How many times have we heard the expression "walking in the Spirit" or "walk in the Spirit"? It's a common expression that I think Christians use quite often in normal discussion about their walk with God. It is derived from the new testament where Paul mentions walking in the Spirit as something that believers need to do so they won't fulfill the lust of the flesh. Sounds like some mandatory stuff to me.
"This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh."
"That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."
So the big question becomes how do we do this walking in the Spirit?
Intuitively it seems that there is some sort of cognitive action and focus we would need to have to enact a walk in the Spirit. Sounds right. Walking of course involves action and will, you must decide to get up and move your feet to walk. So putting an action involving the temporal body, "walking", with a term that sounds very other-worldly "spirit", sounds like mixing your physical chocolate with my existential peanut butter.
So walking in the Spirit sounds like trying to bring your life in line with the Spirit. It stands to reason then that there would be an assumption that you have some way of walking in this life that would be a form of walking in the Spirit right? It sounds like a godly way of walking in this world, a way of letting the Spirit walk through you perhaps - but ah this is where the rub is my friends. This is where you start measuring and comparing how you are walking in the Spirit verses how you were yesterday, how your mind thinks you ought to be walking and how others are walking in it compared to you. This leads to nothing but bondage of the most selfish creation. I know, trust me, I gave walking in the Spirit my best efforts for years only to find that it was exhausting trying to keep up with what that was supposed to look and feel like. Not to mention the mental exhaustion of comparing yourself to everyone else and how they were walking.
If you examine the scriptures a little more closely we can find a key to greater happiness in the Lord and a more fulfilling life by learning that our original assumptions about what walking in the Spirit were off, way off.
"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Romans 8:1
"That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Romans 8:3
Here is the wonderful truth that, if embraced fully, will set you free in your mind from the law of sin and death. YOU couldn't walk in the Spirit no matter how hard you tried so Jesus did it for you. Walking in the Spirit is something that you do by nature not because you try to do it. Walking in the Spirit is Christ living through you because of what He did on the cross and His resurrection, not because you are living a godly life.
"For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" Romans 8:2
There is one requirement for you to walk in the Spirit, and guess what, it isn't that you read, pray, fast and walk in holiness - whatever your mind has conceived that to be. The one requirement is here:
"But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." Romans 8:9
You walk in the spirit, have your being in the Spirit and live in the Spirit because the Spirit dwells in you by faith. It has nothing to do with your efforts, your striving or your trials, it's all because of Him.
In galations 3:2 Paul says
"This only would I learn of you, received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?"
Your answer?
There is no more condemnation isn't just a statement of faith that we must confess, hoping that it's true for us even when we feel sinful, it is a truth of infinite value. There is no more condemnation because you are no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit.
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