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‘This I say then, Walk in the Spirit.’
Gal_5:16
I. A walk in the Spirit is a humble and a lowly walk.—I know of no mark of the presence of the Holy Spirit in a human heart that is so indubitable as this—a broken and a contrite spirit.
II. A walk in the Spirit will be an upright and a straightforward walk.—Those are striking words in the first of Ezekiel, where the wonderful vision of the cherubim is given to us. We read that ‘they went every one straight forward: whither the Spirit was to go, they went: and they turned not when they went’ (Gal_5:12). There is a picture of the redeemed Church under the power of the Holy Spirit: it turns not as it goes.
III. A walk in the Spirit will be a tender and sensitive walk.—I believe, if we may dare so to speak with reverence, that there is no being so sensitive as the Holy Spirit of God. He is compared to the gentle dove, which may be easily startled and frightened away; to the dew, which is easily absorbed by heat, and brushed away by the careless hand. There is nothing that we should more jealously seek to guard against than grieving Him.
IV. A walk in the Spirit will be a fruitful and useful walk.—‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance’ (Gal_5:22-23)—these are the marks that the Holy Spirit is doing His blessed work in our souls, these are the sure proofs that the blessed Comforter has come, and that He is diffusing His graces within our souls.
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Rev. E. W. Moore.
Illustrations(1) ‘That was a true testimony given to a poor navvy by his companions, “He cannot read, but we can read him.” He was a living epistle, “known and read of all men” (2Co_3:2). His walk was upright and consistent before men. That will undoubtedly be the characteristic of a walk in the Holy Ghost.’
(2) ‘It is a solemn reflection that a man may grieve the Spirit long before any inconsistency is perceptible in his conduct. Outwardly his life may seem to be blameless, and yet God, Who knoweth the heart, may see that the communion he once enjoyed is lost; that heart-sin has separated between him and his God; that an inward declension has begun. “Quench not the Spirit” is a warning needed by us all. A little earth upon the fire will soon wellnigh extinguish it; a little neglect of fuel will soon weaken the flame; a little unfaithfulness in our lives will soon deprive us of that light and comfort of the Holy Ghost on which all our knowledge of Christ, all our understanding of heavenly things, all our progress in the Divine life depend.’
NECESSITY OF THE CHRISTIAN WALK
I. It is necessary for continuance.—It is a blessed thing to begin well, but it is not enough to have begun. We are called to a walk. It is not enough to have taken a step or two in the way; we must learn to continue, and it is the continuance which is the test of reality. The blossoms on the trees in early spring give promise of fruit; but many of those blossoms are shed; they do not all grow to maturity and perfection. And so it is in the case of professing Christians. There are some who begin and who appear to be running well, but ‘Time will show,’ says the proverb, and the proverb is right.
II. It is necessary for conquest.—‘Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.’ There is a terrible enemy who will seek to hinder this progress in the Divine life and knowledge, and the only way to meet him is by obedience to this injunction, ‘Walk in the Spirit.’ It is not enough merely to be on your guard against evil; you must be occupied with good. It is not by negatives, but by positives that you will ‘escape the corruption that is in the world through lust’ (2Pe_1:4).
III. It is necessary for communion.—I believe all backsliding begins with neglect of secret prayer, secret communion with God, and we shall never pray as we should unless we are living in the Spirit. ‘The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities’ (Rom_8:26).
Rev. E. W. Moore.
HOW THE CHRISTIAN WALK IS TO BE PURSUED
I. Life.—You must be born of the Spirit. You cannot walk in the Spirit unless you have life in the Spirit. That is obvious. This injunction is addressed to those who have the new life. ‘If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit’ (Gal_5:25, R. V.).
II. Death.—There is a deep verse here, the twenty-fourth verse—‘They that are Christ’s crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts,’ the flesh which lusts against the Spirit to prevent you doing the things that you would. But here, in Gal_5:24, that enemy is crucified. It is the aorist tense. It points to a definite transaction, a definite time when the flesh was crucified with its affections and lusts.
III. Faith.—Deliverance can only come through faith. Life, death, and faith—these are the Divine conditions. Take it by faith that when Christ died those sinful affections and lusts and evil things were crucified with Him. Claim deliverance from them on the ground of His death, and you shall not claim it in vain. Christ’s crucifixion is great and deep; wondrous things were accomplished by it, which things the angels desire to look into.
Rev. E. W. Moore.
Illustration‘Christianity, it has often been said, is not a thing of rules. It is comparatively poor in rules for conduct in particular cases; but it covers the whole field of human action by the maxim of the text. What disguises it tears off! what hypocrisies it unveils! It is a net of far finer mesh than the mere letter of the Ten Commandments. There is many a man who could say with the young man in the Gospel, “All these have I kept from my youth up,” but who will find himself hopelessly caught and convicted of imperfection and of sin by the finer texture of the law “Walk in the Spirit.” ’
‘Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.’
Gal_5:16
I. The chief feature of St. Paul’s teaching in reference to morality was its positiveness.—There are two ways to meet and deal with every vice: one is to set to work to destroy it; the other is to overwhelm and stifle it with its opposite virtue. The former is the negative, and the latter the positive method. There can be no doubt about St. Paul’s way. To the poor Galatian, fighting with his fleshly lusts, he does not set him on a course of stern repression, but rather points him to a life of positive endeavour, to do something opposite: ‘Walk in the Spirit, and—then——’ The Apostle laid hold on one of the noblest methods of the treatment of humanity—one that he had gained most directly from his Lord. These two methods of treatment, the negative and the positive, present themselves to us in all the other problems of life besides morality, and men choose between them.
II.—Throughout the New Testament there is nothing more beautiful than the perfectly clear way in which the positive culture of human character is adopted and employed.—The God of the New Testament, Whose express image and glory we behold in the face of Jesus Christ, is not a God of repression, but a God Whose Fatherhood is made so real that His holiness may be reproduced in His children; a God Whose symbols are everything that is stimulating, everything that encourages and helps; Who leads on His children into that new life where sin becomes impossible, on an ever-ascending pathway of growing Christliness. And this character of the New Testament, of Christianity, is not in contradiction with the best aspirations of the human heart. Man is willing to exercise repression and self-sacrifice for a certain temporary purpose, to do some certain work—the world is full of self-sacrifice, of the suppression of desires, the restraint of natural inclinations; yet all the time there is a great human sense that not suppression but expression is the true life.
III. And yet there arises much in the teachings of our Lord, and in the whole spirit of Christianity, which seems to contradict this conclusion.—Has not the religion of Jesus always been called the very religion of self-sacrifice? Is not self-surrender exalted into a virtue and crowned with glory, as it never was in any other faith? That certainly is true. But in Christ’s teaching self-sacrifice is always temporary and provisional, merely the clearing the way for the positive culture and manifestation of those great results of spiritual life which he loved: the right hand to be cut off, the right eye to be plucked out; mortification of the flesh, that the man may ‘enter into life.’ The self-sacrifice of the Christian is true in proportion as it copies the perfect pattern of the self-sacrifice of Christ. The Christian’s self-surrender is called a being ‘crucified to the world’; when, then, we turn to Christ’s crucifixion we find the key to that of the Christian man. See how the positive power shines through that, the most heroic of all sacrifices. It is not simply the giving up of something, it is the laying hold of something too. He Who suffers is conquering fear by the power of a confident hope, a triumphant certainty. The way to get out of self-love is to love God. ‘Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.’
Bishop Phillips Brooks.
Illustration‘You cannot kill any one of the appetites of human nature by merely starving them. You must try to draw those appetites from the poison they covet, by supplying a true and good food; by providing rational amusements, a healthier and brighter tone to home and public life; in a word, by a positive, and not a negative method of treatment. It is not prohibition which keeps the well-to-do, as a class, from disgusting and degrading lives: it is the comfort of home and intellectual occupation—the positive forces: these, and not negative repression, must be our aim in dealing with the poor man in the squalor of his garret and the hopelessness of his life. The same holds good of religion.’