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K I N G ’S B U S I N E S S
650 tion, glory,—the alone work of Christ, and the free gift of God to faith alone? Or does he say: (Dr. Abbott) “Charac ter is salvation,” even though he may add that Christ “helps” to form the char acter? 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 un der 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, arid 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 in ner 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 ouï, not for help, but for deliverance (Rom. 7:15-24). Then the Spirit is brought in with, Oh, what mar velous 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). Noit the Apostle’s effort, undler the law, nor even the Spirit’s help in that effort, but the might of the indwell ing Spirit alone, breaks the power of in dwelling 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 the Spirit.” But how else may we be led of Him save by yieldedness to His
sway? There is a wonderful sensitiveness in the blessed Spirit’s love. He will not act in and over our lives by way of al- mightiness, forcing us into conformity. That is why “yield” is the great word of Romans 6, where it is expressly said that we are not under the law, but un der grace. , The results of walking in the Spirit are twofold, negative and positive. Walking in the Spirit we shall not ful fill the lusts of the flesh (Gal. 5:16). The “flesh” here is the exact equivalent of “sin” in Romans 6:14, “Sin shall not have dominion over you.” And the reason is immediately given (5:17). The Spirit and the flesh are contrary, and the Spirit is greater and mightier than the flesh. Deliverance comes, not by self-effort under the law igi-that is Romans 7—but by the om nipotent Spirit, who Himself is contrary to the flesh, and who brings the yielded believer into the experience of Ro mans 8. PRAY FOR PREACHERS Jonathan Edwards said: “If some Christians that have been complaining of their ministers had said and acted less before men and had applied them- ‘selves with all their might to cry to God for their ministers—had, as it were, risen and stormed heaven with their humble, fervent and incessant prayers for them—they would have been much more in the way of success.” The great est preacher that ever lived besought his brethren to “pray for him and his associates that the Word of the Lord might run and be glorified”; that “ut terance might be given him in opening his mouth, to make known with bold ness the mystery of the Gospel,” and that God would “open unto him a door for the world.” The preacher who knows that his people are praying for him will be a new man, and preach with new power. In praying for the man of God in the pulpit the people in the pews will promote the interests of the king dom, and will at the' same time bring down blessings upon their own souls.
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