In this chapter we will consider the second prayer of the Apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians. In the previous chapters, we have seen that in Paul’s first prayer, the key is our spirit. Now in the second prayer, the key is the inner man. The spirit is for our seeing, for the revelation, and the inner man is for the experience. Our spirit is for us to use as an organ to see the things of the church, but the inner man is not just an organ. The inner man is a person. By this person, we can experience Christ that the church may come into being. Actually, the inner man is simply our spirit with something added. When Christ as life comes into our spirit, it becomes a person. The inner man is our regenerated person with God’s life as its life.
We all have to see the difference between the spirit as an organ and the inner man. According to 1 Thessalonians 5:23, man is of three parts: spirit, soul, and body. Our soul is our human life. This is why in the New Testament, the same Greek word psuche is translated “soul” in some cases (Luke 12:20; Acts 2:43) and “life” in others (Luke 12:22-23; John 12:25). Because our human life is in our soul, our soul is our person, our being, and our self. Therefore, the Bible refers to people as souls. In Acts 7:14, seventy-five persons are called seventy-five souls. A soul is a person because a human being’s life is in the soul, but the spirit by itself is merely an organ. Just as our body is an outward organ to contact the outward, physical world, our spirit is an inward organ to contact the spiritual world. Before being saved, each of us was a soul, a being, a person, with two organs: the body as an outward organ and the spirit as an inward organ. But now Christ has come into our spirit as life, and this life is not psuche, the soul-life, but the divine life. Whenever the New Testament in the original Greek speaks of this life, it always uses the word zoe (John 1:4; 1 John 1:2; 5:12). Zoe is the divine, eternal, uncreated life of God, which is Christ Himself. Christ is our life in our spirit (Col. 3:4; Rom. 8:10). Without this life, our spirit would only be an organ, not a person. As saved ones with Christ as life in our spirit, our spirit has become a man, a person, a being. It is not merely an inward organ, but it is now an inner man. This is the inner man referred to by Paul in Ephesians 3:16.
Before we were saved, we had only one life, the soul-life, but now we have another life, the divine life in our spirit. Because we now have two lives, we have a problem. By which of these lives will we live? If we live by the soul-life, psuche, we will be soulish, but if we live by the divine life, zoe, we will be spiritual. We should all desire to live by the life in our spirit, by the new divine life, zoe, and not by the old human life, psuche.
In Ephesians 1 our spirit is revealed as an organ for us to receive revelation concerning the church. In Ephesians 3 our spirit is a person, the inner man, for us to experience Christ for the church. Because chapter one refers to our need to see the spiritual revelation, it reveals the spirit as an organ. Chapter three shows us that we have to live according to what we have seen. For this we need the inner man, a person. As a person, our spirit is for us to live by and for us to experience what we have seen.
For us to see, we need revelation in our spirit, but in order to live and experience what we have seen, our inner man needs to be strengthened, empowered. Many of us have to admit that our soul, our outward man, is stronger than our spirit, our inner man. This is why Paul prayed in Ephesians 3:16 that we would be strengthened “with power.” “Power” in this verse is the same Greek word for “power” in 1:19. We need to be strengthened with resurrection power, transcending power, subduing power, and overruling power. If there is any amount of deadness around us not yet conquered, it is hard for our inner man to be strong. Therefore, our inner man needs to be strengthened with the resurrection power to conquer all deadness. For this we have to be desperate that the resurrection power may swallow up all our death. If anything of death remains around or within us, we are weakened in our inner man.
We also need to be strengthened with the transcending power. If anything still suppresses or oppresses us, we are weakened. We have to be desperate and pray: “Lord, where is Your transcending power? I should not be suppressed or oppressed by anything. Regardless of my situation, I should be transcendent.”
Then we need the subduing power to put all things under our feet. The hardest thing for us to subdue is our temper. If your temper could not be subdued, your inner man could never be strengthened. The thing that weakens our inner man the most is our temper. Suppose you lose your temper four times in a week. When you come to the meeting, how strong would your inner man be? You will be too weak to function in the meeting. If someone would ask you why you did not function, you may say that you did not have the anointing or the Lord’s leading, but these answers are untrue. The only reason you did not function is that you were so weak in your inner man. Your inner man was fully weakened by your temper. If you are going to be strong in your inner man, you have to subdue your temper, and if you can subdue your temper, you can subdue everything. You cannot subdue your temper in yourself and by yourself. Only by God’s subduing power within you can you subdue all things. You have this subduing power within you. It is with this subduing and overruling power that our inner man is strengthened.
Paul prays in Ephesians 3 that we would be strengthened with power. This power is the power revealed in Ephesians 1. We all have to realize that it is with this power-the resurrection power, the transcending power, the subduing power, and the overruling power-that our inner man is strengthened. We need to be strengthened into our inner man with the power that raised Christ from among the dead, that seated Christ at the right hand of God in the heavenlies, that subjected all things under His feet, and that gave Him to be Head over all things to the church. Today our inner man is weak because we are not desperate. We need to be desperate to experience this power that is within us so that our inner man might be strengthened.
Home | First | Prev | Next