October 6, 2011

Walk in the Spirit – Galatians 5:16

I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Over and over, the New Testament writers describe the Christian life as a walk. To be sure, we also stand—in God’s grace, on God’s promises, against our enemy—but the course of our life is never static. Whether we think about it or not, we’re always walking.

We find an excellent picture of how God desires us to walk in Paul’s prayer for the Colossian church.

For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. (Colossians 1:9-12)

This prayer has three components. There is the source of our walk, which is the Spirit who fills us with “the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” There is the walk itself. Then, most extensively, there is a description of what our walk produces—or more accurately, a description of us as we walk.

•    Worthy of the Lord
•    Fully pleasing Him
•    Being fruitful in every good work
•    Increasing in the knowledge of God
•    Strengthened with all might, producing patience and longsuffering with joy
•    Giving thanks to the Father

As is so often true in scripture, this is a list of superlatives. These are all-out. Fully pleasing. Fruitful in every good work. Strengthened with all might. And, unthinkably, worthy of the Lord. As we look over this list, we are sorely tempted to give up without even trying.

Today’s entry in My Utmost for His Highest sheds some important light on this dilemma.

“Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into any man the hereditary disposition that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives are based on that disposition: His teaching is for the life He puts in. The moral transaction on my part is agreement with God's verdict on sin in the Cross of Jesus Christ.

“The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a man is struck by a sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God, ‘until Christ be formed in you.’ The moral miracle of Redemption is that God can put into me a new disposition whereby I can live a totally new life. When I reach the frontier of need and know my limitations, Jesus says—‘Blessed are you.’ But I have to get there. God cannot put into me, a responsible moral being, the disposition that was in Jesus Christ unless I am conscious I need it.”

In essence what Oswald Chambers is saying is the weight of our walk is on Christ. The unthinkable description of who we are to be comes not out of our nature, but out of His nature in us. Our part in salvation itself is “agreement with God’s verdict on sin in the Cross of Jesus Christ,” a verdict which must be supernaturally revealed to us. Similarly, as we walk, we must come (again and again) to that place where we reach that “frontier of need,” where we know in our deepest soul that these are things we cannot do—but He can.

Yet while He provides what we cannot with regard to the fruitfulness of our walk, there is a clear sense in scripture that we are responsible for the direction our walk takes. There are only two choices. We can choose to walk according to the Spirit, or else we will walk according to the flesh (see Romans 8, Ephesians 4, I John 1 and many others).

So it’s in this context that we turn now to Galatians. Paul here provides us with a very detailed checklist, just in case we’re confused about what’s spirit and what’s flesh. Flesh looks like this: “adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like” (5:19-21). Spirit looks like this: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (5:22-23).

Paul goes on to say, “And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (5:24-25). Here we arrive at the heart of the matter. We are called to drastic action. We who are Christ’s must crucify our flesh, so we can be free to live and walk in the Spirit.

What’s the best way to crucify our flesh? I have come to believe we need to starve it to death. A few verses later, Paul makes this stark observation. “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life” (6:7-8).

In other words we must ask ourselves: to which part of our natures are we sowing? Are we deliberately turning our attention to that which is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8)? Or do we allow our minds and hearts to become fascinated by books and movies and other entertainment choices that would sow into us uncleanness, lewdness, contention, heresies, envy, revelries and the like?

This is not a rhetorical question, but a matter of urgent practicality. We walk in the direction that our eyes are turned. We supply life to one of the two natures within us through the choices we make.

There is a fierce battle raging in each of us who belong to Christ, but it’s a battle between two very unlike forces. Our enemy (who owns our flesh) is either loud and pushy and demanding, or he can be seductively alluring. Christ (who owns our spirit) simply waits quietly. Yet when we choose—moment by moment—to look to Him instead of to those things that entice our flesh, we will find ourselves “strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy” (Colossians 1:11).



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