And 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.
For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword,
and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow,
and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.
And there is no creature that is not manifest in His sight:
but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do.
And he that doth not take his cross and follow after Me, is not worthy of Me.
He that findeth his life shall lose it;
and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.
And this word life is the same word as soul. So we can read it this way: “He that findeth his soul shall lose it; and he that loseth his soul for My sake shall find it.”
Dear Lord, we do want to thank Thee for all that Thou hast done for us. And we want to thank Thee for Thy precious Word, because Thy Word is truth. Thy Word is light; Thy Word is life.
Lord, we do pray that Thy Word will really be opened to us, that we may not only understand it, but that we may enter into all truth, to the praise of Thy glory. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
We have been considering together this matter of being wholly sanctified: our whole spirit, soul, and body being preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus. Because this is the calling of God. This is the will of God for all who are redeemed by His precious blood.
It is God’s purpose that all who are redeemed should be saved to the uttermost—not just barely saved, but fully saved. Not only our spirit, but also our soul and our body—our whole being—being wholly sanctified; that is to say, separated completely unto God Himself.
And that is to be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus. Our Lord Jesus’ coming is soon, and we shall all stand before His presence. It is God’s will that, when we stand in His presence, we are preserved blameless and wholly sanctified. This is the will of God, and this should be our passion, our desire.
We have already considered this matter of our spirit being wholly sanctified, and we do not have time to go back. But this morning, we would like to continue on to consider our soul being wholly sanctified. How can our soul be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus?
Now, for the sake of some brothers and sisters who may not have that basic understanding, probably we have to lay a little foundation first.
You know, when God created man in Genesis 2:7, He took the red earth and formed it into the form of a man. That is our body. Then He breathed the breath of life into that earthen form, and that breath of life, which comes directly from God, became our human spirit.
Because God is Spirit, He gave us a human spirit that we may commune and communicate with God. And as God’s breath entered into this earthen vessel, a third element came into being. So the Bible says, “And man became a living soul.”
So you find, in the creation of man, man is created as a tripartite being: spirit, soul, and body. Our spirit gives us God-consciousness. Our body gives us world-consciousness. It is our soul that gives us self-consciousness.
This is what we are. The soul is the central part of our being. It is not the highest part; the highest part is our spirit, because that enables us to be in relationship with God. But our soul is our very being. That is what you are. It is I, me, myself. It is the seat of our personality.
According to God’s divine order, we use our spirit to touch God and to receive from God His will. Then our soul will embrace it, love it, consider it, and will it. Then our soul will pass God’s will to our body to act it out—to do the will of God. Now, that is the divine order of God for human beings.
So, dear brothers and sisters, we are talking today of ourselves. That is what you are. Do you know yourself? If we want to know God, we need to know ourselves too, because soul is ourselves.
When man sinned, our spirit was dead. By that, it does not mean that it was no longer there. As an organ, as an element, it was still there; but it had lost its proper communication with God.
In other words, when man sinned, our human spirit was dead unto God—no more communication, cut off, alienated from the life of God. So what remained was soul and body, still functioning.
But when sin entered into the world through man, sin became the dominating power in our life. Our soul was contaminated. Our soul was dominated by the power of sin. Therefore, our soul is lost.
If you read Ephesians 2:1-3: “And you, being dead in your trespasses and sins.” And you—that is your soul—because soul and you are one. Oftentimes you find in Scripture that soul and man are synonymous. When Jacob entered into Egypt, the Bible says seventy souls entered into Egypt, because soul is synonymous with man. It is what you are.
So far as God is concerned, your soul is dead. Not only is your spirit dead; your soul is dead. That is to say, your soul has lost its proper function. It has lost its direction. It has lost its source. And when the soul is left to itself instead of being under God, that soul is a lost soul.
What are the conditions of the lost soul? You have walked according to the age of this world. You walk according to the custom, the fashion, of the world; according to the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.
Not only do you become worldly, but you are also under the authority of the evil spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. And what is our manner of life? Among whom we also all once had our manner of life in the lusts of our flesh, doing what the flesh and the thoughts will to do.
In other words, we have fallen into our sinful, fallen soul, dominated by the sinful flesh, the sinful soul, the sinful self. We were children by nature of wrath, even as the rest. After man sinned, he became a son of wrath, a disobedient child to God. That was our soul condition.
Now turn to Ephesians 4:17-19. Here is another description: “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding.”
When your soul is lost, it becomes a sinful soul. You find that all the functions of our soul have lost their proper function. Your mind becomes vain, your understanding becomes darkened, and there is ignorance within you.
The faculties of our soul are threefold:
You know that you are because you think. You know that you are because you feel. You know that you are because you will—you have your will. So these are the functions of our soul.
Our soul, like our spirit, is immaterial and incorporeal. It is not like the body, which is a corporal, physical body. But the soul is immaterial, and yet it is real. It is a substance, though not a material substance. How do we know our soul? We know our soul by its functions: by our will, our volition; by our mind, our thought; and by our feeling, our sensation.
You are different from anybody else because the way you think, the way you feel, and the way you will are different from anybody else. That is your individuality. That is what we are.
But after we have sinned, you find that the life of the soul—the self-life—is sinful, corrupted, and under the domination of the evil one. Therefore, your mind becomes vain.
If you have enlightenment from above, like Solomon in Ecclesiastes, you look at everything under the sun and say, “Vanity of vanities.” But before we are enlightened, how our mind goes after the vanity of this world.
Our understanding is darkened. We think we know; we think we understand. But our understanding does not have the right standard. It is darkened so far as God is concerned.
And how about our will? You find the hardness of the heart. It says, “By reason of the hardness of their heart,” they give themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. In other words, our will is corrupted. We will to do the things that are unpleasing to God, sinful to God.
And how about our feeling? It says, “Having cast off all feeling.” Our feelings become corrupted. That is to say, our whole soul has fallen. So far as God is concerned, this living soul is now a lost soul, a dead soul.
That was our condition before we were saved. That is the condition of the people of this world. They may consider themselves enlightened, but actually their understanding is darkened.
But thank God, He loves our soul. You know, Charles Wesley has a hymn called “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” God loves our soul, and that is the reason why He comes to us to save us.
He comes not only to save our spirit and sanctify it, but He comes to save our soul and to sanctify it. That is why you find in 1 Peter 1:9 the term “the salvation of your souls.”
Now, brothers and sisters, usually we think that salvation is limited to our spirit: “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” But remember, salvation also reaches our soul. Our soul needs to be saved just as much as our spirit needs to be saved.
In other words, after we are saved, our soul is being saved. We would like to approach this matter from an experiential viewpoint. Spiritual experience must be based upon spiritual truth, but we do not have time to deal fully with the truth side—what Christ has done for us, which is the basis of our spiritual experience.
This morning, we would like simply to focus our attention on spiritual experience. How is our soul being saved? This is something that is going on today. After we are saved—that is, after our spirit is awakened—the salvation of the soul begins, and it continues throughout our life.
So far as our spiritual experience is concerned, if you are saved, what happened? You received a new life. The Bible calls it eternal life.
In other words, the Holy Spirit not only gives rebirth to your dead spirit and quickens your dead spirit into a new spirit; the Holy Spirit Himself also comes and dwells in our new spirit. And a new life is given to you, and that new life dwells in your spirit.
When we are saved, we receive a new life. That new life is none other than the life of our Lord Jesus. He Himself, as it were, comes into our spirit and dwells there. He is the life of our spirit.
When His life comes into you, He brings to you His new nature. Every life has its nature. The life of a bird has a nature to fly. The life of a fish has a nature to swim in the water.
The Adamic life, the fallen life, the life of our soul, has the nature of being earthly, natural, and even devilish. That is the nature of that Adamic life in you—that old life in you, your fallen self. It has a life there. It is the natural life. The so-called natural life is the fallen life; it is earthly and even devilish. That is what you find in James.
But this new life is the life of Christ, and this new life is in your spirit. This new life is spiritual, heavenly, and godly.
Thank God, when He gives us this new life—this eternal life, that life of Christ in us—it carries with it a new nature. We will incline toward that which is spiritual, toward that which is heavenly, and toward that which is godly.
You want to be like God. You want to commune with God. You want to do the will of God. That is a new desire created within you. Brothers and sisters, do you have that kind of new desire when you are saved?
Before you were saved, what interested you was the world. God was of no interest to you. But after you are saved, you have a new desire to know God, to approach God, to fellowship with Him, to pray, and even to read the Word of God in order that you may know Him better. Brothers and sisters, a new nature begins to express itself in you.
How do we know that we have eternal life? The Gospel of John tells us that if you believe in the Lord Jesus as the Son of God, you have eternal life. And 1 John, the whole book, is written for the purpose of telling us how we know that we have eternal life.
You have eternal life because you begin to see light. You begin to walk in the light, as God is in the light. You know you have eternal life because God is righteous and you begin to practice righteousness. You know you have eternal life because God is love, and you begin to love—not only love God, but love those who are begotten of God.
These prove that new life is in you. The new nature begins to express itself through you. Now, do you have such experience? I believe you all have that.
But after you are saved, I cannot tell you how long it takes. With some people it is longer; with other people it is shorter. But sooner or later, you discover that it is not all light, all righteousness, and all love.
You begin to discover that in you—that is, in your flesh—there is still darkness, still unrighteousness, and still unlovingness. In other words, in your spirit you love God, and you love to do His will; but in your soul you discover the old man, the self, the flesh, still dragging you down.
You come into a conflict, a civil war, within yourself. Now, brothers and sisters, are you having that civil war? You feel that within you there are two persons, as it were.
So far as your new man is concerned, you love God. You want to do His will. You want to do what is right. You want to walk in the light, and you have some light too. But you discover, in your old man, in your soul, in your flesh, that there is another life there.
This sinful, fallen self-life still wants to do the old things, go the old way, love the world, even love sin, and has no desire to do God’s will. So there is a conflict within you.
You find this in Galatians 5:17: the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. There is a civil war going on within you.
You think that after you are saved everything will be rosy, everything will be all right. But sooner or later you discover that there are two lives within you, and these two lives are struggling, striving, fighting against each other.
Now, do you have this kind of experience? If you have that kind of experience, actually it is proof that you are saved, that you have the life of Christ in you.
This civil war will increase in your life when you consecrate yourself to the Lord. We often say that the first Christian experience after you are saved is consecration.
What should be your first Christian experience? The first Christian experience is that you are constrained by the love of God to present your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. This is your spiritual, intelligent service.
Now, brothers and sisters, if you have not presented your body as a living sacrifice, you are still keeping yourself. You are still the master, as it were, of your life, even after you are saved. Well, that civil war probably will not be very intense.
But your Christian life will not be very much different from the people of this world. In other words, the more intense the civil war, the better.
After you consecrate yourself, the civil war will be intensified. Why? Because after you consecrate yourself to the Lord, the Bible says your mind will be renewed.
What does it mean? It means that in the past, your mind loved the things of this world and conformed to the fashion of this world. But now your mind begins to prove what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.
There is a change in your mind. When we were saved, there was some change, but it was very superficial. But after consecration, the renewing of the mind begins to come into your life. Your mind begins to be renewed, to love the will of God, to want to understand it, and to want to do the will of God, instead of still loving sin and the things of this world.
Because of this, your civil war is intensified. That is Romans 7. Romans 7 is the conflict between the mind—that is, the renewed mind—and the flesh.
In Romans 7, you find this man Paul after he was saved. We believe it was his experience after he was saved. His mind was renewed. He knew what was the will of God. Not only that, but his will willed to do the will of God. But he discovered that he did not have the power to do it.
He said, “What I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that I do.” It is not I who do it; it is sin in me that does it. “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” In me—that is, in my flesh—there is no good thing.
The conclusion of Romans 7, in the last verse, is this: “So then I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” You see the conflict there? The conflict is intensified.
Another thing: even though your mind is renewed, because it is still in the beginning stage, you will also discover that you have a problem. The problem is that you do not know whether something is from God or whether it is from yourself.
Am I doing it out of myself, or am I doing it out of God? You begin to wonder. Not only do you not have the power to do God’s will, but you begin to be perplexed, not knowing exactly whether something comes from your spirit or from your soul.
If it comes from your spirit, it is of God. If it comes from your soul, it is of man, of the flesh, and unacceptable to God, no matter how good it is. This becomes a problem to you.
So now you come to another experience: the dividing of the soul and spirit. The dividing of soul and spirit actually is the second Christian experience, strictly speaking, after consecration.
After consecration, there will be the dividing of soul and spirit. If there is no consecration, you will not feel the need of such dividing, because you are mainly living in the soul-life. Everything comes out of your soul. Even your worship, even your service, come from the soul and soul-power.
But after you have really consecrated yourself, you really want to be wholly set apart for God. Then the dividing of spirit and soul becomes a necessity. Now, do you sense the need of such a division, or do you think that soul and spirit are one and that it does not matter?
The Bible says to us very clearly that the natural man—that is, the soulish man—does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, cannot know them, and is totally unacceptable to God.
How can the soul and spirit be divided? In Hebrews 4:12, the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the division of soul and spirit, as of joints and marrow. Every thought and intent of the heart will be exposed, because there is nothing unexposed in the sight of God.
Marrow is the blood-producing element, but marrow is in the bone. You do not see the marrow until the bone is cracked. In like manner, our soul is the shell, as it were, of our spirit.
After we sinned, our spirit was completely imprisoned. It is like the bone with the marrow. For the spirit to be released, there has to be a penetrating and a dividing that will show us what is of the spirit and what is of the soul.
So far as our Christian experience is concerned, we come to a point when we begin to sense the need of the dividing of spirit and soul. We do not want to live in our soul-life; we want to live in our spirit-life. We do not want to serve in our soul-power; we want to serve in our spirit-power.
Often we ask ourselves this question: Is it from the spirit, or is it from the soul? Is it from God, or is it from me? Brothers and sisters, are you puzzled? The more you try to divide, the more confused you become.
At that point, you find that your spiritual life is paralyzed. I like to use the illustration of a centipede. A centipede has one hundred feet and can walk very fast. One day the centipede said to itself, “I wonder which of my legs moves first.”
So it began to figure out which of its hundred legs moved first, and it got stuck. It could not move anymore. After a while it said, “Oh, it’s all right,” gave up, and off it went.
Spiritually speaking, some Christians are in this state. They are paralyzed. They love the Lord. They want to be completely in the Lord and for the Lord. They are afraid of their flesh, of themselves, of their soul-power. They try to analyze themselves; the more they analyze, the more paralyzed they become, and they do nothing.
You may think this is a bad sign. No, this is a good sign. If you are really progressing in the Lord, you will come through that stage.
How can the soul and the spirit be divided? Hebrews 4 tells us the secret. It tells us that the Word of God is living and active, like a two-edged sword, penetrating and dividing.
The picture is this: when you bring a sacrifice to God, you put the sacrifice on the altar. Then the priest comes with a sharp knife. He is a trained butcher, so he knows exactly how to cut that sacrifice and not make a mess of it.
He cuts according to the formation of the bones of the body—a clean cut. He penetrates; he divides. So everything is exposed: the bone, the marrow. Nothing is hidden in the sight of God.
What is the Word of God? The Bible tells us that the Word of God is the sword, a two-edged sword, sharp. But whose sword is it? Who is wielding that sword?
If you wield that sword, you cut up people and cut yourself. You make a mess of everything. The One who uses that sword is the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit today represents Christ as the Priest, the High Priest. He alone has the ability, the knowledge, and the power to make a clean cut.
When the Holy Spirit is using the Word of God, that Word is living and active. When we are using the Word of God ourselves, we hurt ourselves and we hurt others. We are not supposed to do that. Let the Holy Spirit use the Word of God.
As we go on with the Lord and are confused, what should we do? Do nothing. Lie on the altar. Do not climb down. Do not struggle. Lie on the altar.
Allow the Holy Spirit. He knows just the timing, just the occasion, and He knows when He will use that living and active Word. God’s Word becomes living and active; it is no longer merely written words.
All you have read, all the Word stored in your memory, the Holy Spirit will bring out at the right moment and show you what is of God and what is not of God, what is of the spirit and what is not of the spirit. There is no more mixture. That is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Then the intents and thoughts of your heart—that is, of your soul—will all be exposed. Intent is will; thought is mind. Everything will be exposed, naked before God. That is the way we learn the dividing of the spirit and the soul.
Brothers and sisters, we need to learn this lesson. The dividing of spirit and soul is more than something we can do. We have to leave it with the Holy Spirit. But what we can do is be quiet on the altar and let Him do the work.
That is the dividing of spirit and soul. Gradually, through the living Word of God, we begin to understand what is of the spirit and what is of the soul.
That is the second step. Now the third: the deliverance of the soul, or the salvation of the soul. How can our soul be delivered from the domination of sin, from the domination of self, from the domination of our flesh? How can we be delivered?
Do we feel the need to be saved, to be delivered? The Apostle Paul said, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” Thank God, through Jesus Christ.
When we come to this matter of the deliverance of the soul, before we touch upon the experiential side, I have to say a little about the truth side, the objective side. In other words, what has Christ done for us?
He not only bore our sins—all the sins we have committed—in His body on the cross, so that all our sins are borne away, carried away, and forgiven.
But when Christ died on the cross, He not only died as our substitute; He also died as our representative.
Therefore, the Bible says in Romans 6:6, “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him.” This is something we need to know. When Christ was crucified, our old man—the old self, the old I—was included in Christ. So when He died on the cross, our old man was dead also.
This is what Christ has done for us. This is something we have to believe. That is where faith comes in.
Romans 6:11 says, “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.” It is only true in Christ. If you look at your feelings, it is not true. But if you look at the finished work of Christ, it is true.
So you have to reckon—count—yourself as dead unto sin in Christ and as alive unto God in Christ. That is a matter of faith.
After you stand on that ground, you yield your body as an instrument of righteousness unto holiness, unto God. That is what you need to do. This is the objective side, the foundation for the salvation of your soul.
Now you come into the experiential side, the subjective side. The subjective side is what Christ has said to us today: if you gain your soul-life, you lose it; if you lose your soul-life for My sake, you gain it.
If you love your soul, you love your life, and you will lose it. If, for My sake, you hate your life, you save it. Now, what does that mean?
It means that in our daily life, we need to deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Him. That is just what it means.
Because if we deny ourselves—that is, our will—we are willing to say no to ourselves, to our soul-life. It has its demands; we say no. “You are dead. I will not listen to you.”
Then the Holy Spirit will arrange crosses to come into our life: our relationships with people, our circumstances, the things that occur to us. All these things are under the hand of the Holy Spirit. He will provide the cross for us to bear.
You do not need to create any cross for others or for yourself. Let the Holy Spirit, in His wisdom, arrange your circumstances. We call it the discipline of the Holy Spirit.
He will show you what the cross is. When God’s mind conflicts with your mind, when God’s will conflicts with your will, when God’s feeling conflicts with your feeling, that is a cross.
Because you have denied yourself, you are able to take up the cross and follow the Lord. When you do that, so far as your soul-life is concerned, you lose it, because you suffer. You love yourself, and you suffer.
But if you lose it today for the sake of the Lord, you gain it for eternity. Why? Because a transformation begins to come into your soul.
Instead of your fallen life, flesh, self—that is, the life of your soul—being in charge of all the faculties of your soul, all the expressions and manifestations of what you are, you are no longer on the throne.
Gradually, by taking up the cross and following the Lord, self is dethroned and Christ is enthroned in your soul.
This is Ephesians 3: the strengthening of your inner man, that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith. Christ comes into your soul. Not only is He the life of your spirit, but that life begins to come over your soul.
He is now using all the faculties of your soul. Your feeling, your thinking, and your willing express Christ instead of expressing yourself. That is the salvation of the soul.
That is your soul being wholly sanctified. That is what Paul said: “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” “For to me to live is Christ.”
Brothers and sisters, that is the salvation of the soul. That is the sanctification of the soul. That is how the soul is preserved blameless at the coming of the Lord.
When we stand before the Lord, we shall all be like Him. Therefore, there is no fear. “As He is, even so are we in this world.”
So, brothers and sisters, very briefly and simply, we put this matter before us: our soul needs to be saved. This is the prescribed way in the Word of God toward the salvation of the soul. May the Lord help us.
Dear Lord, we are touching something that concerns ourselves so intimately that we oftentimes find ourselves in darkness and confusion. But we praise and thank Thee that Thy Word is clear; Thy truth is certain.
We thank Thee that Thou lovest us also, and that Thy desire is to save our soul to the uttermost. O Lord, we want to give our soul to Thee, and pray that Thou wilt, by Thy Spirit, work out Thy salvation. We ask in Thy precious name.