This natural soul-life of ours is an obstacle to our spirit-life. It will never be satisfied with God alone; it always wants to add something other than God. Thus, it never has a moment of peace. Before the believer's soul-life has been dealt with, it lives on excitement and feelings. These, after all, are very changeable, so the believer's living also is changed accordingly. This explains why the believer's living is like waves, always going up and down. When the believer allows his spiritual experiences to be mixed with his soul-life, his experience often becomes unstable so that he is not qualified to be a leading one. This soul-life which has not been lost is constantly luring man to leave the center of his spirit. Sometimes it is the effect of emotion that greatly hurts the freedom and consciousness of the spirit. Joy and grief cause the believer to lose his self-control and to feel that he has been unrestrained and has had a hard time constraining himself. Sometimes it is the extra activities of the mind that cause the quiet spiritual life to be affected and become disorderly. No doubt it is good to desire spiritual knowledge. However, if it goes outside the spiritual measure, what is gained is only letters and not the spirit. This is why many workers, although they are preaching the most wonderful truth, are filled with coldness and deadness. Many believers who seek after a spiritual life have a common experience, the kind of experience that makes them groan: their soul and their spirit are not in unison. This means that the mind, will, and emotion of the soul oftentimes rebel against the spirit by not obeying the command of the spirit. They often want to act alone apart from the spirit, contradicting the desire of the spirit. What is usually damaged by this kind of living is the spirit-life.

Therefore the teaching in Hebrews 4:12 is very important because it is precisely here that the Holy Spirit teaches us how to divide the soul from the spirit in our experience. The dividing of the soul from the spirit is not merely a doctrine; the believer must have and can have such an experience in life. What is the meaning of the dividing of the soul from the spirit? It is simply that, first, God by His Word and through His indwelling Spirit can differentiate experientially the function and expression of the soul from that of the spirit, teaching the believer to know what is the move of the spirit and what is the move of the soul. Second, the willingness of a believer to cooperate causes him experientially to have a pure spiritual life without being affected by the soul. In Hebrews 4, the Holy Spirit tells us of the function of the Lord Jesus as a High Priest toward the believers. Verse 12 says, "For the word of God is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart." Verse 13 continues: "And there is no creature that is not manifest before Him, but all things are naked and laid bare to the eyes of Him to whom we are to give our account." Here the Bible speaks of how the Lord Jesus is carrying out His work as the High Priest for the spirit and soul of the believers. The Holy Spirit here likens the believer to a sacrifice on the altar. During the Old Testament times, when people offered up sacrifices, the sacrifice was tied on the altar, killed by the priest with a sharp knife, and opened in half with the knife so that the joints and marrow were pierced and opened. All the insides that were hidden, which could not be seen or known before, were opened up and laid bare without concealment. After it was opened up, the priest would then burn the sacrifice with fire as an offering to God. The Holy Spirit uses this picture to illustrate the work of the Lord Jesus in the Christians and the experience gained in the Lord by the Christians. As the sacrifice was opened with the knife by the priest so that the joints and marrow were all laid bare, clearly separated in half, thus it will also be for the believers now. With the word of God, their soul is divided from their spirit by their High Priest, the Lord Jesus, so that the soul no longer affects the spirit and the spirit no longer is controlled by the soul. Thus, each has its own place, and one can distinguish what is from the soul and what is from the spirit without any confusion or mixture.

In creation, the first step of the word of God was to separate the light from the dark. Likewise, the word of God now works as a sharp sword inside of us through the Holy Spirit to distinguish the spirit from the soul, so that the dwelling place of the most noble God can be completely separated from base feelings, and we may know how much our soul should submit to the One who is above. This causes us to know how the spirit is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit of God and how the soul with all its power is to move not by itself, but according to the will of the Holy Spirit manifested through the human spirit.