• "How do we walk in the Spirit?"
• Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
• September 12, 2004
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

The epistle today from Galatians (5:16) says, "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."

The word "flesh" does not refer to our physical bodies. We do not believe that life in a body or physical pleasure are bad. In the New Testament, the word "flesh" refers to the corrupted desires of our fallen nature. Our fallen nature moves us to do evil in the body. But the evil is found in our fallen nature, not in the body itself. Our fallen nature is manifested in what Galatians call, "the works of the flesh"-things like sexual impurity, jealousy, hatred, anger, selfish ambitions and envy.

The Spirit is the Holy Spirit, whom God gives to us in baptism. As Ezekiel prophesied some 600 years before Christ: "I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean...I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes." The gift of the Spirit fills us with the desire to do God's will and produces in us what the epistle calls, "The fruit of the Spirit"-things like love, joy, peace, longsuffering and self-control.

The Holy Spirit comes into our lives to conquer our fallen nature and recreate us in the image of Jesus Christ. In Holy Baptism, we pray, "Grant that all sinful affections may die in him, and that all things belonging to the Spirit may live and grow in him." Thus, the Holy Spirit is, in one sense, a source of conflict-"the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh."

This conflict can be a source of great frustration. Some people think that the Holy Spirit will make all struggle vanish. They are surprised when positive spiritual experiences give way to renewed temptation, when old longings and desires resurface with new strength. But testing born of the battle between flesh and Spirit is the very essence of the Christian life.

How is the conflict between flesh and Spirit to be won? The epistle says, "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." I must confess that, at face value, I don't find this helpful. To say, "Walk in the Spirit sounds like an exhortation to sort of walk around in a cloud or fog." It sounds, at first glance, like pious talk that doesn't help much with the daily battle.

How do we walk in the Spirit? The battle between flesh and Spirit takes place at the level of the will. The significant questions to ask are: What do we really want? What do we really desire? What do we really think will fulfill us? In this initial stage of the Christian life, we may say, "I want the will of God." But, in truth our will is more divided.

We may want the promise of eternal life. We may want to have our sins forgiven. But we may not yet be fully convinced that the will of God, as revealed in his commandments, is what is best for us. Thus, when the flesh wars against the Spirit, demanding that its desires be satisfied, there may be a part of us that still believes something good is to be found in following the desires of our fallen nature. We may pray, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done" but, in truth, we still want some of what we want.

The purification of our desires, of our will to will the will of God, occurs gradually over time as we learn, by experience, that the desires of our fallen nature do not deliver what they promise. And we discover, when we follow where the Holy Spirit leads, that the crucifixion of the flesh that is our share of the cross, gives way to longer lasting peace.

In Deuteronomy, God said that he gave Israel the commandments "for your good" (Deut. 10:13). To walk in the Spirit, we must really believe that there is no good but that which is from God. When our faith develops to the point that we really believe the promises of God, when the hope of eternity takes full root in our hearts, when the love of God comes to govern our behavior, then we can begin to walk in the Spirit.

We grow in our desire and ability to will the will of God through the life of prayer. We can understand how this works on two levels. The first is organic. The seed of the Holy Spirit, planted in our souls in baptism, is nourished by the grace that comes through prayer and the sacraments. Just as a planted seed grows slowly as it receives sunlight and water, so there is a process of growth in the Spirit that takes place as we live lives of prayer and worship. We get spiritually stronger and more able to conquer the flesh.

The second level is experiential. As we pray, we enter into communion with the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. We grow in this experience of communion more and more as we persevere in the life of prayer. This experience of God's presence fulfills us in ways that enable us to rise above the desires of the flesh. For as we experience communion with the Father, through the Son in the Holy Spirit, as we get a glimpse of the beatific vision, the attachments of the flesh lose their grip on us. They are revealed to be pathetic counterfeits in the light of the real thing.

We learn this truth at the altar of God. As Jesus said, "My flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed." As we come to see that God is the true end of all that we desire, we learn to walk in the Spirit.