Life in the Spirit

In the same editorial, T. Austin-Sparks discusses the experience of the cross as it brings in the experience of the Spirit. The Spirit’s sword cuts the soul from the spirit to usher us into another realm, as the following paragraphs point out:

[T]his ’Jordan’ experience of the Cross is a crisis–and what a crisis it is! It is not only the end of one realm, it is the opening up of and entering upon a new one. So it proved to be with us, as with Israel. Through this experience we entered into a great expanse of spiritual life, light, and liberty. But then several major things began to come into view. Of course, the first of these was life in the Spirit….As with Israel, the very deliverance from Egypt and government in the wilderness was by the Pillar of Cloud and Fire; so we had known that sovereignty and grace. But Jordan marked a development in this matter. Joshua stands for ever as a type of the energies of the Holy Spirit in relation to the full thought of God. These energies stood over against the poor fruitless energies of man’s own soul.

It is not in our souls or ourselves that the Holy Spirit dwells, but in our spirits, and the renewed and indwelt spirit is the organ of Divine knowledge, purpose, and power.

For us this had a definite subjective meaning: it meant that the Spirit’s sword or knife cut clean in “to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.” There came about the recognition of the fact that the soul is one thing and the spirit is another, and that it is the latter through which the Holy Spirit realises all the purposes of God. The soul is ourselves in intelligence, will, feeling and energy. It is not in our souls or ourselves that the Holy Spirit dwells, but in our spirits, and the renewed and indwelt spirit is the organ of Divine knowledge, purpose, and power. Life in the Spirit is only possible as this distinction is made. We have covered the ground of this distinction in a book entitled What Is Man? and our object now is only to indicate the steps of spiritual progress.

Life in the Spirit, then, means another life, another knowledge, another energy, another capacity....

This life in the Spirit, then, means a new realm of spiritual knowledge and understanding, which is closed, very largely, even to Christians, if they have not known the meaning of death and resurrection union with Christ in its relation to the natural man, man in his natural constitution. Such may have the information which is given by the Scriptures on all matters, and even teach these things–so did we; but there is all the difference of life and death between this and being in the living good of the truth. Life in the Spirit, then, means another life, another knowledge, another energy, another capacity....

It was not long after our coming into the fuller meaning of the Cross, as to the self-life, that there broke upon us this great fact that life in the Spirit is life in the heavenlies, and life in the heavenlies is meant to be a life of reigning and dominion. Again, this is a life of warfare; but in this realm and in this work it is a case, not of appealing to the Throne, but of operating or functioning as from the Throne. It is bringing that Throne to bear upon the enemy in his hold and his devices…. (A Witness and a Testimony, March 1956, “A Statement from the Editor,” pp. 29-30.)

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