While the Spirit of God is residing in you, He is not dormant or sleepy or silent or passive. He is very active, not in exercising some gift or in doing a miracle, but in living. He is active in living. Residing actually means living. His residing in you actually means His living in you. The residing Spirit is not in us for doing a work or for speaking in tongues or for doing miracles. The residing Spirit is a Spirit for living. In chapter eight there is no thought about tongue-speaking or miracle-working; there is no thought about doing a work. The thought is residing, and residing is for living.
This residing One is living in us. Within us He is very active in living. This is why God gives life. Life is mainly for living, not for working. Even humanly speaking, of the twenty-four hours in a day, only eight are used for working. The rest are for simply living. God gives life through this residing Spirit, while we do the killing. The Spirit does the residing and God gives life and we kill the practices of our body.
The more you put to death the practices of your body, the more life you will get. If you would like to have a long life, you must learn to kill the practices of your body. To put to death the practices of the body is not to commit suicide. You don’t need to commit suicide all the day long. But according to the New Testament, especially Romans 8 and 2 Corinthians 4, the putting to death is not something which is once for all. It lasts all the day long. If you would be healthy you must learn to kill the practices of your body all the time. By the practices of the body many people are committing a slow suicide. By what they eat and drink they are committing a slow suicide. If you would practice killing the practices of your body, you would be much healthier.
Instead of talking so much, you need to pick up the habit of praising more, putting to death the practice of your body. To talk a lot is a practice of the body that needs to be put to death. Although you may say that you cannot put to death the practices of your body, still you must. You have to do it not by yourself, but by the Spirit. Don’t forget that the Spirit is the residing One. He resides in you, and He is involved with the life giver. While He is residing in you, One gives life, and you must do the putting to death.
The matter of the leading of the Spirit is so important in this chapter because it is the addition of three things: the residing, the life giving, and the putting to death. In 1949 I gave sixty lessons on the basic truths of the Bible. Among those sixty lessons, one was concerning the leading of God. In that message I pointed out mainly three things. I said that if you want God’s leading you need to take care of the anointing and the inner sense. Secondly, you have to check with the Word, the Bible. Thirdly, you have to take care of the circumstances. Today I would not say that was wrong, but I would say that the matter of the leading of the Spirit in Romans 8 is much deeper than this.
The matter of the leading in Romans 8 is so crucial because it is composed of the Spirit’s residing, God’s life giving, and our putting to death. As long as you experience these three things, you are being led by the Spirit of God. As long as you take care of these three matters, you are clear about everything, whether it is what kind of car you should buy, whom you should marry, or what kind of shoes you should buy. If you have the residing of the Spirit in you plus God’s giving life plus your putting to death, you will be clear in everything. You will have the leading in everything. This is the meaning of being led by the Spirit of God.
To interpret the Bible, especially a chapter like Romans 8, is not so easy. It depends upon the extent of your spiritual experience. Your understanding can never exceed your experience. Rather, your experience always leads your understanding of the Word. Only through experience could we realize that the leading of the Spirit of God in verse 14 is the totality of the Spirit’s residing within us, God’s life giving through Him, and our putting to death through Him.
In the matter of putting to death the practices of the body, don’t consider whether something is good or bad. As long as it is a practice of the body, you have to put that to death. Even if it is a good practice, you have to put it to death. Unbelievers cannot understand what we are talking about. If they put to death the practices of the body, they would really be dead. They do not have another life; they do not have another One residing in them. The more we put the practices of our body to death, the more we live because within you and me there is another Person, Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit.