How do we walk after the Spirit?
‘O Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body this death’?
Paul, that great missionary of the early Church, knew well the battle that believers have between the desires of their flesh and the desire they have to walk in God’s ways and live for Him.
We saw yesterday that this battle is fought and won in the mind. What we set our minds and hearts upon really matters.
Paul’s already told us that God, through Jesus Christ, has done for us what the law in its weakness through the flesh could not do. In sending Jesus ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:’
Why? So that ‘the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.’
The righteousness of the law isn’t fulfilled in us by our striving to keep it in the flesh but as we walk in the Spirit.
How do we walk after the Spirit?
By setting our minds on the things of the Spirit. Making our minds obey the things of the Spirit not the things of the flesh. How do we win this battle? Through the Spirit, not by our own striving.
We can only walk in God’s ways by the Spirit. If we strive to walk in God’s ways in our flesh we’ll come back into slavery to the law.
‘Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. But ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.’
Do you see the beauty here of following Jesus?
As children of God we don’t have to strive in our own strength. All we need to follow Jesus and live godly lives is freely available to us through the Spirit who is IN us! We just have to lean into that fullness, so that as we battle to set our minds on the things of the Spirit rather than the things of the flesh and we’ll be given all the grace we need.
From your Friend
Romans 7:24, 8:1-17
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