The strange thing is this: we receive Him as our Savior, but He comes in as the Spirit. We can see this from Romans 8:10-11: “And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him Who raised Jesus from among the dead dwells in you, He Who raised Christ Jesus from among the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit Who indwells you.” Verse 10 says that Christ is in you, and verse 11 says the Spirit dwells in you. Christ, of course, means the Savior, the Redeemer. The Spirit means the indweller. When the indweller was there redeeming you, His title was Christ. When the Redeemer entered into you, His title is the Spirit. How foolish to oppose the matter of Christ being the Spirit! If Christ is not the Spirit, how can these two verses be reconciled? Christ is in you, and the Spirit dwells in you. These are not two dwellers, but one dweller in two senses. In the sense of redemption, our dweller is Christ, and in the sense of indwelling, our dweller is the Spirit. Christ is the Spirit!
Now we come to another point of the history of the spirit. When Christ as the Spirit enters into your spirit, He comes in as righteousness. When He comes in, righteousness comes in. Righteousness means to be right with God. It is just the opposite of sin. Sin is opposing God, and righteousness is to be right with God. Sin ruins man, and righteousness reconstitutes man. There is a restitution. When Satan entered your flesh, he became sin, and the sin in your flesh day after day just corrupts you. But when Christ as the Spirit enters into your spirit, righteousness is within you all the time making you so right with God and all the time restituting you. This righteousness is not ruining you; it is remodeling and rearranging you. He is reconstituting you. This is a real restitution. I believe you all can testify that since you received the Lord Jesus, you have experienced a lot of restitution. Before I got saved, as a young man I was under the worsening of Satan. The sin that was dwelling in me was causing me to be worse and ruining me all the day. But one day I received Christ in a kind of gospel preaching meeting, and while I was walking on the street, I gave myself to God. From that moment restitution began, and even today this restitution work is still going on. This is righteousness, making you right with God. When you are right with God, you will be right with everyone. You will have no problem with anyone. This is righteousness.
What then is the issue of righteousness? The issue of sin is death, and the issue of righteousness is life. So in our spirit we have three things: Christ the Spirit, righteousness, and life. In our flesh are also three things: Satan, sin, and death. You have to realize this is your history. These are the real things of man. This is your genealogy, but since you became a Christian you probably have never paid attention to these matters. Rather, you considered other matters such as knowing the Bible, improving yourself, or going to the mission field. You have to pay attention to your genealogy and your history. Chapter one of your history shows that Satan entered your flesh and sin followed it and is still here. And death is still here. But the second chapter is that Christ came into your spirit, righteousness followed, and life was the result.
You need to forget about everything else and just take care of this kind of spiritual history. You have to know yourself. You have to know your flesh, and you have to know your spirit. Paul says that if Christ is in you, your flesh or your body is dead, and your spirit is life. If we would get into this verse, we must know our history. We must know the history of our flesh and the history of our spirit; then we would know ourselves. If you know these matters in an adequate way, not only are they a kind of revelation, but they are also a kind of salvation. The knowing is the salvation. You would jump and dance and praise and shout and even mock Satan: “Satan, now I know where you are. You are in my flesh. Do you know that in my spirit is the One you hate? The One you hate so much is right next door to you. You are in my flesh, but He is deeper, in my spirit. Satan, let me tell you this is bad news to you. I will never remain with you in the flesh. I will always stay with the One you hate who is in my spirit.”
Believe me, if you would shout in such a way and tell Satan these things, it would be much better than your prayer to overcome your temper and your weakness. We all can testify that those kinds of prayers were rarely answered. But when we shout and praise and sing, we would enjoy our spiritual history and genealogy. Satan would be under our feet.