Berding Walking in the Spirit

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2423-3
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

Walking in the Spirit is a journey into what the Bible teaches about life in the Holy Spirit. Author Kenneth Berding uses the apostle Paul and his words in Romans 8 to model what it looks like to live both empowered and set free by the Spirit. Written at an accessible level, Berding speaks to a wide audience as he seeks to connect readers to the life of the Spirit. His practical guide covers a variety of topics, showing readers how to set their minds on the things of the Spirit, put to death the deeds of the body, be led by the Spirit, know the fatherhood of God, and hope and pray in the Spirit. Berding applies the Bible to life through many of his own personal experiences, helping readers make connections to their own spiritual journeys. Discussion questions for each chapter facilitate personal reflection and small-group study.

Kenneth Berding (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary) is a professor of New Testament at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University and an elder at Redemption Hill Church in Whittier, California. He is the author of numerous books and articles and regularly blogs at Kindle Afresh and The Good Book Blog.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Berding, Kenneth

Leseproben

WALK IN THE SPIRIT

walk a lot. Compared to most people in Southern California I walk a lot. My “commute” to work is a fifteen-minute walk. I teach at a medium-sized university where classes are scheduled in rooms all over campus—five to ten minutes to class, five to ten minutes from class—for every period I teach. I love to take walks with my wife and daughters in the evenings. And for prayer, I know of no better way to pray than by prayer-walking. Others kneel, sit, raise their hands, or journal their prayers. I walk. Walking keeps me awake. It keeps me focused. And it reminds me of something that is profoundly biblical.

I have walked the streets of the great cities in which I have lived over the years: in my home town in California’s Bay Area, in the Great Northwest where I went to college, and in Berlin just before the dismantling of the Berlin wall. I walked during the seven years my wife Trudi and I lived in two different Middle Eastern cities. I walked in Philadelphia and in a suburb of New York City while my family lived on the East Coast during my doctoral studies and early years of teaching. And I walk in the place that God has put me now—in the Los Angeles area of Southern California. Walking is one thing I do habitually in my physical life. And it is foundational for my spiritual life as well.

Life in the Spirit is a journey. It isn’t sitting in a comfortable deck chair on the veranda of a cruise ship. Neither is it a sprint toward a finish line you can see just ahead. Granted, your journey in the Spirit will sometimes include periods of sitting, and sometimes you will have to sprint. And there are many other good analogies for Christian living. But for the apostle Paul, life in the Spirit is best compared to walking. He launches into his discussion of the ministry of the Holy Spirit with the words at the end of Romans 8:1–4:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 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, 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.

Learning to Walk according to the Spirit

If you want to be someone who brings glory to God (and I pray that there is nothing you desire more!), you must learn what it means to walk according to the Spirit. There are no shortcuts on this journey; the only way from here to there is to walk.

In appendix 1 I discuss how Romans 8 is not just about you and me, though it is certainly about that. Paul’s discussion about walking according to the Spirit in Romans 8 is part of a larger theme in which Paul contrasts life then with life now. The then was the period dominated by the Law, the period before Christ’s death, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit. But even then, the prophets longed for a new age when the Spirit would not simply come upon certain individuals to empower them in special instances. They anticipated and predicted an age when the consummate cleansing for sin would take place and where walking in God’s statutes would result from the presence of God’s indwelling Spirit in all his people. Here is one example of what the Old Testament prophets hoped and longed for:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezek. 36:25–27)

Ezekiel and the other prophets looked ahead to the day when God would put his Spirit within us. Paul said that this day is now! Paul declared that the requirements of the Law are already fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. That is, the requirements of the Law have been fully taken care of by the death of Jesus Christ on our behalf so that we don’t have to live in dependence upon the Law to move us forward in our spiritual lives. Instead, we depend on the Spirit; we walk in the Spirit.

Walking is the apostle Paul’s favorite metaphor for the Christian life. That’s probably because Paul walked a lot. He walked a lot even compared to me! I don’t mean that he walked a mile each day for exercise or that he took the stairs instead of the elevator. It has been estimated that Paul traveled around twelve thousand miles during his known missionary journeys, much of it on foot!1 Perhaps that’s why he was always comparing our Christian lives to walking. He uses the word we sometimes translate “walk” thirty-two times in his letters! Here are a few examples:2

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. (Eph. 4:1)

Walk in love, as Christ loved us. . . . (Eph. 5:2)

We walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Cor. 5:7)

Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. (Gal. 5:16)

If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk. (Gal. 5:25, NASB)

I like the way the ESV translates this last verse: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.” This rendering makes me smile a bit as I think of evening walks with Trudi. There are few things I like to do better than to walk around the neighborhood with her in the cool of the evening to talk about what is going on in our lives and to dream about the future.

And as we walk I sometimes slip my arm around Trudi’s waist. The only problem is that if we aren’t in step with each other, our hips keep bumping against each other! There’s nothing romantic about that. So in order to stop our hips from bumping, we have to get in step with each other. Only then can we enjoy the walk we set out to take.

There is no shortcut to learning how to keep in step with the Spirit—how to walk in the Spirit. The Spirit-ual walk is not just for ultraspiritual people. And it isn’t the property of charismatic Christians. Walking in the Spirit is the central metaphor for describing what it means to live as a Christian. Life lived according to the Spirit is not simply trying to do the right thing. Nor is it simply trying to live according to God’s Law. Life as a Christian is cooperating with the Holy Spirit in a daily walk. The person who walks according to the Spirit will in fact have the essence of the Law fulfilled in his life. God has once and for all “condemned sin in the flesh” through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, and we have received that gift by faith. The result is that the believer in Jesus Christ is now free to live according to the Spirit. He is no longer obligated to live according to the flesh. He will become increasingly dependent upon the Holy Spirit, and any space given to things that displease God will decrease with every passing day.

I know that learning the walking side of the Christian life has been enormously important for my own growth as a man who wants to please the Lord more than anything else in life. It won’t surprise you that after God really got a hold of my heart as a young man, I was not always in tune with the idea of the Christian life as a Spirit-empowered journey. I was intensely interested in dealing with the immediate desire to reach friends with the good news and to waste no time challenging my Christian friends to live radically committed lives to Christ today. I longed to see my prayers answered soon, and felt keenly the pressing need to overcome sin in this moment. But I hadn’t yet learned the Spirit-ual walk that addresses both the concerns of this moment and the long walk of months and years of a faithful and loving relationship with the Lord.

“Walking according to the Spirit” is Paul’s shorthand description for all the other things he says about the Spirit in Romans 8. What are the kinds of things you do when you walk in the Spirit?

• You set your mind on the things of the Spirit (v. 5–7)
• You put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit (v. 13)
• You are led by the Spirit (v. 14)
• You know the Fatherhood of God by the Spirit (vv. 15–17)
• You hope in the Spirit (vv. 23–25)
• You pray in the Spirit (vv. 26–27)

Since walking in the Spirit seems to be an all-encompassing metaphor for Christian living, it also probably includes ideas that are found in other places in Paul’s writings, such as being filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), serving in the Spirit (Rom. 7:6; 15:16), and loving by the Spirit (Rom. 15:30; Gal. 5:22–23; Col. 1:8). The Spirit-ual walk should include all of these and more.

Pictures of a Spirit-ual Walk

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