Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
We are all born dead in our sin. We all came into this world physically alive but spiritually dead…dead in trespasses and dead in sins. Before we were saved, we were motivated by the flesh with its worldly lusts and ungodly affections…and even our good deeds were seen by God as filthy rags. From the moment we were born into this world, it was our sinful, fleshly desires that empowered us, and our old sin nature which kept us enslaved to sin and estranged from God. Our sin nature was not only imputed to us from fallen Adam but also inherited from our sinful parents. We are not sinners because we sin…we sin because we are sinners who were born dead in our sins. We were born out of fellowship with God, in fellowship with sin, and enslaved by Satan. We came into this world disunited from God but united together with sin, as children of the evil one. We were born into this world as a slave to sin and until we were saved by grace through faith in Christ, our life was governed by our fallen nature…a sin nature which was at enmity with God and without hope in the world. But the moment that we were born again we were given life…spiritual life…life from above. We were made alive by the Spirit of God and given a new life in Christ. We were transferred from being in Adam to being in Christ. We were taken out of the old fallen creation in Adam and placed into the new perfect creation in Christ. But the question is often asked: “If we have been born again and made alive by the Spirit of God, how do we walk by the Sprit for the rest of our lives?” Well, we do it by ‘faith’. We were saved by faith and, for the rest of our lives, we are to live by faith, to pray by faith, to walk by faith. We are to walk by means of the Spirit, to trust God in all things, and to heed His Word despite all of your external circumstances. But as we live our Christian life, we have a choice. We can either choose to allow the old sin nature to dictate what we do in our Christian walk. Or we can choose to allow the Spirit of God to lead and guide, to command and to control. To walk in the Spirit is to allow the Word of Christ to dwell in us richly in all wisdom and teaching. To walk in the Spirit is to walk by faith and to immerse ourselves in the Word of God…it is to encourage one another in psalms and hymns, as we sing with grace and thanksgiving in our hearts to the Lord. We were formerly darkness, but now we are light in the Lord. And so we are to walk as children of Light. We are to walk in the Spirit…to walk by faith and not by sight so that we are enabled to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. We were formally dead in our sins, at enmity with God, and without hope in the world. But since we are now alive by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit…to His praise and glory.
Spiritual Steve 