Will you please turn to 1 Timothy? First Timothy, chapter 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.
First Thessalonians, chapter 5, verses 23 and 24.
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.
And finally, the Gospel according to Matthew. Matthew, chapter 10. We read from verse 34 through verse 39.
Think not that I came to send peace on the earth:
I came not to send peace, but a sword.
For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother,
and the daughter in law against her mother in law:
and a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me;
and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.
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.
Let us have a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, as we continue together in Thy presence, our hearts do bow low before Thee, acknowledging Thee. Thou art our Lord, our Sovereign.
Dear Lord, we do praise and thank Thee for the tremendous love with which Thou hast loved us. We thank Thee for saving us. We believe that Thou hast a glorious purpose in saving us, and we do pray, Lord, that Thou wilt open our understanding, that we may know what Thy purpose is and what Thou art doing, even this day, in our lives.
May we submit ourselves to Thee in such a way that we will not in any way hinder Thy gracious working in our lives, but instead, that Thou wilt have a free way with us and bring us to where Thou wantest us to be, to the praise of Thy glory. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
Sometime ago, we shared on this matter of spiritual exercise. I do not know if you are still in the gymnasium of Christ, whether, after you have heard about spiritual exercise, you are really exercising in your spirit.
That is to say, the conscience within you is working. It is clean, it is clear, it is alert. And the intuition in your life is working. You are able to receive revelation, light, from God and from His Word. And your communion is deepening; your daily life with the Lord is increasing.
Now, if we do exercise our spirit as it is led by the Holy Spirit, that shall be, and should be, the case. So I hope that, brothers and sisters, you realize that the only way to make progress in our spiritual life is through spiritual exercise.
If we do not do that, we may be able to accumulate lots of biblical knowledge, but it does us no good. There is no growth in spiritual life unless we exercise our spirit under the management of the Holy Spirit.
Now, this morning, we would like to go a step further. Spiritual exercise not only profits our spirit. The Bible says, “Exercise unto godliness is profitable for all things.” It has the promise of life, eternal life, not only of this age but also of the age to come.
So we know this matter of spiritual exercise is profitable for everything. Not only will it increase our spiritual life, but it will also touch our whole being.
Now, I believe we all know that, as God made us, we are made with a spirit, a soul, and a body. So we find that spiritual exercise will not only purify and sanctify our spirit, but it will also touch our soul and our body.
And, God willing, during this month we will center our fellowship on how spiritual exercise affects our soul.
I hope we all know that when God created man, as we find in Genesis 2, God took the red earth and formed our body. Then He breathed into the nostrils of that body, and the Bible says man became a living soul.
So, in other words, you will find that even though, in God’s creation, man is tripartite—he has a spirit, God-consciousness; he has a soul, self-consciousness; and he has a body, world-consciousness—according to God’s divine order, the spirit should take first place, because by the spirit we are in touch with God, who is Spirit.
The soul is the center of our being. Or, to put it another way, this is where personality dwells. It is I; it is me. And the body is to be in touch with the world around us.
So the soul is the very center of our being. We are living souls. Sometimes the Bible uses “souls” and “men” interchangeably. For example, the Bible says seventy souls went down to Egypt. It means that seventy persons, men of Jacob, went down to Egypt.
So, dear brothers and sisters, we are living souls.
God created us with a soul, but the soul itself is invisible because it is not material. So how do we know we have a soul? Well, we know we have a soul by its functions, by its faculties.
According to the Word of God, the soul has three main faculties or functions: one is emotion, feeling; one is mind, thinking; and one is will, volition. By these three functions, we express ourselves.
Now, this morning, we would like to center upon emotion: how spiritual exercise will purify our emotion.
First of all, let us remember that emotion, or feeling, is a gift of God. Think: if you have no emotion, if you have no feeling of any kind, what kind of life will you live?
Emotion is the spice of life. But sadly, it can also be the bitterness of life.
God created us with emotion, with feeling. We feel good; we feel bad. We like this; we do not like that. We have love; we also have anger. We are emotional beings, every one of us. Maybe some people are more emotional than other people; that is true. But we all have emotions, and we thank God for that.
But we discover that in our emotion there is something wrong. You know, when we are saved, what happens to us? We were once dead in sins and transgressions. We had no hope of any kind. We were heading toward eternal death. But thank God, He saves us.
And what do you mean by being saved? It means that your dead spirit is quickened into new life. Christ came into your life, and He became the life of your new spirit. Then the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in your new spirit. When all these things are happening to you, you are saved.
That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. You are born of the Holy Spirit. You have a new spirit now, and you are able to communicate with God. The life of your spirit is Christ. He becomes your life, and Christ in you is the hope of glory.
The Holy Spirit is indwelling your spirit to see to it that this new life of Christ may grow into maturity, that you may be conformed to the image of Christ. Now, that is what happens when you are saved.
But how about your soul and your body? Was your soul saved at the time you were born again? Was your body redeemed at the time that you were born again?
In one sense, you do experience something happening in your soul and your body during the time you are saved. For the Bible says, “Repent, and believe in the Lord Jesus.” In other words, if you do not repent, you will never believe in the Lord Jesus.
Now, what is repentance? Repentance is a change of mind. A change of mind happens in your soul. The Holy Spirit works upon you and brings you to a sense of sinfulness.
Formerly, you thought you were perfect—or, if not, almost perfect, better than anybody else. But when the Holy Spirit touches your conscience, He brings you into a deep conviction. You sense such a burden of sin upon you that you repent and turn to the Lord Jesus. His blood cleanses your conscience. You are saved.
So, in other words, when we were saved, our soul was touched. There was a change. But remember, it is only a superficial change. Basically, your soul remains the same.
By that I mean the one who dwells in your soul—your life in your soul—is still your natural, old, Adamic life: yourself. Christ dwells in your spirit. He is the life of your spirit. But self is still the life of your soul. Self is still using your soul to express itself instead of Christ.
So that is the reason why, after you are saved, you begin to discover there are two persons dwelling within you. Deep within your spirit, Christ is there, and He is talking to you. He is telling you what is right, what is wrong, what is good, and what is evil. He is trying to lead you into a life of holiness and victory.
But then you discover that in your soul there is still yourself. You have your idea, you have your way, you have your opinion, and you seem to have a civil war going on in your life. It is the conflict of the life of Christ and the self-life, the flesh. It is the conflict between the Holy Spirit and your soul, your flesh.
I believe we all, if we are really saved, have gone through these days.
Now, how about your body? Often you say that before you were saved, you had a long face, but after you are saved, your face begins to be rounded. Now, is that not wonderful?
But does your body transform from a mortal body to an immortal body? No. You still have a mortal body. It has not changed, basically. It needs to be redeemed.
So when you are saved, your spirit is saved—a new spirit—but your soul and your body remain the same, the old same thing. But then God—His salvation is full salvation. He will not leave your body and soul without saving them. He wants to save your whole being.
That is what you find in 2 Corinthians 1:10: we were delivered from so great a death, we are being delivered, and we shall be delivered. In other words, deliverance is threefold.
In the past, we were delivered from the great death; that is, our spirit was saved. We are being delivered; that is our daily experience after we are saved. This is the salvation of our soul. And we will yet be delivered; that is the redemption of our body, when this physical body will be changed into a spiritual body at the coming of the Lord.
So you find that God’s salvation is full salvation. And you also find this thought in 1 Thessalonians 5:23: “May the God of peace sanctify you wholly.” Now, what do you mean by wholly? Your spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of the Lord.
So, dear brothers and sisters, remember: our soul needs to be saved, and the saving of our soul is today.
As long as we live after we are saved, the process of the salvation of the soul is going on daily, until we go to see our Lord Jesus. So this is a present salvation, which is most important.
This is the reason why the Bible tells us there is such a thing as the salvation of souls. You find that in 1 Peter 1:9.
Now, in the salvation of the soul, we will first focus upon emotion. Why? Because emotion is the most apparent, most active, and most influential of all the faculties of your soul.
In a sense, emotion is the clearest and most frequent manifestation of the self-life in your soul. It reveals you, it expresses you, it tells you who you are.
I feel that emotion is a wonderful thing. It is the gift of God. How can we live if we do not have emotion? But unfortunately, there is something wrong in our soul.
That is to say, the one who uses our emotion is our old self, the fallen man. And as long as our emotion is used and controlled by our old self, what is expressed through our emotion will be ourselves—our own self—not the life of Christ, not the beauty of Christ.
So I would say the problem is not emotion. The problem is who controls, who uses, our emotion. Who is expressed through our emotion? Does it express Christ, or does it express me, my old self?
That is the reason why emotion needs to be saved. Do you ever think that your emotion needs to be purified? Has the Holy Spirit ever convicted you that what is expressed by your emotion is not Christ? It is still your old self.
And if it is still your old self, how can it be delivered?
When you read Romans 1, it tells us how we have fallen, how we have sinned. There is a whole list of sins that we have committed. When you come to verse 31, the last of it, what is it? “Without natural affection, unmerciful.”
In other words, there is something wrong with emotion: without natural affection, unmerciful.
Now, the word “natural affection” here really refers to the affection that God has given to us. But unfortunately, what we call natural affection today is unnatural. Why? It is no longer controlled by God; it is controlled by me.
And if you read Ephesians 4, it begins with how the nations walk, and then you come to this: “Being past feeling”—void of all feeling, not caring.
So we do find not only in the Scripture that there is something wrong with our emotion, but I believe even we ourselves have experienced the same thing. We find that what we should love, we do not love; what we should hate, we love. What we should like, we do not like. We do not like the will of God, but we like the world.
The way we express our emotion, even though we are saved, is not pure. We struggle over it. How can our emotion be saved?
Can we save our soul by soul exercise—that is, by exercising our soul? Can we do that?
Once a brother told me he had a weak will, and he asked me how he could strengthen his will. I said, “The more you try to strengthen it, the worse your will will be.” The salvation is not in exercising your will by yourself.
The secret is exercising your spirit. As your spirit gets stronger, your will will be overcome by the life of Christ.
So, dear brothers and sisters, the way of our deliverance is not in soul exercise or mental exercise. The more you exercise your soul, the bigger your soul will be. It will be a monster beyond your control.
The only way that we can be delivered in our soul is through Jesus Christ. You remember Romans 7, how this man struggles over this matter of the soul and the spirit.
What he wants to do, he cannot do. What he does not want to do, he does. He even says, “It is not I; it is sin that dwelleth in me.” Now, who can deliver me from this body of death? Not yourself. Thank God, through Jesus Christ.
The more you try to save yourself, the lower you sink. But when you give up and give to Christ Jesus, He is able to save you to the uttermost. So, dear brothers and sisters, the saving of the soul is in the same way. It is not by your own effort; it is by the grace of God.
We may be able to suppress our emotion and hold back. It is still bubbling within us, but outwardly we are calm. But for how long? It will explode someday.
We may be able to hide our thinking and act differently, but that makes us a hypocrite. We may be able to try to hide our will, but it is there. You never change.
The salvation of our soul is through spiritual exercise. The Holy Spirit will reveal to us where our emotion is wrong. The Holy Spirit will arrange our circumstances to bring us to a point where we have to choose between Christ and ourselves. It is the work of the Holy Spirit.
So that is what you find in Matthew 10. The Lord Jesus said, “Do not think I have come to bring peace upon the earth.” Now, is our Lord very, very contradictory? “Peace on earth, and glory to God.” He is the Prince of Peace. But our Lord Jesus Himself said, “Do not think that I have come to send peace into the world.”
Because the world is so upside down, for it to enjoy peace, it needs to have the sword first to clear the way of peace. So He said, “I have not come to send peace, but a sword.”
And He said, if any man loves his father or mother more than Me, he cannot be My disciple. If any man loves his daughter or son more than Me, he cannot be My disciple. He who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. He who saves his soul-life shall lose it, and he who loses it shall save it.
Now, what do all these things mean?
Thank God, He knows where we fail. He has made every provision for us to deliver us. So you find that after we are saved, you begin to experience—I believe every one of us does—some kind of conflict, a battle, in our emotion.
We are being challenged, not by men but by God. God will raise up some circumstances in our life. The demands of men, the ones that we love most naturally, conflict with the demands of God.
And when such things happen in our life, we struggle whether we will be able to let our soul-life die and let Christ’s life be in ascendency. Will we obey God rather than ourselves?
If we deny ourselves, it is painful. We want to satisfy ourselves; we want to gratify ourselves. But whenever our self is being challenged, our feeling, our emotion, is being challenged: whether you love God or love yourself. Where does your love come from? Is it pure? And we are in trouble.
I believe we all have such conflict in our lives. Now, if we obey ourselves, we disobey God. If we obey God, we put our self-life to death. Painful—but that is the way of salvation.
Think of our Lord Jesus. He is the most compassionate Person in the whole world. How He looked at the multitude, and He had compassion on them—not only on their soul, but also on their body.
But as you read the Gospels, sometimes He seemed to act cruelly, harshly. Once, while He was speaking and a great crowd was with Him, I think it is in Matthew 12, His mother and His brothers were outside. They wanted to speak to Him.
What did our Lord Jesus do? He looked around the crowd around Him and said, “Who is My mother? Who are My brothers and sisters?” He who does the will of God, he is My mother, My brother, My sister.
Is that not cruel? He had a soul, a sinless soul. He had emotion. He wept. But His emotion, His feeling, was pure—not controlled by His own soul, but controlled by God’s will.
Does that make Him hard? No. Even when He was on the cross, dying and suffering, He saw His mother and provided for her. He turned to John and said, “Behold, thy mother.” To His mother He said, “Behold, thy son.” And John took Mary to his house. What love!
You remember John 11. He was persecuted by the Jewish world. He went across the River Jordan and stayed there. Then the news came to Him: Lazarus was sick.
The Bible says He loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. The word used for the Lord’s love is not phileo; it is agape. That is, He loved them with the love of God—absolute love.
Now, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus loved the Lord, but the word used is phileo. They had friendship with Christ. They felt good about Christ. The two sisters felt that as long as they sent a message to Christ, no doubt Christ would rush over, lay His hand upon Lazarus, and bring him back to health.
What did our Lord Jesus do? He heard the news, and He stayed two more days. He waited until Lazarus was dead.
What a disappointment! What kind of a Lord is He? “Lord, You do not love us. You neglect us completely. You ignore us.”
No. He went over when Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. He wept. But He brought Lazarus to life. He said, “I am the resurrection, and the life.”
Brothers and sisters, our Lord is emotional, but under the perfect control of God. Not a hint of Himself—the best of Himself.
Is that easy for the Lord? He is human as well as divine. Humanly, He must have suffered greatly, because it is human for us to rush over and solve the case.
How about Peter? I think, of all the disciples of our Lord Jesus—the twelve disciples—Peter was the most emotional disciple: impetuous, outspoken, fearless. That was his temperament. He was an emotional person.
When the Lord said He was going to Jerusalem and that He would be killed, but on the third day He would rise again, Peter said, “Others may fail Thee; I will not. I will follow Thee unto death.” He meant it.
But a little maid questioned him, and he trembled. He denied the Lord three times. That was the man Peter.
But thank God, the Lord said, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.” That is, only that which is of God will remain in you. What is not of God will all drop out. “I have prayed for thee, that when once thou hast turned again, strengthen thy brethren.”
“When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old, another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” He spoke of the death of Peter.
What was changed? Peter was the one who wrote 1 Peter, and as you read 1 Peter, the whole book is about the salvation of the soul. How can the soul be saved? That we really come under the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls, the Lord Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, this is a process we have to go through. If you try to avoid it or neglect it, you will never know so great a salvation. It is too ill, it hurts. But if we are willing to lose our soul-life, take up our cross, and follow Him, we save our soul-life unto eternity.
Brother Watchman Nee, after he was saved in 1920, by 1922 there was already a group of believers, mostly young, meeting together. They went out to preach the gospel. He was still a college student.
He told us that one day he was going to speak somewhere, so he searched for a Scripture as the topic of his sermon. He came to Psalm 73:25. The psalmist said:
Whom have I in heaven but Thee?
And there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee.
He wanted to use that as his sermon, but, to be honest, he felt he could not say this. He might be able to say, “Whom have I in heaven?” That was easy. But he could not say, “There is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee,” because he was in love with a girl.
They had been together for ten years already. They had grown up together, and they were meant for each other. After he was saved, he tried to bring this girl to Christ. He was able to talk with her about anything, any matter, except Christ. She would not listen.
So he struggled over that. But he went ahead and preached it anyway. You know, many preachers are doing that: teaching against their conscience.
But after some time, he was going to speak again, and this verse came again to him. “No,” he told the Lord, “will You not change Your mind? Do not ask for it.”
Then he began to promise the Lord, “If You allow me to do this, I will go to Tibet to preach the gospel.” But the Lord refused to negotiate.
He spoke in the morning again, but in the afternoon he came to his room and prayed, “Lord, fill me with Your love. I am willing to give up.”
He said the Lord just filled his heart with love. As his farewell to the world, he changed his dress, took some gospel posters, went to the street, and pasted them on the postings as a farewell to the world.
He wrote a poem. Now we have that in Hymns, number 663. Unfortunately, this is another translation. I think it is better in poetry, but it is not as simple as the old translation. I know how to sing the old translation, but I do not know this new tune.
The world was really behind him. Christ was all to him.
Brothers and sisters, this is not something special for special people. No. Every true believer will and must have gone through this.
Our love, our hate, our feeling, our emotion, need to be sanctified. Unless it is Christ who is in charge of our feeling, we can abuse our emotion.
So, brothers and sisters, the only way to deliver our emotion is not to make us emotionless, without natural affection.
Does not the Bible say, “Honor thy father and thy mother”? This is the fifth commandment, the only commandment with a promise. This is not only in the Old Testament; it is repeated in the New Testament by our Lord Himself and by the apostles. We should honor our father and mother.
But why is it that here the Lord says, “If you love your father or mother more than Me, you are not worthy of Me”? Why?
It is not because He wants to be first. It is because He wants to purify and save our soul.
Do you want to have your emotions saved? Are you listening to the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit? When you are in conflict over this matter of emotion, where do you turn?
Do you turn to yourself, to make yourself feel comfortable and great? Or do you turn to the Lord?
And sometimes, thank God, such suffering—we labor in it because He is the Saviour of all believers. May God have mercy upon us.
Dear Lord, these are hard words, but Thy words are pure. We pray that Thou wilt purify our soul, our emotion, with Thy living Word.
Deliver our emotion from self-management, but put our emotion under the new management of Christ, that Thou mayest be glorified. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.