Walking in the Spirit

Deacon Obiora had just finished a twenty-one-day fast, and he had never felt closer to God.

Every January his church in Enugu called a season of prayer and fasting, and every year Obiora took it more seriously than anyone. This year he had eaten nothing until six each evening. He had risen at three to pray in tongues for an hour before work. He had read the whole New Testament and most of the Psalms. On the final Friday, at the all-night service that closed the fast, he had prayed with such fire that the young people in the back rows whispered that Deacon Obiora was “on another level.”

The following Tuesday was the meeting of the church’s development committee. The main item was the new generator. The old one had finally died in December, and the committee had to choose between a large diesel set that the elders preferred and a solar and inverter system that the youth pastor, a young man named Oladele, had spent weeks researching. Oladele had prepared a careful comparison of fuel costs over five years. He had printed copies for everyone.

Obiora did not read his copy. When Oladele began to present it, Obiora cut across him. “With respect, this is a small boy’s idea,” he said. “Some of us were running this church when you were still in primary school.” When Oladele tried to answer, Obiora raised his voice. When the treasurer suggested they at least look at the figures, Obiora told her she was always taking the side of the youth. The meeting ended without a decision. Oladele left without saying goodbye to anyone.

That evening, Obiora’s fifteen-year-old daughter, who helped with the church’s media team and had been in the room setting up the projector, said something at the dinner table that he did not forget. “Daddy,” she said, not unkindly, “you fasted for twenty-one days so that you could shout at Brother Oladele?”

He told me about it some weeks later, and he could still hear her voice. “I had been walking in the Spirit for three weeks,” he said. “Or I thought I had.”

Galatians 5:16 is one of the most loved verses in the New Testament: “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” We often read it as a call to private spiritual intensity. But Paul wrote it to a church in the middle of a fight, and the walk he describes is meant to be seen in committee meetings, in kitchens and in the way we treat the person who disagrees with us.

A letter written into a quarrel

The churches of Galatia had been founded through Paul’s preaching. They had received the Spirit by hearing the gospel with faith, and they had begun well. Then teachers arrived who insisted that Gentile believers must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses in order to be fully accepted by God. The result was confusion, and the confusion became conflict. Some believers took up the new teaching. Others resisted it. Paul writes, “Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?” (Galatians 5:7).

Most of the letter is a sustained defence of the gospel of grace. But by chapter 5 Paul turns to the life that grace produces, and he does not move into abstract spirituality. He goes straight to the way the Galatians were treating one another:

For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

Follow the flow of the argument. “Ye have been called unto liberty.” The Galatians were free from the law as a means of righteousness. “Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh.” The word occasion was used of a military base, a starting point for an attack. Do not let your freedom become a launching pad for the flesh. Instead, “by love serve one another.” The Greek word for serve is the verb of slavery. Freed from the law, believers are to become willing slaves of one another in love.

We usually think of liberty being abused through careless living, and Paul certainly has that in view. But in Galatia the flesh had found another use for freedom. Believers who had rightly rejected the false teachers could now look down on those who had been taken in. Those who were drawn to the law could look down on those who were not. Each side felt justified, and each side felt free to speak harshly. Freedom from the law had become freedom to despise. Paul closes that door as firmly as the other. The liberty of the gospel is the liberty to serve, and the Christian who uses it as a licence for contempt has misunderstood it as badly as the one who uses it as a licence for sin.

Then Paul sums up the whole law in a single command: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The teachers in Galatia wanted the believers to keep the law. Paul says that love fulfils it.

And then comes the warning: “But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” It is the picture of wild animals tearing at each other until nothing is left. That was the condition of the Galatian churches. The argument about circumcision had become a feeding frenzy.

Only now does Paul say, “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit.” The famous verse grows straight out of a description of believers biting one another. Walking in the Spirit is Paul’s answer to a church conflict. He is telling quarrelling Christians how to live together.

What it means to walk

The word Paul uses for walk in verse 16 is peripateo, literally to walk around. It was the everyday word for how a person conducts his life: the way he moves through the ordinary hours of the day. Paul uses it often in this sense. To walk in the Spirit is to live your daily life, step by step, in dependence on the Spirit and in agreement with Him.

That means the walk is visible. You can see how someone walks. You can see where they go, how they treat people on the way and what they do when someone gets in their path. The true measure of walking in the Spirit is how a person moves through a room full of people.

Then notice the promise: “and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” In Greek Paul uses a strong double negative that carries the force of “you will certainly not.” Paul is making a confident statement. Walk in the Spirit, and the flesh will not have its way. The emphasis falls on the positive. You do not defeat the flesh by staring at it. You defeat it by walking with Someone else.

Paul is honest that there is a struggle. “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other.” The flesh in this passage is the old way of being human, self-centred and self-protecting, which still pulls at the believer even though its rule has been broken. The Spirit pulls in the opposite direction. That tension is real in every Christian. But “if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.” The answer to the flesh is being led by the Spirit. A return to law-keeping, which the Galatians were being tempted toward, could never do what He does.

So Paul’s instruction to a quarrelling church is profound. He does not say, “Draw up stricter rules for your meetings.” He does not say, “Agree to keep the law of Moses so that everyone is on the same page.” He says, “Walk in the Spirit.” The Spirit who lives in each believer is the One who can enable people who disagree to love and serve one another.

Punchline

Walking in the Spirit is not first a private spiritual altitude. It is the way a believer moves through real relationships, and it becomes visible in how he treats the people around him.

The works of the flesh in the church

Paul then makes the contrast concrete:

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these ; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Many of us read this list and notice the sexual sins at the start and the drunkenness at the end, and we think of the flesh mainly in those terms. Those sins are serious, and Paul names them first. But look again at the middle of the list. “Hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings.” Eight of the works of the flesh, from hatred to envyings, describe what happens between people.

Variance is quarrelling, discord. Emulations is jealousy, the resentment of someone else’s success. Wrath is outbursts of anger. Strife is selfish ambition, the spirit of party and rivalry. Seditions are divisions. Heresies, in this context, translates haireseis, which means factions, groups formed around opinions and loyalties. Envyings is the bitter wish that another person did not have what they have.

That is the flesh as it appears in a church committee. It does not need a nightclub. It can operate comfortably in a meeting that opens and closes with prayer. A believer who would never touch alcohol or look at pornography can still be ruled by the flesh if his response to disagreement is contempt, rivalry and outbursts of anger. When Obiora called a young leader a “small boy” and accused the treasurer of taking sides, the flesh was speaking, and it was speaking through a man who had just completed a twenty-one-day fast.

Paul’s warning at the end of the list is sobering: “they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” He is describing a pattern of life that marks someone who does not belong to the kingdom. He is not saying that a believer who loses his temper once has lost his salvation. But he wants the Galatians to see that strife and factions are not small matters. They belong to the same family as idolatry and witchcraft. They are works of the flesh, and they have no place among people who walk by the Spirit.

The mind of the Spirit in Romans 8

Paul develops the same contrast in Romans 8, and there he shows us where walking begins. The chapter opens with the great announcement: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:1). Then he explains that God sent His Son to deal with sin, “That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:4).

Put that together with Galatians. What is the righteousness of the law? Paul has told us: “all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” So when Romans 8:4 says that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who walk after the Spirit, it means that love for our neighbour is being produced in us. Walking in the Spirit fulfils the law precisely by producing love toward other people.

Then Paul goes beneath the walk to the mind:

For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

“They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.” The word mind here is phroneo. It means to set your thinking on something, to have a settled outlook. Walking flows from minding. What you set your mind on determines how you walk.

“To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” Notice the word peace. The mind set on the Spirit produces peace, including peace between people. The carnal mind, by contrast, “is enmity against God.” Enmity is hostility. A mind ruled by the flesh is at war with God and, very often, at war with others too.

Paul then says that believers are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in them (Romans 8:9). And he draws a practical conclusion: “if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Romans 8:13-14). Through the Spirit, believers put to death the deeds of the flesh. That includes the deeds that happen in a committee room.

When spiritual people quarrel

Nugget

There is an uncomfortable truth here for those of us in lively churches. It is possible to be very spiritual in some ways and very carnal in others.

The church at Corinth is the clearest example. It was perhaps the most gifted church in the New Testament. Paul says they came behind in no gift. They prophesied, spoke in tongues and saw miracles. And yet Paul wrote to them:

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it , neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?

“For whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?” Paul’s test of spiritual maturity in Corinth was not the volume of their worship or the frequency of their tongues. It was the state of their relationships. Envying, strife and divisions told him that these gifted believers were still babes.

I am Pentecostal in conviction. I love fervent prayer, fasting and the gifts of the Spirit, and I believe they belong in the church today. Fasting is good. Praying in tongues is good. Obiora’s twenty-one days were not wasted. But Paul will not allow us to treat these things as proof of maturity. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1). Believers from more reserved traditions sometimes worry that Pentecostal fervour can become a substitute for character. When we are honest, we have to admit that sometimes it does. Fervour and character were never meant to compete. The same Spirit gives both.

John puts the test bluntly: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4:20). Paul says something similar in Galatians 6: “For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself” (Galatians 6:3). Claims of spiritual depth must be heard alongside the relationships in which that depth should be showing itself. If those relationships are full of contempt, the claims are hollow, however sincere the person making them.

The spiritual person restores

Paul does not leave the subject at the end of chapter 5. He carries it straight into chapter 6, and he defines what a spiritual person actually does:

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

“Ye which are spiritual.” Paul uses the word some of the Galatians may have been using about themselves. Very well, he says: if you are spiritual, here is how it will show. When a brother is “overtaken in a fault,” caught in some sin, you will “restore such an one in the spirit of meekness.”

The word restore is katartizo. It was used for mending fishing nets and for setting a broken bone. The spiritual person does not stand over a fallen brother with a lecture or broadcast his failure to the congregation. He works carefully to put him back together. And he does it “in the spirit of meekness,” with gentleness, which is part of the fruit of the Spirit. Then Paul adds a personal warning: “considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” The restorer remembers that he is made of the same material.

“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” Here is the law again, but now it is “the law of Christ.” The Galatians wanted to carry the burden of the law of Moses. Paul tells them to carry one another instead. That is how Christ’s law is kept: by people stooping to lift each other’s weight.

Paul widens the circle a few verses later: “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10). The walk in the Spirit reaches outward to everyone, and it begins at home, with the brothers and sisters we sit with in church committees and serve beside on Sunday mornings. It is often easier to be gracious to strangers than to the people we see every week.

That is the profile of a spiritual person in Paul’s letter. His mark is gentle restoring and patient burden-bearing, whatever the length of his fast or the volume of his prayer.

Walking in the Spirit through a real conflict

What does this look like when you are actually in disagreement with someone?

First, walking in the Spirit does not mean avoiding conflict or pretending to agree. Paul himself confronted Peter in Antioch: “I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed” (Galatians 2:11). Paul argued hard for the truth. Obiora was entitled to prefer the diesel generator. The question is never whether believers may disagree. It is how they conduct themselves while they do.

Second, it begins before the meeting. Set your mind on the things of the Spirit. Pray for the person you expect to disagree with. Ask the Lord to show you what is right in their position. Decide in advance that you will not bite.

Paul closes chapter 5 with a sentence that could have been written for Obiora’s committee: “Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another” (Galatians 5:26). The word for vain glory is kenodoxos, empty glory: the craving for a standing and recognition that has no real substance. Much church conflict is fed by exactly this. The question of the generator was simple. What made it explosive was the question of who mattered most in the room. When an older believer feels that a younger one is being taken seriously, or a long-serving member sees a newcomer praised, the flesh reaches for seniority, titles and history. “Some of us were running this church when you were still in primary school.” Walking in the Spirit frees us from that hunger, because our standing rests on being sons of God, not on winning the meeting.

Third, in the meeting itself, listen before you answer. Read the comparison sheet. Assume that a younger brother may see something you have missed. Speak truthfully, but without contempt. When you feel the flesh rising, the heat in your chest, the urge to remind everyone of your seniority, recognise it for what it is and refuse to follow it.

Fourth, if you have bitten, go back. Jesus said that if you bring your gift to the altar and remember that your brother has something against you, you should “first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift” (Matthew 5:24). Reconciliation belongs to worship.

A guard-rail is needed. Not every hard situation in a church is a simple disagreement between equals. Where someone is being abused, bullied or exploited, walking in the Spirit does not mean keeping quiet for the sake of unity. Abuse must be named and stopped, and those affected must be protected, with the involvement of appropriate authorities and qualified help. The Spirit who produces gentleness is also the Spirit of truth.

Obiora did not sleep well the night his daughter spoke to him. He told me he lay awake replaying the meeting, and every time he tried to justify himself, he heard her voice again. Early in the morning, before he left for work, he called Oladele.

“I asked him to come to my house that evening,” Obiora said. “He was nervous. I think he thought I was going to shout at him again.” Instead, Obiora sat him down in the parlour, apologised for what he had said, and asked him to explain the solar comparison from the beginning. They went through it page by page. Obiora asked hard questions, and Oladele had good answers to most of them.

At the next committee meeting, Obiora asked to speak first. He apologised publicly to Oladele and to the treasurer. Then he said that he still had some concerns about the cost of the batteries, but he thought the young man’s proposal deserved serious consideration. In the end the church installed a solar system with a small diesel set as backup, which was the solution Oladele had suggested in the last page of his report, the page nobody had read the first time.

“That fast was real,” Obiora said. “God did things in me during those three weeks. But I learned that walking in the Spirit is not what happens at three in the morning when I am alone. It is what happens at seven in the evening when someone disagrees with me.”

Punchline

His daughter, he added, had been watching the second meeting from behind the projector. Afterwards she said nothing at all. She just came and stood beside him.

For reflection, practice and prayer

Teaching Companion

For Reflection

• Have you tended to think of walking in the Spirit mainly as private spiritual intensity? How does the context of Galatians 5 challenge that?
• Look again at the eight relational works of the flesh in Galatians 5:20-21. Which of them do you recognise in yourself under pressure?
• How does Paul’s test of maturity in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 differ from the tests we often use in church?
• Is there anyone you need to restore in the spirit of meekness, or anyone whose burden you could help carry?
• Is there a relationship where you need to go back and be reconciled before you bring your next gift to the altar?

This Week

Before your next meeting, family discussion or conversation where you expect disagreement, pray specifically for the person you are most likely to clash with. Ask the Spirit to set your mind on His things and to show you what is right in their view. In the conversation, listen fully before you answer and refuse every word of contempt. Afterwards, ask one honest person who was present how you came across. If you bit or devoured, go back within twenty-four hours and put it right.

A Prayer

Father, thank You for calling me into liberty in Christ. Forgive me for the times I have used that liberty as an occasion for the flesh, and for the times I have bitten and devoured my brothers and sisters while thinking myself spiritual. Holy Spirit, teach me to walk with You in the committee room, the kitchen and the office, not only in the prayer meeting. Set my mind on Your things, so that life and peace grow in me and around me. Make me the kind of spiritual person who restores gently and bears others’ burdens, and so fulfils the law of Christ. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.