How And Why Do I Live In The Spirit? 

1. Christians are empowered to live in the Spirit.

a. “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you”: Because the Holy Spirit is given to each believer when they are born again, every Christian has within themselves a principle higher and more powerful than the flesh.      

• “Many sincere people are yet spiritually under John the Baptist’s ministry of repentance. Their state is practically that of the struggle of Romans Seven, where neither Christ nor the Holy Spirit is mentioned, but only a quickened but undelivered soul in struggle under a sense of ‘duty,’ not a sense of full acceptance in Christ and sealing by the Holy Spirit.” (William R. Newell)

b. “Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His”: This means every believer has the Holy Spirit. It is a misnomer to divide Christians among the “Spirit-filled” and the “non-Spirit-filled.” If a person is not filled with the Holy Spirit, they are not a Christian at all.      

• However, many do miss out on living the Christian life in the constant fullness of the Spirit because they are not constantly being filled with the Holy Spirit as Paul commanded in Ephesians 5:18. They have no experience of what Jesus spoke about when He described rivers of living water flowing from the believer (John 7:37-39).  
   

How does one know that they have the Spirit? Ask these questions:

· Has the Spirit led you to Jesus?

· Has the Spirit put in you the desire to honor Jesus?

· Is the Spirit leading you to be more like Jesus?

· Is the Spirit at work in your heart?

c. “And if the Spirit of Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin”: Because Jesus lives in us, the old man (body) is dead, but the Spirit lives and reigns, and will live out His salvation even through our mortal bodies through resurrection.      

• Not only are we in Christ (Romans 8:1), but He also is in you, and because God cannot abide in a sinful home, the body (old man) had to die when Jesus came in.

2. Our obligation: to live in the Spirit, not in the flesh.

a. “We are debtors – to the flesh, to live according to the flesh”: The flesh (again, in the narrow sense of sinful flesh in rebellion against God) gave us nothing good. So we have no obligation to oblige or pamper it. Our debt is to the Lord, not to the flesh.

b. “For if you live according to the flesh you will die”: Paul constantly reminds us that living after the flesh ends in death. We need the reminder because we are often deceived into thinking that the flesh offers us life.

c. "By the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body”: When we put to death the deeds of the body (force the sinful flesh to submit to the Spirit), we must do it by the Spirit. Otherwise, we will become like the Pharisees and spiritually proud.      

• Paul tells us that not only are we saved by the work of the Spirit, but we also must walk by the Spirit if we want to grow and pursue holiness in the Lord. We cannot be like some among the Galatians who thought they could begin in the Spirit but then find spiritual perfection through the flesh (Galatians 3:3).

Based on the Enduring Word Bible Commentary by David Guzik