A lot of speakers usually begin by saying something funny but I don't really do jokes very well and neither obviously does the Reverend Kingsley. Can I just begin though by saying hello and that's on behalf of my wife and my son who are here too. And thank you as well for your kind invitation to come and speak to you. And I'd like to bring the greetings of the Scottish Church to you as well. We're indebted to you for your prayerful and indeed financial support in Scotland. We really are. We appreciate it very, very much. So I'd like to bring their greetings to you. I look forward to meeting you all. I hope I'll see you all over these days. If I don't seem to get to you, you can just come to me. So please do that. It would be good to say that I had at least said hello individually to all of you. Our theme is living and walking in the spirit. Living and walking in the spirit. Again, normally when someone takes a theme, people want to ask why. Why did you choose that? The short answer is that I happened really to be thinking about it at the time when I was asked to do this and I think Providence often just plays a part in that. There is a longer answer too. The reason that I was thinking about it had something to do with just how important the theme actually is. And I was wondering how many people, when I was looking at it, how many people really understand what living in the spirit is or what walking in the spirit is. Do we know what it means? Do we know what it involves to walk in the spirit? Do we know the implications of walking in the spirit? Is it possibly something we are afraid of? Is it something you associate with the charismatic or Pentecostal movement? Are you uneasy perhaps with the idea of living in the spirit? I hope not, and probably not, but maybe, on the other hand, you are. And in connection with that, I suppose I was wondering just how healthy Western Christians are anyway. I mean, if I were to ask you if your Christian life is healthy, how would you answer that? Would you say you are more or less healthy than you were? Are you in good health? Or are you in poor health? Or do you know what I even mean when I ask you these questions? All these things are involved in walking in the spirit. And perhaps you don't really know what normal is anyway. Our expectations of the Christian life can vary a lot. Maybe your expectations are very very high. you expect yourself to be perhaps sinless and because you're not, it's possible that you're very low and depressed in your spirit. On the other hand, it's possible that your expectations are very low to begin with. I know a fellow who always seems to be struggling along and he He describes himself as living in Romans 7 all the time. He feels himself very wretched and he's always conscious of sin and being overcome by sin. And in that respect I feel he lives on a very low plane somehow or other. Now you may say, well it should be normal to feel like that. Well we'll see that as we go on. But I would say that his expectations of the Christian life are too low. Too low. And he needs somehow to raise his view of what he could be and what he should be in Christ day to day. I think there is such a thing as good health and normal Christian living but it may be that our Christian living is abnormal. And so a lot of what I say is going to be confronting that. It's good to look at living and walking in the spirit because in other words it's really all about knowing who you are as a Christian and knowing what you can and should be as a Christian. Pretty fundamental stuff. Very important stuff. Knowing who you are as a Christian, an identity issue, and knowing what you can and should be as a Christian, all of you, all of us. Now for our study we have a key passage. There are two contenders for that. The first is Romans 6 through to 8 when Martin Lloyd-Jones, a well-known Welsh preacher, in the 20th century when he was preaching through Romans, he entitled these sermons Life in the Spirit because it was all about spiritual living. Being alive in Christ and being dead to sin, whatever that means for now. Romans 6-8 is crucially important. It contains the ideas of being in captivity to sin, being delivered from sin, being alive in the Holy Spirit and so on. The difficulties with taking these chapters or that passage from 6 to 8 in Romans is that it's just too long. We can't do it in four sessions and it's also very, very complicated. So I'd rather take another passage that is very like it but that's just a little bit more manageable and that is Galatians 5 through to chapter 6. This is a more straightforward passage, it's a graphic passage too, but it's very practical. It's about walking in the flesh, whatever that means, as opposed to walking in the spirit. It's about living in the spirit, living joyfully and triumphantly in the Lord Jesus Christ. So that will be our key passage, Galatians 5 through to 6. And as well as a key passage, we need a key text. And the key text, you can turn to it for a moment, is in Galatians 5, and at verse 25. Galatians 5, 25. Where Paul says, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. And our task, well my task with you is to unpack these words. living in the spirit, walking in the spirit and in doing so we'll be referring constantly I think to Romans 6 to 8. Now before we begin to unpack let's just read in Romans 6 together. Romans chapter 6, if you turn to that and we'll read the opening 14 verses and as we read just think about what I've said already and think about how strong these statements are that Paul makes. Romans 6 And he's described how we have been set free by Jesus Christ through faith. We are a justified people. So what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? In other words, does it matter if we sin? Certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death. That just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should also walk in newness of life. Notice this idea of walking in a new life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man, that's who we were, our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves or servants of sin. For he who has died, and if we are Christians we have somehow died, we who have died have been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ we believe that we shall also live with him. Knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. but the life that he lives, he lives to God. Likewise, similarly, you also reckon yourselves to be dead, indeed to sin. but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members, now the word members is just a reference to your hands and your feet and your tongue and your ears and so on, so don't present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin But present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. Having read that, just turn forward now in your Bible to the main passage that we're looking at, which is Galatians 5. And verse 25, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. If you see me looking at my phone from time to time, it's not because I've become one of these addicts, it's because I don't have a watch with me, unfortunately, so I'll be looking at the time, that's all I'm doing. So, verse 25, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Now, let's begin by clarifying some of the words and phrases there. We need to do that before we can move forward. Let's take first of all the word Spirit. If we live in the Spirit, let us walk in the Spirit. What does he mean by Spirit? Well, it may be obvious to you, but in any case, I think it's worth clarifying it. Sometimes the word spirit can be a reference to our own spirit. The spiritual part of you is the part that just thinks. It's as simple as that. It's every bit of you that's not body, in other words. It's the bit of you that thinks and feels and reasons. It has emotion, will, conscience. That's your spirit. And when the Bible speaks about our spirits like that, it usually does so very clearly. You are not left in any doubt that it is a reference to your own spirit. For example, when Mary says in her song, my spirit rejoices in God. My Savior, that's just a reference to her own spiritual being. In her spirit, she is rejoicing in God. It's a great feeling to have that. It's a great experience. I'll say something more about that later. But normally, when spirit is used in the New Testament, it's used of the Holy Spirit of God. And here the reference is to the Holy Spirit. And that is why the word Spirit is capitalised. At least it is in the version that I'm using. I'm using the New King James Version where the word Spirit is capitalised. It has a capital S. If we live in the Holy Spirit, let us walk in the Holy Spirit. You'll notice just quickly in this letter that the word Spirit for Holy Spirit appears quite a lot. If you just go back to chapter 3 for a second In verse 2, Paul says to the Galatians, I just want to learn this from you, did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Was it not by faith that you receive the Spirit of God into your hearts. Verse 3, are you so foolish having begun in the Spirit, that's the Spirit of God, are you now going to be made perfect by the flesh? Or down further in verse 14, He speaks of the blessing of Abraham coming upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus and us receiving the promise of the Spirit or if you like the promised Spirit, the Spirit of God through faith and so on. So here in chapter 5 in verse 16, walk in the Spirit That doesn't mean your own spirit, it means in the Holy Spirit. Walk in the Holy Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. And again in verse 18, if you are led by the Spirit, that's not your own spirit, Some people like to think that their own spirit can just lead them. Sometimes they are called free spirits because they follow their own spirits. That's not the idea here. It's very far from the idea here. Being led by the spirit here is just being consciously and deliberately led by the spirit of God. And so the same is true in verse 25. If you live in the Holy Spirit, then walk in the Holy Spirit. Now, you may not at this stage know what that means, but that's what it's saying anyway. If you live in the Holy Spirit, then walk in the Holy Spirit. Second, then what's meant by living and walking? Maybe they seem to be the same thing. For example, if I was to ask you, are you living in the Spirit? Are you walking in the Spirit? You may think I was asking you the same question twice. But they are not the same thing. There is obviously a difference. Living in the Holy Spirit means simply being alive in the Holy Spirit. Or even having been brought to life in the Spirit and by the Spirit of God. So that you are in other words a born again person. You are alive. You are not spiritually dead. You are alive. You are alive because the Holy Spirit of God has made you alive. And the Holy Spirit of God lives as a resident in your heart. That is a basic Christian truth. But it is quite shocking in its own way to say and to really apprehend. You are alive because the living Spirit of God has come to make you alive and He resides within your heart. So you live in the Spirit. And that's true of every Christian. In other words, if you have come to Christ, if you've confessed your sins to the Lord, if you've asked Him to have mercy upon you, He has come to dwell in you. You're alive, you're not dead. The natural men and women, and there may be some of you tonight who are still here like that, young and old, some of you may not be Christians yet, that means that you're spiritually dead. But if you've become Christians, you are alive. Walking in the Holy Spirit is something different. It's a reference to the accompanying lifestyle of the person who's alive. So if you're alive, then you walk in a particular way. Walking means thinking, acting, speaking. You think and speak and act in a different way because you are a Christian, because you are alive. Your walk is different. Of course, when we hear an expression like that, we think of things like funny walks and different walks. That's not the issue here. The point is that you live a different life, different thought process, different words, a different way of living. So in other words, living in the spirit is what you are, walking in the spirit is what you do. That's just a pretty simple way of looking at it. Living in the Spirit is what you are, alive. Walking in the Spirit is what you do. Last of all, what does Paul mean by the little word, if? If we live in the Spirit, let's walk in the Spirit. Normally we use the word, if, when we're doubting something. In other words, are you really alive in the Spirit? And I don't think the idea of doubt is completely absent here. I mean, Paul normally writes letters to Christians and accepts that they are Christians. I mean, that's how we deal with each other. If you profess Christian faith, I accept your profession. But of course, we all know that some people's profession of Christianity is not real. Some people who profess the Saviour will fall away. to their destruction. And he sometimes warns the Corinthians along those lines, the Galatians too. He is afraid that some of them have believed in vain. The letter to the Hebrews is a warning to people who are professing faith in case they lose out on the promised reward. So that idea is not completely absent here. After all, you know, he says if we live in the spirit, let's walk in the spirit. We need to remember that walking in the spirit, in the last analysis, walking in the spirit is the evidence that we're alive in the spirit. If we never walk in the spirit, what evidence have we got for believing we're alive? If the patient doesn't breathe and move, he's dead. But having said that, the if here isn't the if of doubt, it's the if of argument. In other words, you have to understand the word if here as meaning since. Since you live in the Spirit, then walk in the Spirit. It's common to use the word if in that kind of way. For example, in Colossians, Paul does the same thing. He says, if you are risen with Christ, Seek these things that are above where Christ sits at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things which are above if you are risen with Christ. If there means since, that's the argument. Since you are resurrected now with Jesus and that's true of you as a Christian, we'll come to that. Since you are raised, risen, resurrected, then seek these things which are above. Even when Jacob is responding to God's revelation of himself, a Bethel, God says, I'll be with you, I'll bring you back home. Jacob says, if God will be with me and bring me back home, then I'll give a tenth of all I possess and so on. Jacob isn't doubting God. He's saying if this is the case, I mean, if you really are going to do this for me, I'm right now giving you back a tenth of all that I have, and I'll come back here and I'll worship you. The same is true here. Since you live in the Spirit, then walk in the Spirit. Since you're alive, then speak and act like someone who really is alive. Now that takes us to the relationship between living and walking. What is the relationship between living and walking? Let's just note three things. The first is obvious. You can't walk unless you live. No one can live the Christian life unless they've been made alive by the Holy Spirit of God. That's very important because some people can look like Christians and sound like Christians sometimes but they're not really living. If you look at verse 22 here in Galatians 5 You're told what the spiritual person looks like. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering kindness, goodness and faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We'll see these things later. But for now let's just say that there are some people and they seem to have these things. They can long-suffer people very well. They are kind people, they seem like good people and they are faithful, loyal, dependable people. They are gentle people, they are self-controlled, but they are not Christians at all. Because none of these things are produced by the Holy Spirit. They haven't received these things from Christ as Lord. They are not Christ-centered virtues. They are just human virtues. Of course the common grace of God is involved in it, but not the saving grace of God. You can't really have love, you can't really have faith, you can't really have peace and this kind of long-suffering and kindness and goodness unless you are a Christian. You can't live the Sermon on the Mount unless you're a Christian. You know, you get people sometimes saying to you, I don't like the Bible, I don't like Christianity, but I do like the Sermon on the Mount. And you say, well, really? Have you tried living it out? People don't naturally live out the Sermon on the Mount. It has to be spiritually worked into you. Even the Ten Commandments can't be kept properly, can they? I mean the rich young ruler thought that he kept the Ten Commandments. That's because he didn't really understand them. He didn't really understand himself. He didn't really understand God. So it's easy to think that you keep the commandments when you don't know yourself and when you don't know God. But a real Christian life can only be lived out by somebody who is actually alive. And that's the big and fundamental question for yourself. Have you received the Spirit of Christ? You've got to start there. If we live, since you live in the Spirit, well, do you live? Are you alive? No, you're here. It's a good sign that you're here. I mean, how many people want to be at a Christian camp? How many people want to hear the Bible preached? But it's possible you were just simply brought along here. It's possible that you have other people coming along who are friends of yours, who are Christians, but you are not a Christian yourself. You need life. You need to live. And the only way you can live is by coming to God. By confessing your need to Christ and asking Christ to make you alive. And Christ will indeed make you alive. Believe in Him. Trust His promise. and you will live. So that's the first connection between living and walking. You can't possibly walk a spiritual walk, a godly walk, unless you're alive. The second connection between living and walking is this. You can live without walking. you can live without walking. Now I'd like to qualify that but I'm just not going to at the moment but just clock that I'd like to and maybe at some point later I will but basically it's true that you can live without walking. This text after all tells us that since we live in the spirit let's do it he says the implication is that you might not be doing it In other words, this text in its context tells you that you can be spiritually alive but spiritually sick. A natural life is like that. I mean, go to a hospital and there's a patient. Let's say the patient is sick. The patient has sepsis. Let's say the patient is paralysed. Make it extreme, paralysed from the neck down. But he's alive. But he can't move. He's ill. He's critically ill. But he's alive. In the same way you can be alive as a Christian but not walking in the spirit. You could be a really, really sick Christian. Or a Christian that for some reason has never started to walk properly. You've crawled and you think that you've arrived. And you've been crawling for 15 years. And you need to walk. You need to get up and be. what God has really called you to be. I used to think that when a Christian was sick spiritually that they would only be sick spiritually for a short time. I've since discovered in the ministry of the word that there are some people who are spiritually sick for years, even sometimes for decades. and they are alive but they are not walking in the spirit as they ought to. And that's really what these talks are about. Walking in the spirit as we ought to. But the third connection between living and walking is in some ways the most important one. It's not explicit in the verse It's implicit, but it's really, really important. The first necessary step to a spiritual walk is the full realization that you are alive. Let me say that again. The first necessary step to a healthy spiritual walk is the full realization that you are alive. And just to elaborate a little on that, the full realization that you are alive and that there's a purpose for your living. And once you understand the purpose of that life, that is the first necessary step to walking spiritually the way you should. And you say, well, come on, I know I'm alive. Well, maybe you do, maybe you don't. Maybe you do know you are alive but you haven't really got a clue what that life is. I spoke earlier about being alive in Christ and having a new life. But have you really ever appreciated what that means? Who that makes you? what it makes you to be and how it makes you so radically different from everybody else in the world except other Christians? Maybe not. Maybe not. But the first step to being who you should be is knowing who you are. I've got a very good friend who is an experienced Christian. An experienced Christian who told me recently that he had made a discovery a very important discovery in his life and I said well what is that and he said that I'm a new creature he said in my Christian life which off the top of my head is probably around 20-22 years he said in all my Christian life I have been trying to become holy as though I was the same person that I was before, trying to put on a new lifestyle. But recently, he said, I've made the discovery that I'm not who I was. And that, he said, has completely changed the way that I live. I'm a new person, he said, a new person. What does that really mean? Well, if you are a Christian tonight, let's just start here, then at some point, and it could be when you were a child, it's possible even it's when you were in the womb, but at some point you died and you rose again as a different creature. Now, tell me honestly, do you Really think about that? Have you really thought about your conversion experience quite like that? Maybe you've said, I've been converted, I'm changed, I'm different. But have you honestly thought that at one point you died? The old you. You died. And that somebody new rose up in your place. Maybe not. But believe me, friend, you have undergone a death resurrection experience. Nothing less than that. So that you can be called a new man or a new woman. The person you were died. Again, that's quite shocking to take it in. You almost want to somehow wriggle out of it. But the Bible is plain. And notice, I'm not saying that you're in the process of dying. I'm saying you died. You died. Some Christians say that they've got a new man and an old man. You don't have a new man and an old man. You are a new man. The old man died. You may say, well, what about my sins and all that? Let's leave that for the moment. Paul says, you died. The old man died. You are new. You are a new man, a new woman in Christ Jesus. Listen to the Bible. Let's stick to Galatians first itself. If you just go back to chapter 2 and verse 20. Where Paul says, and this is a famous verse, it's one of these verses we should learn and think about. Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live. Notice what he's saying, he's not even saying he's dying, he's saying he's dead! I have been crucified, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. Galatians 6, if you go to the end of the letter, and verse 14, And this is in the context of some people who say that they're very spiritual people because they've been circumcised, they keep the Jewish law, and they're comparing themselves with others. And Paul says, well forget all that he says. Verse 14, God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, that cross crucified Christ, did it not? Well, it did more than that, he says. By whom or by which the world has been crucified to me and I have been crucified to the world. I died and in fact, he says, the world has also died to me. The world crucified the old me. I crucified it. Everything is different. I am a new person. Colossians if you turn forward to that Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians and I just actually referred to these verses just a second ago but chapter 3 in Colossians Verse 1, if or since you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is. Think about where Christ is. Heavenly things, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on earth. Why? Because you died! You died! and your new life is now hidden with Christ in God. It's a good reason to think differently. You're dead. Or if you go back the way to Romans, to the passage that we read, just go back to Romans 6 for a minute or two. Again, these are stunning verses as well. Romans 6 and verse 6 Knowing this, that our old man, that's who you were, right? That's the way you were born into the world, most of us, all of us, unless you were converted in the womb. Knowing that our old man was crucified with him, that the old sinful body might be finished with, that we should no longer be servants of sin. For anyone who dies, that's dies with Christ, has been freed from sin. And in verse 8, if we died with Christ, since we died with Christ, again that little if is since, since we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. Now, and forevermore in eternity. So who you were is crucified and you have died. And along with that you have been resurrected. You've been raised back to life. You think of Jesus as someone who has died and been raised to life. Paul says so have you. So have you. Galatians 2.20 again. I have been crucified with Christ yet I live How come? How can you be dead and live? Because you've been resurrected. Ephesians 2 verse 1. You, I remember this in the King James Version. Hath he quickened? He has brought you to life who were dead in trespasses and sins. You died and the Holy Spirit took you back to life. And there you have it you see. How come you're resurrected? How come you're a new person? Because the Holy Spirit made you a new person. The Holy Spirit came into your heart at some point as a child or as an adult. Maybe you didn't, in fact it's quite probable that you weren't aware of exactly when he came into your heart. But the Holy Spirit entered your heart and united your heart, your spirit, united your spirit to the Spirit of Jesus Christ. raised and resurrected, so that the life of the risen Lord was imparted to you. Now, you know, when you start to think in categorical terms like that, it really begins to transform your view of yourself, your understanding of yourself as a Christian. That the life of the risen Lord Jesus was actually, can I use the word, physically imparted to you by the Holy Spirit of Christ. He took his life as it were and he brought it into your heart, switch it round, he plugged you into him, united to Christ. united to Christ. I mean, really united to Christ. For a long time after I became a Christian, when I thought of the term union with Christ, I just thought of something legal. I don't know, that's just how it worked for me. I just thought of something forensic or something like that. But to think of union with Christ as something physical is transformative. His spirit genuinely uniting to my spirit. By the way, how much it changes our view of how we should live? I mean, just in a moment, without even thinking through the implications of that in detail, I mean, just how much does that thought in itself immediately transform your approach to things, your attitude? But the life that you now live is the life of Christ that is imparted to you. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ who lives in me. That's who you are, a Christian living with the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ in you. I spoke about being plugged in or maybe being infused with his life, but the biblical expression is more glorious. It's a new birth. It's a new birth. And what happened in the new birth is that the sperm or the seed of the Holy Spirit in the Word came into your heart which was made ready to receive it. That always happens. I mean, it happens in the natural world. A woman doesn't always receive seed. Everything has to be right for her to receive and to conceive. It's true in horticulture, I mean you can't just throw a seed in there and expect to see fruit. The soil has to be right, it's got to be turned, the temperature's got to be right, everything's got to be right. The same is true in your life, I mean God made you ready to receive the seed of the Spirit. to receive the truth in such a way that you are powerfully transformed, not just by the truth, but by the spirit who spoke that truth and who took that truth into your heart. When that happened, you conceived! A new you was born! With a new heart! You know yourself how wonderful a thing a conception is. to think of a cell and dividing and subdividing and suddenly the features appear and there's a body there in the womb, a new life and that's what happened to you you were you, the old you, the old man, the old woman and then a conception and a new creature with nascent new thoughts, new speech and a new life it's a miracle You are a miracle! I mean really and truly a miracle. But maybe it's long since you stopped thinking of yourself as a miracle. Maybe it's long since you stopped expecting a miracle from yourself or in yourself or through yourself. But you are a miracle. And the life that God's calling you to live is a miraculous life too. I'm not talking about things like picking up snakes and drinking poison and stuff like that. I'm talking about something far more important and substantial than that. but genuinely miraculous, the life that God is calling you to. So you received a new nature. You are not who you used to be. And that new nature that you got is a nature that grows and develops. I mean, just like a little child in the womb. The child comes out of the womb. The child grows and grows into the full stature of a man. So you as a Christian are meant to grow. You are meant to grow. To grow into what? Well, to grow into the likeness of the one who begat you. You are meant to grow to become like Christ. I believe that that is what you want deep down. I don't know how often you think of it in these terms, in these words, but I believe if you are a Christian that that's who you want to be. I mean, people have their idols, they have their heroes. There are usually people who are not worthy of being heroes or idols. But if you are a Christian, there is one person that you want to think like and speak like and be like. you want to conduct yourself in life as he conducted himself in life and in death as he conducted himself in death with integrity, with honesty, with love and with compassion, with pity and with kindness and sincerity and with justice and with zeal and you want to be like that well that's what God is calling you to be Nothing less than that. Because He predestined and called you to be conformed to the image of His Son. Why did He birth you? Why did He conceive you? Why did He give you a new nature? So that you would be like Jesus Christ. Perfectly. Perfectly. That is the goal of your birth and conception. Not justification. or justification is important. Being put right with God is important. But is that what the Christian life is about? That's a mistake that takes place in many Protestant circles. The obsession is with new birth and with justification, getting people to believe in God. Well that's fine and important and very, very necessary. But it's not the goal. Maybe that's why too many of us are infants. All our lives long. The goal is not justification. Justification is a means to an end. What is the end? To be like God. To be with Him. To be like Him. To be partakers of His holiness. To forever think as He thinks. thinks and loves as he loves. That's the goal. That's the end point of your new birth. It's not justification. He didn't even bring you to life to deliver you from hell. That's not the goal. It's vital, of course it's vital, but it's not the goal. Your aim in life is not to be justified and delivered from hell. Your aim in life is to be like God. to be like God. That's what's got to motivate you, really, to be like God. And the more you live as you should and think as you should, the more you'll want to be like God. And the more happy you will be as you become like God. And that really is what walking in the Spirit is all about. It's about achieving that end. Walking in the Spirit is about becoming like God. It's about becoming like the Lord Jesus Christ who loved you and who saved you. Normally when the Bible calls us to be holy, the motivation on our part rises from a sense of two things. First of all, a sense of gratitude. God calls you to be holy because you should be thankful for what Christ has done for you. And that's right, I mean gratitude is a motivation for holiness, no doubt about that. It's often used in the Bible, let me just take two examples for you. In 2 Corinthians 7, Paul says, let's cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. But he doesn't just call us to that. What he says is, having these promises, let's cleanse ourselves. What are the promises? Come out from among them, God says, and I'll receive you. I'll be a father to you, and you shall be my sons, and you shall be my daughters. I will walk among you, I will be your God, and you shall be my people. Having these promises, let's cleanse ourselves. In other words, the knowledge of what God has given to us in Christ is our motivation for pursuing holiness. It's strange, you know, but in Roman Catholic theology, you're not really ever supposed to be sure that you are a Christian. In fact, the great Cardinal Bellarmine, who was a great defender of Roman Catholicism in the Counter-Reformation, he said that the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism could almost be boil down to assurance. He says you can't really have assurance in this life. Whereas we say, but yes you can and you ought to. And the fact of the matter is that assurance is the beginning point of holiness. You can't really grow unless you know God loves you. You can't really grow unless you know you're saved. You can't grow unless you're full really of a sense of gratitude to God for what He has done for you through the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't grow in genuine holiness because you're wondering if you'll make it. You can only grow in genuine holiness because God has done this for you in Christ. And if He really has and if you're really grateful, you will grow. And if for some reason you're stunted, well God will bring that stunting home to you and He'll move you. And it may be sore, He may strip you, He may chastise you, He may do whatever with you, but He'll get you to the point where you are again grateful to God and you will grow. You will want to be holy. So having all that, let us cleanse ourselves. The other verse I think that brings it home even more fully is a great verse Romans 12 verse 1 where the doctrinal part of the letter finishes and the practical part begins and Paul says in these famous words I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice holy Acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. The body there isn't exclusive of the soul, it's inclusive. Present your whole selves, he says. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. I beseech you to do this by the mercies of God. What are the mercies of God? What are they? Just the things that he's been talking about all the way through the letter. That we were dead in sin. that Christ died for us, that Christ justified us, that he reconciled us to God and made a holy life possible and adopted us into the family. I beseech you then, he says, and he's closing that part, by all these mercies of God that in response you present yourself. in holiness to God. The idea is exactly the same. I mean, if you have any conception of what God did for you, then you will present yourself in holiness out of sheer gratitude to God. And that's what I meant by saying that very often our call to holiness in the Bible is meant to move us through gratitude. Yes, of course Lord, I will seek to serve you and to be like you because of what you have done for me. But the second motivation to holiness is the one that most interests us over these days that we are together. The second motivation to holiness is the powerful sense of having a new identity. Identity is in just now. Everybody is talking about identity, gender identity, identity politics, identity this and identity that. The fact of the matter is that you as Christians do have a real brand new identity. And the consciousness of that identity is the powerful motivator. It's the motivation that most appears in the Bible. Think about who you are. Romans 6 verse 1, Shall we continue in sin so that God will be gracious to us? In other words, our understanding of how we are saved by faith, is that basically a charter to sin? Can I say, well if I'm justified simply by faith, does that mean that I can just go on and sin? Paul says, God forbid. But he doesn't just say no, he says it's impossible for you to carry on in sin. That's what he says, it's impossible. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? You, he says, Consider yourselves dead now to sin. Why? Because you did die! Now we'll come in a moment or later in another talk we'll come to the reality of sin in your life but for the moment what he says is this, he says consider yourself dead to sin because you died and you are now alive to God in Jesus Christ your Lord. So don't let sin reign in your body that you should obey it in its lusts. Verse 14, sin shall not have dominion over you. Why? Because you are not the old man under the law, but you are under grace. And again he says, you have been set free from sin. Romans 6, 18. And you have now become servants of righteousness. Sin belongs to the old you. Now that's going to be a problem to you, I know. You're going to tell me that you struggle with sin every day. That's fine. That's for tomorrow. Okay, sins in your life. All I want to say to you right now is that there's really no place in your life. Sin belongs to the old identity. Sin belongs to the old you. Sin belongs to the old unregenerate person that you once were. That's where sin belongs. It doesn't belong in you tonight at all. The fact that it's there is an irregularity, it's an abnormality, it's an aberration, it's an abomination, it's all these things. It doesn't define you. It should less and less have anything to do with defining you. Every single day that you live. And that's why in the Bible you're supposed to take up a zero tolerance attitude to it. How many of you have that? How many of us have that, a zero tolerance attitude to it? When Israel were told to take over the promised land, they were told to make no covenants with the Canaanites. They were just told to get on with it. to conquer the land. But you know yourselves how they became tired and started making little covenants with the Canaanites and it ended up making their lives so problematic and that maybe is the way you are too. You've decided to make little covenants with sins and you're not going to bother fighting that one anymore, you're tired of fighting it. You'll just give it a little corner in your life and the corner is fixed and it's bounded and you say well I'm not going to let you grow out of there but I'll leave you there. It's never as simple as that, is it? Sin has a zero-tolerance attitude to you. Believe me, it does. It's got a zero-tolerance attitude to you. It's not interested in you. Satan is not interested in you. He has a zero-tolerance attitude to you. You need to develop a zero-tolerance attitude to it. That's why Paul says in Colossians 3, set your mind on things above, he says, and put to death the things that belong to the old man. The expression in the Greek is murder these things, murder it, murder the lie, murder the deceit, murder the covetousness, murder the fornication, murder the adultery, murder these things. That's why John says, I am writing these things to you so that you won't sin. Whoever is born of God does not sin, does not commit sin. You see these are really strong terms, yet they are really strong terms and we'll try to explain and qualify them in a necessary and biblical way later, but take them in their starkness for now. Do you get the message? That sin doesn't belong, it's not meant to be there, it doesn't help your peace, it doesn't help your happiness, it doesn't help your joy, it just doesn't help your Christian life. The sad thing is that you permitted a corner because you think it will. But of course it doesn't. It can't. It doesn't belong. It's not the new you. I'm sure you all heard, and I'm just bringing this to a close, but I'm sure you've all heard of the so-called power of positive thinking. It came into vogue I think in the 1960s and 70s and in some form it's carried on. The form of positive thinking says essentially that if you say to yourself every day that every day I'm getting better and better, that you will get better and better, well of course it doesn't work like that. On the other hand, if you genuinely start saying to yourself that I am born again, I am a new creation in Christ, then that's different. That's different because of the truth. It's the truth. The question for us is, is my life Corresponding to that, if I get up in the morning and say, I am a new creation, is the rest of the day somehow consistent with that? Or are we somehow sitting with a mixed and compromised life? I'll leave you with a little story about Alexander the Great. Probably my own son. He was terrified there when I said the word Alexander. Alexander the Great. who was inspecting his army and he came across a soldier who was asleep on his watch and Alexander the Great as a great general and soldier was mortified that one of his soldiers should be asleep on his watch and he said to him what's your name and the soldier said Alexander and Alexander the Great was shocked for a while and he said well in that case he says I want you to change your name or change your behaviour Because you can't have my name and live like that. So change your name or change your behavior. We can't really change your name. But maybe we need to change our behaviour. Tomorrow we'll look at what walking in the spirit actually looks like. Let's give it some arms and legs. What does it look like? And does it really matter if we manage it? Or can we just bumble along? God willing, we'll see that tomorrow. May the Lord bless these thoughts. Let's have a word of prayer together.