We must be those all the time living our life in one way. Whether we are at home, in the church matters, or in the meeting, we live our life one way. Most of the brothers don’t apply Romans 8 to the way they talk to their wives. I don’t mean that the husbands are mean or bad. They may be very gentle and very nice, but their gentleness is not according to their application of Romans 8. If you don’t apply Romans 8 when you talk to your wife, the Perfecting Training has been in vain. It has been mainly helping you to be more religious. Romans 8 is altogether a chapter on the genuine and proper Christian life. It is an extraordinary chapter. Its style, its composition, and the way of its presentation is altogether extraordinary. The more you get into it the more you would appreciate it in this way.
Romans 8 is not a chapter full of teachings. It is just a mentioning of a life, or of a living. It shows the genuine living of a collective people who have the Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit to be such an all-inclusive, life-dispensing Spirit, dispensing Himself all the day long into their tripartite being. This is to saturate their spirit, their soul, and their body. This is to transform them and to build them all together into one Body. This chapter describes such a people. As such a people, they just live.
All the human beings are genuine descendants of Adam. Whether we are American, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Indonesian, French, or English, we are genuine descendants of Adam. We are born of him, and spontaneously we all live a life of Adam.
But when you come to Romans 8, after the first thirteen verses, it says, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” In other words they are descendants of God. No human beings have to perform to live a life of Adam. Their politeness and other things are a performance, but their genuine daily living is not a performance. That is a living of Adam. We are sons of God. We have a new birth. We have a new life and a new nature. Even we have been made a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). So on the one hand we are descendants of Adam, the sons of Adam. On the other hand we are the sons of God.
The problem is here: Do we live as the sons of God or as the descendants of Adam? Romans 8 is not a kind of teaching or exhortation or charge. It is just a depiction of the living of the sons of God. These sons of God are still a tripartite man. They have a spirit, they have a mind representing the soul, and they have a body.
Also in this depiction, it shows us how God has been processed, and after this process, He as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is now the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit indwelling our spirit to saturate our entire being with what He is. He is indwelling us to infuse us with all of His being so that we may become His sons to live as He lives, to have a living, not as the descendants of Adam, but as the sons of God. As such we are led all the day by the Spirit of God. This is a living not just in the meeting and not just in the church life. It is not a living just in the time of pray-reading or in the time of studying the Bible. It is a living all the time. We just live this way.
We need to consider once again the eleven positive items in Romans 8:1-14. The first item is the law (v. 2). This law is the law of the Spirit of life. We have pointed out in other messages that the law of the Spirit of life is just the Triune God working, operating, moving, and anointing within us. He is the law. So the first item of the positive things is a Person working within us as a law. Most Christians have never realized that the law of the Spirit of life is the Triune God, a wonderful Person. Too many times when Christians talk about the Spirit, they don’t consider a Person. This Person who is the Spirit is not only the Spirit, but He is also the Triune God.
The second item is the Spirit, and the third is life (v. 2). This Person who is working within us as the law is the Spirit. He is also the life within us. He is the law, the Spirit, and He is the life. All the three are one Person. The Spirit denotes mainly the Person, the life, this Person’s life, and the law, the function of His life. Every life is a law. Animal life is a law; plant life is a law. The peach life is a law. No one teaches the peach tree to bring forth peaches. The peach life is a law regulating the peach tree to produce peaches. Every animal has a life, and that life is its law. Even our human life is a law. So actually, the law, the Spirit, and the life all refer to the same Person. This same Person is the law, He is the Spirit, and He also is the life.