I want to talk to you today about new life and a new walk. Christianity is about life. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life…” Life in the Spirit and walking by the Spirit. Jesus said something shocking to a religious leader named Nicodemus in John 3. He said, “If you want to see or enter the kingdom of God, you must be born again, born of the Spirit…” You must receive life that you don’t currently have and it is like being born. Experiencing a second birth. And one who receives this life is to walk it out. Like a healthy baby just born, it wiggles, grows, crawls, and eventually walks, so those who experience new life by the Holy Spirit will experience a new walk in the strength of the same Holy Spirit. 

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit… 

BIG IDEA: Spirit-life leads to Spirit-walk. Or new life by the Holy Spirit results in a new walk by the Spirit. And it is an inevitability. Someone who is truly born of the Spirit will carry out a new way of living. But notice this is stated in an if/then statement with the second part of the statement being a command. If A is true, the do B. 

So to sort this out, we need to look at two main points. 

Two Points:

1. What is it to live by the Spirit? 

2. Unpack the command “Let us also walk by the Spirit”. Look at the connection, what it means, and how. 

Two groups of people exist in the world (and here):

1. Those who have not been born again… maybe you think you have been, but really haven’t, or maybe you would deny having been born again. I want you to know what it is that you need and pray that today would be the day you receive it. 
2. Those who truly have been born against… I want you to know what has happened to you that you may live in it’s mighty power. 

What is it to live by the Spirit? 

Different language to describe the same thing: born again, born of the Spirit. Regeneration.

A divinely powerful, heart-level, experiential miracle. From death to life. A resurrection. Not merely terminally sickness healed or a severely broken person fixed, Ephesians 2 describes us, prior to this new life, as being dead in sin (enslaved nature). People talk about having free will, and of course we are free to choose what we want. The problem is that we will always choose according to our nature and so one who is dead in sin will choose sin. And so what does God do? He raises us from the dead, gives us a new, free nature so that we may believe and obey Christ. Ephesians 2:4-6 says, 

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with him… 

This transformation is not just a matter of putting a fresh coat of paint over us, but rather we are made new people. Truly, one who lives by the Spirit has become a new person. JI Packer: “A radical and complete transformation worked in the soul by the Holy Spirit by virtue of which we become new men (people)”.

Listen to 2 Corinthians 5:17:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come. 

Again, JI Packer speaks with such clarity here. He wrote:

The regenerate man has forever ceased to be the man he was; his old life is over, and a new life has begun; he is a new creature in Christ. 

This new creation work is in relation to Jesus Christ of course! If anyone is “in Christ”. This is to be united to Christ by faith. And this happens when our eyes are open to see Jesus Christ in his glory and beauty. We see his work on our behalf and whereas before we would have yawned, now a divine and supernatural light has shone in our hearts. 2 Corinthians 4:6 uses language that takes us back to the creation account when God spoke, “Let there be light” and the light obeyed.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 

When God shines this light into our hearts, we are given new hearts, with new desires, a new ability to respond to Christ in repentance and faith, and new power to obey God through the indwelling Spirit. The prophet Ezekiel prophesied of this hundreds of years prior to the coming of Jesus Christ in Ezekiel 36, when God spoke the following:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. 

It’s not that God forces us to obey him against our wills, he changes our wills. He gives us a new heart with new desires. You see, external commands, given to us on tablets of stone cannot change the heart. God’s law is good. But we, by nature, are not, and we resist God’s law. But when we are given this new life by the Spirit, the law of God is written on the heart, and we obey from the heart (Jeremiah 31:33, Hebrews 10:16). The apostle John affirms this radical transformation when he says that those born of God cannot continue practicing sin. The reason? Because he’s been born of God (1 John 3:9). 

We know the fulfillment of the law, to fulfill obedience to God is to love. To love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And of course, along with this is the new command from Christ to love one another as he has loved us. But the fulfillment of the law is to LOVE! The new birth gives us this ability. Whereas before we did not have this ability. We could NOT love God. Deuteronomy 30:6 says, “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart, so that you will love the Lord your God…” God gives us the ability to love Him. And also to love one another. 1 John 4:7-8 says, 

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love.

What is this life in the Spirit, this new birth? It is nothing less than the vital life of God in the soul of man. God the Holy Spirit, dwelling within giving new life, with new desires and new power to pursue those new, godly desires. Paul said he labored hard so that “Christ would be formed on you.” (Galatians 4:19)

The instrument the Spirit uses to do this inward, powerful, and miraculous work is the word of God. the lights come on, life comes in, the new heart is given with new desires, and so forth through the word… preached, read, etc. (James 1, 1 Peter 1). The Spirit takes the word and brands it on our souls… 

For some it is an event they know happened at a certain time (Alissa, David). 

For others, it is not an event, but they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is true of them! A child who grows up in a home where Christ is honored, the scriptures are read, God is worshiped, and they just think: “I’ve never not believed…” 

The most important thing, however, is that you know your life has changed. You are a new person. I heard it put this way. It is not that important that you know the precise time the sun came up today, so long as you know it is up now. It is not as important that you can pinpoint the moment God spoke “let there be light” in your soul, so much as you know the lights are on and you see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ now. It is important that you know that you have this new life by the Spirit. It is necessary. Jesus said emphatically, unmistakably, “you must be born of the Spirit,” or live by the Spirit.

Let’s look at the second part of this verse. The command. 

Keep In Step With the Spirit

Remember, this is an if/then statement. If A, then B. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. If you are alive by the Spirit, then put one foot in front of the other and walk out that life. 

I find it clarifying at times to turn a statement like this around and say it backwards. If we turn the statement around, it goes like this: Keep in step with the Spirit, if in fact you live by the Spirit. You cannot walk by the Spirit without the life of the Spirit. However, if you have the life, you can walk by the Spirit. New habits flow from a new heart. The new walk comes from the new life. 

Not only can you walk by the Spirit if you have this new life, you must walk by the Spirit. This is a command. A divine imperative. This is not a suggestion. This is not saying, walk by the Spirit if it’s convenient, or walk by the Spirit if it fits in with your environment, or walk by the Spirit if you feel like it. The only alternative to walking by the Spirit is to walk in the flesh. Earlier in Galatians 5, Paul says, 

Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh… (Galatians 5:16)

Interesting. When we are born again, the desires of the flesh do not vanish entirely. The promise is that if we walk by the Spirit, or keep in step with the Spirit, we will not gratify the fleshly, sinful desires. The language here is actually intensified in the original Greek - it’s called an emphatic negation. It would go like this: “If you walk by the Spirit, you will absolutely and certainly not gratify the desires of the flesh.” 

So if we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. What does this mean? And practically how do we do this? First, what does it mean to keep in step with the Spirit? 

Two ditches: one is to boil it all down to reading your bible and seeking to meticulously do what it says. This tends to lead to an overly formal, mechanical walk with no dynamic fellowship with a Person - namely the indwelling Spirit. The other ditch is to boil it all down to being led around by inner impressions and premonitions without much concern about solid, biblical truth. This of course can be deeply problematic, especially when what we feel internally collides with what the bible says and our inclination is to side with what our heart feels. We want to avoid these ditches.

Of course we need the scriptures - the Spirit’s breathed out words to keep in step with him. But the Spirit is a Person who is with us and in us. He leads us and guides, sometimes in mysterious ways, but never contrary to his word. He never gives us desires contrary to his word. He will always lead us according to his truth. 

Think about that phrase, “keep in step with the Spirit”. It’s like the Spirit sets the pace and we keep in step with him. Instead of being those who march to our own drumbeat, we ought to seek to march to the Spirit’s beat. 

So, with new hearts full of new desires to please and obey God, and open bibles so that we see what pleases him, we seek to be obedient to God, doing so in the conscious power he gives us to obey him. 

This is the essence of the Spirit-directed walk. He sets the pace and we keep in step. He lays down the beat and we march to it. 

Steady movement, in a particular direction, relying on the Spirit’s power. ** 

This will lead us on the one hand to go to war against sin. It will put us in conflict with remaining sin in our lives (Romans 8:13). It will also move us in the direction of positive, God-glorifying obedience (Romans 8:4). 

Most mornings, I have a bit of a routine I follow. There are two passages that I recite, speak to God, and pray because they address two realities: the new life, new walk. Spirit life and Spirit-walk. 

• Romans 6:10-14
• John 7:37-38