Walking by the Spirit part 1

Introduction

I believed that Jesus existed and was Lord when I was a teenager. But, I didn’t really surrender to becoming a follower of Jesus until I was in my early twenties.

But, like most people, I had a number of sinful habits that I struggled with. A few of those I walked away from immediately, without much struggle. Others continued to cause issues for me.

For these, I often asked God to take away the temptation, and found myself frustrated that He didn’t just take away the temptation, as He done with others…or at least I believed He did.

See, what I wanted was for God to just take away all my temptations and basically not allow me to sin anymore. But, He never promised that and I didn’t understand that.

I didn’t understand much about the working of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian.

Today, I’ve come to understand the working of the Holy Spirit better, though I still have much to learn. This morning, we will begin a section of Galatians that focuses us on the Holy Spirit, one of the most vital topics we can study if we are to follow Christ as we should.

Body: Galatians 5:16-18

Context - Verses 13-15

In these verses Paul has transitioned away from focusing on the Judaizers and refocused on the freedom that is ours when we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ Jesus alone.

He warns us against using our freedom as a license to sin, and instead use our freedom as an opportunity to serving one another in love.

But where does the power to love one another come from?

In reality, humans are by sin nature self-centered. We need to be taught how to love others.

Additionally, we need a power greater than our willpower to keep us from indulging in the sins of the flesh.

That power is the focus of much of the rest of the letter to the Galatians: the Holy Spirit.

One of the great challenges within the evangelical church today is the general ignorance of the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

Theologically, we spend a lot of time talking about God the Father and God the Son, understandably so, but we tend to give less attention to God the Spirit.

In part because the teachings about the Holy Spirit are a little more challenging in Scripture.

Additionally, certain people over the years have turned the Holy Spirit into something He is not.

Finally, false teaching about the Holy Spirit has led some to various excesses and deceptions that have caused some evangelicals to shy away from talking much about the Holy Spirit, so as to not be grouped in with these false teachers.

And yet, the Holy Spirit is indeed the Third Person of the Trinity and the most personal connection we have with God, in that He dwells within us.

Paul’s teaching on the Holy Spirit in this next section isn’t exhaustive in that he doesn’t tell us everything we could know about the Holy Spirit. But, Paul does tells us some vital aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit and our walk with Him.

Verse 16

As believers, we are to walk by the Spirit if we are going to resist temptation and sin.

The idea of walking comes from the Greek word that means to live and behave in a specified manner. It’s a habitual action.

Thus, Paul is saying to keep on walking.

Within both Jewish and Hellenistic cultures, it was common for students to walk with their teacher in order to learn from their wisdom and from their example.

Here, Paul encourages them to walk in the Holy Spirit, or to be guided by the Holy Spirit, learning from Him and following the example of Christ that the Holy Spirit is constantly pointing to.

When Paul talks about the flesh, it’s more than just our human longings. In fact, Paul is talking about anything in our life that can displace the proper affections for God.

Paul will list many examples of these in the text we will look at next week. But, for our purposes right now, it is anything that will displace our proper affections for God onto something that satisfies our self-indulgent cravings.

Or as Jewett wrote, “…the flesh was Paul’s term for everything aside from God in which one place his final trust.”

Verse 17

According to Paul, there is a battle going on within believers between two opposing forces: the flesh and the Holy Spirit.

The goal of the Spirit is to get us to follow Jesus in every aspect and area of our lives in order to glorify God.

The goal of the flesh is to keep the believer from doing what the Spirit is calling us to do.

When we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ Jesus alone, the Holy Spirit doesn’t just take over and force us to do what God wants. That brings no glory to God.

Think of it like this: when my two older kids were learning to drive, I could drive much better than them. I’m experienced, I have a spotless driving record, and I know what I’m doing. While I was teaching them, I could have taken over and done it for them, but they would have learned nothing and not grown into good drivers today. It brings me more joy knowing that they are applying what I’ve taught them than it would if I would have done everything for them.

There is a similarity there between God’s dealing with us through the Holy Spirit. He guides, directs, comforts, encourages, but He doesn’t do it for us.

So, this is the promise of God to us, His people:

Ezekiel 36:26–27 ESV

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

John 14:15–18 ESV

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

John 14:25–26 ESV

“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

Romans 8:5–9 ESV

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

Verse 18

When faced with the battle within, our natural tendency as believers is to try and do better. Typically, this is done through our own strength and our own willpower. Not surprisingly, we fail.

But, if we are to truly be led by the Spirit, we must go back to how we were saved in the first place: by grace alone through faith alone in Christ Jesus alone.

The only answer in the Gospel. I could not save myself then, and I cannot save myself now.

Thus, Paul’s mention of the law. Salvation through law keeping is trying to put our salvation into our own hands.

Instead, we need to go to the One who has saved us, confess our struggles and sins, ask Him to guide you through the Holy Spirit, stop taking your walk into your own hands, and dwell on the Gospel of Christ Jesus.

Colossians 3:1–3 ESV

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

So What?

If we are to resist the temptations that we will experience, we must walk by the Holy Spirit.

Walking by the Holy Spirit requires dependence on Him, not our own strength or willpower.

As I said earlier, we must remember the Spirit doesn’t overcome us, like some demon possession in the NT. In fact, He waits for us to depend on Him.

When we depend on the Holy Spirit, we are depending on the personal presence of the Triune Godhead; specifically God the Holy Spirit.

How do we depend on Him?

By not relying on our own strength or willpower and truly bringing our temptations and sin to the Lord.

That’s part of the beauty of following the Lord; He gives us the power to overcome.

He won’t take over, but He will show us the way out.

I like what Timothy George wrote about it: “No Christians are so spiritually strong or mature that they need not heed his warning, but neither are any so weak or vacillating that they cannot be free from the tyranny of the flesh through the power of the Spirit.”

How? Dependence on His strength, not our own.

Walking by the Holy Spirit requires obedience to Him.

How can we obey God? Ultimately, grace is required. And this comes when we are walking by the Holy Spirit.

My grandfather once told me a story about when he was in WWII...

That was a time before scuba divers were a thing.

Scuba stands for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.

While almost anyone can learn to scuba drive, to get really good at it a person has to spend hundreds of hours in the water, learning the equipment, understanding the safety concerns, developing confidence, and basically learn how to not die.

But, even then, no matter how good a scuba driver a person becomes, they will never learn how to breath under water for long periods of time without their oxygen tank. That tank is always needed!

The Holy Spirit is always needed if we are to obey God as we want.

As one writer put it: “You never reach the point where grace is no longer needed, just as a scuba diver never grows gills.”

But, we have a part to play as well. See, the Bible says we can grieve the Spirit and quench the Spirit. We do this when we refuse to obey His will and take matters into our own hands.

Thus, we need grace.

As Daniel Bush put it: “Bringing Israel out of Egypt took just days, but it took a lifetime before Egypt was out of Israel!”

Oh, it’s the same for us as well! We need the Spirit’s guidance daily!

Walking by the Holy Spirit frees us from the bondage of legalism.

The flesh is tricky. Our inner man or woman can convince us that we need to make ourselves right with God through our own efforts. Or, that we are good enough as is. Or that we are strong enough to stop our sin at any time and don’t need help. (It reminds me of my father, who was a master at quitting smoking. He quit smoking multiple times…then just a quickly picked it back up again!)

We can develop a mindset that we need to do certain things in order to free ourselves. But walking by the Spirit frees us from this bondage as well.

In being free, I admit that I can do nothing to save myself and I need to fall on the grace of God to not only save me, but to keep my affections on Christ Jesus, not back on the things that tempt me.

The legalism that Paul has dealt with throughout this letter, at it’s core, was about doing things that would save one’s self. Paul has shown that this is impossible. It was impossible for them, and it’s impossible for us today.

We don’t have to be in bondage to this anymore because, if we are indeed in Christ, then we are no longer in bondage to law keeping.

We are free to love, serve and obey through the power of the Holy Spirit.

But, we must choose to walk in the Spirit!