But we Christians are wonderful people. We have not only the divine life with its divine law, but also a divine Person within us. This divine Person is the Spirit, and this Spirit bears or carries two things: the law and the life. So there is such a term: the law of the Spirit of life. The leading of the Spirit is composed with these three things. It is composed with the divine life and with the divine life’s law and with the divine Person, the Spirit. These three things began to be within us at the time when we believed in the Lord Jesus. Since that time these three things have subsisted in our being. They are here to be the leading; they are here to be the lead of our life. They remain together in us. These three things are a composition which we may term the leading of the Spirit.
Since the day I received the Lord Jesus the leading of the Spirit began to remain in me, and it has been there all the days, and all the time. If you are a genuine believer in the Lord, I have the full assurance that you also have experienced this. Even while you are sinning, such a thing is there leading. When you go to the department store to buy something, the leading is there. Because in the past we were taught wrongly and instructed superficially, we didn’t have the knowledge of the existence of such a thing within us, so we just put it down and neglected it and put it aside. We have prayed concerning what kind of tie we should buy or what kind of shoes we should buy. Actually we don’t need to pray because we already have a leading within us. If you would not seek the outward leading, but would take care of this inward leading, you would be clear.
With the sisters the hair style is sometimes a problem. The more you go on with the Lord, the more you may be bothered by your style of hair. But because you have not been taught in the proper way, you would forget about this inward leading. Instead you would seek and pray concerning your hair style. Eventually you pick up some kind of leading, and you label it the leading of the Lord. Actually that is not the leading of the Lord. Actually the real leading, the genuine leading, is already there. The leading concerning what you should say to people, where you should go, what kind of people you should contact, how you should respect and honor your parents is already within you. In the past I wasted so much time in seeking after the Lord’s leading. Eventually I found out that those seekings were in vain because the leading was there already.
This is like a dog seeking whether or not it should bark or like a cat seeking whether or not it should catch a mouse. We are not dogs or cats, but we are the sons of God. “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” In the Greek language the expression is very strong. It could read, “These sons are of God.” They have the very God who is the Spirit within them. And they have this One’s divine life and this One’s divine law. These three things: the Person, the life, and the law are within them to be the leading. The leading of the Christian life is nothing less than these three: the Person, the life, and the law. Because these three are within you, you do have the leading. In Romans 8 Paul did not exhort us to seek after the leading. He only mentioned the fact. You don’t need to seek, and you don’t need to receive the leading. The leading is just there.
We have seen that the constituents of the composition of the leading of the Spirit are three: the law, the Spirit, and the life. Now we need to further analyze these three elements. We have to admit that all three are to some extent difficult to analyze because the life is the divine life. It is not our human life. Its nature is different from our human life. Its tastes are different from our human life. Its intentions, its likes, and its dislikes are all different from our natural life. It is absolutely a different life. It is the life of God, the divine life. Every life has its substance, its nature, its tastes, its tendencies, its likes, and dislikes. This is why to follow the leading of the Spirit is not so easy for us, because we were born of and with the human life. But now another life is within us to be an element of our daily living, and this life is absolutely different from our natural life in its substance, in its nature, in its taste, in its tendency, in its likes, and in its dislikes. So it is not so easy for us to follow this leading.
Among the three, the law is the easiest one for us to follow because it is a kind of automatic power. It really regulates. Sometimes it constrains you. Not only does it forbid you, but it also sometimes constrains you and restricts you. Sometimes it just would not let you go. All of us have experienced that when we were intending to do certain things, there was a strong automatic forbidding within us. There was a strong automatic restriction within us. Something within us restricted us from doing the thing we intended to do. So even though we were not willing to follow, yet we had no way, no alternative, but to follow, because there was a kind of constraining power within us. That is the law. Our desire and our preference may be so strong that temporarily they conquer the law of the Spirit of life. But eventually the law of the Spirit of life will overcome.
Now we come to the Person. This is the hardest thing for us. Do you prefer to have a Person living with you all the time? As human beings we all like to get married, but we all can testify that in married life there is a big problem, that is, there is always another person, sometimes praising you, but often interfering with you. Sometimes not only the complaints but also even the praises of the wife are not so pleasant. On the one hand we like to have a spouse, but on the other hand we don’t like to have someone with us all the time. There is always the bothering, telling us what to do or telling us how much to eat.
We are different from the dogs and cats and even the unbelievers, because we have another Person, Christ the Spirit, living in us. It is so bothersome because He, another Person, takes the lead. I don’t believe many Christians have realized what kind of bothering Person the Holy Spirit is. He is really bothering because our intention, our preference, our desire, our aspiration is always absolutely different from His. This may sometimes cause us to be tired of being a Christian, but we just cannot quit. Whenever we were tired or bored and wanted to quit, Someone said no. He is a real Person contradicting us all the day long in the things that we do. Sometimes even in our reading of the Bible, He wouldn’t agree with the portion we want to read. He wants us to read another portion.
The leading of the Lord within us is composed with these three elements: a law, a life, and a Person. This Person is very strong, very unique, very absolute! The longer you go on in the spiritual life, the more you will realize this is true. If you were saved in a proper and normal way, you probably experienced the leading of the Lord. At the beginning of the enjoyment of God’s salvation, you may have been simple and to some extent thorough, so you may have experienced the Lord’s leading in a good way. But not many can maintain that normal situation for a long period of time. After that initial period of time of the enjoyment of God’s salvation, most drift back and the struggle between them and the inward leading begins. Actually our Christian life after the initial period of salvation is a struggling life. It is not so simple. Between your desire, your intention, your preference, and your choice there is such a thing that is termed the leading of the Spirit. The struggle of your Christian life is just your preference struggling with this matter of the leading of the Spirit.
Don’t forget that the leading of the Spirit is a composition with three things: a life with a law and a Person. Most of the time you have been so strong that even such a composition could not put you down or convince you or overcome you. Most of the time you conquered this composition. Of course, this composition never fights wildly as you may have done. We were not instructed or taught concerning such a leading within us, so we have not had the knowledge concerning the leading of the Spirit. But anyhow it was there all the time with a Person.
It is a very unique thing that the Triune God today as the all-inclusive Spirit indwells you. This is not a small thing. Even to have a strong person stay in your home is something, to say nothing of a strong Person who is indwelling your inner part. We have a strong One who is quite active and living and working and speaking and all the time repeating His word within us. He is here within you, and this is the leading. We know this by our experience and by Romans 8:9-11. This Person within us is not so simple. He is not just the Spirit. He is the Spirit with the Father, and He is the Spirit with the Son. When He lives here the other Two also are with Him. Eventually this One is Three, and these Three are One. Such a One lives in you with His life and with the law of His life to be your leading.