When it comes to living according to the Spirit instead of according to our sinful nature, everything boils down to one word: surrender. You see, living according to the Spirit will often mean letting go of our own will and desires for the things of God and His kingdom. After all, we can only live according to the Spirit if we are willing to let go of everything else that is not of God and His kingdom.
The apostle Paul explains that living according to our sinful nature and living life in the Spirit are incompatible in Romans 8. He wrote in this passage of Scripture, “The sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. That’s why those who are still under control of their sinful nature can never please God” (verses 7-9). Did you see the strong, definitive words that Paul wrote in these verses, like “always hostile” and “never.” These words from Paul make it abundantly clear that it is impossible, according to this passage of Scripture, to live according to our sinful nature and according to the Spirit and please God.
In another book of the New Testament that was also written by Paul, he wrote about his own surrender to the Spirit in Galatians 2. Paul explained to readers, “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (verse 20). When we place our faith in Christ, we have died to our old selves. That means that our worldly passions and desires were put to death. As a result, we should consider ourselves dead to sin and the things of this earth. Living this way means surrendering our own fleshly desires for the things of this world to Him, knowing that He is the only One who brings eternal life.
The question at hand today is, “Have we surrendered to Christ?” Have we laid down our own will and desires for His will to be done? I urge you today, surrender to Him. He alone can bring life and peace. Only by surrender can we truly live life according to the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us.
Is there something you have yet to surrender to God that you have been holding on to? Maybe you have been holding on to an old, sinful habit, an attachment to the things of this earth, or something else. Your challenge is to bravely (and obediently) surrender that to God today. After all, we cannot live by the Spirit and by the things of this world at the same time.
1Then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along, too. 2 I went there because God revealed to me that I should go. While I was there I met privately with those considered to be leaders of the church and shared with them the message I had been preaching to the Gentiles. I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement, for fear that all my efforts had been wasted and I was running the race for nothing. 3 And they supported me and did not even demand that my companion Titus be circumcised, though he was a Gentile.
4 Even that question came up only because of some so-called believers there—false ones, really—who were secretly brought in. They sneaked in to spy on us and take away the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow their Jewish regulations. 5 But we refused to give in to them for a single moment. We wanted to preserve the truth of the gospel message for you.
6 And the leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.) 7 Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews. 8 For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles.
9 In fact, James, Peter, and John, who were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their co-workers. They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles, while they continued their work with the Jews. 10 Their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do.
11 But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. 12 When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. 13 As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
14 When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?
15 “You and I are Jews by birth, not ‘sinners’ like the Gentiles. 16 Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.”
17 But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely not! 18 Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down. 19 For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God. 20 My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.
