Thus, a Christian has two possibilities of living. One possibility is to live in the outer man and the other possibility is to live in the inner man. Every Christian must bear the responsibility for either living in the outer man or living in the inner man. As we have said before, this is like having two kinds of lamps in your room; one is an oil lamp and the other is an electric lamp. It is up to you if you want to light the oil lamp or switch on the electric lamp. We have two lives and can live out two kinds of living as two kinds of people. Do we want to live by our human life or by the divine life? Do we want to live in the outer man or in the inner man? It is entirely up to us.
Since we should not live by the soul, we should also not serve by the soul. The apostle says that we are not sufficient of ourselves for the ministry, but that our sufficiency is from God (2 Cor. 3:5-6). To be by the self is to be by the soul. We do not serve as ministers by our soul. As ministers of the new covenant, we serve under the new covenant by the spirit, not by the soul. However, we often think that all we need is to serve and that we do not need to care by what we serve. We often think that as long as our service is right and good, we do not need to worry about anything else because everything is fine without any problems. This is not true! Even a proper or good service may still have a problem. Indeed, many services that are right and good have a problem. For example, a brother may be rich in his emotion and truly care for the brothers. One day he suddenly remembers two brothers who often miss the meetings, so he decides to visit them and eventually he goes. I would ask you, is it good for him to visit the brothers like this? Some may say it is not good, but how can you say this? It is not good to go watch a movie or to sin and do evil, but is it also not good to visit the brothers? You cannot say that. It is really good. It is not evil but good. It appears to be a good thing done for the Lord. We have to ask, though, did the brother whom I just mentioned visit the brothers from his soul or from his spirit? Did the Spirit of God send him, or did he go on his own? Some would say he went from his soul. Yes, he went from his soul, not from his spirit. He himself wanted to go; it was not the Spirit of God sending him.
We must ask further. Out of which part of the soul did he go? Some may say he went out of the emotion, others out of the will, and still others out of the mind. These three answers cover all three parts of the soul. Actually, he acted from all three parts. His visiting was initiated in his emotion, passed through his mind, and was decided by the will; therefore, it was entirely out of the soul. Whatever comes out of the urge of the emotion, the consideration of the mind, and the decision of the will is from the soul.
We must also ask whether such a visiting from the soul is carried out through the outer man or the inner man. Naturally, it is through the outer man. Moreover, we must ask whether it is done out of the self or out of God. Naturally, it is out of the self.
Since this going is done out of the self, it is also of the self. Then, is the self good or bad? Some may say it is not good; they are absolutely right. The self is bad. Everyone’s self is bad. Yet it is marvelous that now a good thing can come out of the bad self. How can this be? How can something good be in something bad? How can a good thing come out of a bad thing? How do we explain this?
This shows that the things which we think are good can come out of the self. Whatever comes out of the self comes out of the soul. It does not matter how good they are in our eyes, the source is still the soul, the self.
Many times the things that come out of the self are very good, but the source is bad. Therefore, we must see that even the good things in the service, such as visiting the brothers, can possibly come out from the soul. This kind of service cannot be considered the service of the spirit. It can only be considered the service of the soul. This kind of service might be needed, but is it acceptable? Some brothers say that we should not accept it. But many times is our service not this kind of service? We do good things, but they come out from the wrong source. Many times when we serve, we are simply doing the right thing from the wrong source. This should not be. We should visit the brothers, but we should not visit them by our soul. We should not be sent by the soul to visit the brothers.