#42 LIFE IN THE SPIRIT 8-27-26
There is a difference, often overlooked, between having the Spirit and living in the Spirit. Many a child of God has received the Spirit as the seal of new birth and yet has gone on, year after year, governed still by the old life of the natural man—thinking his own thoughts, planning his own way, drawing on his own strength—while the Spirit within waits, grieved, for a fuller possession. It is possible to possess and yet not to live by what is possessed. The whole burden of the Christian life, rightly understood, is that this should not remain so; that what has been given in seed should become the very atmosphere and element in which we move, as naturally as the fish moves in the sea or the bird in the air.
Not a Doctrine, But an Element
We must be careful here, because it is possible to make the Spirit a subject of study, a doctrine to be mastered, an experience to be sought after and testified to, while all the time missing the plain, quiet fact that He is meant to be the very air we breathe. Doctrine has its place, and testimony has its place, but neither is the thing itself. The thing itself is a life—hidden, continuous, unspectacular for the most part—in which the believer no longer draws upon himself for the resources of living, but upon Another. This is not achieved by working ourselves up into some higher plane of feeling. It is not attained by seeking after unusual manifestations. It is entered by a deep, settled recognition that in ourselves we have nothing, and by an equally deep and settled reliance upon the Spirit who indwells.
The Cross Stands at the Door
No one comes into this life who has not first been dealt with at the Cross. This is not a truth to be passed over lightly. The natural life, however religious, however well-intentioned, however active in the Lord’s service, is simply not capable of carrying the life of the Spirit. It must be brought to its end. Not improved, not educated, not even greatly disciplined—ended. Paul’s word was not that he had crucified himself, as though it were his own achievement, but that he had been crucified with Christ, and that the life he now lived, he lived by the faith of the Son of God. Here is the ground of all Spirit-life: not a self reformed, but a self displaced, and Christ, by His Spirit, become the living center.
This is deeply humbling, and rightly so. There is nothing in the Spirit-filled life that allows for pride, for the whole basis of it is that we have nothing of our own to be proud of. The most spiritual man is not the most gifted, or the most eloquent, or the most active; he is the man who has learned, through repeated dealings of God, how utterly bankrupt he is apart from the indwelling Christ, and who has therefore ceased leaning on his own understanding.
Led, Not Driven
The Spirit-led life is not a driven life. There is a vast difference between the restless activity of the flesh, even when employed in Christian work, and the quiet, sure movement of a soul that waits upon God and moves only as He moves. Much that passes for zeal is simply the old energy of nature, now baptized with religious vocabulary but still essentially self-generated, self-sustained, and self-glorifying in its outcome, however unconsciously. The Spirit does not hurry. He does not strive in the way the flesh strives. His fruit, Paul tells us, is love, joy, peace—the language of rest, not of anxious labor.
This does not mean passivity. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Spirit-led life is intensely active, but its activity flows out of a center of rest, rather than being a substitute for it. There is an immense difference between working for God and God working through us; the first exhausts, the second sustains. The mark of a soul truly in the Spirit is that even in the midst of great labor, there remains an inward quietness, because the labor is not, at its root, one’s own.
The Inward Witness
How does one know whether they are walking after the flesh or after the Spirit? Not, in the first place, by outward measures how much service is rendered, how much is known, how much is felt. The truest register is inward: is there a settled sense of Christ’s Lordship over the whole being, or is there a persistent, if subtle, assertion of the self? Does the life, at its center, bear the marks of death and resurrection, or does it still cling to its own rights, its own reputation, its own way? The Spirit will not share His government with an unyielded self. He may allow much activity, much apparent usefulness, in a life that is still largely governed by nature; but there comes always, sooner or later, a deeper dealing, a further stripping, until that self is brought low enough for the Spirit to have unhindered way.
An Ongoing Work
We must not think of this as something achieved once and settled forever. It is a continuous history, a walking, as Paul says, not a single crisis but a way of life, renewed day by day. There will be times of fresh discovery, fresh brokenness, fresh fullness. The Spirit is not given to make us static, finished products, but to lead us, by a way we could not have chosen for ourselves, ever deeper into the fullness of Christ. Every apparent setback, every fresh dealing of God with the self-life, is not a contradiction of this life but its very method. The Spirit does His deepest work not around our weakness but through it, until at last it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us. And that, increasingly, is what it means to walk in the Spirit.
BDD
