This kind of visitation is a right thing, yet it is from the wrong source. A right thing should come out of the right source. The matter of visiting the brothers should come out of the spirit to be proper. Both the matter and source must be right. Our problem now is that the brothers and sisters everywhere are almost all doing the right things from the wrong source. It is right to love the brothers, it is right to minister to them, it is right to visit them, and it is right to help them. All these matters are right. But what is their source? Do they come out of the spirit or the soul? Whatever comes out of the spirit is right; whatever comes out of the soul is wrong. We should not merely ask if the things we do are right or wrong. We should also ask if the source is right or wrong. Therefore, we should not only ask, What am I doing? We should more importantly ask, By what am I doing it? From what am I doing it? Am I doing this by the spirit or by the soul? Am I doing it out of the spirit or out of the soul? Oh, brothers and sisters, this question is too crucial in the matter of our service to God! Perhaps what you are doing is right, but you may be doing the right thing out of the wrong source. Therefore, we must check the source of everything we do. Is it from the spirit as the source or from the soul as the source? Whatever is done with the soul as its source should not be done, even if it is right. Whatever comes from the soul, whether it is good or bad, right or wrong, should be rejected and condemned.
Therefore, we must learn to condemn everything that is from the soul and everything that belongs to the soul. We must condemn the emotion, the mind, and the will, which all belong to the soul, and we must also condemn everything that comes out of them. We must realize that our emotion, mind, and will are soulish things and that whatever comes out of them are from the soul. If these things have the ground in us, it is the soul that has the ground in us. If we live in these, then we are living in the soul. If we see this, know this, and understand this, we will condemn these things, and we will not only condemn them, but we will also judge them and confess the fact that the soul has already been put to death on the cross. We will confess that our emotion, mind, and will have all been crucified. Because we have been crucified with the Lord on the cross, everything belonging to us has also been crucified with Him. Just as God put our soul to death through the cross, so also He put all the parts of our soul to death through the cross. Today before God, we also condemn, judge, and apply the Lord’s death on the cross to these things. Before God we deny that these things have any ground in us. We see that these things have already been crucified, that they were hung on the cross long ago. We consider our emotion, mind, and will as having been hung on the cross long ago. We must judge and condemn all the things of our soul by applying the death of the cross, that is, by experiencing the putting to death of our soul-life through the cross. The more we have this kind of judging and condemning, the better.
Some may think that if we condemn and judge the things of the soul, we will no longer be able to do anything. We condemn our emotion, our mind, and our will; as soon as we think about doing something, we condemn our thinking. In this way, some think, we will become wooden persons or stone persons and will not be able to do anything. However, brothers and sisters, the marvelous point is right here. This is the difference between Christians and the unsaved. If an unsaved person were to condemn his mind, emotion, and will, then he certainly would become a “stone” person. An unsaved person only has the outer man with the outward soul-life; within him there is no life but death. If he were to condemn, judge, and reject the outer man while he is inwardly dead, then he naturally would become a “wooden” person. This is what happens with the unbelievers. But we saved ones have another man and another life within. If we reject our outer man and our outer life, then our inner man and inner life will have the ground in us. If we reject, condemn, and judge our outer man, then God will bear the responsibility and cause His Spirit to live another life out from within us. If we bury a stone in the earth, it will not grow anything; once we bury it, it is finished. If, however, we bury a seed in the earth, something will grow after just a few days. An unbeliever is like a stone that has no life within. If he rejects his outer man and puts his outer life into death, then he will be finished. But we Christians are like seeds; we have a life inside that is the Lord’s life. If we reject our outer life, then our inner life will grow. If we are willing to let our outer shell be broken to pieces, then our inner man will be lived out from within.
The apostle says that within us we have a “treasure,” which is the Lord’s life. He also says that if we always bear about in the body the putting to death of the Lord Jesus, then the life of the Lord Jesus also will be manifested in our body. This means that if we allow the Lord’s death to do a killing work in our body, the Lord’s life in us will be manifested. Moreover, the apostle says that our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed. This means that if our outer man is consumed, our inner man will be able to grow. Therefore, if we reject our outer man and put him to death, then our inner man will grow stronger.
We are double people with an outer man and an inner man. Formerly we lived in our outer man, yet now God wants us to live in our inner man. However, this is not so easy. We have been living in the outer man for such a long time that we have become accustomed to it. Naturally it will be somewhat difficult for us to make a change now and live in the inner man. Even today, most of the brothers and sisters still live in the outer man by the mind, emotion, and will. Very few live before God in the inner man by the spirit. Even though they serve God and do His work, they do it by the soul and not by the spirit, from the outer man and not from the inner man. Now God wants us to learn to turn from the outer man back to the inner man. He wants us to learn to live and serve not in the outer man but in the inner man. This is learning to live or serve not by the soul but by the spirit since the outer man is the soul and the inner man is the spirit. The secret to living in the spirit and not in the soul is to judge, condemn, reject, and deny our soul. In this way the spirit gains the ground and the opportunity within us and is spontaneously lived out from within us.
For example, if you are going to visit a brother, but you realize that it is something of your emotion, it comes out of your mind, and it is decided by your will, you must immediately judge, condemn, and reject it before God. You must hate such a thing. Perhaps you will say that if this is the case, then you will not be able to visit the brothers. But it is not so! If your visiting the brothers is of the spirit, it will not be diminished by your condemning and rejecting. If God wants you to go visiting, and if the Holy Spirit has given you a burden, then the more you reject the things of the soul, the more manifest and the heavier the burden in your spirit will be. The more you reject the things of the soul, the clearer the things in your spirit will be. After you have condemned the things of the soul and rejected the activities that are from the soul, there is still a burden and a deep sense in your spirit urging you to visit the brothers. At this time, it is the spirit sending you to visit the brother. This kind of visitation is from the spirit, not from the soul; it is spiritual, not soulish. Therefore, this kind of service is called the service in spirit.