Seeing the reality of living in both heaven and earth through our union with Jesus is so key to understanding what it means to “walk in the Spirit” and Paul said walking in the Spirit is how we fellowship with God and overcome the flesh. Pretty important.
Most believers say that walking in the Spirit is yielding to the impulses of the Spirit within as He guides you in day to day decisions. They see walking in the Spirit primarily all about making godly choices and hearing God’s voice lead you. In many cases, that is really just a way to promote a life lived by principals and laws without saying so. That is an inferior view of what God really did through Jesus. Very inferior.
In reality “walking in the Spirit” is living on earth with the awareness that you are not from here anymore and you live in and from the realm from which you came. The heavenly realm. As Jesus said, “You are no longer from below (Earth) but now you are from above (Heaven).”
This is how our mind can set itself on things above and how we can look at the unseen. This is how the new world within us by union with Jesus is experienced personally and manifested visibly for others to see. This is how we can continually bask in God’s love as if from a light from another sun that shines on another world of blue skies and green meadows.
To be sure, a person who lives with the awareness that they are not from here anymore will make godly choices but those choices arise from a new insight and a new life deep within and not a mere mental choice to do what is right.
Jesus did not come to suffer and die and be raised again on that first Easter morning to merely help you make godly choices so you could have a good life. Jesus came to utterly end the human race which began with the first Adam and begin a new creation born in Heaven! Jesus came to take away the sin of the world so God could start over again. The apostle Paul said Jesus is the last Adam and the first glorified Man from Heaven for a new reality. To see this is to begin to understand what it means to “walk in the Spirit!” Anything less than this is just men playing religious games for financial gain in this world.
To see the new world in Jesus is totally life changing. Imagine a new world within you that is full of God’s love and peace and joy. Imagine that reality so filling you that it overshadows this present, visible world such that nothing in this world moves you from your place of rest and peace as a son or daughter of God, born in Heaven. This is the inheritance of the saints available now to be enjoyed because of the Door who is Jesus. This understanding is what “walking in the Spirit” is all about. This is the glad news of the Kingdom of God!
James Barron