We’re a Miniature Garden of Eden: Christ is in our Spirit and Satan is in our Flesh

Today we believers in Christ are a miniature garden of Eden, for God as the tree of life is in our spirit, Satan as the tree of knowledge is in our flesh, and our mind is in between; we need to choose to turn to our spirit and never try to improve our ugly flesh, for there’s no room for bettering or improvement with the flesh. Hallelujah for our spirit!

Thank the Lord that we can see the two trees – the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Daily we need to make the choice to eat the tree of life and reject the tree of knowledge, which is the tree of death.

We need to have this primary matter in the church life – eating Christ as the tree of life by partaking of Him as life and life supply in everything. The Lord Jesus is the tree of life; when He was on the earth, He depended on the Father in everything He did.

When He was about to say something, He always checked with the Father, and wherever He went, whatever He did, and whatever He spoke, He took the Father as the source and supply. He depended on the Father.

Today, we need to depend on the Lord in all things. We need to take Him in as our life and life supply.

To do this, however, we need to love the Lord. Oh, how we love the Lord Jesus!

Whenever we do not love the Lord, degradation comes in; we may still be able to do many things for the Lord, but if we don’t do things out of our love for Him, even out of our best love for Him, all these amount to nothing.

Today, there are many works done in God’s name, but He is not pleased with them, for the ones who do these works don’t love the Lord.

May we see that we need to return to our first love for the Lord, loving Him with the best love, and may we remain in this love for the Lord in everything we do so that we may do the first works.

When we recover our first love for the Lord, we will do the first works, we will eat Christ as the tree of life, we will have God’s shining, and we will be the testimony of Jesus on the earth.

However, if we do not love the Lord with the first love, He will come and take the lampstand from us; the reality of the Lord’s testimony will no longer be with us.

May the Lord save us from having the lampstand taken from us; may we be saved from being a degraded church without the testimony of Jesus.

Oh, may we give ourselves to the Lord to just love Him, eat Him as the tree of life, remain under His shining, and be the testimony of Jesus shining on earth with Christ as our light!

We’re a Miniature Garden of Eden: Christ is in our Spirit and Satan is in our Flesh, and we are in between

Romans 8:6 is a key verse concerning our experience of Christ as life and also concerning the danger of living in the flesh. The mind set on the flesh is death but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace.

This shows us that we believers in Christ today are a miniature garden of Eden, for we have God as the tree of life in our spirit, Satan as the tree of knowledge in our flesh, and our mind is in between.

We are in a triangular situation, even as Adam was in Genesis; we are daily put before the two trees.

One of the trees is very simple and uncomplicated: it is the tree of life, and it is easy for us to ignore it, even though it is in the centre of our being. The other tree, however, is very complicated, complex, confusing, and deceiving, for we have knowledge, good, and evil.

Many times, we are tempted to choose the good and reject the evil, and we want to know more about the good and repudiate what is evil. All this sounds good, but unless we choose the tree of life, unless we set our mind on our spirit, nothing else matters, for it is all done in the flesh and by the flesh. Oh Lord!

May we see that we’re in this triangular situation, being a miniature garden of Eden – we are between life and death, God and Satan!

Our soul is our very person, and the chief part of the soul is our mind. As a miniature garden of Eden, we have the mingled spirit representing the tree of life and we have the flesh representing the tree of knowledge.

Our spirit is where the Lord Jesus is; when we turn to our spirit and touch the Lord in spirit, we have life, for He is life to us (2 Tim. 4:22).

However, Satan is in our flesh; our corrupted flesh is where Satan lives and dwells, for he mingled himself with our fallen body to corrupt it and make it the flesh. In the flesh is the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

When we are in the flesh, we may be doing good and not evil, and we may have a lot of knowledge, but it is in the flesh, and the flesh can never please God (Rom. 8:7-9).

Today we have only two choices; we don’t have thousands of choices but two – the tree of life in our spirit or the tree of knowledge of good and evil in our flesh.

Paul charges us in Rom. 8:6 to set our mind on our spirit so that we may have life and peace. When we set our mind on our spirit, we give heed to the tree of life, we return to God, and we draw near to God.

When we set our mind on the tree of life in our spirit, we eat Christ, drink Christ, breathe in Christ, and we experience the tree of life for us to have life and even be life. The result is life and peace.

But when we set our mind on the things of the flesh, when our mind is set on the flesh, the result is death.

We all have the experience of having a sense of life and peace whenever we set our mind on the spirit; then, when our mind is set on the flesh, even though we don’t realise this, we have a sense of death.

When we do not set our mind on the spirit, we sense we’re depressed, we feel we’re in darkness, and we feel weak and in death.

This should be a warning that we have chosen the wrong tree, and we should turn to our spirit to enjoy Christ and be in life! When we set our mind on the spirit, setting our mind on Christ and on the things above, we will sense we’re joyful, strong, vital, and full of life.

In Greek, the expression is, the mind of the spirit is life and peace, but the mind of the flesh is death.

Our mind set on the spirit becomes the mind of the spirit, for the Spirit with our spirit spreads into our mind to renew us and make it the mind of the spirit.

Similarly, the mind set on the flesh becomes the mind of the flesh, for Satan in the flesh spreads into our mind and makes it carnal, fleshly. Oh Lord!

May we daily learn to set our mind on our spirit in all things!

Lord Jesus, cause us to see that we today are a miniature garden of Eden, having Christ as the tree of life in our spirit and Satan as the tree of knowledge in our flesh. Oh Lord, we open to You! May we choose to set our mind on our spirit so that we may enjoy life and peace! May our wandering mind leave old thoughts behind and be set on the mingled spirit so that we may choose the tree of life! Amen, Lord, may we realise we’re in this triangular situation, having our mind between God and Satan, life and death! May we learn to set our mind on the spirit throughout the day in big things and in small things. Oh Lord, may we be in our spirit and not in our flesh! We want to follow the sense of life and peace within so that, whenever we sense any death, we would run to our spirit! Oh Lord, remind us again and again to set our mind on the mingled spirit so that we may be joyful, peaceful, strong, and vital! Save us from setting our mind on our flesh, for this brings in death, darkness, depression, and sadness! Amen, Lord, our spirit!

The Flesh is the Body of Sin and the Body of this Death – it can Never Improve, so we Set our Mind on our Spirit!

What is the flesh? Romans 8:6 speaks of not setting our mind on the flesh, for this brings in death; what is the flesh in this verse?

Man’s body was originally pure, but through man’s fall, Satan injected himself into man, and man’s body has become the flesh (Gen. 3:6; Rom. 7:18). This is how the flesh came about.

When God created us, He created our body pure and clean; however, man partook of the wrong tree, and this body became the flesh with Satan’s element in it. Our body today is the body of sin (Rom. 6:6) and the body of this death (7:24).

On the one hand, the body of sin is very active and full of strength in sinning against God. On the other hand, the body of this death is weak and powerless in acting to please God.

For example, when it comes to being involved in worldly events or entertainment, the body of sin is so full of energy, and there seems to be limitless power to do this and that in and for the world.

But when it comes to going to the meetings of the church, when the prayer meeting comes, we suddenly feel powerless, even tired and sick, for the body of this death is powerless in acting to please God.

When it comes to doing things in the flesh, there’s much energy and resources in us to do it; when the meeting time comes, we have a headache or our body is just tired, so we may choose not to go. Oh Lord!

The body of death operates in us when we desire to do anything related to the Lord and the church life, but the body of sin is active and full of energy when it comes to worldly things.

We need to see this, for this is what the flesh is in our experience. When we set our mind on the flesh, we partake of death, but when we set our mind on the spirit, we enjoy life and peace.

In Romans 7 we see clearly that the flesh is with us, for the flesh of sin and the body of this death is present with us, and there’s nothing we can do to change the flesh into better or improve it.

Romans 8, on the other hand, clearly shows us that Christ as the Spirit is with our spirit, for the Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16).

This is why we say that we are a miniature garden of Eden and that we are in a triangular situation, always being between God and Satan, life and death.

The mind of our soul represents ourselves, sin in our flesh represents Satan, and the Spirit in our spirit represents God.

We may think that, after believing into the Lord Jesus, we are now much better, for the flesh is improving over time.

But the Lord is faithful to show us through our experience that, no matter how much we may try to improve the flesh, there’s no way to improve it.

Our body has a foreign element added to it, for it has become the flesh; Satan dwells and is expressed through our flesh.

No matter how many ethical and moral teachings we may know and try to obey, at most we will choose the good and reject the evil, which is eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Oh Lord!

Our flesh is the meeting hall of sin, death, and Satan, and our body is a body of sin and death. As long as we are still living, until the day of our redemption, the body of sin and death is always with us (Rom. 8:23).

May we not be deceived into thinking that the flesh is gone once we are saved, or that the saved will become better after regeneration.

As long as we are still living on this earth, until the day of the redemption of our body, the body of sin and of death is always with us.

We may ask the Lord why did He allow the flesh to be with us – why didn’t He save us fully, not just in our spirit but also in our flesh. Paul said that we are groaning to be delivered from the body of sin and death, and this will happen at the redemption of our body.

The flesh is the “meeting hall” and the compound of sin, death, and Satan; the flesh is a hopeless case and can never be improved (Rom. 7:17-18, 21; cf. John 17:15). The flesh is filled up with Satan, sin, and death; these three are one.

There’s no possibility to improve the flesh; rather, we need to see that the flesh is ugly and condemn it, never trying to improve it.

God will never recover or save the flesh; He will save our spirit, our soul, and even our body, but He will never save or recover the flesh.

Our flesh is a hopeless case; we shouldn’t have any positive expectation concerning our flesh. Rather, may we learn to run to our spirit, set our mind on our spirit, and reject anything of the flesh today!

Lord Jesus, grant us to see a vision of what the flesh is so that we may run to our spirit and set our mind on our spirit in our daily life! Amen, Lord, we choose to turn to our spirit today! Grant us to realise that our flesh is the body of this sin, very active and full of strength in sinning against God. May we see that the flesh is the body of this death, weak and powerless in acting to please God. Oh Lord, save us from trying to improve our flesh. Save us from trying to better our flesh or cause it to please God! May we realise that our old man has been crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be annulled! Hallelujah, we should no longer serve sin as slaves! Amen, Lord, we turn to our spirit right now! We choose to set our mind on our spirit! We realise that, as long as we’re still living, until the day of our redemption, this body of sin and death is always with us. So we turn! Amen, Lord, we turn to our spirit! We set our mind not on the flesh but on the spirit today!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brothers in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1975-1976, vol. 1, “The Flesh and the Spirit,” chs. 1-3, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Chapters 5 through 8 of Romans – the Kernel of the Bible (2025 ICSC), week 1, The Line of Life and the Line of Death in Chapters 5 through 8 of Romans.
• Similar articles on this topic:
  – The garden of Eden having two trees, a portion from, Dead to Law but Living to God, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee.
  – Walk by the Spirit to Have the Spirit’s Flow of Life, article via, New Jerusalem blog.
  – Reviews: misinterpreting the goal of God’s eternal purpose, article via, Affirmation and Critique.
  – The Law of the Spirit of Life, Nuggets and Gems from the Bible (#9).
  – To set our mind on the spirit, a portion from, The Spirit with Our Spirit, Chapter 8, by Witness Lee.
  – Renewed in the Spirit of Your Mind – What does it mean and how do you experience it? More via, holding to truth in love.
  – Setting the mind on the spirit – the key to death or life, a portion from, Lesson Book, Level 3: Two Spirits—Two Spirits – the Divine Spirit and the Human Spirit, Chapter 16, by Witness Lee.
  – Choosing to Exercise our Spirit, via, Living to Him.
  – Setting our mind on the spirit, article by Ed Marks in, Affirmation and Critique.
  – What is the Renewing of the Mind? More via, The Hearing of Faith.
  – The three parts of the soul – mind, will, and emotion, a portion from, The Economy of God, Chapter 6.
  – Message 4: “The Spirit Himself with Our Spirit” (1), video message via, LSM YouTube.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – All I have in Adam is but sin and death, / I in Christ inherit life and righteousness; / When in flesh abiding, Adam I express, / But when in the spirit Christ is manifest. / When I am in Adam, though I may not sin, / Unto death, a sinner, sentenced I have been; / When in Christ I need not righteously to act, / I’m already righteous, justified in fact. (Hymns #593 stanzas 1-2)
  – Now He must have our cooperation. / We must set our mind upon the Son. / We must turn away from all that leads astray, / Till our mind is set on Him each day. / Lord, our human spirit now contains You. / Still Your purpose in us You would do; / If our wandering mind would leave old thoughts behind, / Then Your life and peace in it we’ll find. (Hymns #1193 stanzas 4-5)
  – My old man has been crucified with Him, / With all its foul corruption deep within; / And buried too its nature serpentine, / Completely finished—this great fact is mine, / I hold it fast. / So, Lord, I give my heart to Thee today, / That it may be Thy home in every way, / A place for Thee to come and settle down, / And all Thy grand recovery work to crown / In one new man. (Hymns #1179 stanzas 1 and 5)