What does it mean to serve God in our spirit in the gospel of His Son (Rom. 1:9)? Much of the service rendered to God today by His people is outwardly good, great, and even wonderful, but do the Lord’s believers serve Him in their spirit in the gospel of His Son?
First of all, we need to realize that, in order to do anything for the Lord, we first need to receive the divine supply of the Spirit in the Body; only when we’re properly supplied with the Triune God can we do anything for Him.
What does it mean to serve God? To serve God, according to John 4, is to worship God; our God is a living God, and as such a One He lives in us, directs us, controls us, and we live Him out, testifying in our living of the gospel that we preach.
When we come to serve God we first need to have a blood-purified conscience of any dead work so that we may serve our living God in a living way (Heb. 9:14).
When we serve God we need to be in our mingled spirit, our spirit regenerated with the divine Spirit, because our God is Spirit, and everything we are, have, and do toward God should be in spirit.
Our service to God is in spirit and in the gospel, in the realm of the mingled spirit and in the realm of the gospel; we need to not only exercise our spirit and be in spirit, but learn the elements and details of the gospel, experience the full content of the gospel, and exercise our spirit to learn how to minister the gospel.
Hallelujah, our God is Spirit, and we who worship Him, that is, serve Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truthfulness (John 4:24).
To worship God we need to open to Him, confess our sins, and drink Him as the living water; this living water will become in us a fountain flowing out as the gospel toward others for their salvation to be produced as materials for the building up of the church.
On the one hand, we need to drink Christ, and on the other, we need to have no confidence in the flesh; all that we are and have in our natural being – whether good or evil – is the flesh, and the flesh cannot be pleasing to God, nor can it be used in God’s service.
We need to allow the Lord’s light to shine on us concerning our nature, our deeds, and our confidence in the flesh, and we need to agree with the Lord’s light, repenting to the Lord and condemning our flesh so that we may live in spirit and serve God by the Spirit of God.
In God’s eyes, we are men in the flesh, good for nothing except death and burial, and therefore we should not bring anything of our natural life or the flesh into God’s ministry in the service of His gospel. We all should declare in our life and work, I am a person in the flesh, worthy of nothing but death and burial, and so I want to have myself terminated, crucified, and buried. Oh Lord Jesus, make this our reality!
Our Work for the Lord in the Gospel should be by the Lord’s Resurrection Life and Power
Our work and labor for the Lord in the gospel should not be by our natural life and natural ability but by the Lord’s resurrection life and power; resurrection is the eternal principle in our service to God (see Num. 17:8; 1 Cor. 15:10, 58; 16:10).
In Num. 17 we see that, after the rebellion of Korah, God asked the 12 tribes to bring a rod for each tribe and put them before Him over night, and whose rod would bud is the one who has the God-given authority. All twelve were dead sticks, including Aaron’s; but Aaron was vindicated by the Lord in resurrection by having his rod budding, blossoming, and bringing forth fruit.
Aaron wasn’t vindicated because he was better than the rebellious ones or because he didn’t rebel; he was the same as the others, but God vindicated him by the resurrection life.
Resurrection means that everything is out of God – and not out of us, that God alone is able and that we are not able, and that everything is done by God and not by ourselves. The colt the Lord Jesus was riding on in Jerusalem was just like the other colts on earth, but Jesus was riding on it; it would be foolish for the colt to think he’s more important than the other colts or to think that the Hosanna’s were for him (and not for the One riding it).
There’s nothing special about you or me; the only thing that’s special is that Jesus is in us, and His resurrection life is in our spirit; what vindicates us is Christ as the resurrection life. There’s nothing within us naturally that would give us any kind of spiritual authority; we should serve God only by Christ, the life-giving Spirit, the reality of resurrection.
All those who know resurrection have given up hope in themselves; they KNOW that they can’t make it, they can’t serve God, and they can’t even live the Christian life, so they rely absolutely on the Lord, allowing His resurrection power to work in them and be manifested through them, realizing that everything that is of death belongs to them, while everything that is of life belongs to the Lord (see 2 Cor. 1:8-9; cf. Eccl. 9:4).
Paul acknowledged it when he said that he, the foremost of sinners became the foremost of the apostles, laboring more abundantly than the others, yet it was not him but the grace of God who was with him (1 Cor. 15:10); he also testified that it was not him but Christ who lived in him (Gal. 2:20).
By the grace which lives in us and supplies us daily we can labor more abundantly for the Lord; it is by the resurrected Christ living in us that we as God’s servants can labor for the Lord and can do things that we normally can’t do in ourselves.
Hallelujah, our labor is not in vain in the Lord (1 Cor. 15:58) when it is done in and by the resurrection life! Our labor for the Lord in the gospel should be done not in our natural life or power but in the Lord’s resurrection life and power.
Lord Jesus, may our work and labor for You in the gospel not be by our natural life and natural ability but by Your resurrection life and power! Oh Lord, may we realize that we are nothing, we can do nothing, and in us nothing good dwells, but we have the resurrection life in our spirit! Lord, we are not able but You are able. We cannot do it but You can. Everything that is of death belongs to us, and everything that is of life belongs to You. Lord, we want that our work and labor for You be by the resurrection life in our spirit!
We are Nothing and can do Nothing, but the Resurrected Christ Enables us to Serve God
A servant of the Lord is one who has died and resurrected. God testifies again and again to His people that authority to serve God lies in resurrection, not in a person himself. All services to the Lord must pass through death and resurrection before they will be acceptable to God. Resurrection means that everything is of God and not of us. It means that God alone is able and that we are not able. Resurrection means that everything is done by God, not by ourselves. All those who think highly of themselves and who hold a misguided judgment of themselves have never realized what resurrection is….If a man continues to think that he is able, that he can do something, and that he is useful, he does not know resurrection. He may know the doctrine of resurrection, the reason for resurrection, or the result of resurrection, but he does not know resurrection. All those who know resurrection have given up hope in themselves; they know that they cannot make it. As long as the natural strength remains, the power of resurrection has no ground for manifestation. Watchman Nee
I was really touched concerning this. We may think we can do it, we still can serve God in ourselves, and we are the right ones to do this or that for God; but we must acknowledge that we are nothing, we have nothing, and we can do nothing – it is only the resurrected Christ in our spirit that is the power and source of our work for the Lord.
We need to be convinced of the impotence of our natural being in serving the Lord. In our natural human being our spirit has been deadened, our soul neither receives the things of God nor is it able to know them, our heart is deceitful above everything, our mind is filled with vanity and darkened in understanding, our will is hardened, our flesh is unable to be subject to God or please God, our self needs to be denied, and our body is of sin and of death.
Every single cell in our natural being is contaminated; not one thing is left that can be used to serve the Lord.
However, the resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit lives in us, and He enables us to do what we can never do in ourselves (see 1 Cor. 15:10; 2 Cor. 1:8-9, 12; 4:7-18). The life-giving Spirit as the reality of resurrection is in our spirit to be the grace that enables us to labor for the Lord more abundantly, yet not us but the grace of God.
When we do not live by our natural life but live by the divine life within us, we are in resurrection, and the issue will be the reality of the Body of Christ as the goal of the gospel of God (Phil. 3:10-11; Eph. 1:22-23).
The result of our not living by the natural life but by the divine life in our spirit is that there will be a corporate living of the perfected God-men who are being conformed to the death of Christ through the power of His resurrection.
We may not be constantly like this, but we can be instantly like this; we may not constantly live a life in conformity with the death of Christ through the power of His resurrection, but we have a spirit, and when we serve in our spirit, we can be like this instantly!
Lord, train us, perfect us, adjust us, and teach us how to serve properly in our spirit in the gospel for the building up of the Body of Christ. We acknowledge that we are nothing, we have nothing, and we can do nothing, but we have the resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit in our spirit to enable us to do what we can never do in ourselves. Lord, we want to take the way of not living by our natural life but by the divine life in our spirit so that the resurrection life may be manifested in us, and we would serve in spirit in the gospel of the Son of God!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message for this week, and Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 47, “Authority and Submission,” ch. 15, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Service for the Building up of the Church (2016 Spring ITERO), week 3 / msg. 3, Serving God in our Spirit in the Gospel of His Son.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic:
# I would cease completely / From my efforts vain, / Let Thy life transform me, / Full release to gain; / Build me up with others / Till in us Thou see / Thy complete expression / Glorifying Thee. (Hymns #841)
# Lord, do cleanse my heart from all self-seeking / That I’d truly want nothing but Thee; / Let my soul be occupied, possessed, Lord, / That You would be magnified in me. (Song on being filled with God)
# Oh, to be nothing, nothing! / Only to lie at His feet, / A broken and emptied vessel— / For the Master’s use made meet! / Emptied that He might fill me / As forth to His service I go; / Broken, that so unhindered, / His life through me might flow. (Hymns #900)
About aGodMan
“Not I but the grace of God” [in 1 Corinthians 15:10] equals “no longer I…but…Christ” in Galatians 2:20. The grace that motivates the apostle and operates in him is not some matter or thing but a living person, the resurrected Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God becoming the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit, who dwells in him as his everything. By this grace Paul could be what he was and labor more abundantly than all the other apostles. Throughout the centuries, all the living servants of the Lord have had this resurrected Christ living in them. We can testify that He lives in us, enabling us to do what we could never do in ourselves.
In 1 Corinthians 15:58 Paul encourages us by saying that our “labor is not in vain in the Lord.”…Without resurrection, whatever we do is vain. But in resurrection our labor in the Lord is not vain. Therefore, resurrection is not only an encouragement; it also motivates us to the work of the Lord. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 1839-1841, by Witness Lee)