Please turn to 1 Timothy 4. We will read from verse 8 through verse 10.
Exercise thyself unto godliness:
for bodily exercise is profitable for a little;
but godliness is profitable for all things,
having promise of the life which now is,
and of that which is to come.
Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation.
For to this end we labor and strive,
because we have our hope set on the living God,
Who is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe.
Perhaps the better translation is, “Exercise thyself unto godliness.” The life here is eternal life—the life which now is and that which is to come. The saying is faithful; it is true and worthy of all acceptation. We should accept it.
Dear Lord, how we praise and thank Thee that it is Thou, the Lamb of God, Who hast brought us to Thy house. We thank Thee that we may enjoy the house of God and are able to behold Thy face and be transformed from glory to glory according to Thy image, by the Lord the Spirit.
So, as we gather here this morning, Lord, we turn our hearts to Thee. May Thy Spirit work in each and every heart. Give us understanding, that we may be able to hear what Thou hast to say and become what Thou wantest us to be. This is all for Thy own glory. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, this morning I would like to share with you something which is very basic, but very important. It is this matter of spiritual exercise.
Now, the apostle Paul tells us that bodily exercise is profitable for a little. In recent days, I believe we all have heard—and have all been bombarded with—the thought of physical fitness. This country is beginning to realize that our young people are not physically fit because they spend so much time before the computer. They do not exercise themselves.
People are beginning to realize that eating well, drinking well, and sleeping well do not necessarily give you a healthy body. We are told again and again that we need to exercise. Physical fitness is the theme of the world today, and indeed bodily exercise is profitable.
But in comparison with something else, which we would like to address this morning, its profit is for a little. That little means that it is profitable, but the profit is limited to our body. It may help a little with our soul; in other words, if you have a healthy body, you may think better. But it does not do any good to your spirit.
Physical exercise is important, but it is just for this present physical life. It does not sanctify you. It does not prepare you for life eternal.
This does not mean, brothers and sisters, that because it profits only a little, we neglect it. If you do, you will suffer for it. But to us Christians, there is something far more important than physical exercise: it is exercise unto godliness.
In other words, the reason why we are here, the reason why the Lord saves us, is because He has a purpose for our lives. It is not His purpose merely to deliver us out of hell and put us into heaven, as if there were so much vacancy in heaven that it needs you to be there. It is far more than that.
God has a purpose for each and every one whom He has brought into this world. He wants us to be conformed to the image of His beloved Son. To be like God—that is what godliness means: to take up His character in our lives, that we may truly manifest His glory. That is the glorious purpose of God for each and every one of us.
In order to arrive at this goal, brothers and sisters, it is true that God has made every provision for us to get there. But there is something that He wants to involve us in: He wants us to exercise unto godliness.
To put it another way, God has His purpose for your life, and He has made every provision for you to arrive there. But there is one thing that He requires of you: you need to exercise your spirit. By exercising your spirit—not your body, not your soul, but your spirit—you will find that His grace will bring you there.
Unfortunately, we find that even among believers, we do not have any idea that we have a spirit, nor do we know how to exercise our spirit.
Now, to those who do not know the Lord, this is no wonder. Even though God created us in three parts—we are tripartite—God created us with a spirit, a soul, and a body.
God used red earth to form our body. Therefore, you find that our body has the same elements as the elements in the earth. That gives us world-consciousness and enables us to contact the world, because we are of the same nature.
Then the Bible says that God breathed His breath into the nostrils of man—something that came directly from God Himself. Our body, He formed with red earth; but into that earthly vessel God breathed His breath. That is the wonder of it: something that comes directly from within God, and He put it into us.
To make it simple, when He breathed His breath into us, that breath became our human spirit. Now, God is Spirit. We cannot contact God unless we have a spirit.
This is the beauty of man. This is the wonder of man. What makes man different from all the beings in this world—the animals, the mountains, and all the created things on this earth—is that man has a spirit. There is something of God within us, and because we have a spirit, we are able to communicate with God. It takes the same nature to communicate.
I remember many years ago, when Russia sent cosmonauts into outer space. A cosmonaut came back and said, “There is no God, because I have been to outer space. I looked around; I did not see any God.” Foolishness! How can a physical body contact God, Who is Spirit?
The dignity of man is not because he has a body. Compare your body with a mountain—it is almost nothing. The dignity of man does not lie in his soul, even though his soul has huge capacities. The dignity of man is in having a spirit that can commune with God and receive God’s life into him, be transformed, and become like God.
Taking upon himself or herself the character of Christ—wonderful!
But, dear brothers and sisters, because of sin, our Lord God said to Adam, “There is one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that you should not eat. Because if you eat thereof, you will die immediately.”
Now, we know that Adam and Eve, our forefathers, ate of that forbidden tree, but they lived much longer than we do. If we live to be one hundred years old, people say, “Well, you are a rarity.” But they lived hundreds of years. So far as the body was concerned, they had sons and daughters and lived in their soul relationships.
But the word of God is true. On the day they ate of the forbidden tree, something died, and that was the spirit. The human spirit, which is the dignity of man, was lost. Man could not contact God. Man had to live on his own, and what a tragedy we find in this world.
So, to an unbeliever, it is no wonder that he does not know he has a spirit, because the spirit is dead toward God.
When I was a young boy, we had an American grandmother living with us. She was a missionary to China from Virginia, and she loved China so much that after she retired, she stayed with us. We called her Grandma.
Oftentimes, when she was exasperated, she would say, “Oh, my soul and body! Where is the spirit?”
Now, with us believers, this is different. When we believe in the Lord Jesus, something wonderful happens. Brothers and sisters, I am not going to approach it from a theological or doctrinal standpoint. I want to go into it from the experiential and practical viewpoint.
What do you mean when you say that you are saved?
If you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, then you are begotten of God. You find that in 1 John 5:1.
He that hath the Son hath the life;
he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.
This is 1 John 5:12.
What do you mean by being born again? Born from above. When you believe in Jesus, you are saved. Negatively, all your sins have been forgiven through the blood of our dear Lord Jesus. On the positive side, you receive life—eternal life. The life of Christ comes into you. You are born into the family of God.
You remember, in John 3:6:
That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Now, that is born again. He who is born of the Holy Spirit has a new human spirit.
So, when we are saved, brothers and sisters, not only do we receive life—eternal life, the life of Christ comes into us—but where does that life reside? Where does He dwell? Does that life dwell in your body? Does that life dwell in your soul?
It is too divine to dwell merely in your body and in your soul. It has to dwell in something that is of His nature. So the life that you receive—Christ—where does He dwell in you? If you do not have a new spirit, He has nowhere to dwell.
You find that he who is born of the Spirit is spirit. That is to say, our dead spirit is quickened by the Holy Spirit, renewed by the Holy Spirit, and becomes a new spirit. God is Spirit, and now your spirit is renewed.
His life can dwell in your spirit. Christ dwells in you—that is, in your spirit. Furthermore, when you are saved, you receive something so precious: even God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit. He comes and dwells in your spirit.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, do you see what you have received when you are born again? Not only are your sins forgiven, but you have a new life. Christ becomes your life, and that life dwells in your new spirit. The Holy Spirit also dwells in your spirit.
The Holy Spirit bears witness with your spirit that you are children of God, and you cry out, “Abba, Father.” In other words, your relationship with God is renewed. That is your first experience.
That is what you have received. Now, what is life for? Why does Christ come to be your life?
People think that eternal life is for the future, not for today. Eternal life is like a life-insurance policy: while you are living, you cannot enjoy it; it can only begin to be effective after you die. So some people say, “Well, you believe in the Lord Jesus, you have eternal life, and you are guaranteed to go to heaven; but that is not available today.”
So, they say, you have to live your own life, live by your old life, and try to be better and better, because eternal life does not work today.
Brothers and sisters, what a mistake! Eternal life begins today. Life is to live; otherwise, life has no meaning. Why is Christ your life if He is not to live in you and for you?
This life that is given to you is to transform you and grow you into maturity, into the likeness of the image of Christ. It is like a seed that comes into you, and that seed in your spirit has to grow and grow and grow until your whole being is glorified.
Remember, all this is in your spirit. All this growing process is in your spirit. What do you mean by spiritual life?
Spiritual life does not mean that you have a healthy body. Spiritual life does not mean that you have an intelligent mind. Spiritual life means that the life in your spirit is living and growing, transforming and conforming you to the image of Christ. That is spiritual life, and only that is spiritual life.
You find that there must be something going on deep down within you. That is the purpose of God. That is the way of God, and that is what we need to pay special attention to.
Exercise unto godliness is an exercise in your spirit. The more you exercise, the better you grow. If you do not exercise it, it is there, but it remains dormant, and you are not profited by it. You will miss the whole purpose of God’s salvation.
But unfortunately, brothers and sisters, many Christians neglect their spirit and neglect their spiritual life. Many Christians do not exercise the great gift that God has given to us: the spirit. Because of this, we do not grow as we should.
This is something that has bothered me in recent days. It puzzles me before the Lord: how is it that we believe in the Lord Jesus, have His life in us for so many years, and yet there is so little growth? What is the reason? Where is the problem?
Maybe the problem is that we know how to exercise our body. We even know how to exercise our soul, because from childhood we have been learning. We have been sent to school, studying and gathering information from outside to make us wise and intelligent. But we do not know how to exercise our spirit.
Let me try to analyze how you are saved.
The Bible tells us that we have sinned; all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But if you tell anyone, “You have sinned. You are a sinner,” will he or she receive it?
Suppose I come to a person and say, “You are a sinner.” What will he say? “I am not in jail. I am still free. I am not a sinner.” We are in such darkness that we do not even know that we have sinned. We do not even know how seriously we have sinned.
When I was in high school, I was brought up in a Christian family. I knew the Bible. I knew the plan of salvation. But I never believed. Why? Not because I did not believe in God; mentally, I did. Not because I did not believe Jesus is the Saviour of the world; I did.
But I did not feel that I needed to be saved. I thought, “I am good. I am a good student. I am friendly with everybody.” So my feeling was, “Jesus is the Saviour of the world. He comes to save sinners. Thank God for that, but I do not need Him.” I was in total darkness.
Brothers and sisters, how did you begin to realize that you had sinned? How did you begin to realize that you were a great sinner, and that unless something happened, your eternity was finished? How did that come about to you? Recall what happened.
In John 16, we are told that when the Holy Spirit comes, He will convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.
Even though our spirit was dead so far as relationship with God is concerned, what is death? Scientifically speaking, death is the cessation of communication with one’s proper environment.
The proper environment of the body is the world. When you lose contact with the world, you are dead. You cannot smell, you cannot feel, you cannot see, you cannot hear, and you cannot touch. You are dead.
The same thing applies to your spirit. What do you mean when you say that your spirit was dead? It lost its contact, its communication, with its proper environment. The proper environment of your spirit is God. So when you lose that contact, you are dead.
It is not that the organ of the spirit is annihilated. No, the organ is still there. How do you know? It is easy to prove. You cannot contact God, but you can contact evil spirits. It shows that the organ is there, but it has lost its proper communication.
Your spirit was dead, but because the organ is still there, so far as the function of your spirit is concerned, it is in a coma. That is the best way I can describe it. It is in a coma.
Because it is in a coma, do you know that sometimes people in a coma will suddenly wake up for a while? That is what happens. Our spirit was in a coma so far as God is concerned, but in every life there are occasions when suddenly your conscience wakes up, maybe for a little while.
When does it happen? When you are in danger.
I remember the story of a missionary. This is a true story. One day he saw a man preaching that there was no God—an atheist.
This was the man whom he had rescued the other day. The man was drowning, and the missionary heard him cry, “God, save me!” He went and rescued him. Yet the same man, the other day, began to preach atheism.
So the missionary confronted him and said, “Why did you cry, ‘God, save me,’ in your desperation?” Well, the Holy Spirit had touched his conscience and touched his intuition, because intuitively he knew there was a God. When he was in danger, he cried to heaven, to God, for help.
In Chinese, we have a proverb: when the bird is dying, its cry is mournful; when a man is dying, his words are always good. He tries to say some good thing. Why? Because he knows he is going to meet his Maker.
Is it not true that the Holy Spirit somehow touches your conscience? Your spirit was in a coma; you did not feel that you were sinful. But somehow, suddenly, you realized.
D. L. Moody said—I do not remember whether it was his own experience or an experience he was telling about—that when a person is drowning, suddenly all his sins are like a movie quickly coming before him. He suddenly realizes all his sins.
That happened to me. Somehow the Holy Spirit showed me all my sin. He also opened up my intuition, and I saw that Jesus is the only Saviour.
When I believed in the Lord Jesus, something happened: my communion with God was resumed. I can remember very vividly. I was saved by the grace of God in 1930. I remember very vividly that when the Lord saved me, I went to my room and opened the Bible.
I knew the Bible; I had read it from my childhood. It happened to be 2 Peter, and it began to speak to my heart. It was no longer a dead book; it was a living book. It was my Father talking to me.
Brothers and sisters, is it not true that when you are saved, something is happening in your spirit and all the functions of your spirit begin to work? That is how you begin your life with Christ. Is that not true?
But what happened? God showed you that this is the way of life. Follow it, exercise it, and you are on the right way.
But unfortunately, very soon we have been led astray by Christianity. Christianity begins to come into our life, and it begins to teach us many things and give us rules and regulations. “Now you are saved; this is what you should do, and this is what you should not do.”
The result is that we are brought back to law. The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Brothers and sisters, when we are first saved, the Holy Spirit is working in our spirit. He is working in our conscience. He is illuminating our intuition. He is drawing us into communion with Himself. These are the basic things.
This is the way of life that God wants us to live. If we continue in that way of life, we grow spiritually.
But instead of that, we begin to forget this inward way of life. We neglect it. Our conscience does speak to us, but we do not listen. Light has come to us, but we do not obey.
Our communion with God becomes outward, not inward—not by the spirit. How we try to commune with God through our emotions, through our mind, through our will, through will-worship, as the Bible says, and through our physical postures! That does not work.
Our spirit is neglected. Spiritual exercise is neglected. Brothers and sisters, it makes me cry. Christianity has led us astray.
We are not walking in the narrow way, the straight way, the way that leads us to life. Instead, we are walking in the broad way that leads us to destruction. Is it not time that we should really repent and return?
The Christian way is the inward way; it is not the outward way. Christian life is a way of growing, not of law. The Christian way is the way of the spirit, not of the body or the soul.
But are we really walking in this inward way of life? What is your spiritual life today? Have you ever exercised your spirit? I believe the Holy Spirit is working upon your spirit, but are we cooperating by exercising our spirit, so that we may truly grow spiritually?
Now, what is exercise?
Exercise is something you are conscious of. It is not something automatic. We are active every day, but activity or activeness does not mean exercise.
If there is exercise, it is something that you are conscious of. It is something that you deliberately do. It is something to which you apply yourself. It is something that you do regularly, or daily. It is something that you do with purpose. It is something that you do with discipline.
Sometimes the word exercise in the Bible, in some versions, is translated train. In training, you need a trainer. Brothers and sisters, Who is the Trainer? The Holy Spirit.
So it does not mean that you exercise merely by yourself. You exercise under the training of the Holy Spirit.
You know, in the early days, the Greeks paid much attention to their physical bodies. They wanted to develop a well-balanced, perfect body. Because of that, they went to the gymnasium.
When they went to the gymnasium, they had trainers there. These trainers knew physiology. They studied your body. They knew where the members of your body were weak, or whether they were too strong and unbalanced, because they wanted to develop a well-balanced body.
After they studied your body, they would tell you what kind of exercises you had to go through. They exercised themselves; they worked at it; they sweated for it. When you are exercising, there is certain pain.
But you endure it. You persevere through it. After you have done it for some time, gradually you develop a beautiful, well-balanced, coordinated body. That was what the Greeks were for.
But, brothers and sisters, we have something far better. They were working just for time, but we are working for eternity. So we need to go into the gymnasium.
Brothers and sisters, I do not advise you to go to school. I advise you to go to a gymnasium.
Now, do not mistake what I mean. School today is not a school of poverty. School today is where you pay a cost. You go there, but the professor is your employee; you are the employer. You go there just to absorb all his learning and skill—nothing else. Now, that is school.
But gymnasium is different. In a gymnasium, you have to work at it. You have to sweat for it. You have to go through it. As Paul said, we labor and suffer reproach.
You have to labor for it. You have to suffer reproach. Sometimes the Holy Spirit will reproach you; oftentimes He does. Not because He wants to do that, but because that is what we are. Can you endure it? Are you willing to suffer for it?
The apostle Paul said:
For to this end we labor and strive,
because we have our hope set on the living God,
Who is the Saviour of all men,
specially of them that believe.
Brothers and sisters, I invite all of you to join with me in going into the gymnasium of Christ.
By the grace of God, you have to have determination. If you exercise once a day and forget it twice a day, it does not work. There must be persistence. It is something to which we must apply ourselves.
That is all I will ask for today.
God willing, we will go into how we exercise our spirit: how we exercise our conscience, how we exercise our intuition, and how we exercise our communion. What is the real exercise, and what is the false one?
By the grace of God, we want to do it not as a scholastic approach, but as a practical, gymnastic approach. Look to God. Shall we pray?
Dear heavenly Father, how we praise and thank Thee for all the wonderful works that Christ has done for us on Calvary’s cross, and for all the promises—precious promises—that Thou hast given to us who believe.
Thou hast given us every promise of life and godliness. Dear Lord, we pray that we may not neglect what Thou hast provided for us. Teach us how diligently to apply ourselves, that we may work under Thy Spirit’s direction.
May our spirit grow, be transformed, and be conformed to Thy own image. It is not for our own glory, Lord; it is for Thy glory. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.