It is hardly necessary to remind you that every kingdom is governed by it's own life. In the vegetable kingdom there is life, and the vegetable kingdom is governed entirely by that kind of life. That life may be very wonderful in that kingdom ... and capable of doing very wonderful things, as we see all around us; we see the variety, the magnificence, the beauty, and the strength of life in the vegetable kingdom. But it has its limitations; an end is reached. Between the end of life of the vegetable kingdom and the point at which the life of the animal kingdom begins, there is a gap ... and there is no bridging of that division.

In the animal kingdom there is a wonderful variety, a wonderful manifestation of life. Look at all that animal life can produce! But then again you come to an end of that kingdom, and there is an unbridgeable gap, as in the former case. While man may find friends among the animals - and there may be a kind of companionship - there is not between a man and a beast that intelligent, understanding fellowship and communion that there is between man and man. They live in two different worlds.

In the kingdom of human life the range of possibility, of value, of variety is very great. To what a height human life can reach! But it has its limitations, and here again an end is reached. Between the natural-life kingdom and the divine-life kingdom there is a gap which cannot be bridged.

For the vegetable to become an animal it must become a new creation, with a new life in it. For the animal to become a man - despite what evolutionists say - it must become another creation, with another life in it. And for a man to become a child of God, an inheritor of the kingdom of God, he has to become a new creation, possessed of an entirely different and other life. It is another kingdom.

So the natural man is entirely incapable of having intercourse with the things of the Spirit of God; the two things belong to two different kingdoms. Divine Life is essential, and that is the thing upon which Christ is placing His finger of emphasis all the time.

What is the next step? Having received Divine Life as the gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ, the obligation, the necessity, and the blessing of the believer is to live by faith on this new basis. It is the obligation which rests upon him; he must. He is obliged to live by faith on this basis of Divine Life; otherwise he misses all that for which Life has been given.

He has to live by faith in it. It will not just proceed automatically. It will proceed as there is a deliberate and definite attitude taken toward it - to live on that basis. It is necessary for the believer to do that ... and it is the privilege and blessing of the believer to live by faith on the basis of Divine Life. It is an entirely new and different basis of life for the believer from the life of nature - or the basis of the life of nature. This Life is not in ourselves, even when we have received it. It is in Christ. It remains in Christ; but then Christ is represented as being in us by the Holy Spirit through faith. "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. Christ within possesses this Life, but keeps it in Himself.

"The Lord's desire for His own ... is that they have spiritual understanding."

But knowing that Christ is there as our sufficiency, and looking to Him as within, is deliverance from self altogether, and we are delivered into Christ. We have to produce neither divine things nor the result of divine things in ourselves. We have not to work ourselves up to be what we think we ought to be, as though we could produce it. We have not to seek to draw upon ourselves for the Christian life - for the things of God in life and in service. It is not so, and it is fatal to try and produce it as out from ourselves. It is, not effort of any kind that is required in relation to God.

Listen to that and underline it. It is not effort of any kind that is required in relation to God and His things but positive faith in the Lord Jesus as within us.

Having said that, we can go on to the next step; and that is, that this life in Christ in us is for the whole man - spirit, soul and body. It begins in his spirit, where it makes him alive unto God, who is a Spirit. For intelligent, understanding fellowship with what is spiritual you must be spiritual ... and you must be alive in that kingdom which is spiritual. Man by nature is not alive to God; his spirit is not alive to God. Everything in the kingdom Of God is spiritual, and we know that does not mean that it is unreal, ethereal or abstract. Sometimes it can be far more real that what is material and temporal. This divine life begins, then, in man's spirit, where it makes him alive unto God and all that is of God - to be God's kingdom, which is spiritual.

Then it is for his soul. Far from setting the soul aside and ruling it out as though it were a forbidden thing, the Divine Life quickens and energises the soul. The soul has now been brought under the government of the Spirit of Life - the Spirit of God - and is no longer under the government of the spirit of this world - of Satan, and now; under the government of the Holy Spirit, the soul is to be energised by the Spirit of Life. The mind is one part of the soul and has to be quickened thus. This is a part of the inheritance in Life - to have a quickened, illumined, energised mind; and a mind quickened and energised by the Life of God outstrips the natural mind by a universe as to knowledge and understanding. It opens up an entirely new world and kingdom, and it is not only impossible to communicate concerning that with the natural man, but foolish to try. It is useless to talk to the natural man about the things of the Spirit of God.

For ourselves it is a blessed thing to have a divinely quickened and enlightened understanding. We have a new world. How important this is for the child of God. The Lord's desire for His own - and the Lord's need for His own - is that they should have spiritual understanding, and a mind quickened, energised and illumined as to Himself, His ways, His things.

If this were recognised, there would be fewer tragedies of deception, delusion, error and misleading. All such things are a result of judging according to the natural mind and coming to a conclusion that certain things are quite good and right because they appear to be so. The language of certain persons may seem to be quite sound, their arguments to be quite right, their ways to be proper ways, and to the natural mind everything appears to be all right. There is no capacity for seeing beyond and into and through. Then those concerned are carried away into deception. They are deceptions because they are so closely counterfeiting the things of God, and the enemy knows quite well that if he can put up a close counterfeit - and imitation - there are enough Christians without spiritual understanding to fall into this trap. So he produces vast productions, counting upon this very thing, because he knows of the existence of this state of affairs - this lack of understanding of the people of God.

This divine Life is for the understanding, which in the natural mind, the Word says, is darkened ... but which in the kingdom of God is delivered from the kingdom of darkness, translated and then quickened. This divine Life is for the mind.

Then it is for the heart - a Life to energise and maintain desire, to govern the affections, to use in a right way the emotions. Emotion is not a sinful thing in itself, but if we think that natural emotion is of value in divine things, that is where we go wrong. It is emotion of a right kind, affection and feeling governed by the Spirit and energised by divine Life, which is a feature in that humanity which remains God's thought.

Humanity is a divine thought. Humanity is an eternal thought. We are not going to be disembodied spirits floating about in the air throughout eternity; we are going to be human beings ... but after God's mind. This humanity is in heaven now in the Person of the Son of Man - a humanity after God's original thought - and to that it is that you and I are going to be conformed. All the holy, pure and right emotions and affections of the Son of Man are to be found in us. This divine Life produces them ... saves them from that realm into which they have gone, which is both false and futile.

The will is another part of the soul ... and comes into the same realm of divine activity. The will is to be energised by divine Life. On the one hand, we may be will-less in ourselves, suffering perhaps because of the weaknesses and disabilities of the physical life, or for some other cause our wills nave lost their strength and we cannot do. Now the divine Life energises the will and works in us as God to will and to do His good pleasure.

On the other hand, let us remember that it has to be a divinely energised will to achieve divine ends. It is no more a matter of the will of the flesh in doing the work of God that it is being born again. If that is not true of the birth, it cannot be true of anything else that follows afterwards. So we can produce no divine fruits, achieve no divine purpose, accomplish no divine will in the natural will, however strong it is. The natural strength must come under the mastery of the Spirit of God.

Then this divine Life is for the body. We know that it is in this direction and realm of things that many mistakes have been made and much confusion and contradiction wrought amongst God's people. When a position is taken which is said to be a true doctrinal position ... and there is contradiction in history and experience ... and the Lord's honour is involved, and a great deal is brought against the Lord by a false position. When we speak of divine Life for the body, we are not affirming this necessarily means that the whole of our physical infirmity and weakness ... and the mortal element in our bodies ... is destroyed or set aside. It means nothing of that kind.

Of course, that ought to go without saying, because If that were so (and some people have taken that extreme position, with disastrous consequences to their doctrine and the faith of others ... and to the honour of the Lord), then we should be in our resurrection bodies now; it would be true of us now that the mortal has put on immortality. Who would be prepared to say that? Divine Life does not destroy the infirmity and weakness and mortality of this body, but it energises over against all these.

"Emotion is not a sinful thing in itself, but if we think that natural emotion is of value in divine things, that is where we go wrong."

Paul is a very clear example. Infirmity was always with him. To a very late hour in his life he was almost dead through a sickness. Weakness was his constant companion. He said much in his letters about 'this mortal flesh", and yet over against that he went forward on his course until he himself could just pour his life out as a drink offering to the Lord ... laying it down for His sake, and saying, "The hour of my departure is at hand." He did not say, "The hour has come when I shall have to surrender to death working in my mortal body when I shall have to admit that I am beaten by disease and infirmity." He went through to the end, when from every natural standpoint death should have claimed him long before.

It is a testimony to this great truth that, while there may be infirmity and mortality and weakness - and even disease, divine Life may be there all the time, energising over against those things, until God's work is done. Such an end is not one of defeat; it is a rounded-off ministry, so far as this present life is concerned.

Thus the whole man becomes a spiritual testimony to Christ in His risen Life, and that is what we are here for.

It is the obligation and the necessity, as well, of the privilege of the believer to live by faith on this basis. It does not work automatically, but we recall that it is written, "The life that I now live In the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God ... " It is a case of living on Him by faith, taking His Life by faith for spirit, soul and body in the will of God.

"Divine Life moves within the compass or field of divine interests and divine purposes ... and we shall find Lifeas we keep in that direction"

We have to govern all that with one important consideration and qualification.

When you and I live upon a basis of divine Life and seek to exercise faith for that Life to be made good in us for spirit, soul and body, we have to be utterly the prisoners of the Lord; we cannot do as we like. If you and I begin to exercise and interest ourselves in things outside of the Lord's permission, the Life cannot work ... and will not work ... and it will be death. If, in claiming divine Life for your body, you begin to use your physical energies outside of the will of God, divine Life will not sustain you - will not support you. Your body has to come within the limits of divine permission; and when you over-step, you will find that the Lord does not go with you in divine Life ... and then you have a reaction - something goes wrong physically or nervously.

It is the same in every other way. Divine Life moves within the compass or field of divine interests and divine purposes - it is always in the direction of God's ends; and we shall find Life as we keep in that direction. We may have Life as we abide in Christ; but if in interest, in thought, in occupation we get outside of that which is meant by Christ, there we can neither count upon divine Life nor draw upon it. Remember that, lest you go off and say, 'I may count on the Lord's Life now! 'And begin to presume upon that Life. It only operates in the compass of divine will.

That does not necessarily mean that we are going to be cut off from numberless things. The Lord can give added blessedness to many things which in no way contradict His mind, but it is when things come into conflict with some interest of His and we begin to be occupied with them that we lose the operation of Life. So all the time our attitude has to be one of inquiry and of willingness in the direction of the Lord's will. We need to ask; Would the Lord have this? Is this today in the Lord's will, or are there interests of the Lord's which require that this shall be left? Would this run counter to some interest of the Lord?

It is a matter of Life and death all the time.

God's Order God's way and law of fullness is that of organic life. In the divine order, life produces it's own organism, whether it be a vegetable, animal, human or spiritual. This means that everything comes from the inside ... Function, order and fruit issue forth from this law of life within. It was solely on this principle that the New Testament came into being. Organised Christianity has entirely reversed this order. - T. Austin Sparks