The Grace o f God 53 become guilty before God” (Rom. 3:19). The law, in other words, never says: “Try to do better next time.” Of this the antinomian legalist seems entirely unaware. THE TRUE CHRISTIAN LIFE And now we are ready to turn from the negative to the positive side to the secret of a holy and victorious walk under grace. We shall find the principle and the power of that walk defined in Galatians 5:16-24. The principle of the walk is briefly stated: “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh” (5 :16). The Spirit is shown in Galatians in a threefold way. First, He is received by the hearing of faith (3 :2 ) . When the Galatians believed they received the Spirit. To what end? The legalists make little of the Spirit. Though they talk much of “power” in connection with the Spirit, it is power for service which chiefly occupies them. Of His sovereign rights, of His blessed enabling in the inner life, there is scant apprehension. But it is precisely there that the Biblical emphasis falls. In Romans, for example, the Spirit is not even mentioned until we have a justified sinner trying to keep the law, utterly defeated in that attempt by the flesh, the “law in his members,” and crying out, not for help, but for deliverance (Rom. 7:15-24). Then the Spirit is brought in with, Oh, what marvelous results! “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8 :2 ) . Not the Apostle’s effort under the law, nor even the Spirit’s help in that effort, but the might of the indwelling Spirit alone, breaks the power of indwelling sin (Gal. 5:16-18). You ask, and necessarily at this point, what is it to walk in the Spirit? The answer is in Gal. 5:18: “If ye be led of
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