Prayer: O Lord Jesus, You are our God and our Lord. We praise You that You have a people on this earth seeking after Your heart and coming together week after week. Lord, we thank You for such an audience. We trust in You that You would speak to us afresh in a new way. Lord, we need Your understanding. Grant us the spirit of wisdom and the spirit of understanding. Bring us into the depths of Yourself. Lord, we want to see some things here. We want to see something in Your depth. Lord, grant us the view. Grant us the sight. Grant us the inner light. Grant us even the utterance. We need Your expression. Lord, cleanse all of us. Lord, remember that we are weak vessels. We need Your strengthening. How we need You to strengthen our physical body. We need the strength in our body to match the need of the Spirit. Lord, do make every one of us so alive and vigorous. Lord, we trust in You, and we worship You. We worship You for such a fellowship in this dark age. In such a dark age You still separate us unto Yourself, unto Your Word, unto Your purpose, and unto Your eternal economy. Thank You, Lord, we are in it. Be with us through all the meeting.
In the last message on Romans 8:1-14, we saw three groups of three things plus one condition and one result. The first group is the group of the law, including the law, the Spirit, and life. The second group is the group of our human spirit mingled with the Spirit, including our spirit, the things of the Spirit, and the mind set on the spirit. The third group is the group of the Triune God, including the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of the One. When we experience these groups of things, we enjoy a condition of peace. We also experience a result, being sons of God led by the Spirit of God.
The burden of this message is mainly to spend time concerning the first group, but before we get into that, we would like to spend more time concerning the second group of things. In the second group there are three things which are very mysterious. The first item of the second group is what we call the mingled spirit. This is not merely the Spirit of God nor merely our human spirit. This is the spirit which is the mingling of our human spirit with the Spirit of God. This is a mystery.
Romans 8:4 is difficult to translate. It has been hard for the translators to make a definite decision whether the spirit in Romans 8:4 refers to the Spirit of God or to our human spirit. Some versions of the Bible render the spirit in Romans 8:4 with a small letter “s,” indicating that the spirit is our human spirit. Other versions, such as the King James Version, render the spirit with a capital “S” indicating that it refers to the Holy Spirit. In his note on Romans 8:9 J. N. Darby refers to the same problem: “An instance of the difficulty of putting a large or small ‘S.’ It is clearly the state and characteristic of the believer; but it is so by the presence of the Spirit.”
Since coming into the Lord’s recovery, you have heard this term, the mingled spirit. But I am afraid this term, mingled spirit, may be just a kind of teaching or theology to you. For example, some today recite the Apostles’ Creed, and others recite the Lord’s prayer, as a kind of religious practice. I am afraid that your realization of the mingled spirit may be somewhat like this. This matter of the mingled spirit is not just some vain teaching. It is a fact which is too great! The fact is that the Spirit of God is not only living and true, but He is within you. Not only is He within you, but He is also mingling Himself with your spirit to make your spirit and Him one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). If you could realize this in a thorough way, you would be excited. It is not a small thing! This is a very complicated matter. It is not a complication with two small things involved. It is a universal and great complication with God’s Spirit and our spirit involved. Today these two spirits are just one (1 Cor. 6:17).
Although, according to your knowledge, you may be bold to tell me that your spirit is mingled with God’s Spirit, I am concerned to look at your living. How do you live? Do you live a life by your spirit mingled with God’s Spirit, or do you live a life by something else? I am afraid that this fact of the mingled spirit is in your understanding, but not in your living. The fact of the mingled spirit, our spirit mingled with God’s Spirit, must not be merely our theology. This must be our reality in a living way.
When I talk to my wife I want to have the assurance that I am talking to her by my spirit mingled with the Spirit of God. This afternoon in a little prayer time with my wife, I praised the Lord that today He is not only the living and true God, but He is mingled with our inner being. He is the Spirit mingled with our innermost being, and this innermost part of our being is our spirit. In my prayer I said to the Lord that this seems quite mysterious, but it is a fact. It is a fact not only revealed in the living Word but also realized by our experience. In our experience I cannot deny such a fact. Without such a fact my living would be altogether another way.
All of us have to realize that there is such a fact that our spirit is mingled with God’s Spirit. We have to realize this is a fact which has been wrought into our being. This is a fact which is wrapped up with our innermost being. This is a big involvement and a big complication.