Note: These are the notes I wrote down as I read through this book. Sometimes the notes are a word-for-word transcription from the book. Other times it’s my paraphrase of what was written. These notes are not intended to fully explain what Watchman Nee wrote. If something is confusing or requires more clarity, you can reference this book for more information.
For an unregenerated person, the flesh is all an unregenerated person is. Body, soul, heart, and spirit.
For a regenerated person, it’s the part of him that hasn’t been born again and renewed by the life of Christ.
The Soul
Soul contains man’s personality and consciousness. It is connected to the spiritual world via the spirit.
Soul decides whether to obey the spirit and be united with God or to obey the body and be united to the natural world.
Fallen man’s spirit is a prisoner of the body’s passions and the soul’s rationalizations and feelings.
How Does Man Become Flesh?
As soon as we are born, we are fleshly.
No amount of education, improvement, cultivation, morality, or religion can turn man from being fleshly. This is determined by our birth.
It’s impossible to please God and fulfill His will in the flesh.
The fleshly do sometimes exert their utmost strength to observe the Law.
God looks at the flesh as utterly corrupt and unable to please Him.
The flesh is so corrupt that even the all-powerful God cannot transform the flesh into something that pleases Him. The flesh is consigned to death, to wrath, to judgment.
Man continually tries to refine and reform his flesh.
Knowing the utter corruption of the flesh, God does not try to alter man’s flesh; instead, He gives man a new life and seeks to put his flesh to death. The flesh must die. This is salvation.
God’s Salvation
Our sins have been punished and judged in Christ’s death on the cross.
As the new federal head, Jesus includes sinners in His suffering.
When He dies in the flesh, He takes to the cross the sin in the flesh. This is what “condemned sin in the flesh” means.
In His death, our sins were judged and sin itself was judged. Now sin has no power over those joined to the Lord’s death.
Regeneration
The cross releases us from the penalty and the power of sin.
No good resides in man. No flesh can please Him. It is corrupted beyond repair.
We are so hopeless in the flesh to please God that the Lord must bestow a new life into our spirit—His uncreated, untainted life—to all who receive Christ as Lord. This is regeneration or new birth.
Though He cannot alter our flesh, God gives us His life. Our flesh is as corrupt as the lost. The flesh in a saint is the same as in sinner.
Flesh is not transformed in regeneration.
God does not impart His life to us to educate and train the flesh. Rather, it is given to overcome the flesh.
In regeneration, we become related to God by birth. Regeneration means to be born of God.
The meaning of birth is “to impart life.” Born of God signifies we receive new life from Him.
Before regeneration, our spirit is dead and our soul is in full management of our entire being. We walk by the lusts of our body and the intellect of our soul.
To deliver us, God restores the spirit’s position within us to its proper place, so that we may have fellowship with Him again.
God puts His life into our spirits, thus raising it up from death. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. God’s life, which is the Spirit, enters our human spirit and restores it to its original position.
God demands withdrawal from what He has deposited, meaning He wants the life of Christ in our spirits to be fully released into hearts, souls, and bodies.
Regeneration is the minimum of spiritual life. It is the basis upon which later building up takes place.
One cannot grow spiritually if they are not regenerated, since there is no life in their spirit.
God cannot repair and reform the flesh.
The Conflict Between the Old and the New
It is essential for a regenerated person to understand what he has obtained through new birth and what still lingers of his natural endowment.
Components of the flesh are “sin” and “me.” Paul said, “Sin that dwells in me…in my flesh” (Rom. 7:14, 17-18).
“Sin” is the power of sin; nature of sin.
“Me” is the self-life of the soul.
The Lord Jesus has dealt with the sin of our flesh on the cross. With regard to the sin of the flesh, we need to consider this an accomplished fact (Rom. 6:11) and we will reap the effectiveness of Jesus’ death in deliverance from the power of sin (Rom. 6:14). The body of sin is then rendered powerless.
We are never asked to be crucified for sin. But we are exhorted to take up the cross to deny self.
Jesus deals with our sins and with ourselves very differently. To conquer sin, the believer needs but a moment. To deny self, we need a lifetime.
On the day we became identified with Jesus, our flesh is crucified. Galatians 5:24 states that we have crucified the flesh with its passion and desires. This is the sin of the flesh.
Galatians 5:17 exhorts us to walk by the Spirit and not the flesh. This is the self of the flesh.
Christ’s cross deals with sin. The Spirit, through the cross, deals with self.
Christ delivers us completely from the power of sin through the cross so that sin may not reign again.
By the indwelling Spirit, Christ enables us to overcome the “self of the flesh” daily and obey Him perfectly.
Liberation from sin is an accomplished fact; denial of self is a daily experience.
God’s life is absolute; it must gain complete mastery over the man.
Hebrews 4:12 states, “The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing unto the separation of soul and spirit.”
God can only give to those who believe, receive, and claim what has already been accomplished for them.
To walk by the spirit, we must see the separation and distinction between the body, soul, heart, and spirit.
The flesh demands full sovereignty; so does the spiritual life.
The flesh wants man forever attached to itself. This is the nature of the first Adam, having an earthly focus, and always leading man to sin.
The Spirit, on the other hand, wants man completely subject to the Holy Spirit. This is the nature of the second Adam, having a complete focus upon Christ, and always leading man to righteousness.
It is by God’s life, imparted into the believer’s spirit at regeneration, that kills the self in the flesh.
God has provided a whole salvation for man. He who does not know he has it (or what he has) will not be able to enjoy it.
