the Son is the course, and the Spirit is the consummation of the Divine Trinity. The Divine Trinity is one, yet He has these three aspects: the source, the course, and the consummation. The Spirit of God is the consummation of the Triune God to reach us. Without the Spirit of God, God cannot reach us. If there were no Holy Spirit, Christ could only come to us to stay among us; He could not get into us. In order to get into us, He had to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). This life-giving Spirit is the breath of life. On the day of resurrection, when Christ came back in the evening to His disciples, He breathed Himself into them, and He called what was breathed into them the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). This strongly indicates that the resurrected Christ, the pneumatic Christ, is the life-giving Spirit as the breath breathed into all His believing ones. Now the Holy Spirit is in the believers’ spirit in addition to the divine life.
The believers’ spirit is a composition of three things: our human spirit, the divine life, and the Holy Spirit. Our spirit is now a compound spirit, which is the mingled spirit. The Holy Spirit has mingled Himself with our human spirit in the element of the divine life. It is difficult to see much growth in life among many Christians because very few know about this mingled spirit with the divine life as the mingling element. We cannot have the growth in life if we do not know the mingled spirit in the element of the divine life.
The believers’ spirit is indwelt by the Spirit (Rom. 8:11). The Spirit is not only in us and remains within us, but He dwells in us. To dwell is to settle down. When we stay in a hotel, we only lodge there for awhile, but we do not dwell there. But when we own a house, we settle in it, that is, we dwell in it. The Holy Spirit does not merely lodge in our spirit but He dwells or settles down in our spirit. The Holy Spirit indwelling our spirit is a wonderful fact.
Our spirit should be living, fresh, strong, and active. Second Timothy 1:7 says that God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but of power and of love and of a sober mind. Love refers to affection, power refers to strength, and a sober mind means that we think and behave with a restricted and sober understanding. In order for our spirit, the spirit indwelt by the Holy Spirit, to be fresh, strong, and active, we must exercise our spirit.
The believers’ spirit is also filled with God as the Spirit and filled with the pneumatic Christ (Eph. 5:18b). Although God, the pneumatic Christ, is within us, we need to be filled with Him. In the New Testament, to be filled implies saturation. God is within us as the pneumatic Christ both filling and saturating us. We must learn how to realize the infilling, the saturating, of the Divine Trinity. The mingling starts within our spirit, and the saturating carries out the mingling through our entire being, from our spirit through our soul to our body. The Lord saturates us with Himself by filling us up. We need much experience of the mingled spirit, of its infilling and its saturating. Then we will be saturated with the Triune God. The water in a cup can fill the cup, but it cannot saturate the cup. But we as human beings can be saturated by the indwelling God. All the parts of our soul and all the parts of our body need to be saturated with the Triune God so that we can be constituted into God-men.
The believers’ spirit is one with the Spirit. First Corinthians 6:17 says, “But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” How wonderful that we human beings can become one spirit with the Lord! The Lord is the Spirit, He created us with a spirit, He regenerated our spirit, and He indwells our spirit. Now our spirit is joined to His Spirit, and the two spirits are one spirit. We, the believers of Christ, who love Him and who would let Him do everything to saturate us thoroughly, have become one spirit with Him. The experience of being one spirit with the Lord is real and practical. Quite often, before I was to speak, I prayed, “Lord, grant me the grace to practice being one spirit with You, and vindicate the fact that You are one spirit with me in my speaking.” The greatest miracle in the universe is that human beings with flesh and blood can be one spirit with the Triune God. God’s salvation is many times higher than any philosophy. All philosophies attempt to develop our mind, our psychology, our psuche life, which is merely to develop the “poor me.” But regardless of how much you develop yourself, you are still yourself. God’s salvation is not to develop our mind but to put Himself into our being, to have His element saturating our being to make our being one with His divine life. To enjoy this salvation we need to practice being one spirit with the Lord.