Will you please turn to 1 Timothy 4? We will read from verses 8 through 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.
Will you please also turn to 1 Thessalonians 5? We will read 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.
Well, dear brothers and sisters, we are in the gymnasium of Christ. You are not in your school, sitting there, listening passively, nodding your head if you approve and shaking your head if you do not approve. No, this is not the time.
You are joining me in the gymnasium of Christ. You are to be very active in your spirit, exercising your spirit—perhaps even sweating a little bit—in order that our spirit may be strengthened, sanctified, and glorifying God.
Yesterday afternoon, we began our time together by asking why we need to exercise our spirit. Thank God, when we are saved, He gives us a new spirit. Into that spirit, the life of Christ Jesus dwells; and at the same time, the Holy Spirit also dwells in our new spirit.
Why should God do such a thing? Thank God for giving us a new spirit, that we may be able to communicate with God, who is Spirit. Thank God for giving us a new life. The life of Christ Jesus becomes the life of our new spirit. Thank God for His Holy Spirit, who is willing to dwell in our spirit. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He is always there.
Why? It is because, when God gives His life—our Lord Jesus—in our spirit, it is His desire that Christ in us, the hope of glory, should grow within us. As He grows within us, we grow; and we will be transformed and conformed to the image of Christ. That is God’s purpose.
So, dear brothers and sisters, we are saved and equipped by God to be conformed to Christ Jesus. This is godliness: to be like God. But in the process, God wants us to exercise unto godliness.
In other words, we are not here simply letting God do everything while we do nothing—or even while we resist. No. When God is doing something—and thank God, He does everything in us—He expects us to cooperate with Him. He expects us to respond to His working in us.
Because of this, we are called to exercise unto godliness. We are called to exercise our spirit. By exercising our spirit under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the life of Christ will grow in us, and by that we live our Christian life.
So, dear brothers and sisters, if we want to live a true Christian life, if we want to see Christ really grow in us and be conformed to His image, then we must go to the gymnasium and exercise according to the direction of the Holy Spirit. It is a must.
Without it, we will never have a Christian life. We will live, even after we are saved, but we will live just as we were before. So it is essential. It is absolutely necessary.
Brothers and sisters, I want to urge you again: to live a Christian life, you cannot just sit there, or even sleep. You have to exercise your spirit.
We already mentioned that the spirit is not material. We cannot see it with our naked eyes, but that does not mean it is not real. It is more real than physical things. We know it by its functions.
We need to exercise our conscience. God has given us a cleansed conscience, and now He is going to speak to our conscience. He expects us to walk worthy of a good conscience.
Just as Paul said, “I exercise myself to have a conscience void of offence toward God and men.” That is Christian walk. That is the way we walk righteously before God.
We also need to exercise our intuition. God always speaks directly to our spirit. We have the anointing within us, and He will teach us in all things—not only great things.
Oftentimes, when we are faced with a crisis, then we seek the Lord. But in ordinary days, in small things, we think we are well enough to do it ourselves. But, brothers and sisters, this is wrong. In small things as well as big things, it is the small things that really change your life.
We need to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, as He speaks to us directly in our spirit, that we may be holy as He is holy.
Of course, we know that we need to commune with God, not as a routine or as an outward form. Our worship must be from our spirit. We need to draw near to Him, and He will draw near to us.
We need to look at Him with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, and we will be changed from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit. By communing with God, we will be glorified; that is to say, we will be like Him as He is.
So, dear brothers and sisters, this is what we covered yesterday afternoon: we need to exercise our spirit.
But when you read 1 Timothy 4, the Apostle Paul says that godliness is profitable for all things. It is not only profitable for our spirit, but it is profitable even for our soul and for our body. In other words, it is profitable for our whole being.
You remember 1 Thessalonians 5:23. The God of peace sanctifies us wholly—spirit, soul, and body—to be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So, brothers and sisters, we know that as human beings we are composed of three parts: spirit, soul, and body. God wants to sanctify our whole being—not only our spirit, but even our soul and our body.
The profit of spiritual exercise is tremendous. It is not only profitable for our spirit, but you will find it profitable for your soul as well as for your body. This morning, we would like to focus on how spiritual exercise profits our souls and our bodies—our whole being. That is the will of God.
I do not think I need to go into much detail about our soul. At least we remember that when God created man, He used the dust of the ground to make a human body. Then He breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the Bible says that man became a living soul.
What is man? Man is a living soul—a soul that is animated, a soul that is active and living. That is what man is.
Of course, in the order of God, the spirit in us has the highest place, because it is by our spirit that we commune with God. We receive God’s commandment and pass it on to our soul, and the soul decides whether it will follow or not. If it is obedient, it tells our body to work it out, to act it out. That is the divine order.
But so far as human beings are concerned, the central part of us is the soul. It is where our personality dwells. We feel, we think, and we decide. It is our soul that really tells us who we are and what we are.
You know, God has created billions and billions of people in this world, but no two persons are exactly alike. Is that not wonderful? Even our souls are all different.
So far as our soul is concerned, every soul is different. Your emotion, your feeling, your thinking, and your decision are different from anybody else.
Even the shape of our soul is different. What is the shape of our soul? Temperament. We all have different temperaments. Some people are naturally born very slow; some are born very quick. Some are very careful; some are very brave, even careless. All are different.
This is where our personality is, because God loves variety.
But, brothers and sisters, when we are saved, what happens to our soul? We mentioned briefly yesterday that our spirit is renewed and Christ becomes the life in our spirit. But so far as our soul is concerned, it has not changed much.
There may be a superficial change, because that is what repentance means. But so far as the nature of the soul, or the life of the soul, is concerned, it has not changed a bit. Why? Because the one who dwells in our soul is you; it is me.
The one who dwells there is a fallen person. We are born with the fallen nature of Adam. So our human life, the life that is in our soul, is a fallen life. It is under the bondage of sin and death.
It is I. It is self. That is the reason why you find that we are all self-centered. Even after we are saved, this has not changed.
When we believe in the Lord Jesus, we may have selfish reasons: “I want to go to heaven and not go to hell.” You know, we may even be saved because of selfish reasons. In other words, Christ is for me. I am the center of the universe. Everything surrounds me and is for me. Even Christ is for me.
That is true. So, after we are saved, we may remain self-centered. Our soul needs to be saved.
Brothers and sisters, how sad it is that God’s people do not know that their soul needs to be saved. But if you read the Bible, you will find, for instance, in 1 Peter 1:9, the term “the salvation of your souls.”
Our soul needs to be saved. Otherwise, we cannot live a Christian life, because our soul life will be against our spirit life and make it almost impossible for us to live according to God.
We are not going into theology. I would like to be very practical. After you are saved, look into your own life. What do you discover?
As you go on in so-called Christian life, you are saved and you want to live as a Christian. But while you are doing that, what happens in your life? I think the most common thing is that you begin to enter into a civil war.
You begin to find that within you there are two personalities. In your spirit there is Christ, and He wants you to walk according to God. But in your soul there is you. There is self. There is soul life there, and this soul life is selfish, fallen, and in bondage to sin and death.
So you find there is a civil war going on within you. Deep down within you, you want to please God; but outwardly, within you, you want to please yourself. These two fight against each other. The Bible says that the spirit strives against the flesh and the flesh strives against the spirit.
Are you experiencing this? Why is it? What has happened? It is because your soul needs to be saved, needs to be brought into subjection to Christ.
The soul is not material, just like our spirit. You know you have a soul, but can you see it? No. You cannot see it with your natural eyes. I remember once a brother who was a scientist. He tried to weigh how much the soul weighs. No, he was not successful, of course.
The soul is not material, but it is real. How do we know that we have a soul? The old Greek philosopher said, “I know I am because I think.”
You know you are. How do you know? You know by your emotion. You know by your mind—your thinking. You know by your volition, your will. You have a will.
When a child is born, even though it is a very little thing, you can see the strong will there. If he wants something, “Serve me immediately. If not, I cry. I do not care if it is midnight.”
Brothers and sisters, we know our soul by these three functions: emotion, mind, and will. Every one is different.
I do thank the Lord for creating me with emotion. It is the gift of God. What if I had no emotion? Life would be meaningless. Emotion is a gift of God.
But why does God create us with emotion? I love, I hate, I like, I dislike, I feel happy, I feel sorry. We have emotions.
Why does God give us emotion? Primarily, He gives emotion that we may express His feelings. But unfortunately, after we have fallen, with self as the life of our soul, we do not express God’s emotion; we express our own emotion.
“I do not like it because I do not like it. I love it because I feel good about it. I am happy because I gave you something.” Our emotion, even the purest, highest, and noblest of all emotions, is not correct.
Our highest emotion is love. But even when we express love, it does not represent God; it represents me. I love because I am loved. I get something. If I do not get anything, why should I love? If it means loss to me, I hate.
So you find that our emotion today needs to be delivered, even the noblest of it.
That is the reason why, in Matthew 10, our Lord Jesus said:
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.
Many find this very difficult. Even last week, I was asked by a brother, “I just could not understand this. God says, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother.’ This is the only commandment with a promise.”
This is not only in the Old Testament. When you read the New Testament, our Lord Jesus mentions it again. It is written, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” You go to the Epistles, and it is also mentioned. We have to respect our father and mother. It is the will of God.
Then why does our Lord Jesus say, “If you love your father or your mother more than Me, you cannot be My disciple. You are not worthy of Me”? Is that not a harsh requirement? Why does our Lord Jesus ask for that? Who is He that is worthy to ask such a thing?
If anybody comes to you and says, “You have to love me more than your father and mother,” what would happen? If a lady says to a man, “You have to love me more than your father or your mother, then I will marry you,” what will happen?
Why? It is because our Lord knows the absolute. He knows that our emotion needs to be purified.
In your Christian life, you will come to a point where you find the will of God and your will—or, may I say, the feeling of God and your feeling—come into conflict.
In ordinary times, of course, we love our father and mother. We honor our father and mother. That is the will of God. But strangely, sometimes God brings in a situation in which what your father or mother demands of you is contradictory to what God requires of you.
When these two things come together, it is a test: whether you love God more than your father or mother; whether you choose God or choose your father or mother.
Why does God create such a situation in our lives? It is because He wants to purify your emotion. As a matter of fact, after your emotion is purified, you love your father and mother even more than ever before, and you love them in the right way.
I would just use a little example of myself. After I was saved, I was challenged by people that I needed to be baptized by immersion.
I was baptized when I was a baby. When I was challenged, I argued with them. I said, “I was already baptized. You cannot be baptized twice.”
When people pressed me further, I said, “When I was baptized as a baby, with a few drops of water sprinkled on my head, it was in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You should not mention the name of the Lord in vain. So it has been done. I cannot repeat it.”
But as I searched the Scriptures, I became convinced that it is “believe and be baptized.” As a baby, I had not believed. I could not depend on the belief of my father.
So I was convinced that I needed to be baptized by immersion according to the Scriptures. But I refused to do that. Why? Because I loved my father.
My father was a Methodist pastor. He really loved the Lord, and I loved him very much. As a pastor’s son, if I got baptized by immersion, what would happen to my father? It would break his heart. So I would not do it. I refused to do it, and that continued for more than a year.
Until one day, I was again arguing with my friend about baptism. Inwardly, I knew it was right, but outwardly I was too argumentative. He gave me up.
But as I was sitting there alone, praying, I said, “Lord, I know I need to be baptized by immersion, but this is not the time. After I graduate from college and become independent, then I will be baptized.”
Suddenly, I heard a voice. I cannot tell whether I heard it audibly or not, but it was audible to me. Suddenly, a voice came to me and said, “He that loveth father more than Me is not worthy of Me.”
That brought me down. I was baptized the next day.
Did I hurt my father? I hid it from my father for a whole year. Then, after I told my father, my father was hurt. But he was hurt not because I was baptized by immersion. He was hurt because I did not trust him.
He said, “If you want to be baptized by immersion, I will do it for you.”
Brothers and sisters, was it because of that that I loved my father less? No. I loved my father with the love of Christ. It is purer.
So you find that our emotion needs to be purified. The only way it can be purified is by losing our soul life and gaining it unto eternity.
The Lord said, “If you love your soul life, you will lose it. But if you hate your soul life for My sake, you will gain it unto eternity.” That is the salvation of our soul.
We need to know how to use our emotion, that our emotion is not to express ourselves. Our emotion is to express Christ. Christ has to come to be the life of our soul.
The same thing is true with your mind. Again, I will say, our mind is a wonderful gift of God. Oh, one can do so many things—more than a computer can do. It is a wonderful gift of God.
But who is in control of our mind? Who is thinking through our mind? We find that again it is the self life, the soul life. Our mind needs to be purified.
You remember Matthew 16. After Peter received a revelation from the heavenly Father and confessed our Lord Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Lord said, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
Immediately after that, our Lord Jesus began to share with His disciples how He must go to Jerusalem, be rejected by the priests, scribes, and Pharisees, be killed, and on the third day be raised from the dead.
You know what Peter did. Peter took hold of Him—think of that—shook Him, and said, “Lord, this shall never be unto Thee. Do not do it.”
What was the reaction of our Lord? He turned and said, “Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto Me: for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men.”
If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
For whosoever would save his life shall lose it:
and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it.
Brothers and sisters, our mind, our thinking, our way of thinking, and our estimate of the value of things need to be completely changed.
Just like the Apostle Paul: if you read Philippians 3, you find that Paul had much to be proud of. There were many things that he really loved and sought after, and he was very successful. But he said, “Now I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.”
His mind was completely renewed. He was thinking of the things above and no longer of the things on earth. Brothers and sisters, our mind needs to be sanctified.
In your daily experience, are you experiencing the renewing of your mind? Are you still looking at things the old way? Do you still treasure the things that the world considers treasure?
Or is your mind turned to heaven, turned to things eternal, counting the things on earth as refuse? Has your mind changed?
Who can change your mind? We often say, “I changed my mind.” But you do not change your mind completely. You may only change your mind from one earthly thing to another. There is nothing in heaven.
We cannot change our mind. The Lord alone can do that. Are you willing to exercise, to sweat a little bit, to suffer a little bit, to lose a little bit of yourself, and allow the Lord to think through you?
Now, the same is true with our will. Again, I say it is the gift of God. God gave us a will. If I am a person without will, then that life is worthless.
But God gave us a will for one reason: that we may will the will of God. So the perfect Man, our Lord Jesus—when He came into this earth to be a man—what does the Scripture say?
If you read Hebrews 10, you find that He said:
A body didst Thou prepare for Me;
Lo, I am come
(In the roll of the book it is written of Me)
To do Thy will, O God.
In other words, God gives us a will that we may will the will of God. But today it is a different story, because we exercise our own will. “That is what I want. No matter what people say, that is what I want.”
We want to satisfy ourselves. Our will is selfish and self-centered. But, brothers and sisters, God does a marvelous work. He will purify even our will.
Our Lord Jesus is the perfect Man. By that I mean He has a human will, a mind, and emotions. But thank God, He is sinless.
In other words, He has a will—His own will—but that will is pure. It is not like our will. Yet even that will, throughout His life, He denied in order to subject Himself to His Father’s will. Every move of His was governed by the will of God.
Was it easy? No. You remember the story of Gethsemane, how He went into that garden. His soul was in sorrow. He struggled and said:
My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from Me:
nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.
Why? Because He is sinless and pure. Yet the Father’s will was that He should become sin itself. All the sins of the world were centered and concentrated upon Him. He became sin itself. Think of that: He who knew no sin was made sin for us.
How could He take it? If you are a very clean person, and someone living with you is very unclean, how do you feel? Think of our Lord Jesus, absolutely pure, and now He was to be sin itself. All the sins of the world fell upon Him.
Could He stand it? He could not bear it. So He asked His Father, “If it is possible, remove it from Me.” But again He said, “Not My will, but Thy will be done.” And He went to the cross.
Has this happened to us? Do we live purely by our own will, or have we submitted our will to the will of God? Are we that obedient to God—obedient even unto death?
Brothers and sisters, our will needs to be sanctified. The process of sanctification is exercise. We need to exercise our spirit, denying ourselves, taking up our cross daily, and following the Lord.
I always remember the prayer of Dr. F. B. Meyer. He was greatly used by God. He was a successful pastor in a church in Edinburgh, Scotland.
One day, another young man visited him. His name was C. T. Studd, the cricketer of England. He had given himself to the Lord and was going to China as a missionary. But before he went, he visited different churches to speak, and he was F. B. Meyer’s guest.
It was November, and Edinburgh was very cold. But early in the morning, Dr. Meyer saw a light in C. T. Studd’s room. As a host, he was a little concerned. He dared not knock at the door, but he waited. The light was still there, so finally he knocked.
He went in and saw C. T. Studd sitting there, wrapped up with a rug because it was very cold. Dr. Meyer said, “Why are you up so early?”
He said, “I love the Lord. I am searching the Scriptures for His commandments.”
Brothers and sisters, we search the Scriptures for His promises, but he searched the Scriptures for God’s commandments. Dr. Meyer’s heart was deeply touched. He felt that C. T. Studd had something that he did not have, so he asked, “What is the secret?”
C. T. Studd said, “Hand over everything in your life to the Lord, one by one.”
So F. B. Meyer tried to hand over his life to Christ one by one. But while he was doing that, he found there was a little key to a small closet of his life that he could not hand over.
He said the Lord came and held out His hand. Dr. Meyer gave the Lord a bundle of keys, with that little key left. The Lord shook His head.
He tried to argue with the Lord: “Allow me to have this little key, and I will serve You with double effort.”
Then the Lord said, “If I am not Lord of all, I am not Lord at all.”
In desperation, he saw the Lord turning and leaving. He cried out, “Make me willing to be willing.” The Lord turned back and took the little key away.
Brothers and sisters, there may be some keys in your life that you want to keep for yourself. But if that is the case, then the Lord is not Lord at all. Our will needs to be surrendered.
Thank God, through spiritual exercise, He will enable us to have our soul sanctified—totally set apart for the Lord—to express Christ instead of ourselves.
Now, how about our body? Again, I say our body is a wonder. Psalm 139 says:
I will give thanks unto Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
Wonderful are Thy works;
And that my soul knoweth right well.
How true it is. But what is this body for? This body is to glorify God.
So, dear brothers and sisters, you find in 1 Corinthians 6:20:
For ye were bought with a price:
glorify God therefore in your body.
This is what our Christian body is for. We are still in a mortal body, but even though we are still in this mortal body, this mortal body has been ransomed. Amen. Our Lord Jesus paid a great price for us.
So we belong to Him. We do not belong to ourselves. Our body is now the temple of the Holy Spirit. We cannot use our body as before.
We have to present our bodies a living sacrifice. That is what the Bible says:
Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual service.
As we present our bodies to God, He will transform us. Our mind will be renewed. We will begin to see differently. We will begin to prove what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.
So, brothers and sisters, this body does not belong to you. This body is redeemed, ransomed, and belongs to God. God expects that in this body you will glorify Him.
The Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 9:27, says, “I buffet my body.” I beat it black and blue, to put my body under me—not allowing my body to rule over me.
I heard someone say, “Your spiritual life is hung upon your bed.” If you love your bed so much, your spiritual life will suffer.
If you buffet your body and let your body be your bondslave instead of you being its bondslave, then you are on the way to victory.
Brothers and sisters, we are still in this mortal body, but even in this mortal body we are able to experience the quickening of our mortal body.
Sometimes you may be very tired, and you say, “Well, if I am tired, I will not go to the prayer meeting.” But if you go, you experience a quickening of your mortal body.
A brother told me that every Wednesday, when he tried to go to the prayer meeting, he was so tired. He was driving, but he was tired. Yet he said, “As soon as I crossed the Huguenot Bridge”—because our meeting was on the other side of the Huguenot Bridge—“I suddenly became alive.”
Wonderful. You can experience it.
One day, at the coming of the Lord, even this mortal body will be changed into an immortal body. This corruptible body will be changed into incorruptible. This physical body will be changed into a spiritual body. That is the redemption of our body.
Wonderful, what God can do for us. But are you willing to respond to Him by exercising your spirit?
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, Thou hast loved us so much. Thou hast given so much to us in order that we may live unto Thee.
Dear Lord, we pray that Thou wouldst touch us and bring us into exercising unto godliness.
Thank You, Lord, that Thy purpose in saving us might be fully realized to the praise of Thy glory. We ask in Thy precious name.