Walk by the Spirit!

Walk by the
Spirit! “The life we have in Christ we owe wholly to the work of God’s Spirit.”

If it was by
the free and sovereign power of the Spirit that our new spiritual life came
into being, then the way that new life should be lived is by that same free and
sovereign power. “Walk by the Spirit” means
do what you do each day by the Spirit; live your life in all its details from
waking up in the morning until going to sleep at night by the enabling power of
the Spirit. But what does that mean, practically speaking? How do we “walk
by the Spirit”?

Now what? Galatians 5:25 states concisely what our next step should be.
“If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” Paul is in full agreement with Jesus that it
is by the work of the Holy Spirit that we have been given new life. “Even when
we were dead through trespasses God made us alive together
with Christ . . . We are his workmanship created in
Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5, 10; Colossians 2:13). Just as God once said, “Let there be light,” and
there was light, so he “has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

The phrase “walk by the Spirit” occurs
not only in verse 25 but also in verse 16, “But I say, walk by the Spirit and do not gratify the desires of the
flesh.” So here we see what the opposite of walking by the
Spirit is, namely, giving in to the desires of the flesh. Remember, “flesh” is the
old, ordinary human nature that does not relish the things of God and prefers
to get satisfaction from independence, power, prestige, and worldly pleasures.

When we “walk by the Spirit,”
we are not controlled by those drives. This is what verse 17 means: the flesh
produces one kind of desires, and the Spirit produces another kind, and they
are opposed to each other. Walking by the Spirit is
what we do when the desires produced by the Spirit are stronger than the
desires produced by the flesh. This means
that “walking by the Spirit” is not something we do in order to get the
Spirit’s help, but rather, just as the phrase implies, it is something we do by
the enablement of the Spirit.

Now, if we
look at verses 19–24, which follow, we will find one more expression about the
Spirit which confirms and expands what we have seen so far about “walking by the Spirit.”
In these verses, Paul contrasts the “works of the flesh” (19–21) with the “fruit of the Spirit” (22–23).
The opposite of doing the “works of the flesh” is “bearing the fruit of
the Spirit.” Let us not forget Judas who went from being an apostle to a devil.
Did not I choose you, the
twelve, and yet one of you is a devil? John 6:70

This is
exactly the same contrast we saw in verse 16: “Walk by the Spirit and do not gratify the desires of the
flesh.” The “works of the flesh” are what you do when you
“gratify the desires of the flesh.” 

“The great problem in contemporary Christian
living is not learning the right things to do but how to do the right things. ”
-Next week Five Steps Toward Walking by the Spirit: 1.
Acknowledge, 2. Pray, 3. Trust, 4. Act, 5. Thank.