On the one hand, human beings have a spirit. On the other hand, the Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). The fact that the Lord is the Spirit implies three things. The first thing it implies is that, according to God’s nature, God is Spirit. This is similar to saying that the nature of a table is wood or that the nature of a metal pipe is iron. The second thing it implies is that, according to God’s economy, God is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. In God’s economy, which is God’s way to accomplish His work, first, God is the Father; second, He is the Son; and third, He is the Spirit. The Father is the source, the Son is the expression, and the Spirit is the One who enters into us. The third thing that this fact implies is that, according to God’s plan of redemption, the Lord Jesus was incarnated to become a man, the last Adam, and that one day the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Therefore, after the Lord Jesus accomplished everything on the cross, God’s plan of redemption is still a matter of the Spirit. Thus, the entire Bible can be summarized by the statement the Lord is the Spirit. The Spirit includes God Himself, God’s economy, and God’s redemption. This is why we can say that the Spirit is all-inclusive. Today the God we worship and the Lord we serve is the Spirit. In fact, everything related to our God and our Lord is a matter of the Spirit. The Spirit who is within us today is truly a treasure.
Man is different from the beasts, because man has a spirit inside of him. Moreover, those who are saved are different from those who are not saved, because those who are saved not only have a human spirit, they also have received the Lord as the Spirit into them. Thus, as saved ones, we truly have reason to shout, “Hallelujah!” We have something that the unbelievers do not have—we have the Lord Himself in our spirit. How do we know that the Lord, who is the Spirit, has come into this particular part of our being? We know this because the Bible clearly says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17). The Lord is Spirit, and as the Spirit, He enters into and lives in our spirit, causing us to be joined to Him as one spirit. The Bible also says, “The Lord be with your spirit,” and “the Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit” (2 Tim. 4:22a; Rom. 8:16). These verses prove that the Lord as the Spirit is in our spirit.
Let us now consider the difference between the outer man and the inner man. We have already stated that man is composed of three parts—body, soul, and spirit. Now we must ask, which of these three parts is our real person? Neither our body nor our spirit is our real person; our real person is our soul. We can see this in Genesis 2:7. This verse begins, “Jehovah God formed man with the dust of the ground....” This refers to the way in which God formed our body. Then this verse continues, “and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life....” This refers to the creation of man’s spirit. Finally, this verse ends, “and man became a living soul.” This final expression indicates that man’s person is the soul, for man became a living soul. In addition, there are also other verses in which the Bible uses the term souls to refer to persons. When the seventy members of Jacob’s family went down to Egypt, Exodus 1:5 refers to them as “seventy souls” (lit., Hebrew) rather than as seventy persons; and when three thousand people received the Lord and were baptized on the day of Pentecost, Acts 2:41 says, “There were added on that day about three thousand souls.” From these verses we can see that a person is a soul, and the soul is the person. In other words, the soul is the self and the personality.
Our body is an outward organ for contacting the physical world, and our spirit is an inward organ for contacting the spiritual world. Only our soul is our person. Originally, our spirit is merely an organ, but when Christ comes into our spirit, He comes into us as a person. Now we have a person in our spirit. As a result, our spirit, which now has a person and a life within it, is no longer only an organ. It has become a person. Formerly, we had only one person inside of us—the soul. However, now that the Lord has entered into our spirit to become the life of our spirit, our spirit has become a person. Thus, today we have two persons within us—our soul is the old man, the outer man, and our spirit is our new person, the inner man.
Since we now have two persons within us, I would pose the question, “Is it better to have one person or to have two persons within us?” Consider what it is like for two people to live together in the same room. Is it better to have one person or to have two persons live in one room? Nearly all would say that it is better to live alone. Why do we prefer to live alone? We prefer to live alone because when we live alone, we have more freedom. If we live alone, we have no one to bother us. We can open or close the doors and the windows as we please. As soon as two persons begin to live together, however, there is trouble. One person wants to open the window, but the other person wants to close the window. Right away there is the question of who should listen to whom. On the one hand, we cannot deny that it is a blessing that we are saved, for the Lord has come into us as a genuine treasure (2 Cor. 4:7). But on the other hand, it is also true that because the Lord has come into us, we experience some trouble. Before we were saved, it may have been very natural for us to tell a lie now and then, to occasionally play mah-jongg with our friends, and to curse when we lost our temper. This may have been the situation before we were saved, but what is our experience now? On the day that we were saved, Christ as the treasure came into us. Now if we want to tell a lie, we do not have peace. When we want to lie, He does not want to lie. Moreover, to do something like playing mah-jongg is now entirely out of the question. When we want to play mah-jongg, the Lord is not only unhappy about this, He even gets angry. Who can deny that this is troublesome?
Faced with this troublesome situation, what should we do? The Bible reveals that it is not good for us to have two persons within us at the same time. Thus, we must get rid of one of them. If we must do this, which one should we get rid of? Surely we must get rid of the old man. Romans 6:6 declares that “our old man has been crucified with Him,” and Galatians 2:20 states, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live.” When the old man is crucified, the new man is enlivened.