If you will get into these negative items and even pray-read these negative items, you will see who you were and perhaps still are. You will see in what condition and situation you were and still are. You will realize and you will see your real being. Of these eleven negative letters, two tell us who we were and perhaps who we still are: dead persons and debtors. Then the rest of the nine negative letters tell us something of our condition and our situation. As long as you are even a little bit involved with these nine items of your natural situation, you are not under the leading by the Spirit. The leading by the Spirit is altogether outside the sphere of these eleven negative items.
By this you can see how mistaken Christians have been in their talk about the leading of God. They have thought that they have the leading of God, yet they are still under sin, under the sinful law, even under a kind of spiritual death. They don’t have peace with God; rather they have a kind of enmity with God. Their mind is not on the spirit but rather on the flesh. They have a lot of practices of the mortal body. Yet they think that they are under the leading of God. No! Regardless of how much you think or feel that you are under the leading of God, you are actually outside of it. You are actually far beyond the leading of God, because the leading of the Spirit is altogether something far beyond these eleven items.
You say that you have the leading of God, but are you a living person or a dead person? You say that you have the Lord’s leading to do this or to do that, but when you do that are you a debtor, or are you a released person? Forty to fifty years ago I had many experiences of this kind of thing. At that time I could even tell people boldly that I had the leading of the Lord, yet truthfully I felt I was dead. On the one hand I thought I was under the leading of God. But on the other hand I had the sensation that I was dead, that I was a debtor, that I was not free. I did not have the peace with God; there was a kind of enmity within me.
We need to remember all of these eleven items of negative letters in Romans 8. This will help us to realize whether or not the leading we have is by the Spirit. If the leading is by the Spirit, it surely does not have any of these eleven items. Too many times what we thought was the leading by the Spirit actually was not. Actually, it was composed with some other letters.
On the positive side there are eleven letters to spell out the leading of the Spirit. These are such positive components. There is the law of life, there is the Spirit of life, and there is the life of God. There is also the mingled spirit. This means our human spirit mingled with the life-giving Spirit. Then there are the things of such a mingled spirit. There is the mind set on such a spirit. Then follows the peace. Then comes God, the Spirit of God. This means that the Spirit and God, God and the Spirit, are just one. The Spirit of God means God is the Spirit. In the same way the Spirit of Christ means that Christ is the Spirit. There is the One, the resurrecting One, who raised Christ Jesus from among the dead. So the Triune God is here. The Spirit of life is the Spirit Himself. The Spirit of God is God the Father as the Spirit. And the Spirit of Christ is God the Son as the Spirit. All three are here as the One who raised Christ Jesus from among the dead.
Have you noticed that the New Testament tells us three aspects concerning Christ’s resurrection? Firstly, the New Testament tells us that God, that is, God the Father, raised Him up (Acts 2:24, 32). In this case Christ was not active; He was passive because He was raised up by God the Father. But other verses in the New Testament tell us that Christ Himself rose up (1 Thes. 4:14; 1 Cor. 15:12). This is not the passive voice but the active voice. Thirdly, the New Testament also tells us that God raised Jesus by the power of the Spirit (Rom. 8:11). These three aspects show us that in the resurrection of Christ, the Three of the Godhead are all involved.