Watchman Nee comments on the connection between spirit, soul, and body in his classic book The Release of the Spirit. No matter how one classifies the inner fperson (soul, or soul and spirit as Nee does), Nee’s observations are enlightening. He pictures God's Spirit residing in the inner person, specifically in one's spirit, a separate part of the inner person where one connects with God. God intends His Spirit, joined with a person's spirit to govern the soul – the seat of our thoughts, emotions, and will. The soul then uses the body as its form of expression. For this to happen, God must break a soul still tuned to the call of sin so that the spirit, along with God's Spirit, might rule.
Similarly, in the soul-body make up of humans, the Holy Spirit makes its home in the inner part of a person, the soul, which God regenerates at conversion to Christ. A fundamental change takes place in our souls and we experience a break from the absolute controlling force of sin at regeneration. We become dead to sin, but sin does not completely die. Paul acknowledges that even though we become alive to Christ and dead to sin, we must not let sin reign in our mortal bodies so that we obey its evil desires.[1] Like the soul to Nee that must be broken, we must be made dead to sin that still rests in us.
Though the exact makeup of the inner person remains the subject of some debate, the Bible makes clear: (1) the Holy Spirit takes up residency in the inner man at conversion to Christ; (2) we become new creatures in Christ; (3) we gain not only this newness, but justification for the legal penalty for our sins and adoption into the family of God. However, complete redemption remains a future event. At present, we still battle with sin and must devote ourselves in concert with God in the process of sanctification. We must act to treat sin as it now deserves - dead and without power. Likewise, we must treat the Holy Spirit as He deserves - the power of God in us to live holy, obedient lives in worship to the Lord.
Romans 7:21-23 paints a dismal picture of one on the loosing side of sin’s attempt to reign: “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.” The inner person has broken away from the grips of sin and desires to conform to God’s law, but doesn’t have the developed machinery to put it to work. This person cries in despair “what a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
In contrast Romans 8 tells the story on one dead to sin. The righteous requirements of the Lord are fully met in those who do not live according the sinful nature, but who live according to the Spirit (vs. 4). In verses 5 and 6 Paul continues with a contrast of the person who agrees with the law of God in the inner person and the one not only agrees, but walks by the Spirit. “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.”
Nee describes the breaking of the outer person as the discipline of the Spirit. Through life we will inevitably experience events that wound us. The Spirit knows the strongholds of sin that He must destroy. He knows how to use the circumstances of life that exhaust our cleverness. With a love that we might not immediately comprehend, He wields the events in life intended for our harm and that cause us to inwardly groan and we realize our desperate need for God’s redemptive work, that we can no longer live by ourselves or for ourselves, and uses them bring us to a Jesus commitment of previously unknown severity.
For our part, we must recognize the discipline of the Spirit, yield to it, and begin to live in Romans chapter 8 - setting our minds on the things of the Spirit, living by Him, in His strength which will make sin dead to us.[2]
[1] Romans 6:12-13
[2] Romans 8:4.
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