In the last message I told you that if you are going to be in the spirit, you must have the Spirit of God dwelling in you, making His home in you, housing Himself in you. But now I would tell you that you may have the Spirit housing Himself in you and yet still not have the distinction between your dead body and your spirit being life. Eventually, there will be a distinction within you where you realize that your spirit is not only living, but it is life; yet your body is dead. I don’t believe that many among us have this distinction. When you have this distinction, by experience you can know so clearly that your body is just a dead thing and your spirit is life. Many of you have not yet entered into this experience, and although you can understand my speaking, I don’t think you can apprehend the taste of this distinction. But someday you will have such a distinction. You will be so clear that something within you— your spirit—is life. And at the same time something remains in you—your body—a dead thing. There will be a clear distinction. Until you enter into this distinction, your Christian life is somewhat obscure because there is no distinction between your body and your spirit. Don’t consider that you have experienced the distinction between your body and your spirit. Your body is still quite active; it is not dead. In fact it is dead, but in your experience it is not dead; rather it is active. At the same time your spirit is active, your body is also active. You may consider, then, that this is the body enlivened by the divine life. No, that is different. The body mentioned in verse 10 is a dead body, a body which is active in a natural way. But the body mentioned in verse 11 is a body so living and in resurrection. For example, when a person has a beautiful singing voice, we have to ask whether or not this is a natural talent or something in resurrection. When a person who has a talent in singing enters into the distinction between the dead body and the spirit being life, she wouldn’t sing. It is not until one day, when all her body’s practices have been put to death, that she would begin to sing. Then it would be in resurrection.
Logically speaking, this point should be clear to you now. But if you don’t have the experience, you could only understand logically. When you enter into the experience you will realize that the very “you” in verse 11 is not so common. In a sense, the “you” should be common, but due to today’s degradation among Christians, such a “you” is not common. In other words not too many Christians are such a “you.”
Some teachers of the Bible have used Romans 8:11 to refer to divine healing. But you must realize, in the book of Romans, and in such an excellent chapter as chapter eight, Paul has no thought to touch the matter of divine healing. Divine healing is far, far from his thought. His thought here is altogether a matter in the spirit. Strictly speaking, it does not mean that God gives life to our sick body, to our dead body. It means that God gives His life to deal with our body to make it alive to carry out His will. As we illustrated in the last message, a person, after a certain time of sickness, may enter into the distinction between the dead body and the spirit as life. At that time some amount of the divine life would be imparted into his dead body. This is not to heal him, but to make his dead body so useful for fulfilling God’s purpose. Yet he is still sick. You could understand this only when you enter into this kind of experience.
Once again I would say that the very “you” in verse 11 who is the receiver of the divine life is a believer who is qualified with the Spirit indwelling him and with the distinction between the dead body and the spirit as life by Christ’s presence. This distinction is by Christ’s presence. When Christ is in you, there is such a distinction. You may know in fact that Christ is in you, but in experience is He in you? You may answer, “Sometimes,” but I would question even the sometimes.
In Romans 8 life is mentioned four times and is related to four different matters. The first time, this life is the life to which the Spirit of God belongs. The second time, this life is involved with our mind and with our spirit. The third time, this life is involved with Christ and with the distinction that Christ has brought in. The fourth time, this life is involved with our mortal body. This is the fourfold life. The first is related to the Spirit of God, and the last three are related to our three parts. God is altogether life, and we in our three parts were altogether not life. But first our spirit becomes life, then our soul becomes life, and finally our body becomes life. This is the foundation for us to see how the Spirit of life works within the saved ones, ultimately to saturate their body.