Fourthly, there is the spirit (v. 4). This means our human spirit. Today this spirit is not merely our human spirit. It is our spirit mingled with the life-giving Spirit. It is mingled, strengthened, enriched, uplifted and empowered by and with the divine Spirit. If you fully realize that the Triune God is within you as the law, that you have His Spirit, that you have Him as the life within you, and that now your spirit has been strengthened, empowered, enriched, and uplifted by and with the Spirit, surely you would be beside yourself.
Next are the things of the Spirit (v. 5). Following this is the mind set on the spirit (v. 6), followed by the peace (v. 6). After this you come to the Spirit in three aspects: the Spirit of God (v. 9), the Spirit of Christ (v. 9), and the Spirit of the resurrecting One (v. 11). These are not three Spirits but one Spirit with three aspects: the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of the resurrecting One. Finally, there are the sons of God (v. 14).
Are these items of religion? Are these items for our activities or a program? No! these are the items for us just to live a life. These are for us to live everywhere and at every time. These are for us to live a meeting life, a church life, and a home life. Our living is constituted with all these constituents.
We don’t need teachings or exhortations, but we need to see all these constituents of our genuine and proper living as sons of God. We don’t need to try to live this way, but we need to realize all these items. My! A law who is the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—is working, operating, moving, and anointing within us! This must be the first constituent of our Christian living. We must have our living thoroughly saturated with this law. We should not apply this law simply to certain parts or sections or avenues of our living. To apply this law only to certain sections of our life is to be religious. It would not give us the proper and genuine Christian living as sons of God. We need a living as the sons of God.
For us to have such a living, the first thing we must see is that the law within us is a Person. He is within us all the time working and anointing and living and moving. Also we have the Spirit, and we have the life. We also have a wonderful mingled spirit within us. So we surely can have the things of such a wonderful Spirit. Our mind should be on this spirit. Then we have peace. Following this we experience and enjoy and participate in the wonderful Spirit in three aspects: the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of the resurrecting One. The Spirit of God indicates the origin, the source—the Originator and the Father. It is the Spirit of that Originator, of that Planner. The Spirit of Christ indicates the Spirit of the One who has gone through all the processes to accomplish and to finish whatever the Originator has planned. The Spirit of the resurrecting One indicates the One who has brought everything that the Father planned and that the Son accomplished into our being in resurrection. Otherwise, Paul would not have used interchangeably different expressions denoting the same Spirit.
The issue of the experience of all these items is that we are sons of God. We are such a constitution. This is not an activity or something of religion. This is not a kind of performance. This is the spontaneous, genuine, and proper living of the sons of God. In such a living there is no need to overcome sin. We are far away from sin. Sin is in another world, and now we are in this world, in the kingdom of the sons of God. In our kingdom there is no sin. Satan is in his kingdom, and we are in our kingdom. We are the sons of God. Do we need to seek holiness? No! our God, the Triune One, the processed One, the One who has become such a life-giving Spirit, is our holiness. He is our everything. We are the sons of God inheriting all that He is.
This is the genuine living of the proper Christian life, of the sons of God. If this is our way of living, we are not religious. We will not have different kinds of living in our home, in our school, in our office, in the church life, or in the meeting. Our living in all of those places will be exactly the same. It will be the genuine and proper living of the sons of God.