Second Corinthians 3:17-18 mentions five important matters—the Lord, the Spirit, freedom, glory, and image. After the Lord resurrected and ascended, He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). The Lord Jesus’ incarnation was His becoming flesh; His death and resurrection were His becoming the Spirit. Christians always speak of loving the Lord, worshiping the Lord, obeying the Lord, and following the Lord, but where is the Lord? Second Corinthians 3 shows us that the Lord is the Spirit and indicates that the Lord is in our spirit. Even before the Lord’s death and resurrection, John 4:24 tells us that God is Spirit and that if man wants to worship Him, he must worship Him neither in Jerusalem nor Samaria but in his spirit.
What is the Lord? The Lord is the Spirit. Where is the Lord? The Lord is in our spirit. We may have the concept that the Lord is in heaven. Truly, the Lord is the Lord of heaven, but He is also the Spirit in our spirit. The Lord is wherever the Spirit is, and the way the Lord contacts man is in man’s spirit. We can use electricity as an illustration. Electricity is essential for our daily living. On the one hand, electricity is in the air; on the other hand, it is in our room and we are able to contact it. Our unbelieving friends often ask, “Where is God? Where is the Lord? Can He be seen or touched?” Those who have experienced this know that God is Spirit, that the Lord is the Spirit, and that the Lord is in our spirit today. He is not only very near to us; He is even mingled with us as one. No matter where we are, by the Lord’s precious blood and in His name, we can touch Him as the Spirit.
When we believe into the Lord, we believe into the Lord who is in heaven. At that time, we open our heart and our spirit to Him. Then we sense His presence in our spirit, in the depths of our being. This is the testimony of everyone who has been saved. As we open our heart and spirit to the Lord who is in heaven, we feel peaceful, proper, enlightened, comfortable, strengthened, and satisfied within. Every genuine believer can testify that although they believed into the Lord who is in heaven, at the moment they believed, the Lord entered into them. Moreover, they can testify that from the time that they first believed, many times throughout their Christian life they have sensed the Lord in heaven touch their inner being and cause them to feel peaceful and secure within.
The fact that we can sense the Lord within us shows us that the Lord is the Spirit and that He contacts us in our spirit. After we are saved, everything of the spiritual life comes from the Lord’s moving within us. Even now when I am speaking here, apparently I am the one speaking, but actually there is One who is speaking within me as my content, filling me and sustaining me to speak. Otherwise, how could it be that the more I speak, the more I have to speak, and the more I speak, the more I have the Lord’s presence? If I speak from myself, then after I have given three to five messages, I will have nothing more to say. It is the same with the teachings concerning the Christian life. Some say that these teachings are too high and that they are too difficult to follow. They say, “Not only do we need to love our enemies, but as Matthew 5:39 says, we also need to turn our left cheek to those who slap us on our right cheek. Who is able to do this?” We must realize that no Christian is able to do this by himself but by the Lord who dwells within. He takes every opportunity to fill us, replace us, and work within us to enable us to live this way.
Consider, for example, the motion of an electric fan. It rotates quickly and smoothly. From the outside, it appears as if the electric fan is rotating by itself, but in actuality there is a motor within the fan that pushes the fan and causes it to rotate. The living of a genuine Christian is like this—it comes from the Lord’s “pushing” within. Andrew Murray was a brother who knew the spiritual life. He once asked, “What is prayer?” He then said that prayer is the Christ who is indwelling us praying to the Christ who is sitting on the throne. This word is very clear and to the point. Genuine prayer involves not only the person who is praying but also the Lord who dwells within him. The Lord “puts us on” and prays from within us. If we are covered by some clothing, when we move around, although others may see the clothing moving, the fact is that we are the ones who are moving within the clothing.
The Christian life is the Lord putting us on and living out from within us. Proper prayer is not simply us praying but is the Spirit in us putting us on to pray. The Spirit is the Lord Himself. Romans 8 says that although we do not know how to pray, the Spirit within us prays for us (v. 26). Similarly, we do not know how to love people or how to obey our parents. Even if we do know how to do these things a little bit, our ability is very limited. When our parents lose their temper, we are unhappy with them, but when our parents are pleased with us, we honor them. This kind of honoring is not from the Lord within. What the Lord does from within us does not depend upon how our parents treat us. The Lord would still honor them from within us regardless of how they treat us. This is something that we cannot do from ourselves. We can do it only by the Spirit motivating us from within.