In this message we want to fellowship about the need to deal with our peculiarity, our self, and our soul. Every man is full of peculiar traits, peculiarities. Peculiarities are the characteristics of our personality. We may be persons who are quiet, nice, gentle, and kind. These are the characteristics, the peculiarities, of our personality. Personality is what we are, and its characteristics are peculiarities expressed from our personality.
Peculiarity always comes out of our self. Actually, peculiarity is the real self. For this reason there is no way that we can hide our peculiarity. We should not think that we can conceal our peculiarity. The more we try to conceal our peculiarity, the more peculiar we become. There is no way to conceal our peculiarity because that is our self. How can we be saved from our self, from our peculiarity? We need to see that God's salvation is a renewing. Titus 3:5 speaks of God saving us "through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit." To be saved is to be renewed. God's salvation is altogether a renewing.
Ephesians 4:22-24 says, "That you have put off, as regards your former manner of life, the old man, which is being corrupted according to the lusts of the deceit; and are being renewed in the spirit of your mind, and have put on the new man, which according to God was created in righteousness and holiness of the truth." We can say that Christ is the new man since Colossians 3:10 and 11 say that in the new man Christ is all and in all. Christ is all the members and in all the members of the new man. The constitution of the new man is Christ. We can also say, according to Ephesians 4:22-24, that our old man is our former manner of life, and our former manner of life is our peculiarity. Our old man is our peculiarity, the peculiarity is the expression, the exhibition, of the self, and the self is the expression of the soul. The new man, however, was created according to God. Based on this we can say that peculiarity is in contrast to God. It is God's enemy. Peculiarity is opposing God.
Now we need to ask how we can be rescued out of the old man and into the new man. How can we be delivered out of our peculiarity and into God? Ephesians 4:23 reveals that it is by being renewed in the spirit of our mind. This is the regenerated spirit of the believers, mingled with the indwelling Spirit of God. Such a mingled spirit spreads into our mind, thus becoming the spirit of our mind. It is in such a spirit that we are renewed for our transformation. The Spirit is with our spirit (Rom. 8:16), and our mind is the main part of our soul. But our spirit needs to "invade" our soul and take over the main part of our soul, our mind. Our mind needs to be invaded by the spirit.
According to God's creation and ordination, He has preserved the central part of our being, our spirit, for Himself. This can be proven by two things. First, when all the unbelievers are in trouble, the innermost part, the deepest part, of their being will remind them of God. Second, a fallen man responds to the preaching of the gospel because of his spirit, the part of him that has been preserved by God. When we preach the gospel, we must learn how to touch man's spirit. Specifically, we must touch the conscience, which is the main part of our spirit (Rom. 9:1; cf. 8:16).
Confucius referred to the conscience as the "bright virtue." He said that the highest learning is to develop our bright virtue. This means that if we develop our conscience, we become the most ethical persons. This shows that God has preserved something in fallen man for Himself. Every man has a human spirit, which is the God-preserved part of his being. We Christians also have our spirit regenerated! "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6b). The first Spirit here is the divine Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God, and the second spirit is the human spirit, the regenerated spirit of man. Regeneration transpires in the human spirit by the Holy Spirit of God with God's life, the uncreated life. A regenerated spirit is a renewed spirit. This renewed spirit must be strengthened (Eph. 3:16) to invade, subdue, and occupy every part of our soul. This is God's salvation.
The parts of our soul need to be invaded by our spirit. Sometimes our spirit will invade our soul and later "be forced to withdraw." Whenever our spirit invades our soul, the whole world rises up to put pressure on the invading spirit to withdraw. Our spirit is forced to withdraw many times by our spouse, our children, our roommates, and others who are close to us. Often the invasion by our spirit into our soul was persecuted by us. We persecuted this invasion and forced our spirit to withdraw from our mind, from our soul.
In our time with the Lord in the morning, the spirit may have invaded and strongly entered into our mind, which became subdued and occupied by the spirit. At that time we were under the renewing of the spirit. But maybe after two hours, something exercised pressure on our spirit, forcing our spirit to withdraw from our mind. God indwells our spirit, so our spirit is His habitation (Eph. 2:22). But because we have been living by our soul for many years, our soul is always attempting to conquer our spirit. Because we still live in our former manner of life, we need another invasion of the spirit into our mind, another morning watch, another portion of the Word for morning revival. This renews us and saves us from our peculiarity.
The overcomers are those who overcome their peculiarity. Some of the older saints may feel that they need to be sympathized with and given the freedom to live as they are. But to live what we are is to live peculiarity. We may not want to change. We may excuse ourselves by saying that living in our peculiarity is not living in sin. But if we remain in our peculiarity, we are defeated ones remaining in our former manner of life. We are defeated because our spirit has been forced by our way of living to withdraw from our mind, emotion, and will. First Thessalonians 5:19 says, "Do not quench the Spirit." What is it to quench the Spirit? To quench the Spirit is to let the parts of our soul—the mind, emotion, and will—subdue our spirit. Instead of the spirit invading our soul, the soul subdues the spirit and causes the spirit to withdraw. Then the Spirit is quenched, and we are defeated. An overcomer is one who is always allowing his spirit to spread into the inner parts of his being day by day. Then his spirit becomes the spirit of his mind. This means that his spirit is an expanding spirit. I am concerned that some of us may have a withdrawing spirit instead of an expanding spirit. Our outward activity may be the same, but inwardly our spirit may be greatly limited. At such a time, our peculiarity, our former manner of life, has become very strong. Perhaps we put off our former manner of life for a time, but now it has come back and still remains.