When we received the Lord Jesus as our Savior, we were regenerated in our spirit. John 3:6 says, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” This proves that it was in our spirit that we were reborn, regenerated. When our spirit was regenerated, the Holy Spirit of God came into our spirit to enliven it and bring the Lord Jesus Christ into it as life. From that time forward the divine life of God, the eternal life, has been in our spirit (Rom. 8:10). Our spirit was regenerated with the life of God by the Holy Spirit.
Before we were regenerated, we already had the human life. The human life is primarily the life of the soul. This is the reason that in the Bible men are called “souls” (Exo. 1:5, lit.; Ezek. 18:4). After God formed man’s body from the dust of the ground and breathed into it the breath of life, a living soul came into existence. Man is a soul because the human life is mainly a matter of the soul.
Therefore, before we were regenerated, we were human beings with a human life mainly in the soul. The soul is the personality, the very self, of man, whereas the body is a vessel to contain the soul, and the spirit is an organ by which the soul can contact God. Before we were regenerated, we lived by the soul, by the human life, using the body as a vessel and the spirit as an organ. Now that we have been regenerated, there is another life in our spirit. This life is the divine, eternal life, which is Christ Himself (John 11:25; 14:6). Today we must realize that we have two lives: the human life in the soul and the divine life in the spirit. According to the human life in our soul, we are human beings and sons of men, and according to the divine life in our spirit, we are children of God and sons of God.
We have not only two lives but also two men, the old man and the new man. Ephesians 4:22 says, “Put off, as regards your former manner of life, the old man.” We must put off the old man because it can never please God (cf. Rom. 8:7-8). It has already been condemned by God and put on the cross, crucified with Christ (6:6). Then Ephesians 4:24 says, “Put on the new man.” These verses make clear reference to two men: the old man in the soul and the new man in the spirit. The old man has the human life, and the new man has the divine life. After our regeneration, our spirit is no longer merely an organ; it is a new man with the divine life. Hence, we must realize that we are persons with two lives and two men. We have the human life for the old man and the divine life for the new man. As Christians who are reborn children of God, our problem today is this: do we live by the human life or by the divine life, by the old man or by the new man? Herein lies the secret to the Christian life.
The Bible tells us that the old man has been crucified and that we must deny the self (Matt. 16:24; Luke 9:23). The self refers to both the old man and the soul. We need to deny the soul, and we should not live by the old man any longer, because the old man is condemned before God and has been crucified by the Lord on the cross. The “I,” that is, the old man, has been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer this old “I” who lives, but it is Christ who lives in the new “I,” the regenerated new man (Gal. 2:20). Our spirit is now a new man; hence, we must deny our self and live by the divine life in our spirit, which is to live by the new man.
We can know the difference between the soul and the spirit from our experience. The soul consists of three parts: the mind, the emotion, and the will (Prov. 2:10; Psa. 139:14; 1 Sam. 18:1; Job 7:15). We have a mind to think, to consider; an emotion to love and hate, to be happy and unhappy; and a will to make decisions and choices. These three parts together compose the soul. Many times as a Christian you may have considered doing a certain thing. According to your reasoning, it was right; it was also desirable, and eventually you made a decision to do it. In the process, you exercised all three parts of the soul: your mind to consider and reason about it, your emotion to like and desire it, and your will to decide on it. Yet at the same time deep within you there was a feeling against it. That was your spirit. This proves that there is something other than the mind, emotion, and will within us; there is something much deeper than the soul, and this is the spirit. By the soul, which has the human life, we can live as the old man. By the spirit, which has the divine life, the life of the Triune God, through regeneration, we can live as the new man.
How can we live by the divine life as the new man instead of by the human life as the old man? On the negative side, we must deny the old man, the soul, which means to deny the mind, the will, and the emotion. On the positive side, we must exercise our spirit, which means to exercise the deepest part of our being.
We can apply this principle to the matter of prayer. Many Christians pray by using their soul, not by exercising their spirit. Some pray by their emotion. When they are happy, they pray, “Lord, You are so good to me.” Many others pray according to their memory, according to what they remember concerning their husband’s business, their children, the church, and the gospel work. Instead of exercising their spirit, they exercise their mind to recite many things from memory.
In order to pray by exercising the spirit, we must forget about everything and come to the Lord to contact Him. For this we need to stop our whole being, including our memory, our thoughts, and our considerations. Then when we exercise our spirit, the Holy Spirit will work and move within us to energize us. At that time we will sense what the Lord’s mind is, and we will not pray from memory but from our spirit.
Some sisters recite a certain set of prayers to the Lord day after day. Consequently, rather than feeling refreshed and satisfied within, they feel tired and grow weary of praying. However, if we pray by exercising our spirit, the more we pray, the more we will feel satisfied and refreshed. We will feel that we have been contacted by the Lord and that we have also contacted the Lord. From this we see that there are two ways to pray: by our mind or our emotion, and by our spirit.
The principle is the same with reading the Bible. There are two ways to read the Bible. Many read the Bible using only their mind. However, if we know how to contact the Lord, we will change the way we read the Bible. When we read a verse, we will exercise our spirit to digest it. For instance, after reading Genesis 2:7, we will immediately pray with our spirit to digest the verse. We may pray, “Lord, I praise You that You have created me with three parts. You have created a body for me, and also a spirit and a soul. Lord, I thank You for this body, through which I can sense and contact the physical world. And, Lord, I thank You even more that I can contact You because You are a Spirit and have created a spirit within me.” In this way, we will exercise our spirit to eat the word. To exercise our mentality to understand and remember the word is tiresome, but to exercise our spirit to pray and to digest what we read strengthens, refreshes, and satisfies us.
The words in the Scriptures are spiritual food (1 Pet. 2:2; Matt. 4:4). In the matter of eating, what is important is not how much we understand but how much we take in. It would be foolish for me to ask someone what he understands concerning eggs, milk, meat, or lettuce. Instead, I need to ask him how many cups of milk he has taken in. To understand food is one thing, but to eat it is another. Likewise, to understand the word is one thing, but to take the word in, to eat and digest it by the spirit, is another. Jeremiah 15:16 speaks of receiving the Lord’s words by eating them, and in the New Testament the Lord Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). The word of God is spiritual food that we must eat, not merely understand.
Furthermore, there are two ways to contact people. One way is to contact a person by our mentality or by our emotion. The other way is to contact the person by our spirit. In the morning while we are with the Lord, we may become burdened and very concerned in our heart and our spirit about a certain brother or sister. Then sometime during the day or in the evening we may contact that person not by our mentality or our emotion but by our spirit. This is the proper way to contact people.
Similarly, there are two ways to minister the word. One way is to use our mentality in knowledge, and the other way is by exercising our spirit. When we minister by our mentality, we can touch only people’s mentality; we can never touch the spirit within them. But when we minister by exercising our spirit, our word will touch their spirit.