SPIRITUAL REALITY AT THE CROSSROADS
There are moments in the Christian life when a man finds himself standing at a spiritual crossroads, where two kingdoms converge within the borders of his own soul. Paul speaks into such a moment when he writes, “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit…” (Eph. 5:18). The apostle is not merely giving moral instruction; he is unveiling a spiritual principle, as fixed as any law of physics and as tender as the breath of God.
Most believers linger at this intersection. To the left lies the old nature with its familiar gravity, pulling us downward as though sin were the natural orbit of the human heart. To the right glimmers a higher world, the Christ-life, where Jesus Himself becomes the animating power within the believer. Many imagine that such a life is reserved for spiritual elites, but Scripture speaks otherwise. The New Testament insists that this Spirit-filled life is not an optional upgrade; it is Christianity as God intended it.
Paul gives us a vision of this life in Ephesians 5. He calls us to walk as children of light, our spiritual senses awakened, our inner faculties illuminated. For Paul, the difference between a believer trudging through the dust and a believer walking in the radiance of Christ is the Holy Spirit. He is the One who turns theory into life, doctrine into experience, command into capability. As Andrew Murray so often taught, the presence of the Holy Spirit is the presence of Christ Himself, given not as a distant ideal but as an indwelling reality.
The greatest need in the church is not new strategies, nor more dazzling personalities, but the recovered awareness that the Spirit of Jesus walks among us. Acts 2:38 calls Him “the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Before the Spirit enables, He indwells. Before He empowers, He brings us into the living presence of the Father. This is the true inheritance of the believer: access to God through the abiding Christ.
Just as wine governs the behavior of the one who drinks deeply, so the Spirit governs the believer who yields wholly to God. One who is intoxicated speaks and acts under an alien influence. Likewise, the believer surrendered to the Spirit finds himself carried into gifts, graces, and holy desires that do not originate from within his natural capacity. What we call “spiritual victory” is simply Christ manifesting His own life through a vessel fully yielded to Him.
The Christian life is impossible without Christ living in us, and inevitable when He does. We bear no fruit in our own strength. We are vessels of dust, dependent upon a divine Vine. Jesus said plainly, “Without Me you can do nothing.” Fruit is never the achievement of fleshly effort; it is the overflow of spiritual intimacy. As a child is born of human union, so spiritual fruit is born of abiding union with Christ.
Paul tells us that we have been “married” to Christ (Rom. 7:4), joined in a spiritual union designed to bear fruit to God. This is no poetic flourish—it is the logic of redemption. God saves us to shape us, indwells us to transform us, empowers us to manifest His character in the world. This transformation is described as “the fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. These are not ideals we strain toward; they are the very dispositions of Christ formed within us.
This is spiritual law with mathematical consistency:
Christ in us produces what Christ is.
Self in us produces what self is.
Much of the modern church falters here. We lament our lack of joy, our fractured unity, our indulgent habits, our simmering restlessness. We treat anxiety and dissatisfaction as though they were merely psychological issues, when in truth they are spiritual symptoms of disconnection from the Vine. Only a return to deep dependence upon the Spirit can restore the character of Christ in His people.
Jesus Himself is our model—the living demonstration of what humanity looks like under the full governance of the Spirit. His longsuffering with the disciples, His kindness toward the outcast, His joy in the Father, His serenity in storms—these are not traits we imitate from afar, but graces He reproduces in us as we abide in Him.
So then, the crossroads before us is real and unavoidable. We may walk the weary path of self-effort, or we may turn toward the radiant highway of the Spirit. We can be spiritual people, for God has given us His Spirit. There is no scarcity in Him. No believer need settle for a life of spiritual drought when the living water resides within.
Let us step boldly toward the life Christ offers, for all of heaven’s resources are available in the One who dwells in us.
BDD
