2023-12-12 A Meditation on Walking According to the Spirit

“8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” (Ro 8:1–11 ESV)

Amidst all spiritual temptations there comes a juncture where we must soar. We must fly high above the pedantry and the prosaic, above the awkward and the fraught, the tense, the ill at ease. We who are spiritual do know man’s proclivity to bust up the peace, to instill a spirit of judgment, to deny that for her or him who walks according to the spirit, the flesh has no power.

For him or her who walks according to the spirit, there is a message most of the world will not understand. They will not know Him. They will not cease with their measurements and self-chosen works, works of judgment and of criticism, works of death unto Him who became sin, that His sinful frame might be judged and wounded and killed for our sake, so that His wounded frame might Rise Up high above the commerce of pain and of slugfests, rumblings, those dastardly efforts being made to upset the birth pangs and upset the Entrance into our world of a Savior King.

The soldier knows collegiality, but too the bonds simply to her or his fellow or gal in arms, as an awakened watch of the night; as parable and pluck, persistence and armor, unto the goal of being differently situated from the status quo. We are differently situated because of being those Few, those Chosen, who walk in the brightness of a New Day. Once, or a couple spare times, we met the Savior Crucified, perhaps at a season in our life with more prospects vis-a-vis what our peer imagines, but no, probably not that kind of self-earned height, but a gift and a lover for our soul, a soul that worthily loves to know that Spiritual Walk, minus the festering wound of judgment.

We know ourselves possessed of an experience and a teaching gladsome and of mighty high tidings, and in this do endeavor to be the bigger woman or man. Yes, they scoff at what rumors have preceded us, but peace my man, my lady, these accolades are no robbery to yourselves, but are high and noble recollections, of a community minus the judgment of Law, of a miasma of aright ecstasies, of friendships and all things that make for peace.

We covet the peace, knowing sadly the war that begins with one perceived slight. That slight is the power of sin: sin is never an easy thing to dismiss or set aright. Sin calls on us to pray long into the night. It calls on us to wrestle and love and fellowship with each other, in hope that above all else we not disturb that Walk According to the Spirit. The game is to know ourselves to be Crucified like He was Crucified. The game is no nonsense desire to preserve the channels, the friendship, the shared heave-ho and project.