Therefore, a spiritual Christian is one who lets the Holy Spirit operate in his spirit. He receives the person of the Holy Spirit to dwell in his spirit and allows the life given by the Holy Spirit to supply him the strength or power for his entire daily walk of life. By appropriating the power of the Holy Spirit, he lives on this earth not seeking his own will but the will of the Lord. He does not rely on his own cleverness to have any consideration or arrangement in serving God. Moreover, the principle of his entire living is no longer controlled and influenced by his emotion; rather, it is to live quietly in his spirit.

The soulish Christian is just the opposite. Although he has life in his spirit, he does not draw his life supply from the life in his spirit. In his daily living he continues to make the soul his life and depends on the power of the self for everything. He acts according to his own preference and does not learn to obey God from his heart. In God's work he still uses his natural cleverness to make many artful arrangements, and in his daily living he is manipulated and influenced by the stimuli of his emotion.

Now the problem of the two natures has been resolved, but the problem of the two lives still remains. Both the life of the spirit and the life of the soul live simultaneously within us. The life of the spirit is in itself exceedingly strong. However, because the soul-life has been deep-rooted in man, it operates and rules over his whole being. Unless one is willing to deny his soul-life and let the life of the spirit live and operate, the life of the spirit will find it difficult to have the opportunity to develop.

Such a teaching is extremely important because if the believer were to focus only on the problem of the old man, considering that overcoming all the external, filthy sins is the entirety of a Christian's spiritual walk in life, this would deprive him of the opportunity to advance beyond living in his soul, which God hates (as much as He hates sin). The believer must learn to know that overcoming sin (of course, this is most blessed) is merely a general state of every believer and is not something extraordinary. For a believer, then, to commit sin, to be the slave of sin, is something strange and abnormal. "We who have died to sin, how shall we still live in it?" To believe that the Lord Jesus died as our Substitute is to believe that we have died with the Lord Jesus. Otherwise, there is no substitution. Since we have believed the substitutional death of the Lord Jesus, that is, we have been crucified with the Lord Jesus already, is it not a strange thing that a dead person can still commit sin?

To be freed from sin is not a difficult matter, because a full salvation has been provided. A believer should proceed to learn the complete lesson—which may be more difficult but which is always deeper—to hate his own life. This is not just to hate his sinful nature which comes from Adam but also his natural life by which he lives. He should be willing not only to put away all sins of the flesh but also to deny all good works of the flesh which issue forth from his own life. It is not only to forsake all sins but also, from God's point of view, to deliver up this sinful life to death. The life which is really in the Holy Spirit not only does not commit sin but also does not allow the self to live. The Holy Spirit can manifest His power only in those who live by Him. Whoever lives by his natural life cannot expect to see any mighty works of the Holy Spirit. We should be delivered from everything natural as well as from everything unclean. If we still live according to "man" (not necessarily sinful man) in the natural realm, then the Holy Spirit cannot rule within us. If we are freed from sin, yet still think as "man" thinks, desire as "man" desires, live as "man" lives, work as "man" works, and do not rely entirely on the Holy Spirit of God to work in our life, how can the Holy Spirit manifest His power? What we desire is to be filled with the Holy Spirit, but we must first eliminate the permeation of the soul.