Now let us consider the importance of our spirit. Zechariah 12:1 says that God stretched forth the heavens, laid the foundation of the earth, and formed the spirit of man within him. In the whole universe only three things are crucial besides God: the heavens, the earth, and the human spirit. This is because the heavens are for the earth, the earth is for man, and man has a spirit for God. Job 32:8 says, "There is a spirit in man." We have a spirit within us as an organ to contact God and take God in.
Proverbs 20:27 says that the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord. This lamp needs the oil. Our spirit is God’s lamp, and God is the oil for this lamp. John 4:24 says that God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit. If you are going to contact God, to worship God, you need to worship Him in your spirit.
John 3:6 says, "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." After being born again, our human spirit is no longer merely a human spirit, because it has the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit in it. The Spirit witnesses with our spirit (Rom. 8:16). This means the Holy Spirit is with our human spirit. Our spirit also has grace within it (Gal. 6:18). The flesh has sin, death, and Satan in it. But our spirit has Christ, the Spirit, and grace in it. Our flesh is a compound, compounded with sin, death, and Satan. Our spirit today is also a compound, compounded with Christ, the Spirit, and grace.
Man has two organs: the body as an outward organ and the spirit as an inward organ. In between these two organs is our being, that is, the human soul (1 Thes. 5:23). Our soul is our self, our being. The body is the outward organ for us to contact the material things. Our spirit is the inward organ for us to contact God. Through the fall, the devil, Satan, came into the outward organ, the human body. But in our regeneration, the Lord Jesus came into our inward organ, our human spirit.
We also need to realize that as Christians, we have three persons. The first person is yourself in your soul, your being. The second person is Satan in your flesh. And the third person is Christ in your spirit. This kind of truth has been fully missed today. Most of the teachings and sermons are in the ethical and moral realm, not in the realm that Paul taught in the book of Romans. In the book of Romans, there is not the ethical and moral concept, but the concept that our spirit today has Jesus Christ, the Spirit, and the very grace of God within it. God does not want us to be merely ethical and moral, but God surely wants us to walk according to this wonderful compound spirit. God wants us to live in this compound spirit and have our being every minute according to this compound spirit.
(The Flesh and the Spirit, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee)