If we argue with our mentality, we miss the mark. This is not the organ we should use. For the church we must use our spirit. The church is a matter of the divine Spirit in the human spirit. You could never hear my voice with your eyes. That is the wrong organ. You must use your ears. The church is spiritual and mysterious. It can only be substantiated in our spirit. If there is an odor in the air and we exercise our eyes to see the odor, we will not see it. Neither can we listen to the odor with our ears. This does not mean that there is no odor. It simply means that we did not use our nose. We did not use the proper organ to substantiate this substance. Every kind of substance needs the proper substantiating organ. To substantiate a noise, we need our substantiating ears. To substantiate all colorful things, we need our substantiating eyes. If we lose our sight, we cannot substantiate any color.
We all must learn to turn to our inward “nose,” our spirit. We need our spirit for the church life. In Old Testament days no one with a flat nose could serve as a priest (Lev. 21:18). Everyone serving God must have a keen nose. This kind of spiritual nose is a beauty appraised by the Lord (S. of S. 7:4, 8). Many people speak to me, but they cannot cheat me. I have an inward smelling nose. They may say “Yes” to me, but in the spirit I know that the tone is “No.” Where is our spiritual nose? We must learn to turn to our spirit. God is Spirit, and we must learn to worship Him in spirit (John 4:24). Even the words of the Lord Jesus while He was here on earth are spirit. “It is the Spirit Who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63). We do have a spirit, and our spirit is where we have been born again. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6b). We must learn to use our regenerated spirit. The church life needs our spirit!
The Lord Jesus was with His disciples for over three years, and they appreciated Him greatly. When He told them that He was going to die, they could not bear it. But He explained to them that His going was His real coming back. Before His death and resurrection He could only be among them. He could not enter into them. Therefore, He needed to take a further step that He might come into them. His going to die was not His going away; it was His coming back. It was only in this way that He could come back as the Spirit of reality to dwell in them forever.
We must all realize that the Christian life is altogether a matter of the Spirit. It is not a matter of any doctrine or teaching, even from the Bible. I respect the Bible, but if the Bible is not taken in spirit and with spirit, it is just dead letters. I am not against the sisters covering their head. But whatever we do, we must do it in spirit and with spirit. Otherwise, it is just a dead form of godliness. When we touch the Bible in the church life, we must do it in spirit. If there is no spirit, it is deadening. We simply kill ourselves and others. In like manner, we should sing hymns in spirit and with spirit. Otherwise, we should not sing. Everything we do should be in spirit and with spirit.
Today we are in the age of Revelation. Whatever we do must be under the seven eyes of Christ. Then we are no longer in religion with doctrines, but in Christ, with the Spirit. After Jesus accomplished His incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45) and came back to His members in a mysterious and hidden way. Now He dwells in us in such a hidden way (Gal. 2:20), but it is more than real. From within He is going to transform us, replacing all our fallen elements with Himself. This is His work and it takes time, but today He is doing it. This work is to build up the Body-Christ. By resurrection, in resurrection, and with resurrection Christ was made the life-giving Spirit. He is not only God, the Redeemer, and the Savior, but also the life-giving Spirit.
Andrew Murray, John Darby, and M. R. Vincent, in their interpretation of the Bible, all admit that Christ is the Holy Spirit. How can you reconcile this? I do not know. But it is a fact in the Bible. First Corinthians 15:45 says, “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” Second Corinthians 3:17 says the same thing: “Now the Lord is that Spirit.” John Nelson Darby in his New Translation of the Bible puts verses seven through sixteen of 2 Corinthians, chapter three, into parentheses. By this he is saying that verse seventeen is a continuation of verse six. The last part of 2 Corinthians 3:6 says, “But the Spirit giveth life.” This is then continued by 2 Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is that Spirit.” By these two verses it is clear that the Lord is the Spirit that gives life. Thus Darby agrees that the Lord is the Spirit that gives life.