Galatians 5:16: So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.
1 Corinthians 2:14: But the natural man does not welcome what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to know it since it is evaluated spiritually.
This week the Lord has been taking me through some fundamentals of the Christian faith that I would like to share with you. May the Holy Spirit reveal the deeper truths of His Word as you read.
Paul here explains some fundamental truths of the Christian faith to the Corinthian church, which had several challenges. These truths are still relevant to us today.
But before I delve into what he is saying, I want to explain some basics.
Spirit, Soul and Body
Man is a spirit being with a soul who lives in a body. How do I say this?
Genesis 1:27 says this:
“So God created mankind in His own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.”
And again, in John 4:24: “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
God is Spirit, and He created mankind in His own image and likeness. We are therefore not merely physical beings first, but spirit beings. The Bible is abundantly clear that God did not create us as He created the birds, animals, plants, etc. Those were not made in His image. We have a distinctiveness in that we alone were made in His likeness and His image.
We each have a soul which is the seat of our five senses. Our soul comprises the will, emotions, mind and personality. The Bible does not divide the soul and spirit as clearly as we see in diagrams of the human body, soul and spirit. In some places, these two are used with a very fine dividing line or even interchangeably. However, from Hebrews 4:12, it is clear that the soul and spirit are two distinct areas.
Our body is “an earthly suit” that we inhabit during our time on earth. Through it, we experience the world around us and participate in the physical world.
Before we are saved through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, sin reigns in us, and therefore we are dead in our spirit. We cannot understand the truths of God’s Word, and no matter how hard we try to evaluate them with human intellect (at our soul level), we will be unable to understand them. The Bible says God’s Word is foolishness to the natural man, the man who is dead in the spirit.
But after we give our lives to Jesus, our spirit comes alive and is made one with the Holy Spirit.
1 Corinthians 6:17: “Whoever is united with the Lord is one with Him in spirit.”
Once we become believers, we share a deep, spiritual connection with the Lord.
He puts in us a desire to know Him more relationally as our Lord and Saviour.
What Does It Mean for Jesus to Be Lord?
What does Lord mean?
The dictionary defines Lord as follows: a person or deity with power, authority, or control over others, acting as a master, ruler, or nobleman.
We are, in effect, giving complete allegiance to Him. He directs us, He leads us, He guides us, He shows us the way, He is the ultimate authority.
What does this look like practically?
We do not take our plans to Him and ask Him to bless them.
We go to Him in reverence and ask Him to reveal His plan and purpose for our lives.
There is no independence here.
There is a complete submission to His Will. His purpose.
We do this through the love that He pours into our hearts and a longing to know Him deeply and intimately. Our spirit, when it is made alive through salvation, is always God-hungry. It wants to know more and more about Him. There is such a deep longing to delve more and more into His Word and into prayer. No one needs to force us to pray. Prayer is not a chore or a spiritual discipline we commit to, but something we delight to do because we love God. Prayer, reading God’s Word and fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit are responses from the depth of our spirit.
What Does It Mean for Jesus to Be Saviour?
Now what does Saviour mean?
Jesus as our Saviour means He is the One who saves us from our sin.
What is sin?
Sin is not merely breaking God’s commandments. It is also rebelling against Him as the ultimate Lord of our lives.
We sin when we don’t rely on Him for our everyday living. We sin when we rely on our own strength and intellect as we go about our lives. We sin when we rely on our intellect to make daily decisions. We sin when we do not lean on the Holy Spirit to draw wisdom and daily guidance for the day.
Sin is basically rebellion against God as our Lord and Saviour.
Our soul is pointed toward the “body” (the flesh) to draw wisdom from the world for our daily living.
We rely on the wisdom of people through books, podcasts, etc.
Don’t get me wrong. These are good, but they are limited. God’s Word is clear that even the wisdom of the world is foolishness to God. The knowledge in the world is drawn from the soul level and not from the spirit, since secular authors are spiritually dead and their reasoning is limited to the physical world at the soul level.
As those made alive in our spirit, we are doing God a major disservice by continuing to walk as those who are spiritually dead.
Now why is that problematic?
The things of God cannot be evaluated or understood through our human mind. God is Spirit, and the things of God can only be evaluated through His Spirit.
The Danger of a Divided Life
You may be thinking, yes, but I rely on books and the knowledge in the world for my secular job, since I work in a secular setting. And I rely on God’s Word for church-related activities.
My friend, when we make God our Lord, He is Lord over every part of our lives. Our secular job, our family, our marriage, our parenting, our every relationship. God desires to permeate every part of our lives.
We put ourselves in major danger when we compartmentalise our lives and put God into a box where He occupies an occasional or hurried quiet time, prayer and Bible reading.
The Israelites in the Old Testament repeatedly lived divided lives, and this eventually brought God’s judgement upon them. They did not always completely abandon God. Often, they continued to acknowledge Him while at the same time building altars, offering sacrifices and giving their allegiance to other gods such as Baal.
But God had already made His command unmistakably clear:
Exodus 20:3: “You shall have no other gods before me.”
God does not ask to be one among many influences in our lives. He demands our complete allegiance.
Scripture even tells us that God is a jealous God:
Exodus 34:14: “Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”
This is not jealousy in the insecure, possessive human sense. His jealousy is His holy insistence that the worship and allegiance that rightly belong to Him are not given to another.
This was the danger of Israel’s divided life. They wanted God, but they also wanted other gods.
And we can do exactly the same thing today without ever building a physical altar to Baal.
We can say that Jesus is Lord while allowing career, money, recognition, relationships, success, intellect, comfort or even ministry itself to occupy the place in our hearts that belongs to Him alone.
A divided life does not necessarily mean that we have rejected God.
It can simply mean that He is no longer the only One on the throne.
The danger in this is that we go through a slow drift. And eventually begin trying to evaluate God’s Word also at the human intellect (soul) level.
What does God want us to do?
He wants to be part of all of our lives.
When was the last time you invited His wisdom into a meeting you are about to chair or attend?
Or a major life decision you are weighing: do you ask Him to bless it or ask Him what He wants you to do?
When we have this close daily fellowship with God, our spirit becomes very much in tune with His voice.
God is still alive and very much interested in our lives.
Really? More than we may think!
Here’s the best part: we don’t spend this time with God because we HAVE TO as Christians, but because we GET TO as His sons and daughters!
What a privilege!
What an honor to commune with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords! As His children!
Oh, how He delights us and reveals to us the deep things of God, His plans and purposes for this time we are in.
And as we go on this journey with Him, we realize that we cannot do anything without Him!
Abiding and Bearing Fruit
His Word makes this abundantly clear to us. Unless we abide (dwell, spend unhurried and continual time) in Him, we cannot bear fruit.
Fruit is the evidence of our time with Him.
Fruit is not some productivity metric like church attendance or monetary reward or promotion or abundant wealth or something else according to the world’s standards that people of the world run after.
That fruit is the love of God that flows freely from us to others around us. Even those most undeserving.
John 15:9–10: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love.”
That fruit is joy as well.
John 15:11: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
Galatians 5:22–23 says this:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
This is the fruit, NOT fruits!
Fruit is the evidence of what the plant is for.
We do not get oranges from a coconut tree.
Deep daily fellowship with God leads to a life that is not striving, performing, competing or trying to look great.
Rather, it leads to a life fully yielded to Jesus, secure in our identity as image bearers of God, fully devoted to Him in all of life, shining brightly as His light and quietly influencing and impacting those around us as salt.
The Holy Spirit in Our Everyday Lives
The Holy Spirit speaks to us in our everyday, mundane lives. He gives us wisdom and insight.
In the past weeks, God has begun revealing several things for my own family and friends as I tarried more in His presence, and He has also given me strategies on how to specifically pray for them.
The Holy Spirit is not someone lofty and on High. He is very near. He is our personal counsellor, guide and comforter. He reveals the deep things of God.
So now, with this background, I want to take us back to the verse for this day.
Spiritual Wisdom Versus Human Wisdom
Paul is grieved to see the state of the Corinthian church.
The members were split on which church leader they liked the best; there was sexual immorality; they were trying to intellectually reason and argue about food offered to idols; and there was false teaching as well that denied the fundamental truth of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
They were arguing at the intellectual level.
What does Paul say to them?
Paul makes a clear distinction between spiritual people (those made alive in the spirit through the salvation experience) and people of the flesh (those of the world, whose spirit is dead). We read this in 1 Corinthians 2 and 3.
Those who walk according to the flesh are focussed on brilliance of speech or wisdom (1 Corinthians 2:1) and use persuasive words of wisdom (1 Corinthians 2:4).
When those who walk in the Spirit speak, they are not concerned about the choice of words to use. They speak “with a demonstration of the Spirit and power”.
Why is this important?
Because our faith in Jesus is NOT based on human wisdom but on God’s power.
God is the One who drew us to Himself. We did not wander into discovering Him and thinking we would give Him a try.
He chose us, He predestined us, He leads.
After all, He is our Lord!!
Those walking in the Spirit speak God’s hidden wisdom and do not operate in the wisdom of this age (which those walking in the flesh do).
Paul refers to those walking in the flesh as babies in Christ.
They are not able to welcome what God’s Spirit is revealing to them. They find it foolish.
Why?
Because that which is revealed in the spirit can only be understood by those who are made spiritually alive. It cannot be understood by those who are walking in the flesh.
The spiritually alive person also cannot be evaluated by the person in the flesh (1 Corinthians 2:15 and 16), because God gives them the mind of Christ.
A New Heart and a New Spirit
At salvation, we receive a new mind and a new heart. When we repent of our sins (not regret or remorse, but truly feel grieved for having sinned against a Holy God), God removes our heart of stone and gives us a new heart. He puts a new spirit within us which becomes united with His Holy Spirit.
Ezekiel 36:26 says this:
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
When we walk in the flesh, the works of the flesh are evident in our lives. Paul says there is envy and strife.
Galatians 5:19–21 gives us an entire list:
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Walking According to the Spirit
Friends, God wants us all to walk according to the Spirit. To delight in knowing Him through His Word and be led by the Holy Spirit in our everyday life.
He longs to disrupt our schedules, and He is grieved by our divided lives.
He gives us a sober warning in Hebrews 3:15:
As it is said: Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.
So what does it take to experience this life in the Spirit?
It Begins With Surrender
It begins with surrender. God wants us to lay down our continual striving and trying to make ourselves into somebody by our own efforts. He desires to be the sole Lord of our lives and permeate every part of us.
Friends, lay down your need for recognition. Your identity as an image bearer for God was already given before you were born or learned to speak or walk! You do not need social media fame, impressive numbers, income or a job as your identity. Those are what you do, not who you are.
He is enough. You are His, and in Him you have already been given all you need for this life and godliness.
I believe the Lord is calling many of us to return to Him and seek Him with all that is within us.
Joel 2:12 says:
That is why the LORD says, “Turn to me now, while there is time. Give me your hearts. Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning.”
Here is a song that has been our heart song as family.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, I am so sorry for trying to fathom You and Your Word through my own limited human intellect and reasoning. The vastness of You cannot be understood in my entire lifetime; this I realize. I come to You in humility and brokenness. I surrender my all. Take my hand and teach me; lead me on the path to know You deeply so that I can be a blessing to those You have given to me. May Your love flow through me and may Your joy be abundant even during difficult times when my flesh and my soul do not want to rejoice.
In Your precious Name, sweet Jesus, amen.