Live and Walk by the Spirit

I can’t live without the Holy Spirit. I’m sorry, it just isn’t possible. And, if I can’t live, I can’t walk.

I have been reading Galatians as we work through our new ABF series, “The fruit of the Spirit”. In chapter 5 verse 25, Paul says to the Christians at the church of Galatia.

“If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit”

Now when I say “live” I don’t necessarily mean breathing, with a pulse, etc….but rather, “living”, in this context, is my whole disposition in this life. It is what is most important. It is what I am trusting in. It is what I am living for. This is how Paul puts it in Galatians 2:20,

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

I can’t live without the Holy Spirit. He had to do a work in me. It wasn’t through me being a good person or keeping the religious law. In order for me to live with a new focus, I had to recieve the spirit by hearing with faith (Gal 3:2).

God did this work. Scripture says, in Gal 4:6, that God adopted me as a son, and that,

“God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba! Father!”

Instead of my whole life being directed towards my wants and needs, the Holy Spirit redirects my heart to cry out for my greatest want and need – my Abba! My Father!

I can’t live without the Holy Spirit. He redirected my heart and showed me the vanity of my attempts to live for myself and in accordance with my own man-made laws of righteousness, which I really didn’t keep anyways.

In other words, because my whole life and disposition was directed towards myself, I walked (or, in other words, functioned) in a way consistent with self-focus. People where just a vehicle to get what I wanted. My gifts were just there to gain attention, and happiness was based on everything going my way. It was the fruit of living by faith in myself.

It was the fruit of living by faith in myself.

What Paul is saying in Galatians is that, if the Holy Spirit has worked in your heart, so that you have been cruficied with Christ and adopted as a son, then you “live by the spirit” – that is your identity, that is your focus, that is the most important thing about you.

Therefore, the most important thing about you (the Spirit’s work in you) needs to come out in your life’s walk, in your everyday actions.

The fruit of the Spirit evidences that kind of walk. So that, instead of people being tools to use or obstacles to move, they are witnesses to see the fruit of the spirit manifested in you…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – these are the clear evidence of the Spirit in you.

As F.F. Bruce said, “Living by the Spirit is the root; walking by the Spirit is the fruit”.

“Living by the Spirit is the root; walking by the Spirit is the fruit”

I can’t live without the Holy Spirit….and he has given me life in Christ so that I can walk by the Spirit, bearing fruit that points people to the root: Christ.

 

Dustin Folden
Pastor Dustin Folden and his wife Trisha joined the Pastoral Staff in 2010. They have two children, Sawyer and Mackenna who absolutely love children’s ministries, mostly because of the singing and snacks. Pastor Folden shepherds the 9:30 worship service, oversees the Adult Bible Fellowship ministry, as well as serves in the Biblical Counseling Ministries.