Spiritual Progress - Living by the Spirit

"...after beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?" (Galatians 3:3, NIV)

Why is it that God's church, as a whole, is so feeble, and that the great majority of Christians are not living up to their privileges? Has God not given Christ, His almighty Son, to be the Keeper of every believer, to make Christ an ever-present reality, and to impart and communicate to us all that we have in Christ?

We find in more than one of Paul's epistles a very solemn answer to that question. There are epistles, such as the first to the Thessalonians, where Paul writes to the Christians, in effect: "I want you to grow, to abound, to increase more and more." They were young, and there were things lacking in their faith, but their state so far was satisfactory and gave him great joy, and he writes time after time: "I pray God that you may abound more and more; I write to you to increase more and more." But there are other epistles where he takes a very different tone, especially the epistles to the Corinthians and the Galatians, and he tells them in many different ways that the one reason was they were living under the power of "the flesh." Galatians 3:3 is one example: "Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?"

God has called the church of Christ to live in the power of the Holy Spirit, but the church is living, for the most part, in the power of human flesh -- of will and energy and effort apart from the Spirit of God.

If God will use me to give a message from Him, it will be: If the church will return to acknowledge that the Holy Spirit is her strength and her help, and if the church will return to give up everything and wait upon God to be filled with the Spirit, her days of beauty and gladness will return, and we shall see the glory of God revealed among us. And to every individual Christian I say: Nothing will help you unless you come to understand that you must live every day under the power of the Holy Spirit.

First, Paul says, "Having begun in the Spirit..." The Apostle not only preached justification by faith, he preached that justified men cannot live but by the Holy Spirit, and therefore God gives to every justified man the Holy Spirit to seal him.

There are many Christians who hardly know that when they truly believed they received the Holy Spirit. A great many Christians can say: "I received pardon and I received peace." But if you were to ask them: "Have you received the Holy Spirit?" they would hesitate, and many, if they were to to say, "Yes," would say it with hesitation; and they would tell you that they hardly knew what it was, since that time, to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Let us try and take hold of this great truth: the beginning of the true Christian life is to receive the Holy Spirit. And the work of every Christian minister is what was the work of Paul -- to remind his people that they received the Holy Spirit and they must live according to his guidance and to his power.

A person cannot live a godly life one hour unless it is by the power of the Holy Spirit. He may live a proper, consistent life, as people call it, an irreproachable life, a life of virtue and diligent service; but to live a life acceptable to God, in the enjoyment of God's salvation and God's love, to live and walk in the power of the new life is impossible unless he is guided by the Holy Spirit every day and every hour.

The Galatians received the Holy Spirit, but what was begun by the Spirit they tried to perfect in the flesh. How? They fell under Judaising teachers who told them they must be circumcised. They began to seek their religion in external observances. And so Paul says, "They sought to glory in their flesh."

I may be very diligent and doing a great deal and yet all the time making it more the work of human flesh than of God's Spirit. A man may be a preacher and work diligently in his ministry; a man may be a Christian worker and have others tell of his great sacrifices; and yet you can feel a lack about it.

I fear that the preaching throughout the church of Christ has little converting power. There may be much work, yet so often so little result for eternity. That the Word has so little power to build up believers in holiness and consecration results from the absence of the power of the Holy Spirit. Human energy has taken the place the Holy Spirit ought to have. That was true of the Corinthians.

What are the indications that a church like the Galatians, or a Christian, is perfecting in "the flesh" what was begun in the Spirit? The answer is very easy. Religious self-effort always ends in sinful flesh. The Galatians were striving to be justified by works of the law, and yet they were quarreling and in danger of "devouring" one another. Twelve expressions indicate their lack of love, such as envy, jealousy, bitterness, and strife. They tried to serve God in their own strength and they failed utterly. The power of sin got the better of them.

There is a complaint everywhere in the Christian church of the lack of a high standard of integrity. In the homes of Christians there is unlovingness and temper and sharpness and bitterness, and among members of churches there is envy and jealousy and sensitiveness and pride -- and we are compelled to say: "Where are marks of the presence of the Spirit of the Lamb of God?"

Many people speak of these things as though they were the natural result of our feebleness and cannot be helped. Many people speak of these things as sins, yet they have given up the hope of conquering them. There is no prospect until there comes a radical change, until the church of God begins to see that every sin in the believer comes from the "flesh," from a carnal life amidst our religious activities, from a striving in self-effort to serve God. Until we learn to make confession, and until we begin to see we must somehow or other get God's Spirit in power back to His church, we must fail.

If we believe that God is going to have mercy on His church in these last ages, it will be because the doctrine and the truth about the Holy Spirit will not only be studied but sought after with a whole heart; and not only because that truth will be sought after, but because ministers and congregations will be found bowing before God in deep abasement with one cry; "We have grieved God's Spirit; we have tried to be Christian churches with as little as possible of God's Spirit; we have not sought to be churches filled with the Holy Spirit." All the feebleness in the church is owing to its refusal to obey its God.

The Galatians had no other way of returning but to come back to where they had gone wrong; to come back from all religious effort in their own strength, and to yield themselves humbly to the Holy Spirit. There is no other way for us as individuals.

Just as truly as the Everlasting Son of God came to this world and wrought his wonderful works, just as truly as on Calvary he died and wrought your redemption by his precious blood, just as truly can the Holy Spirit sanctify you with his divine power and enable you to do God's blessed will, and fill your heart with joy and strength. The Father in heaven loves to fill his children with His Holy Spirit. God longs to give each one individually, separately, the power of the Holy Spirit for daily life. The command comes to us individually and collectively. God wants us as His children to arise and place our sins before Him, and to call upon Him for mercy. "Are you so foolish -- having begun in the Spirit -- are you perfecting in the flesh?"

I have often been asked by young Christians, "Why is it that I fail?" I solemnly vowed with my whole heart, and desired to serve God; why have I failed?" To such I always give the answer: "My dear friend, you are trying to do in your own strength what Christ alone can do in you." And when they tell me: "I am sure I knew Christ alone could do it; I was not trusting in myself," my answer always is: "You were trusting in yourself or you could not have failed. If you had trusted Christ, He could not fail."

Let us ask God to reveal to us that it is only when we are brought to utter emptiness that we shall be prepared to receive the blessing that comes from on High. I ask every believer: 'Are you living under the power of the Holy Spirit day by day, or are you attempting to live without that? Are you consecrated, given up to the Spirit to work in you and to live in you?' If your answer is "No," then I come with a second question: 'Are you willing to be consecrated? Are you willing to give up yourself to the power of the Holy Spirit?' A great deal may still be dim and beyond what we understand, and you may feel nothing; but come. God alone can "strengthen us with might by His Spirit in the inner man." And to every waiting heart that will give up everything, and give time to pray to God, the answer will come. Our God delights to help us. He will enable us to perfect, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, what was begun in the Spirit.

- Andrew Murray