| How to Walk by
the Spirit, by Jennifer Tiszai You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. Galatians 5:13-26 (NIV) We
don’t find out the answer to our question “how to walk in
the Spirit” until
near the end of this passage. Paul spends the whole passage leading up
to this
point by telling us what life in the Spirit looks like and what it does
not
look like. Finally, he tells us how to do it: “Since we live by
the Spirit, let
us keep in step with the Spirit.” Recognizing that we live by the
Spirit is the
key to walking in the Spirit. Now
this sounds a bit like circular reasoning. Isn’t living by the
Spirit the same
as walking in the Spirit? No. Living by the Spirit is what happens when
we make
Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior of our lives. Our relationship with
God
changes. We are no longer His enemies but His children. Our position
has
changed. However, our actions don’t necessarily follow suit.
That’s why Paul
goes though that laundry list of sins. They are acts of our sinful
nature,
things we can and do as Christians because we are living under our own
power
and not the power of the Holy Spirit. Contrast those sins to the fruit
of the
Spirit that follows. The fruit of the Spirit are the actions that
happen when
we are letting the Spirit control our lives. So
if living by the Spirit is what happens when Christ comes into our
lives, what
is walking by the Spirit? That is when we actually let Him take control
of our
lives and we stop trying to sit in the driver’s seat. We
can’t live out the
Christian faith under our own power. When we do, we stand guilty of the
things
that Paul has listed in the passage. So how do we “let God do the
driving?”
Well, as the Nike slogan says, “Just Do It.” Sounds simple,
doesn’t it? There
must be a catch. There is. It’s called faith. Unger’s Bible
Handbook says about
this passage, “When we believe, God undertakes.” God
doesn’t try to wrest the
steering wheel from us. He waits for us to hand it to Him. One
of my favorite examples of this is in Joshua 3:8-17. God commanded the
Israelites to cross the Jordan, which just happened to be at flood
stage. God
told them that when the priests, who went before the people, touched
the soles
of their feet to the water, the river would be cut off. What I love
about this
passage is how it demonstrates how God works with us. He will make it
possible
for us to obey Him in what seems to be an impossible situation. But we
have to
take the first step. The priests’ feet had to be in the water
before it stopped
flowing. If they had waited around on the riverbank for God to make the
first
move, they never would have witnessed God’s miracle. It’s
like that in our own
lives. God wants us to step out in faith, to trust Him in what He has
told us.
Then He will be faithful to follow through. That’s walking in the
Spirit. The
first step in walking by the Spirit is to do the things God has already
told
all Christians to do. At Saddleback, we call them the Five Purposes of
the
Church: membership, maturity, ministry, mission, magnification. We
offer CLASS
101, 201, 301, and 401 to get you started in these areas. I
challenge you to step in to the Jordan. Walk out in faith in that area
you know
God has been calling you to act in. If you are trusting Christ with
your
eternity, you can trust Him with your today. |
| Copyright 2005-2006 Jennifer Tiszai. This is copyrighted material. Please do not use without permission. |
New International Version, copyright 1978, Zondervan.
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