The book of John reveals that the Holy Spirit begets the human spirit (3:6) and the human spirit worships the divine Spirit (4:24). Romans tells us to serve God in our spirit: “For God is my witness, Whom I serve in my spirit” (Rom. 1:9). I am so grateful to the Apostle Paul that he used this pronoun “my” before “spirit.” Paul designated clearly and definitely “in my spirit.” To serve God is not just a matter in the Holy Spirit, but also a matter in our spirit.
If you have only electrical waves in the air and you don’t have a radio with a receiver, how could you receive the electrical waves? On our side, practically speaking, what we need is a “radio” with a receiver. God has taken care of the heavenly electrical waves, and we have to take care of the receiver. Man can be likened to a radio. The Holy Spirit is like the heavenly radio waves. The spirit in man is like the radio receiver. The receiver is our spirit. God has done His part, and we have to take care of our spirit. We have to cooperate with God by preparing the proper organ to receive what He is, what He has done, and what He is going to do. There is no need for us to take care of the side of the Holy Spirit. That has been fully taken care of by God. We simply need to take care of our side, the human spirit.
The air may be full of electrical waves, but if we don’t have a radio, we cannot receive them. If we have a radio, but the receiver within is wrong, it still won’t work. We need to prepare a radio, and we need to regulate the receiver properly. When you get the radio, tune it, and regulate it, the music comes in. What we have to take care of is our human spirit. God has done everything and God is going to take care of everything. What is needed is our cooperation and coordination. Our coordination that we could render to God is to prepare our spirit, to regulate our spirit, and to tune our spirit.
Romans 2:29 tells us that today in the spiritual realm, in the kingdom of God, everything must be in spirit, not in letter. “In spirit” here is in contrast with “in flesh” in the previous verse. The Jewish people had their circumcision in flesh. Now Paul tells us the real, spiritual circumcision is not in flesh but in spirit. It is not something in letter, but in spirit.
In Romans 7:6 we serve not in the oldness of the letter of the law, but we serve in newness of spirit because we are dead to the law and have nothing to do with the law. Some examples may help to illustrate these matters of the oldness of the letter and the newness of the spirit.
In 1937 I went to a certain prayer meeting in Hangkow, China. All the people knelt down, the pastor started to pray, and I closed my eyes and listened to the prayer. It was a very good composition. It surprised me greatly. I thought that this pastor must be a learned person; otherwise, he couldn’t compose such a good prayer. Then I opened my eyes and looked at the pastor. He was reading! Then I found out that they have a prayer book. For every kind of meeting there is a certain kind of prayer. For Sunday morning service there are certain prayers. For a wedding there are certain prayers and certain verses to be quoted. For a funeral there are certain prayers and certain verses to be quoted. When you come to any kind of meeting, you just open to a specific portion in the prayer book. Everything is there.
Some of the people in the congregation said that whenever they came to a certain meeting, they knew what the first prayer would be, what the second prayer would be, and what text would be quoted. On each occasion, the same verses are read and the same prayer is made. Even the pastor has no need to go to the Bible. Their prayer book to them is the all-inclusive book. Every time they have a wedding, the pastor just goes to that certain portion and practices everything according to that prayer book. This is just the oldness of the letter.
In my whole Christian life, I haven’t seen many living weddings. Nearly all of them were dead. One pastor, however, instead of going on according to the regulations in letters, wept with tears before the bride and the bridegroom. Then he told the bridegroom, “Today you are not standing in my presence. You are standing in the Lord’s presence. I realize where you stand as a young man. I know you. I am so concerned today for you.” This is the newness of the spirit. This surprised the congregation. That day the pastor just broke through the dead letter. He broke through the oldness. Later on that young man was really captured by God due to that wedding.
Today we must serve the Lord in the way of newness. When we come together to meet, we must meet in the way of newness. To be kept in the way of oldness is easy. If I were a pastor it would be easy for me, having just studied four years in a seminary, to get myself acquainted with a prayer book and read certain portions for certain occasions. But if you are going to serve in newness of spirit you must keep yourself in the presence of the Lord and living in the spirit by contacting the Lord. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have the newness but spontaneously you would have the oldness. To have the oldness is easy, but to keep the newness you need to contact the Lord day by day.
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