I. IN THE EYES OF GOD—
RANKED WITH THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH
In the eyes of God, our human spirit is ranked with the heavens and the earth. There are two verses in the Bible concerning this one point — Zechariah 12:1 and Isaiah 42:5. Zechariah 12:1 says clearly that God stretched forth the heavens, laid the foundation of the earth, and formed the spirit of man within him. The heavens are for the earth; the earth is for man; and man has a spirit to contact God. We can contact God only by using our spirit.
II. IN OUR WORSHIPPING OF GOD
Our human spirit is important in our contacting God, and our contacting God is our worship to God. We cannot contact God without worshipping Him. God is the object of human worship, and the human worship must be carried out by contacting God. If we worship God, we contact Him. We can contact God by using our spirit. The Lord Jesus told us purposely in John 4:24 that God is Spirit and that we must worship Him in our spirit. We worship Him by exercising our spirit. If we are going to live a meaningful life, we should contact God. He is our source, and our spirit is our spiritual organ for us to contact Him.
We live physically by exercising our body. But to merely live physically is no higher than the living of a beast. If we are going to live a super life, a higher life, we have to do it by exercising our spirit, which came from the origin of God’s breath of life. This spiritual organ within us is mainly for us to contact God, to worship Him.
We must be deeply impressed with this basic knowledge of the holy Word. We are being trained to be normal believers in Christ. A normal believer’s life implies the service, the worship, he should render to the Triune God, and in all of our service we must contact God in our spirit.
III. IN CHRIST AND THE SPIRIT INDWELLING US, TAKING OUR SPIRIT AS GOD’S HABITATION
Our human spirit is important because it is in this spirit that Christ and the Spirit indwell us, taking our spirit as God’s habitation (2 Tim. 4:22a; Rom. 8:11; Eph. 2:22). If you do not have God in your spirit, your soul will also be empty. The soul was made to be a vessel to contain God as the contents. Romans 9 tells us clearly that we human beings are vessels to God, containers to contain God as our contents (vv. 21, 23). Today the Triune God is embodied in Christ and realized as the Spirit. Both the embodiment and the realization of God indwell us, remaining within us to be our contents in our spirit. Because of Their indwelling, we human beings become God’s habitation.
The contents of man should be the very creating God, the Triune God. He created us with an organ to receive Him, to take Him in, and to contain Him so that He can come into us to be our contents. If you have a house without a dweller, that is a pitiful house. Our dweller is the Triune God. The New Testament says that God abides in us (1 John 4:16), and it goes on to give us even more details. To merely say that God dwells in us is still too general. God has to be embodied, and God has to be realized. When God is embodied, He becomes Christ (Col. 2:9). When God is realized, He becomes the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). So today we have Christ and the Spirit dwelling in us, taking us as Their habitation (Eph. 2:22). How wonderful it is to have Christ living in me! How sweet and how pleasant it is to have the life-giving Spirit dwelling in me! We should declare, "Christ lives in me, makes His home in me!" (Eph. 3:17). "The Spirit dwells in me!"
Since Christ and the Spirit indwell us, we become top beings in the whole universe. Our rank is now with God. We become on the level of God and are much higher than the angels. We should be happy because we are the highest beings, ranked with God. We need to realize that we are on the same level with God because we have been born of God (John 1:12-13). If you are born of a cat, you become a cat. One is the originator, and the others are the children. The children are in the rank of the mother. If the mother is a human being, surely all the children are human beings. We are born of the great God, so we become God in His life and nature, but of course, not in His Godhead. We are ranked with God. He is our great Originator, and we are His children. He became a God-man so that man can become a man-God. Eventually, He and we are in the same category, of the same kind, and on the same level.
(The Spirit with Our Spirit, Chapter 7, by Witness Lee)
