Please turn to the Gospel according to John, John 3:6.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh;
and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Let us have a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, we do want to thank Thee again for the table. How we appreciate what Thou hast done for us. Lord, Thou hast bought us with such a price that we are no longer our own; we are forever Yours.
Dear Lord, we want to give ourselves totally over to You and allow You to work out Your full purpose in each and every one of us, to the praise of Thy glory. We commit this time into Your hands. We pray that Your Spirit will quicken Thy word in our hearts and bring us into all that Thou hast provided for us, that we may be unto the praise of Thy glory. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
You know, to help young brothers and sisters in the knowledge of God, our brother Watchman Nee prepared fifty-two basic lessons. These lessons will help young believers to see the full counsel of God.
At the beginning, his purpose was to have these fifty-two lessons go through every year—one lesson each week. The brothers and sisters would gather together to hear these lessons, and not only to hear, but to receive these spiritual lessons into their lives.
By so doing, they would not only have the knowledge of God, but they would have His life within them. This is the purpose for which our brother prepared these fifty-two lessons.
I was assigned to share with you three of these lessons. The first one will be spiritual life.
We all know that God created man with a definite purpose. So let us begin from the very beginning, as we find in Genesis 2.
When God created man, He created man in three parts. First, He took the earth and formed the shape of a man. So far as our body is concerned, it came from the earth; therefore, it is in touch with the earth around us.
We call it world consciousness. Our body gives us consciousness of the world around us because they are of the same element.
Then God breathed His breath of life into this form of man, and the Bible says that man became a living soul.
In our Chinese Bible, I think it is more complete, because it says that man became a living soul with a spirit. That is what it is. The breath from God that was breathed into the form of man became the spirit of man, because God is Spirit.
In order to contact God, you cannot contact God with your body. I think you all remember many, many years ago, a cosmonaut went into space. When he came back, he said, “I was in space. I looked around. I could find no God. Therefore, there was no God.” That is nonsense.
Because God is Spirit, how can you contact Him with your physical body? You have to contact Him with your spirit. So we know that the breath breathed into the nostrils of man is the spirit of man.
God gave man a spirit so that we can contact Him, know Him, and have fellowship with Him. As the spirit touched the body, a third element came forth, and that is the soul, which is ourselves.
With the body, we have world consciousness. With the spirit, we have God-consciousness. With our soul, we have self-consciousness. So, brothers and sisters, that was the creation of man.
According to God’s divine order, our spirit should take the lead, because our spirit should be in contact with God the Spirit. After that, our spirit will touch our soul and enable our soul to understand what God’s will is.
Our soul will take God’s will from our spirit and command our body to work it out. That is the divine order when God first created man.
But as we read the Bible, we find that after God had created man, He put man in a beautiful garden, the Garden of Eden. In the garden, He planted all kinds of fruit trees for the food of man.
But in the midst of the garden, He planted the tree of life. In other words, God’s intention was for man to receive His life and thus be united with God, commune with God, and do the will of God.
By the tree of life there was another tree, called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Sometimes we may think that this was a bad tree because of our bad experience with that tree. But so far as the tree itself is concerned, it was a good tree.
In other words, it was a better tree than all the other fruit trees, even though it was lower than the tree of life, because it gave man the knowledge of good and evil.
The highest knowledge in the world is not scientific knowledge. The highest knowledge in the world is ethical knowledge: to know what is good and what is bad. That is the highest knowledge in this world.
So the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not a bad tree at all. It was a better tree, but not the best tree.
God put these two trees in the center. For what reason? Because God had given man a reasoning mind, and God wanted man to exercise his mind to choose what to eat.
All the fruit trees were for nourishing man’s body. But the tree of life was to give God’s life to man’s spirit. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to increase man’s knowledge, to know what is good and what is bad.
Scientific knowledge is not the highest knowledge. The highest knowledge is moral knowledge: the ability to know what is good and what is bad.
God put these two trees in the center because He had given man free will. What is free will? If you cannot choose, you do not have free will. Free will means that you are given the freedom to choose, to exercise your will, to decide what you really want.
Do you want the life of God, to be united with God, to do His will, and to fulfill man’s destination? Or do you want to exercise the knowledge of good and evil, to decide what you want to do, and to make yourself God?
After God had created man, He put man in the garden with the two trees in the center, as if God said, “Now you make the choice.”
If you want to eat of the tree of life, that you may have the life of God and be united with Me, you will fulfill the purpose for which I created you. But you can decide. God did not make the decision for you. You decide what you want to do.
If you do not want the life of God and do not want His control—if you want to be yourself—you can eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You become very knowledgeable, and you are proud of yourself.
But unfortunately, we have the knowledge, but we do not have the life to do what we know is right and not to do what is wrong. That is our problem.
So, in the beginning, God put man before these two trees and allowed man to make his own choice. Since God has given us free will, He allows us to make our own decision.
Unfortunately, man did not guard the garden as he should have. We know the Garden of Eden was a beautiful garden, but it had no wall. Why? Because God wanted man to be that wall.
God had commanded man to take care of the garden, to watch the garden, to be the wall of the garden, because outside the garden the enemy of God was lurking. He wanted to get in to tempt man.
Unfortunately, man failed to be the wall of the garden. Somehow, we find Adam and Eve were not together. They should have been together, and together they would have been the wall of the Garden of Eden.
But somehow they were separated. Eve was all alone, without Adam with her. The result was that it allowed the enemy to slip in, in the form of a serpent.
Eve was tempted. She looked at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She saw what a beautiful tree it was, and that it would give her knowledge and independence. She would not need to depend upon God; she could make her own decision.
She was tempted by the enemy to take the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was her own decision, and she affected her husband.
Her husband knew all about it. Her husband knew the word of God, but he loved his wife more than God. He was willing to give up God in order to get Eve. That is how man fell.
In the beginning, God’s purpose in creating man was noble, because He created man for His own purpose. He had an enemy to destroy, but for God to destroy His enemy was most easy. God could speak a word, and it would be done.
But that would not give God glory, just as if a grown person beat a little child. There is no glory in it. So God created man a little lower than the angels and allowed this man, lower than the angels, to so obey God that he would be used by God to defeat God’s enemy. That was God’s purpose.
But unfortunately, man fell into the hand of God’s enemy. As we find in the world today, we know what is good and what is bad, but we do not have the power to do the good or to resist the bad. That is the human condition today.
You know what is good, but you cannot do it. Just like the apostle Paul before he believed in the Lord Jesus: he knew what was good, but he could not do it. He knew what was bad, but he did it because he could not help himself.
That was our human condition before we believed in the Lord Jesus. But thank God, He loves us even though we have failed. God still wanted to save us, to deliver us, that we might still be His instrument instead of being an instrument of God’s enemy.
Even before the foundation of the world, God had prepared salvation. Now, you must remember: God is the beginning. Before Him there was nothing. In the beginning, there was a consultation among the Godhead, because God is three in one: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
During that consultation, if we can use human language to describe it, God loved His Son so much that He wanted to do something for His Son. He wanted to give everything to His Son. He was thinking of creating the universe and giving the universe to His Son.
But God, being God, knew things from the beginning to the very end. He knew what would happen. He knew that the enemy would come in and try to destroy His plan.
For God to destroy the enemy, He could simply speak a word and the enemy would be destroyed. But there would be no glory to God, just like a grown man beating a little child. There would be no glory in it.
That is the reason God created man a little lower than the angels. Brothers and sisters, we human beings are a little lower than the angels because we have a body. The angels do not have a body; they are spirits.
They can go anywhere at any time without restriction. But man, with his body, is restricted. If you are here, you cannot be in some other place. That is our limitation.
But that is not the problem. The problem is that man has sin. Not only did our forefathers, Adam and Eve, sin, but we who are their descendants have all sinned in them. We have their sinful nature in us.
We know what is good; we have the knowledge. But we do not have the power, the life, to live it out. That is our human problem.
But thank God, before God began creation, He knew all about it. If we put it in human words, God was wondering whether He should create. Then the Son stepped up and said, “Father, if it is Your will to do it, go ahead. I am willing to give Myself, to be the substitute, to be the One who will give Himself totally over in order to rescue man from death.”
It is on the basis of that that God created the universe. Even though it took so many years for God to send His Son into the world to be the Savior of the world, God’s purpose never changed.
Throughout the centuries, God was working toward salvation. In God’s timing, two thousand years ago, He sent His Son into this world.
Christ Jesus came sinless and perfect, obeying God in everything. Yet He took our sins into Himself and was crucified on Calvary’s cross. This is salvation.
Brothers and sisters, we are saved today because of what our Lord Jesus has done for us. He who is perfect bore our sins in His own body, and because of this, we who believe in Him have our sins forgiven and are given new life.
He that is born of the Spirit is spirit.
This is what salvation really is. Dear brothers and sisters, we were destined for eternal death. There was no hope and no way out.
But thank God, He has sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to be the Savior of the world. By the grace of God, we who are here this morning have believed in Jesus Christ, and by believing in Him, we are saved.
Our sins have been forgiven. We have been given new life, even the life of Christ in us. He is leading us so that we may be used of God to defeat the enemy.
By the grace of God, we are all believers. We have a new life.
He that is born of the Spirit is spirit.
With this new life, God is going to use us to defeat His enemy. Now, how?
We are saved, but why is it that after we are saved, God does not take us immediately to heaven? I used to think how good it would be if, the moment I was saved, He would take me to heaven. That would save me from many sorrows and troubles in the world.
But God did not do that. Why did He not do that? It is to complete us, to perfect us, because He wants us on this earth to demonstrate the life of Christ in such a way as to defeat all the works of the enemy.
As we find in Galatians 5, the spirit and the flesh fight against each other. We have the Spirit of God in us, and our spirit is in touch with God’s Spirit. We know what the will of God is and what He wants us to do.
That is the way God will use us to defeat His enemy. So, brothers and sisters, we are here not just to live for ourselves. We are here to live for God. We have a mission to be fulfilled.
God wants each and every one of us to defeat His enemy in our lives so that God’s purpose may be fulfilled. Now, how?
The Bible tells us that the Spirit strives against the flesh, and the flesh strives against the Spirit. That is the experience in each and every one of us.
We who believe in the Lord Jesus have a new spirit. Christ is the life of this new spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in our spirit, and the one purpose for which He dwells in us is to see that the life of Christ will grow into maturity.
We thank God that we have a new spirit. Christ is the life of our spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the power to make that life overcome the flesh in our daily life. In this way, the enemy is defeated.
Brothers and sisters, do not think that you live on this earth for no purpose. After we are saved, sometimes we may think, “What is the purpose of our continuing on this earth? Things just give us trouble. Why not be raptured immediately after we are saved?”
But God has a definite purpose. He wants us, in our daily life and in the remaining years of our lives, to so cooperate with God that the enemy will be defeated in our life. How? Not outwardly, but inwardly.
Our soul, having been under the dominion of the enemy, still defies the Spirit of God in our spirit. So, dear brothers and sisters, we find in our daily life that there is a struggle between the spirit and the soul.
Just like the apostle Paul, after he was saved, he realized and knew within himself what was the right thing to do. He knew it, and he wanted to do it. But he found there was another power in his life that would not allow him to do it, and caused him to do the opposite.
He had that inner struggle in his life, as he depicted in Romans 6 and 7. Brothers and sisters, I believe we all have that kind of experience.
Why is it that Christian life is so difficult? You know what is good, but it is hard for you to do it. You know what is bad, but unfortunately you always fall into it. That is the battle between the spirit and the soul.
To use a Bible illustration, Adam had two sons: Cain and Abel. These two sons represent the battle within us.
Cain was not a bad person. We find that he was a dutiful person. He worked in the field very earnestly. He produced, and he did not forget God, because after he had produced, he took the produce to God to offer it to God.
He was not bad at all. He was doing the best that he could. But he forgot God’s purpose.
Abel became a shepherd. We all know that at that time they ate only fruit; they did not have meat for their food. Why, then, did Abel become a shepherd? He could not eat the sheep.
We find that he did it to offer to God, because he remembered how, after their forefathers sinned, God slew an animal and clothed them with that animal.
So Abel became a shepherd, not to eat the meat, but to offer to God. In other words, Cain lived for himself, but Abel lived for God.
Now, brothers and sisters, let us ask ourselves this question: We are all living. Whom do you live for? Do you live for yourself, or do you live for God?
You may be a good person, just like Cain. He was not a very bad person at all. He was dutiful, diligent, and he planted his garden. He had produce, and he thought of God, bringing the best of his produce to God.
He was not a bad person, but he lived for himself. Abel lived for God. That is the difference.
How do you live? Do you live for yourself, the best of yourself, or do you live for God? That is the difference.
If you live for yourself, you will find, like Cain, that you thought God must be pleased with you. You try to please God with your good, but you will find that it is totally rejected.
But if you live like Abel, you do not live for yourself; you live for Him. Then you find that God will accept you, because you offer Christ to Him.
Dear brothers and sisters, here we are. We are still living, and there is still a choice to be made. What is your choice?
Do you choose to live for yourself—a good self—or do you choose to live for Christ? There is only one way for us to live: it is to live for Christ.
Even if you may suffer, even if it may mean persecution, the Lord knows. He will accept your sacrifice.
My burden this morning is very simple. Brothers and sisters, it concerns each and every one of us here. We do not doubt that you are saved. We believe that you belong to the Lord.
But what we do want to emphasize is this: Are you living for yourself, or are you living for Christ? That will make a difference, and it will be a difference of heaven and earth.
May the Lord have mercy upon us, touch our hearts, and enable us to give ourselves to Christ and to follow Him, even if the way may be difficult, because you cannot do what you want to do.
But thank God, the life of Christ in you will grow into maturity. When you see Him, you will be accepted by Him. May the Lord help each and every one of us here. Shall we pray?
Dear Lord, we want to thank Thee for saving us. We who were destined for eternal death—yet, Lord, Thou hast died for us. Thou hast borne our sins in Thine own body and died for us, that we may live.
Lord, for this we are forever grateful. But, Lord, Thou hast something higher than that. Thou dost want us to live to defeat Thy enemy, to defeat Thy enemy in our own lives.
Whatever comes from the enemy in our lives, by Thy grace we will reject. We are willing to go through pains and sorrows, but, Lord, we want to be faithful to Thee.
This morning, we commit each and every one of us here into Your hands, and pray that Thou wilt not allow us any more to live for ourselves. Enable us to live for Thee, to defeat Thy enemy in our own lives, and to glorify Your name.
May we be accepted by Thee. O dear Lord, have mercy upon each and every one of us. We ask in Thy name. Amen.