Living by the Spirit

Transpose this now into the realm of everyday Christian living and you understand that this text is saying not that the Christian is a person who is free to sin, but that a Holy-Spirit-empowered believer in Jesus Christ is free not to sin.

Sin is serious business. God's heart is broken by sin. Good works make the heart of God glad. A true follower of Jesus is one whose life is marked by righteousness. That righteousness doesn't earn God's favor. It is the result of a person who genuinely is in a love relationship with God and others and wants to, in love, serve God and others.

All through the Scriptures you will see references to this. This week, I was reading, devotionally, through the One Year Bible, and Psalm 119:41-48 leapt out at me. Captured in this Old Testament passage is a statement of grace and freedom in which we genuinely love the things of God and want to obey His statutes and live by His teachings:

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May your unfailing love come to me, O Lord,

your salvation according to your promise;

then I will answer the one who taunts me,

for I trust in your word.

Do not snatch the word of truth from my mouth,

for I have put my hope in your laws.

I will always obey your law, for ever and ever.

I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts.

I will speak of your statutes before kings

and will not be put to shame,

for I delight in your commands because I love them.

I lift up my hands to your commands, which I love,

and I meditate on your decrees.

Or, isn't this what James is saying when he declares, " . . . faith without works is dead" (James 2:26).

What we do and don't do is not what saves us. We are set free from the Law by God's grace, what Christ has done for us on the Cross. It is not license to do that which destroys a relationship with the Lord and with each other. It is freedom in love to serve the Lord and each other.

Spiritual Principle Three: What we are really talking about is living by the Spirit.

The central core of this teaching comes in Galatians 5:16-18, where Paul writes:

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

Paul makes a very dramatic contrast between what we might call "flesh works" and "spirit works."

Flesh works, or what we would call living by sinful nature, looks like this: "The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God" (Galatians 5:19-21).