Second Corinthians 3:16 says, “But whenever their heart turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” The veil is related to the heart. One who pursues the Lord and wants to participate in His service must bring his heart with him. Sadly, there is a problem: once a person comes, his heart comes, and his ways of doing things also come with him. We must see that God only wants our heart; all the other things have to be removed and broken by Him. All of our viewpoints and methods have to be broken by God; He just wants our heart. From the very beginning God just has one purpose in His work, that is, to work Himself into us. For this reason, He must gain our heart so that He will be able to work Himself into us.
Man is a vessel created by God for the purpose of containing God. We may use a glass as an illustration. A glass is a vessel created to contain water. For it to be used in any other way is inappropriate. Similarly, in the universe man is a special vessel for containing God. If man does not contain God, there is no meaning to his human existence because man was specially created for God’s use. However, how can God put Himself into man? Proverbs 20:27 says, “The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah, / Searching all the innermost parts of the inner being.” This indicates that we have a spirit within us. First Thessalonians 5:23 says that we human beings are of three parts: spirit, soul, and body. Our outward part is the body, and our inward part is the spirit. In between the spirit and the body is our soul. The soul is our personality, our self, including our mind, will, and emotion. Our feelings of joy, anger, sorrow, and delight are the functions of the soul which belong to the emotion. Our choices and decisions are the functions of the soul, which belong to the will. Our concepts and thoughts are the functions of the soul, which belong to the mind. The soul is the true “I” and what the psychologists refer to as the metaphysical being—something that can be felt but not touched.
Often, certain things may cause the soul of a saved person to be full of pain and sorrow, yet still, deep within his being, there is a joy which is unspeakable. This proves that other than having a soul within our being, there is a spirit deep within us. Hence, sometimes we may be sad because we have a soul, but the reason we can be joyful is that we have a spirit. When our soul feels sorrowful, the Holy Spirit will strengthen us and give us joy from within. Since we have both the soul and spirit, we have two different feelings. This also shows us that we human beings are of three parts: spirit, soul, and body.
The purpose of God’s work on us is to work Himself into us. The principle of God’s work is to work from the center to the circumference. For example, when we throw a stone into a pond, ripples are stirred up in the water which spread out from the center circle by circle. The working of God in us is also from the center to the circumference. The center of our being is our spirit, and the circumference is our body. The work of God in us is similar to coloring in a circle. He gradually adds color beginning from the center and spreading outward until it is fully colored. He wants to reach our body starting from our spirit.
When we were saved, we used our heart and spirit to receive the Lord Jesus as our Savior, and the Lord’s Spirit came into our spirit. As a result, we have God in the center of our being. Before we receive the Lord, we do not have God in us; however, at the very moment we receive Him, the Holy Spirit enters into us, and we have God in us. Originally, we do not have God in our spirit, soul, or body, but when we repent and receive the Lord Jesus as our Savior, God comes in, and we have God’s life in us.
Whenever we encounter an outward environment which causes our soul to suffer, we still feel joyful and comforted deep within where the Holy Spirit and the life of God are. This is because the Holy Spirit in our spirit gives us comfort, support, and supply. However, at this point the Holy Spirit is merely in our spirit and has not yet entered into our soul. At the moment of our salvation God began to work in us. Now He wants to spread out from the center of our being, all the way to the circumference, so that the mind, will, and emotion of our soul will possess the element of God. Eventually, He wants to fill our entire being completely. In this way we will not only have God in our spirit, but we will have God in every part of our soul. Our joy, anger, sorrow, and delight will all be filled with God. At that time our viewpoint will be God’s viewpoint. Our joy, anger, sorrow, and delight will be God’s joy, anger, sorrow, and delight. How is this possible? It is because God is living out from us. We may liken this to a cotton ball absorbing red ink. The red ink saturates the cotton little by little, until finally the whole cotton ball becomes red.
Today no matter how spiritual we are, we are still not wholly spiritual. Only when God’s life in us spreads from our spirit to every part of our mind, emotion, will, and even to our body, causing our entire being to be filled with God’s life completely and making our body a glorious body, will we be entirely spiritual. But this will be fully accomplished only when the Lord Jesus comes back. At that time our body will be fully transfigured. First Corinthians 15 says that “this corruptible must put on incorruption” (v. 53). Not only will we have God in our spirit and our soul, but we will also have God in our body. This is God’s line of life in us.