We would still like, brothers and sisters, to turn to 1 Thessalonians 5.
We shall read verses 23 and 24:
Now the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly;
and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faithful is He that calleth you, Who will also do it.
And let us turn again to 1 Peter 1. We shall read from verse 3 through verse 12.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,
who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials,
that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ:
Whom having not seen, ye love; on Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory:
receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.
Please be careful here. I did not read “spirit” in the Chinese version, because in the original language there is no such word. It says, “the salvation of your souls.”
Concerning which salvation the prophets sought and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:
searching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto, when It testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow them.
To whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto you, did they minister these things, which now have been announced unto you through them that preached the gospel unto you by the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven; which things angels desire to look into.
Let us bow down and pray.
Our Lord, our God, we thank You because of the salvation You have prepared for us, which even angels desire to look upon and to know.
We thank You and praise You because Your grace is far more than what our eyes can see, our ears can hear, and our hearts can comprehend.
Our God and our Father, we pray that at this moment Your Holy Spirit may reveal to us what You have already prepared for us, and lead us into Your own grace.
May all glory and honour be to You. In the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
I think by this time we all are able to recite 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24. May these two verses be carved into our hearts.
God Himself will sanctify us wholly. This is His will, and this is also His calling to every one of us. May we all hear this calling.
This is also His own work.
Yesterday morning we shared a little about the creation and the fall of the soul, so this morning we will not repeat that. We thank and praise our God.
When God created man, He created man according to His own image. God Himself is the Triune God. He is three, yet one.
When He created man, man also was three and one. Spirit, soul, and body are not three separate persons, but three parts of one whole being.
When He created us, He created us with spirit, soul, and body. Although these are three parts, they constitute one being, one person.
In God’s plan, He puts our spirit in the highest place, because our spirit can commune with the Spirit of God.
The spirit receives the will of God from God, and then delivers this will to the soul. The soul is the person. Although the spirit is in the highest place, the soul is the most central, because we, the person, are the soul.
The soul is the self. When the spirit receives the will from God and fellowships that will to us, the person, then it stirs our will, and we are willing the will of God.
We understand His will in our mind, and it also stirs our emotion to love.
In other words, when we receive the will revealed to us by God, then we command our body to do the will of God.
When God created man, the Bible tells us that God breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of man, and man became a living soul.
At that time our soul was innocent, and our soul was neutral. Our soul could function freely in relation to God.
But when man sinned, we know that his spirit died. His relationship with God was severed.
Man then fell properly into his own soul and his own body. We also see that man became totally controlled by sin and self-centred.
This we have already mentioned. Thank and praise our Lord.
We see that God came to seek, deliver, and save fallen and lost man.
When the salvation of God came to us, it came to the centre first and then expanded to the circumference. When God came to save us, first He wanted to quicken our dead spirit. Then salvation would reach our soul, and finally it would reach our body.
Last night our brother mentioned especially this matter of being born again. What does it mean to be born again?
In John 3:6, it tells us:
That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
The first “Spirit” is the Holy Spirit, and the second “spirit” is the spirit of man. The Holy Spirit gives birth to us again.
That means that our spirit, which was severed from God before, is now quickened. It is now a new spirit, and the Holy Spirit Himself comes to dwell in that spirit so that we can call God our Father, proving that now we are God’s children.
We thank and praise our Lord. I believe, brothers and sisters, that by the grace of God, we all have experienced this. If we have not been born again, then we would continue in this fallen condition and would not even have a beginning in spiritual matters.
Brothers and sisters, at the moment we were born again, in the depth of our spirit there was a tremendous change.
Originally, that spirit was dead, having no communication with God. But now the spirit is alive again. We now begin to have communication with God.
When we were first born again, we might have experienced a great change. We remember 2 Corinthians 5:17:
Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature:
the old things are passed away;
behold, they are become new.
But all things are of God.
If one is in Christ, there is a new creation. When we believe in the Lord, there is indeed a new creation in us. The old things are passed away; all things are new; and all are from God.
Maybe when you first believed, you indeed experienced this new creation. At that time, you may have felt that although you were on earth, you were really in heaven.
Many brothers and sisters have given this testimony: on the day they were born again, they became totally changed persons. When they walked down the street, it was like walking on clouds. When they heard the sound of birds, it was delightful. When they saw the trees and grass, everything seemed fresh, as though they had been elevated to the third heaven.
At that time they were full of peace and joy. They loved to read the Word; every word in the Bible spoke to them. They loved to pray and wanted to continue in prayer.
When they saw brothers and sisters, everyone was lovely. They loved fellowship and loved to attend meetings.
If God had any requirement at that time, they would say yes readily. They would forsake the whole world to follow the Lord. At that time, it was indeed like a new creation.
How wonderful it would be if that condition could continue. Yet, in the experience of many of God’s children, it does not last very long.
Even though at the time we were first born again there was indeed a new creation, with old things passed away and all things new, that good experience does not last very long.
After a little while, it seems that we have fallen from the third heaven to the ground. Although there is a new creation and there is indeed new life in us, our old self still seems to be there.
We discover that sin is still powerful in us, and the world is still attractive to us. We discover that our condition is not as perfect as it was when we first believed.
At that time, some of us may wonder whether we have really been saved. If I am really saved, how come I have gone back to my previous condition?
Some, when they read 2 Corinthians 5:17, have a problem. It says, “If one is in Christ, then he is a new creation. Old things are passed away; everything is new; everything is from God.” Yet they ask, “How come it seems all the old things are still there?”
I remember our brother T. Austin-Sparks wrote about this in his writings. He said he had a problem because he felt that if one is in Christ and is a new creation, then everything old should have passed away, everything should be new, and everything should be from God.
One day he discovered that the original language does not say, “If one is in Christ, then he is a new creation.” It says, “If one is in Christ, there is new creation.”
He saw that it is in Christ that there is the new creation. If you are not in Christ, then all the old things are still with you.
When we were reborn, our spirit was reborn. Was our soul changed? Was our perishable body changed? No.
Indeed, at the time we believed in the Lord, the Bible tells us to repent and believe in Him. To repent is a change of mind.
When we repent, there is indeed a turning in our mind. Originally, our heart and mind were toward sin, but now our heart and mind turn, and we want to separate from sin.
Originally, our heart and mind were toward death, but now our heart and mind are turned toward life. Because of this turning of heart and mind, we can receive the Lord Jesus as our Saviour.
We cannot say that the heart and mind do not matter. But that turning was temporary, and it was only on the surface. It was not a deep turn in the soul and in life.
Although we have a new spirit, we still bring an old mind. When we are saved, the change within our soul is not that far-reaching.
What about our body? When we believe in the Lord, was there a great change in our body?
Indeed, before we believed in the Lord, we had sorrow and worry in our hearts, and our faces were sad. After we believed in the Lord, the burdens were lifted and our faces became bright.
Even so, this body is still a perishable body. It has not been changed into an incorruptible body.
Therefore, when we were first saved, the great change was actually in our spirit. A dead spirit became a living spirit. A spirit severed from God became a spirit communicating with God.
As far as our soul and body are concerned, we discover that there was no great change yet.
Salvation will not only reach our spirit. Salvation must also reach our soul and our body.
Today among God’s children, the normal understanding is that to be saved is simply to be reborn, to have our sins forgiven, to have eternal life, and then, when we die, to go to heaven. Outside of that, they think there is nothing else.
That is why the condition of Christians these days is so weak. God’s children do not know that God’s salvation is a comprehensive salvation.
In Scripture we see this term, “the salvation of the soul.” In the Chinese language, people may speak of the salvation of spirit and soul, but in the Bible salvation is not only concerned with our spirit being saved. It also emphasises that our souls need to be saved.
For example, Hebrews speaks about the salvation of the soul. Many people have difficulties when they read Hebrews, especially chapters 6 and 10, because they do not know that the salvation mentioned in Hebrews is such a great salvation.
That salvation is not confined to our spirit. It is a great salvation, and Hebrews speaks particularly about the salvation of our souls.
Let us read several verses from Hebrews 10, beginning with verse 35:
Cast not away therefore your boldness, which hath great recompense of reward.
For ye have need of patience, that, having done the will of God, ye may receive the promise.
For yet a very little while,
He that cometh shall come, and shall not tarry.
But My righteous one shall live by faith:
And if he shrink back, My soul hath no pleasure in him.
But we are not of them that shrink back unto perdition, but of them that have faith unto the saving of the soul.
In the original language, there is no mention of the spirit here. The salvation of the soul is set in contrast with perdition.
This perdition is not referring to going to hell. It refers to the kingdom. We do not have time to go into that now.
First and Second Peter both speak about the salvation of the soul. The Scripture we read in 1 Peter 1:9 speaks of “the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.”
Even James speaks about this. Some say that what James says in his letter is contrary to what Paul says in his letters, because Paul emphasises justification by faith and James emphasises justification by works.
Let us read James 1:21:
Wherefore putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
Again, there is no mention of the spirit. The Word is able to save your soul.
So we know that in Scripture there is this matter called the salvation of the soul. It is not manufactured by men. Not only does our spirit need to be saved; our soul needs to be saved too.
Why do our souls need to be saved? After you are saved, especially after the first love has passed, you discover that although the Holy Spirit lives in your spirit and brings the will and delight of God to you, there is another old life in your soul.
In your spirit, the Holy Spirit becomes your life. But in your soul, the old soul-life remains the life of that soul.
Then you see that your spirit and your soul are not consistent, and the soul is not cooperating with the spirit.
You discover that there seem to be two persons living within you. This is like Rebekah, who discovered that there were two children struggling in her womb.
This describes our experience after we are saved, when our souls are not yet saved. There seem to be two persons living there, and these two persons inside are in conflict with each other.
The Holy Spirit and the flesh are at war with each other. The lust of the flesh wars against the Spirit.
According to your inner man, you are willing to do the will of God. But the old soul-life seems so strong, and the new life seems still very tender.
Often you discover that the old life has the upper hand. When you follow the flesh, you discover a condition of death upon you.
Once in a while, you discover that this new life is winning, and then you feel there is life and peace within you.
Brothers and sisters, is that our experience? According to my inner man, I want to do the will of God, but my flesh obeys the law of sin and death.
This is just like Paul says in Romans 7. Sin still has power in you. What you want to do, you cannot do. What you do not want to do, you end up doing.
You are still bound by sin, and you still see that the world is attractive to you. Although you know that you should not love the world, you may still say in your heart, “It is so lovely. How can I not love it?”
So within you there is a struggle.
You are a Christian. You should be able to live out Christ, and you hope to live out Christ. Yet what is lived out is still the old self, and you do not know why.
Here we see that our soul needs to be saved. Our soul is not yet saved, and therefore we have to live this life of conflict.
On one hand, there is strife between the spirit and the soul. On the other hand, the spirit and soul seem to be mixed together.
You do not know what is the activity of the spirit and what is the activity of the soul. The soul can receive from outward conditions and material things, while the spirit can commune with God and know the will of God.
In your spirit, you know the will of God and are willing to do the will of God. But in your soul there is also a will, and sometimes you cannot distinguish between them.
Many young brothers and sisters often ask, “How can I tell the will of God? How can I tell that this is the will of God and that is my own thinking?”
This becomes a great difficulty. It is not that God is unwilling for us to know His will. Yet it seems that we must force Him and force Him before He tells us even a little about His will.
When we are serving the Lord, we may not be able to distinguish whether something is the strength of our soul or the strength of our spirit. The spirit and the soul are not distinguished.
Therefore, the lives of many Christians are not sufficiently sanctified. Our souls are not separated unto God and remain independent from Jesus. This is our common condition.
When you discover this condition, you realise that you really need salvation.
Personally, I feel that in our spiritual experience, when you come to the point where you discover that there is indeed a distinction between spirit and soul, and you really wish to live in the spirit instead of living in the soul, this is a step forward.
Many of God’s children have not yet had that sense. They simply live by themselves.
This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:1:
And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ.
After we believe in the Lord, we should be spiritual because our spirits are now alive. But Paul says, “I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual. I could only speak to you as unto fleshly, as unto babes in Christ.”
In the original language, “fleshly” means belonging to flesh.
We all love babies. We see their innocence, and we are happy. But we also know that a baby is extremely fleshly. He thinks only for himself.
If he is hungry, he wants to eat. If you are late a little while, he gets angry. Even if you want to sleep at night, he will not consider you. When he wants to cry, he cries. He is very much flesh.
This is the condition of a baby.
Among believers, many are like that. Although we belong to Christ, we are just babies.
We all go through that stage, but that stage cannot be too long. If it continues too long, it becomes a problem because one refuses to grow and still wants to remain a baby.
Such a person always thinks of himself and is totally self-centred. He is not able to display Christ.
Why is a believer a baby in Christ? Externally, people cannot tell the difference between him and a person in the world.
Some criticise believers and say, “You are no different from the people in the world.”
What these Corinthian believers did was no different from what the people in the world did. People in the world quarrel, and they quarrel. There is no difference from the world.
The only difference is that their spirit is now alive and they indeed have eternal life. But they do not live according to that eternal life, and that eternal life cannot be lived out because the life of the old soul surrounds it.
What they live out is nothing but self. It is not Christ.
Here we have to see one thing: our souls need to be saved. Christ has prepared salvation for our souls, but we may not know it and have not accepted it.
For that reason, we live in our soul-life and cannot live Christ out. It is impossible for us to live out Christ according to our own life.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh. Our flesh cannot change. You can decorate it a little, and you can make the outward working of the flesh appear somewhat different, but flesh is still flesh.
In the past, you sinned by your life of flesh. Now you may want to serve God with your life of flesh. But the carnal mind cannot submit to the will of God.
This is what we are told in Romans 8. The natural man does not know the will of God. He thinks the will of God is foolishness, and he does not want the will of God.
A Christian who remains a baby is a carnal Christian. In his spirit he is different from a person in the world, but in his soul he may be totally the same as the person in the world.
Therefore, our soul needs to be saved.
If we do not see this need, we will not pay attention to this great salvation God has prepared for us. But if we sense this need, then we want to see the salvation God has prepared for us.
This morning we want to examine this matter objectively. Tomorrow morning, the Lord willing, we will emphasise our subjective experience.
When our Lord Jesus was crucified, He bore our sins. He bore our sins Himself. All our sins were laid upon Him, and for our sake He bled. His blood cleansed all our sins.
The Bible tells us that Christ loved us and gave Himself for our sins. This we have accepted.
But when our Lord Jesus was crucified, He not only bore our sins. When our Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, He also bore all our old persons, all our selves, and crucified them together with Himself.
The Bible says that Christ loved us and gave Himself for us. He not only gave Himself for our sins; He also gave Himself for us.
On the cross, He not only became our Substitute; He also became our Representative.
When our Lord died on the cross, you and I were crucified and died in Him.
The Bible says that our Lord Jesus is the last Adam. We know that the first man was Adam, and all that are born of Adam are in Adam.
We have all received that fallen life of Adam. The nature and character of Adam’s fallen life are distributed within us.
No matter how you live, you are still Adam. This is the nature and character of Adam’s life.
God established our Lord Jesus as the last Adam. What does “the last Adam” mean? It means that He is the concluding One. The race of Adam is discontinued in Him.
I often like to use a legend from China. We know that we are descendants of the Yellow Emperor. The Yellow Emperor had a war with a barbarian king, and there was a great fog. The Yellow Emperor invented a compass, knew the direction, and won the victory.
Suppose the Yellow Emperor had not invented the compass, had been defeated, and had been killed by the barbarian king. Would we, his descendants, be here today? We would not be here.
There would be no Chinese in the world. Yet today there are more than one billion Chinese because the Yellow Emperor won the victory.
If the Yellow Emperor had died, then we all would have died. We would not exist.
Thank and praise God. In Adam, everyone needs to die. But when the Lord Jesus came, He came as the last Adam. When the last Adam died on the cross, Adam’s race was concluded.
Romans 6:6 says:
Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him,
that the body of sin might be done away,
that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin.
This old man is singular. It is one man, and we all are in that one man.
But that old man has been crucified with Christ. In Christ, God has finished the old generation and the old creation.
This is the salvation that God has prepared for us. We have to be separated from the old man, from the old creation, and from the law of sin and death.
God has prepared this salvation. He has crucified you and me with Christ.
When our Lord Jesus was crucified, although you and I had not yet been born, in the eyes of God we were all in Christ. He was the last Adam.
His one death for all became the grace of redemption. This is the salvation God has prepared for us.
When we preach the gospel, we tell unbelievers, “You do not have to die because Someone died for you.”
All the people in the world are afraid of death. They are under the power of death and cannot escape it. It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment.
Therefore, we preach the gospel to them: believers shall never die. We may sleep, sometimes for a longer time, but we do not die. Believers shall never die.
But there is also a gospel for believers. The gospel to the believer is that you do not have to live by yourself, because Someone has lived for you.
We want to live Christ out. We strive very hard, but we cannot overcome the law of sin, and we cannot overcome our own self.
That is our condition. Thank and praise God: today we do not have to live ourselves, because we have been crucified with Christ.
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me:
and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
Now that we have been crucified with Christ, how shall we live? Romans 6:11 tells us that we must reckon ourselves dead unto sin in Christ.
We must also reckon ourselves alive unto God in Christ Jesus.
Christ has accomplished salvation to deliver us from this fallen soul-life. How shall we live today? We have to believe.
Today we believe that Christ bore our sins. We were not born two thousand years ago, and we did not see Him bear our sins. Yet we believe that Christ bore our sins on the cross, and our sins are forgiven.
The same principle applies here. We must see that two thousand years ago we were crucified with Christ. This is the salvation God has accomplished in Christ.
What we need is to believe. Believe that you have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer you who live; Christ lives in you.
Romans 6:13 tells us to offer ourselves to God and to offer ourselves as servants of righteousness.
That is to say, we now allow the life of Christ to be lived out through us.
Some ask, “I believe Romans 6. I believe my old man was crucified with Christ, and I reckon myself to be dead. But no matter how I reckon, I am still alive. The more I reckon, the more alive I seem to be. What is going on?”
I think this is very simple. You have forgotten a small but important phrase: “in Christ.”
When we say that we reckon ourselves dead unto sin, the original language says that we reckon ourselves in Christ dead unto sin.
If you are not in Christ, no matter how you reckon, you are still alive to yourself. This is only true in Christ.
In Christ, we are alive unto God. If you are not in Christ, you cannot be alive unto God.
On one hand, we have to reckon ourselves dead to sin. On the other hand, we have to abide in Christ.
Let us not think that we only have to believe once and then everything will be fine. The salvation of the spirit is once and for all, but the salvation of the soul requires that we believe and continue in Christ.
If we continue to abide in Christ, then this fact of dying together with Him and living together with Him shall be lived out and expressed in us.
This is the salvation God has prepared for us. Lord willing, tomorrow we will share more about the experience of this salvation.
Let us bow down and pray.
Lord, we thank You and praise You because Your salvation is so perfect. Not only have You saved us from such great death, but You still want to deliver us and fully save us.
Lord, You have not only delivered our spirit; You shall deliver our soul, and You shall save our body.
Lord, Your will is for us to be holy and sanctified, and at the day of Your appearing, that we may be preserved blameless—our spirit and soul and body—holy and without blemish.
Lord, may that will be done in us. In the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.