I'm going to read beginning in verse 13. For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die. But if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
And if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, in order that we may also be glorified with Him. In your worship folder today, you should have an outline which will lead us through this text just so that you don't get worried. We're only going to be covering point one today. The danger of printing the outline on Monday is that by Saturday you have so much more to say. And so we'll take point one today and we'll pick it up there later.
Several days ago I heard about a fellow who died. Two of his friends walked by the casket and one of them began snickering. The other said, why are you snickering? And the other person replied, well, Pat didn't believe in heaven or hell. And there he is all dressed up and no place to go. Well, of course, that's a bit of a fallacy, isn't it, because it makes no difference whether one believes in heaven or hell because all of us are moving in one direction or the other.
In the text that we've been looking at in Romans chapter eight, it tells us that a person either is walking according to the flesh or he's walking according to the spirit. If he walks according to the flesh, it's because he is in the flesh, which is a Bible phrase indicating a person who is unregenerated, who does not know God personally. Maybe religious, maybe very sincere, might even be a very moral person, but still in the flesh. There's nothing supernatural about him.
On the other hand, there are those who walk according to the spirit and the Bible says that these are in the spirit, capital S, and the Holy Spirit is in them, indicating that a supernatural birth has taken place. They have been born from above or born again, as Peter says it. Those who walk according to the flesh are in death and are destined for eternal separation from God in a place the Bible calls hell.
Those who walk according to the spirit are in life and their eternal destination is a place the Bible calls heaven. Every person is moving in one direction or the other. Most of Romans eight is given to instruction for those of us who are walking according to the spirit or who are in the spirit, that is, who have been truly saved, who have trusted Jesus Christ as Savior. As we have seen in verse 12, he reminds us that we are under obligation.
That obligation is not to the flesh, but it's an obligation to the spirit. We will appreciate even more the debt we have to the spirit as we understand the work of the spirit in the Christian's life. In verse 13, we have the first work that we want to look at, and this is the one we'll cover this morning. We talked a bit about this last week, but I want to come back over to emphasize again the truth that the first work of the spirit is that he empowers the Christian. He energizes the Christian.
He endures with strength the Christian. You'll notice that it says, but if by the spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. The apostle in saying that is giving us an expectation, and that means that those who are living in the spirit will be doing what he says here. They will, by the spirit, be putting to death the deeds of the body, and thus will live. That's a continuous thing.
It doesn't mean that a Christian cannot fall into sin, because we all know better than that. We commit isolated acts of sin, but the point is that a Christian is not one who is characterized by fulfilling the desires of his flesh. He tells us that this obedience of putting to death the deeds of the body is not something that we can do in our own strength, our own self-generated power. And rather we can only do it, I point out again those three words, by the spirit.
For the spirit is the one who empowers. Whether we talk about witnessing, or we talk about real prayer, or we talk about living the Christian life, which is the subject of our text, it is all by the spirit. Probably the most complete single passage in the New Testament dealing with this truth is found in Galatians chapter 5. Would you turn there with me please? Galatians chapter 5, beginning in verse 13.
I'm going to read to the end of the chapter and make some comments along the way, so you follow along with me. He says, for you were called to freedom, brethren. Now what is the theme of Romans chapter 8? It's the same isn't it? It's our freedom, our liberty in Jesus Christ. Freed from the principle of sin so that we don't have to obey it, though we sometimes do, and freed from the law with its condemnation. Here again he says, you were called to freedom, brethren.
Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. Now just quickly again, the flesh refers to that sinful tendency in our humanness, that unredeemed part of us. It's an ethical kind of thing. It's more than just the flesh and blood of our physical bodies, but it refers to that proneness of our unredeemed humanness to fulfill sins, desires. Now he says we should not use our freedom as an opportunity for our flesh to express itself.
But on the other hand we're to serve one another through love. He says for the whole law is fulfilled in one word in the statement, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now really that is a capsule of the whole Mosaic law, at least that part of it that refers to man and his relationship to man. And in a real sense that's what Jesus did on the cross isn't it? He was the fulfillment of an act of love when he loved us so completely.
But he says in verse 15, if you bite and devour one another, take heed lest you be consumed by one another. And that's just the opposite of love. Now in verse 16 he says, but I say walk by the spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. And so here again we see those three words, by the spirit. Here he doesn't say put to death the deeds of the body, but he says on a positive note, walk by the spirit or conduct yourself by the spirit.
And the result is you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. I cannot be dominated by the spirit and fulfill the desire of the flesh. I cannot be dominated by the flesh and fulfill what the Holy Spirit wants in me. He goes on to say the flesh sets its desire against the spirit. And the spirit against the flesh. And these are in opposition to one another. That explains again the struggle that we see within us. And Romans 7 dealt with some of that.
He says, so that you may not do the things that you please, but if you are led by the spirit you are not under the law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident. First the plural there, the works or the deeds, the expressions of the flesh are evident. And he names them, he says, and includes immorality, impurity, sensuality. Those are sexual sins. The Holy Spirit does not lead to those. Rather it is the expression of sin within our bodies.
It is sin using the appetites, the desires, the drives, the body, that it might pervert them for evil. Those drives and desires are given by God to us and they and themselves are not wrong. But sin, you see, in us seeks to take those good things and to have them expressed in evil, sinful ways. So he talks here very plainly about immorality and impurity and sensuality. He talks about religious sins, idolatry, the worship of idols, giving honor to idols.
And he talks about sorcery, the worship of witchcraft, of Satanism. This is the word in the Greek, pharmakeia, which obviously is the root for pharmacy and involves drugs. The witchcraft then and still today involves very often the use of drugs or the abuse of drugs.
And he talks about social sins from the flesh, enmities, people hating one another, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, how often churches collapse because of these expressions of the flesh, how often families degenerate and friendships fall apart because of these works of the flesh. And then he talks about personal sins of envying, that's something you can't see, but it's very real. He talks about drunkenness and carousings and things like these.
Now what are carousings? Well that's a typical Saturday night crowd. That's going out in the town. Back in those days they would periodically have parades in their cities of the Roman Empire in honor of the god Bacchus. And involved with that would be a lot of immorality as well as drunkenness. And it would seem that Paul has this in mind as he talks about the carousing, the public partings with boozing and fornicating and all the rest that goes with that.
And he says, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Now he could not be more clear, he could not be more explicit than that. The people who practice that way of life, who live that way habitually, will not enter the kingdom of God. By the way that they live they are evidencing the fact that they are walking according to the flesh and they're headed for hell and eternal judgment and punishment.
But the warning is very, very clear. It's possible for a Christian to have these expressions of the flesh evident in his own life. Not that he will practice them habitually for the rest of his life, but it's possible for him in isolated cases to allow the flesh to dominate him so that he will fulfill the desires of the flesh and even these things and things like them will be seen. Maybe that's where you are today. I don't know. God knows, you know.
In contrast to that though, in verse 22 he talks about the fruit of the Spirit. Singular, it's not something we produce, it's the fruit of the Spirit. When he dominates, when he's in control, when we walk by the Spirit, here is what is produced in the life. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Nine wonderful characteristics which really describe the very life of Jesus himself.
If you go back to the Gospels you will find these characteristics over and over again illustrated in the way that he lived. He was perfectly empowered by the Spirit. There was no sin in him. Consequently, these expressions of the Spirit were very evident all the time. The Apostle says fruit here in the singular in the sense of a cluster of grapes, for example. Each of these are individual characteristics and yet they come together like a cluster.
We cannot say, well I have love and I guess I have some faithfulness and maybe some gentleness but I don't have the rest of it. As you see they all come together and it's not that they're all going to be perfectly expressed all the time but they all come together when the Holy Spirit is in control. And he says against such things there is no law. Of course there isn't. There doesn't need to be. He says now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
More thought to Romans 6 where it talks about our dying with Christ, being put to death with Christ, except that that's passive and this is active. Here it's something that we have done. That's interesting isn't it? This is the other side of the coin. It's true that we are identified with Christ in his death and yet it says here that we have crucified the flesh. Actually the word that would describe what verse 24 is talking about is repentance.
For when we come to Jesus Christ in faith it must involve a genuine changing of the mind. Whereas up to that point I loved my sin and I would not have anyone tell me how to live. And that those things I was doing were wrong. At that point I changed my mind and I realized that those things were sin. That God says they were wrong. And instead of looking at God like a bully trying to control my life and tell me what to do. At that point I gladly gave my heart to him and loved him.
So it's a complete change of the mind. And here he tells me that when I came to that point of repentance I crucified the flesh. I nailed the flesh to the cross. A very graphic picture isn't it? Crucifixion. He says I took that sinful tendency, that humaness about me and I nailed it to the cross. I crucified it with its passions and desires. Notice he does not say that I must every day crucify the flesh. There are people who teach that.
What we need to do is to keep crucifying the flesh every day. Crucify the flesh. He says we have crucified the flesh. Now what I need to keep doing is going back to that and claiming it to be true. I don't have to keep doing it all the time but I do have to look back to that cross and reckon it so each day. He says in verse 25 again, if we live by the Spirit let us also walk by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who made us alive in Jesus Christ through regeneration.
And now he is the one who enables us to live, to walk, to conduct ourselves to the honor of Christ. Now how can we experience this walk by the Spirit? First we need to see that the very word walk has built into it the concept of dependence. I've talked about that before. I want to reiterate it, repeat it, to underscore the truthfulness of it. When you and I walk physically what we are doing is actually throwing ourselves off balance and then catching ourselves in a coordinated fashion usually.
And in doing that we make progress by throwing our weight in a particular way and then stepping out and catching ourselves before we fall on our faces. And so when I walk by the Spirit what I am doing is throwing myself on the Holy Spirit, allowing him as it were to catch me. I am depending, relying upon him. I place my weight upon him and in doing that I make spiritual progress. Now let's tack this down with some specific thoughts.
Number one, if I want to walk by the Spirit I must practice spiritual breathing. That is not a new concept with me nor is it new with Campus Crusade who uses it a great deal. It's a concept that's pretty old. When you and I breathe physically we exhale stale air with carbon dioxide in it and we inhale fresh air unless we live in Chicago or Los Angeles or somewhere. But we take in fresh oxygen is the point so that we can sustain our lives. So we exhale and inhale.
We don't have to learn to do that. We don't have to go through exercises so we learn to exhale and learn to inhale. It's something that comes very naturally to us isn't it? In our walk by the Spirit spiritual breathing needs to come naturally and that will happen in time but in the spiritual realm we do have to practice it. That's the difference. Now what do I mean by spiritual breathing? In the first place I'm relating exhaling to confession. Confession of sin.
When I am aware that there's a disobedience in my life that quenches or grieves the Holy Spirit I exhale by confessing my sin. First John 1, 9. I bring that before God and agree with him that what I've done is wrong. And then I have his forgiveness don't I? He's just, he's faithful, he will always forgive and cleanse us when we just bring it up and own up to what we've done. By inhaling I'm referring to appropriating the power of the Holy Spirit afresh.
Ephesians 5, 18 says be ye being filled by the Holy Spirit. In other words I'm constantly to be experiencing that. It's to be over and over again that I experience the filling, the empowering of the Spirit. Ephesians 5, 18 confuses some people because they see filling being like this glass of water I've got. Pretty good. Except it's lukewarm.
Some people see the filling of the Holy Spirit like a pitcher and if you pour water into a glass it'll overflow and that's not the meaning in Ephesians 5, 18. A better illustration of it would be a sail on a sailboat. So when the wind hits it the sail billows and it's empowered in that sense and it's pushed along on the water.
And so when I inhale what I'm doing is allowing the Holy Spirit to release his power in me as it were to blow upon my life so that I as a vessel then am empowered and taken along on my journey for the rest of that day. Do you understand what I mean? I hope that's simple enough that we exhale, we inhale. And we need to learn to do that every time that we're aware of sin. You say well that'd be a hundred times a day. Well sometimes it seems that way. It does.
But you know as we begin to walk in the Spirit we fulfill the lust of the flesh less so that it won't be a hundred times maybe next week. Next month it may be twenty-five. I don't know what it'll be. But just learn to get in that practice of spiritual breathing. Number two, if you're going to walk by the Spirit you need to be in the Word. You see we cannot separate the Holy Spirit from the Word of God. Now they're not the same thing. Don't misunderstand me. But the two work together.
Ephesians 5.18. Turn over there a minute. I just forwarded the verse to you. But I want you to look at the following couple of verses. He says, do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation. That's waste. But be filled with the Spirit. Be empowered by the Spirit. Sing to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Giving thanks, always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God even the Father.
In verses 19 and 20 we have the results of the filling of the Holy Spirit. Now turn over to Colossians for just a moment. I'm going to show you something that probably most of you know already. Colossians is a parallel book to Ephesians isn't it? They're sometimes called the Twin Epistles. Many similar thoughts. In Colossians chapter 3, in verse 16 it says, let the Word of Christ richly dwell within you. And what's the result of that?
With all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with hymns, with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God in whatever you do in word or deed. Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks through him to God the Father. See how similar that is to Ephesians 5? The point is this, that if we're going to know the reality of the walk by the Spirit and the kind of life that's described here, we cannot separate the Word of God from it.
Being filled with the Word is not the same as being filled with the Spirit. One can be filled with the Spirit to some degree without being filled with the Word. But the point is that we dare not separate the two of them if we want to have a lot of maturity and growth in our lives. The Holy Spirit inspired this book to be written. It's called The Sword of the Spirit, Ephesians 6, 17. And so if I am not in the Word of God, really I'm in disobedience, aren't I? And thus the Holy Spirit is grieved.
I need to be in the Word. Are you in the Word? Are you spending quality time in the Word of God, allowing it to soak into your mind and your heart? A third practical step I want to suggest is to exercise prayer in the Spirit. Again, Ephesians chapter 6, where in verse 18 it tells us that we are to be praying at all times with prayer in the Spirit. Literally, with all prayer and petitions, pray at all times in the Spirit. What does it mean to pray in the Spirit?
Does that mean to have a certain emotional experience? Does that mean to pray in tongues? What does it mean to pray in the Spirit? Well, it does not involve emotions and it does not involve tongues. We start out there. What it does mean is that when I pray, I need to depend upon the Holy Spirit to lead me in my praying so that I don't get down with my prayer list, which is rather lengthy perhaps, and ritualistic and cold and just rattle off a lot of names.
But I allow the Holy Spirit to lead me in my praying. That morning I may pray for one name on that list, but God will show me really how to pray for that person, will give me insight to it. It means in phrasing my request, I allow the Holy Spirit to show me how I should pray for that person, for that need. Then in offering praise to God, I allow the Holy Spirit to lay on my heart those things for which I should praise God and worship Him.
As Skip led us this morning in our personal meditation time, he said that we should worship the Lord for those characteristics or attributes that would come to our minds. What the Holy Spirit does bring to our minds, certain characteristics of God that we should praise Him for, perhaps His faithfulness or His justice or His love or mercy or whatever. But when we pray, folks, we need to pray in the Spirit. I fear that many of us know how to say prayers without praying in the Spirit.
I judge myself for that. I want to learn what it means to pray with the Spirit energizing me. And so if I'm going to know what it is to walk by the Spirit, if I'm going to know what it is to be energized, to be empowered by the Spirit, it involves spiritual breathing, being in the Word of God, and praying in the Spirit. Now if you work on these three specific steps, you're going to find that the flesh life will have less authority in your life.
The flesh will not be able to dominate you so easily as it perhaps does now. The flesh will not be able to demand and insist from you that you follow a certain course of action, but rather because you are growing, maturing, and walking by the Spirit, you will be able to put to death the deeds of the body.
It doesn't mean temptation won't be there, it will be, but it means that it will not have its allurement and that you will not find within you that tendency to respond so much as perhaps you do today. Now I want to emphasize the balance again that says back in Romans chapter 8, if you by the Spirit, you by the Spirit are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. It's not all the Holy Spirit, it's not all me, it's me by the Spirit who does it.
An illustration of this perhaps would be power steering. I'm glad I have that on my car. Power steering means that when I put pressure on the steering wheel in a certain direction, that pressure is immediately multiplied by the power of the automobile itself so that the turning is with ease. I have to initiate it and then the automobile picks up and empowers that turn.
Some pressure is essential or nothing will happen, but the moment that I in my will say I will do this and turn, there's power there so that that car is turned. Do you see how that applies spiritually? I make the decision, I choose to obey, I choose to put to death that temptation, I choose to witness to that person, I make the decision I will do it, but once that decision is made, the Holy Spirit then empowers and enables. That's how the two work together.
Now may God help us to put that into practice in our life this week. My Father, thank you for this truth. I pray that we will not just be hearers of the word but doers of it and thus be wise. Lord, all of us want a better handle on what it means to walk by the Spirit, to know the empowering of the Spirit. So I pray that we'll be learning more about it even this week. Teach us.
Make it practical, Lord. We're very simple people and we need instruction of the Spirit in a simple way that we can get our hands on it. And I pray that there's someone here who doesn't know Christ who's in the flesh, that that one would trust him today. And may all of us who know the Savior be living for him and thus living by the Spirit we also be walking by the Spirit. In Jesus' name, Amen.