Prayer: Lord, we do have a heart to seek after You and to seek after the living word. Lord, You know tonight we come to a high mountain. Lord, help us to come up. Lord, we like to get over; we like to see something from You. Lord, do give us another revelation that we may have another clear view concerning Your economy of Your salvation. Lord, do cover us again with Your prevailing blood. And cleanse us. How we thank You for Your cleansing! Even now we may not have gross sins, but we are still so natural. We are still living in the old creation, walking on this earth. Even we are here in this dark age. We have been defiled in many ways, even unconsciously. Lord, we need Your cleansing. Cleanse us that we might be brought into Your presence, into Your anointing, even into Yourself. Lead us, Lord. Lord, You know we don’t have much idea what we have to say. We look unto You that You would infuse us with Your thought, with Your feeling, with Your up-to-date revelation, and with Your fresh utterances. Lord, grant us the liberty and wisdom. Thank You for Your victory! Amen.
In this message we need to consider Romans 8:6, 7 and 8. These verses read as follows: “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace. Because the mind set on the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” For many years I have considered that the problem in these verses is the flesh. I have ministered and taught that the flesh is enmity against God, that the flesh is not subject to the law of God, that there is no possibility with the flesh to be subject to the law of God, and that the flesh cannot please God. I have always considered these negative things to be things of flesh. But actually this is not correct. In fact, the first three things are related not to the flesh but to the mind. The enmity against God, the lack of subjection to the law of God, and the lack of possibility to be subject are actually things of the mind. Eventually, in verse 8 it says that those who are “somewhere” cannot do “something.” In other words the emphasis is on “those,” not on the flesh. Actually, these three verses don’t talk so much about the flesh. Rather, they talk about the mind and “those.”
In verse 6 there are six major things: the mind, the flesh, the spirit, death, life, and peace. In this message we want to consider only three of these major things: the mind, the flesh, and the spirit. The crucial word of these three is the mind. If the mind is set on the spirit, there is a positive result; if the mind is set on the flesh, there is a negative result. It all depends upon where the mind is set. You have to realize also that your mind and you are synonyms. When your mind is down, you are down; when your mind is up, you are up. Sometimes we say that our spirit is either up or down, but this is not so accurate. If your mind were never down, your spirit would always be up. Your spirit seems to be down because your mind is down. Actually, it is not your spirit that is down; it is your mind that is down. From this we can see that the problem is always with our mind. But the salvation is also with our mind. When your mind is right, you are right. When your mind has a problem, you are in trouble. Your mind represents you. It is not your body, nor your spirit, nor the mingled spirit, nor even the flesh that represents you. It is your mind. Where you are depends upon where your mind is. If your mind is in New York, you are in New York. If your mind is in hell, you are in hell. You go with your mind, and your mind goes with you. The mind is the leading part, the main part of the soul. The soul is our real person. Genesis 46:27 says that seventy souls of the house of Jacob, meaning seventy people, went down into Egypt. A person is a soul. The soul is our personality, our person. The leading part of our soul is the mind, so actually the mind represents the soul. In Romans 8 the mind is neutral, being between our regenerated spirit and our fallen body, the flesh. The problem is always a matter of where the mind goes and stays and is. If the mind goes to the spirit and stays with the spirit, everything is fine.