As Christians today we all have been very much influenced in our human culture by religion. Even those who claim to have no thought about religion, the atheists, cannot stay away absolutely from the influence of religion. As long as you are a human being, born as a descendant of Adam and living on this earth, you are under the influence of religion. Religion is a very big matter. Even in the constitution of many countries, there is a part concerning religion. Religion is so common to human culture. It is natural to human culture. In a sense religion is more natural than marriage. In human history and among human societies a good number of persons were never married. But no one has ever escaped the influence of religion. Religion is a big influence. I would liken the influence of religion to a thick, strong box. All the descendants of Adam have been put into this box.
Although we have given more than twenty-five messages on Romans 8, it may be that you still consider Romans 8 as something religious. For example, when we talk about the leading by the Spirit, spontaneously you may consider that you need to seek after the Lord’s leading concerning a business trip or concerning getting married or concerning what school you should attend. This is the religious understanding. To consider that the leading by the Spirit is just a matter of our activities, our actions, our programs, our enterprises, our education, our housing, or our car is just according to the religious understanding.
I am afraid that many of the brothers and sisters have at least three kinds of lives—the family life, the church life, and the meeting life. Are you the same in your home life, in your church life, and in your meeting life? It might be that you talk one way at home, but then talk another way in order to prepare yourself for the meeting. This means your living in your home life is one way, and your living in the meeting life is another way. When you read the newspaper you may live in one way, and when you read a Life-study message you may live in another way. You may consider that the Life-study messages bring you into the Lord. If so this means that when you read the newspapers you are outside of the Lord. So you have two lives, or two livings. One is in the Lord, and the other is not in the Lord.
As a little minister of the Word, whenever I am speaking I am also exercising simultaneously to sense the condition of the dear saints who are the listeners. The more I speak in these Perfecting Meetings, the more my realization is that the speaking may make the audience more religious. In other words I am afraid you may understand what we are speaking on Romans altogether in a religious way. Why? Because you don’t apply what you have heard in this meeting to your home life. You don’t apply what you have heard in these meetings to all the small avenues of your daily living. You don’t apply what you have heard in these meetings to some of the corners of your private life. It may be you have applied some of the points to your living. But your kind of application makes the speaking religious.
In the past we have given a definition of religion. Religion is to do something for God, to worship God, yet without the Spirit. Now I would add something more to this definition of religion. When we say something is religion, we also mean that you have more than one way to live in your human living. In one of the ways for living, you don’t apply the spiritual teachings to your life. You live a life without God. You just live it by yourself. But because you are religious and you are loving God, you would not do anything grossly sinful. This means that in your living there are two sections: one is the secular section. It is not bad or sinful. The other is the religious section.
It seems with your human life there is the outer court and there is the sanctuary. Some of the things you do in the outer court, and other things you do in the sanctuary. In the meeting you are all very religious, but when you are dismissed, the religious atmosphere changes. It becomes only a little better than the atmosphere at a ball game. This means that unconsciously you have made the spiritual things from Romans 8 religious. All these things have not become your living. They are still in the realm of your performance. As long as you make a spiritual thing only a section of your daily living and not your whole daily living, that is a performance. That is religion. Today human society everywhere is filled with performance. Politeness is performance. In the offices and in the schools people are nice and polite and regulated. But if you go into the back room and if you check their weekend life, you may see something different.
Sometimes a brother may act one way with the brothers at the meeting and another way with his wife at home. With the brothers he is so gentle and nice, but he may treat his wife as if she were a slave. This means he has two ways of living. One way is the way of living with his wife, and the other way is the way of living with the brothers in the church.