Walking in the Spirit

I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

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. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

– Galatians 5:16-18, 24-26

These verses describe two possibilities for our lives. We can either live according to what we naturally want (the lust/desires of our flesh), or according to what God’s Spirit leads us to want.

When Paul says “the lust of the flesh” in verse 16, he is talking about the desires of the natural man. The Greek word translated as “lust” means “desire” and can be positive or negative. For example, when Jesus told His disciples that he “earnestly desired to eat this Passover” with them, He used the word epithymia, the same word translated “lust” here in Galatians 5.

But its meaning is not general here in Galatians, because Paul is speaking about the desires of the flesh. “Flesh” here refers to our natural, sinful inclinations, the part of us that leads us to serve ourselves rather than serve God. When Paul talks about “lust of the flesh” he is thinking about the desires of our sinful, fallen natures.

As we see in Galatians 5:19-21, life lived according to our natural desires results in self-centered pleasure-seeking. Paul describes this behavior with a list of particular sins: sexual sins (adultery and fornication), sins in our worship (idolatry, sorcery), sins in our relationships (hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissension, heresies/divisiveness, envy, murders), and sins in our leisure (drunkenness, revelries). We can summarize all of these in two words: self-worship. We naturally worship the god of self-fulfilment. All of the sins Paul lists result from seeking to satisfy one’s sinful desires above everything else.

Sin is More Than Actions

Why do we sin? Why do we reject God’s truth? Because of our sin-corrupted hearts. When Paul talks about being led by the flesh, he is not talking about sin as something outside of us, but rather about the sinful desires of our fallen hearts.

In John 3 we read that, when the light of the gospel shines in the darkness of sin, many people hate the light because they love their darkness. They resist God because they love their sin more than they love Him. There’s something askew in our hearts that keeps us from seeing God’s goodness as good, from seeing His truth as true, from seeing His beauty as desirable.

We must understand that we are not essentially good people who sometimes sin. Rather, our sinful actions reveal what is going on inside. Jesus said that the fruit reveals the state of the tree — that is, sinful actions reveal a sinful heart. We should not excuse our sinful behavior as mere mistakes. Rather, we sin because, after Adam’s fall into sin, we are all born in bondage to our sinful desires. The main issue is our desires — our “lusts.”

James says in the opening chapter of his epistle that we are led into sin by our own sinful desires. “Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.” The root issue of every sin is not the action, but rather the desire that leads to that action. James uses the same word for desire (epithymia) as Paul uses in Galatians 5. The primary reason we sin is that we want to follow our desires — to do what makes us feel good, even if it is contrary to what God tells us we should do. The real issue is a matter of the heart.

Thus Jesus in Matthew 5 can equate hatred with murder and lust with adultery. It’s not that these sins are the same in their extent. The consequences of murder far exceed the consequences of hatred. But these sins are the same in their essence. Hatred, if left unchecked, will eventually lead to murder. There’s perhaps no greater illustration of this than the Pharisee’s hatred of Jesus which eventually led them to execute Jesus on a Roman cross.

Paul, James, and Jesus all emphasize that the root issue of our sinful behavior is sinful hearts. The basic progression is from a sinful heart to sinful desires to sinful actions.

So, why do we sin? Why do we walk in the flesh? Because we by nature want to serve ourselves instead of God. We love ourselves more than we love God. The root of every sinful action is a sinful heart.

How Do We Change?

This is a miserable condition. Is there hope for this to change?

There certainly is. God sent His Son to save us from our sin. And He sends His Spirit to awaken our hearts so we can see how ugly our sin is and see how we can be freed from it through Christ. He “makes us alive” (Eph. 2) so we love God and His goodness rather than loving to follow our sinful desires.

In short, the Spirit of God changes us at the very core of who we are. For our lives to change, we need more than some new rules. We need more than a little more knowledge. We need more than discipline or new commitments. We need the supernatural transformation wrought by God’s Spirit.

The Holy Spirit Reveals the Truth

The first thing the Spirit does to save us from our bondage to sin is to reveal the truth to us. What I have in mind here is not His work to help us understand and accept the truth (we’ll get to that soon), but rather His work to make God’s character, works, and will made known to us through Scripture.

God has made Himself known through the written words of Scripture. While we know that the entire Trinity is involved, the Spirit is spoken of specifically as the one who wrote Scripture. Think for example of 2 Peter 1 where Peter says Scripture was written by “holy men of God” who were “moved/carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Though the words of Scripture are the words of men, the Holy Spirit worked in, through, and around them to ensure that the words they wrote infallibly and inerrantly witnessed to the truth. The Holy Spirit is so involved in this process that Paul could say in 2 Timothy 3 that God Himself spoke (breathed-out) Scripture.

Other places in the New Testament we read that the words of the Old Testament are in fact the words of God’s Spirit. In Matthew 22 Jesus says that David wrote Psalm 110 “in the Spirit”. Similarly, when the author of Hebrews quotes Psalm 95, he says that these words are the Spirit’s words (“As the Holy Spirit says”). Though it was written by a man, its ultimate author was the Spirit.

It’s interesting that the author here uses the present tense for the Holy Spirit’s action (He “says” not He “said”). This means that, not only did the Spirit speak when the words were written, but also when Scripture is read He is speaking. Everytime we read the Bible, the Spirit is speaking to us through it.

Not only is the Old Testament written by the Spirit, but the New Testament was too. Jesus promised this in John 14 when He told His disciples, “The Holy Spirit…will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” Jesus promises Holy-Spirit-empowered recollection of everything He taught them.

If we read a bit further in John, we learn that, not only does the Spirit teach them what they must know and remind them of past teachings, He also “will tell [them] things to come.” (Jn 16). Everything the disciples needed to witness of Jesus’ life and teachings — past, present and future — was secured for them through the Spirit. And our knowledge of God comes to us primarily through the writings of those disciples in our New Testament.

What does all this have to do with the fruit of the Spirit? The Spirit’s involvement in the authorship of Scripture is significant precisely because, unless God tells us about Himself and about His character, we cannot know Him or become like Him. When the Spirit goes to work to free us from the flesh and to enable us to live by His power, He does so through the words He wrote in the Bible. Without this work, the rest of the Holy Spirit’s work will not happen.

The Holy Spirit Helps Us Understand and Accept the Truth

But the truth revealed in Scripture does not help us if we can’t understand it. The Spirit must illuminate our minds so that we can understand and accept it. Spiritual sight is a gift of God. In Ephesians 1 the apostle Paul prays that God would give the Ephesian believers “the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened…” Similarly, in 2 Corinthians 4 we see that it is the Spirit who shows us the glory of the Lord. He “shines into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Even when we are exposed to the truth, a barrier keeps us from receiving it even when it is right in front of us — the barrier of a sinful heart. In 1 Corinthians 2 we read that the Holy Spirit teaches spiritual wisdom, but the natural man does not receive those things. Why not? Because they are foolish to him. Though he is able to comprehend the facts of the gospel, he rejects them as foolish. He does not see Christ as good, as worth having. Before we can receive Christ, we need not only to understand true facts about Him but also to see Him as true and good.

This requires not only a change of mind, but also a change of heart. This is why Jesus says in John 3 that “unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” This spiritual rebirth is a transformation at the deepest level, a change of affections wrought by the Spirit of God. Until we are renewed spiritually by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, we remain unable to “receive the things of the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2). Again, this is not something we can do for ourselves. As Jesus said, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing” (John 6:63).

So, tying these two sections together, we learn that in order for us to walk in the Spirit as Galatians tells us to, (1) we need the Spirit to teach us the truth, and (2) we need Him to change our hearts so we can receive that truth. Our journey toward healthy spiritual fruit begins with the supernatural transformation of our hearts.

The Holy Spirit Helps Us Obey God

The Holy Spirit also helps us obey God. If we want to bear healthy spiritual fruit, we need to understand how the Spirit works to produce these varied fruits. The apostle Paul says this happens as we “walk in the Spirit”, but what does that mean?

He not only tells us what the truth is, and helps us to love and accept it, He also helps us to obey “everything Jesus has commanded.” He helps us obey God rather than our sinful desires. This is right on the face of Galatians 5, as seen in the contrast between the “works of the flesh” and the “fruit of the Spirit.” There are two — and only two — ways to live. Either by our own desires, or by the Spirit. It’s clear by the things listed as “works of the flesh” that we do not naturally do the things that please God. Everything that comes from the flesh is a corruption of God’s good creation — sex, worship, community, and leisure. We do not have within ourselves the ability to do what God wants us to do. We cannot, in our flesh, obey Christ’s commands. “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8).

How, then, can we obey God? Only with the Holy Spirit’s help. Paul follows up his statement in Romans 8:8 that “those who are in the flesh cannot please God” by saying “you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit. …If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” God’s Spirit is in us, giving us spiritual life so we are able to live lives that please God.

“If you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13). Right here is the same struggle Paul talks about in Galatians 5. There’s a war going on between our flesh and God’s Spirit. One way leads to life, the other to death. But there’s also a promise here. God intends to finish His redemptive work in all those who trust in Him. Paul says “If the Spirit of Christ dwells in you…He will give life to your mortal bodies.” 

Notice that this is not just a possibility; it is a guarantee. If the Spirit is in you, He will be working to crucify your sinful flesh and make you more like Christ.

Paul emphasizes the same thing in Galatians 5. He doesn’t say, “If you walk in the Spirit, you might not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” Rather, he says “If you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” If God is present in your life by His Spirit, things are going to change.

I don’t think Paul is speaking of perfectionism here (we never sin), nor of passivity (we don’t do anything) or fatalism (our choices do not impact our spiritual growth). Rather, he is saying that every true believer experiences spiritual change. And he is saying that, to the degree that we rely on the Spirit’s help, we will be able to defeat sin. If the Spirit is in you (and He is in all true believers, c.f. Rom. 8), then He will be changing you.

In Galatians and in Romans 8, Paul tells us what we must do to defeat our sinful man. If we “walk in the Spirit” we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. The contrast here is not between two courses of action which each rely on our own resources. Spiritual change will not happen if we rely on our own abilities. Rather, Paul says there are two distinct ways to live. There’s a way which relies on our own resources — walking according to the flesh — and a way which relies on the Spirit of God. The one focuses on what we do by ourselves, the other on what God does in us. The one leads to death, and the other to life (Rom. 8).

Of course, this does not mean that we have nothing to do. But rather, in all our doing, we need to remember that we need the Spirit’s help. We pray, asking Him to help us obey. We deny ourselves, turning from our sinful desires to God. We study God’s Word, relying on the Spirit to understand its spiritual and practical significance. We “work out our salvation with fear and trembling,” all the while remembering that it is “God who is at work to will and to do His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13)

Since the Spirit is the one who gives us the ability to defeat sin and live for God’s glory, we ought to live in such a way that we are continually dependent on the Spirit’s power to think, will, and do what is right. In every noble action, we must admit that we cannot do it without the Spirit in us. This means praying constantly, and turning moment-by-moment from our own abilities to God’s, asking Him to work in us and acknowledging that we depend on Him entirely for every good thing that we want to do.

It is no trial to convince the Spirit to work in us to make us more like Christ. That’s the very thing He wants to do, the very reason He comes to live inside us. As you seek to live a life worthy of the gospel, don’t forget to rely moment-by-moment on the Spirit’s power. In every spiritual fruit, we need His spiritual life in us.