Lesson 3 Walking by the Spirit
Questions 6 and 7
Faith in Christ
Galatians 3:1-5 explains that we receive the Holy Spirit and His miraculous power when we believe the good news of Christ crucified for us.
The Apostle Paul portrayed Christ as crucified to the Galatians (Galatians 3:1), by using the Scriptures of the Old Testament to describe the sufferings of Christ in their place, and he called them to believe that good news. (John 5:39)
And when the Galatians “saw” Jesus uplifted on the cross, bearing their sins in His own body on the tree, suffering the curse of God that they might be blessed, it moved them deeply and cut their hearts and gave them hope, and they put faith in that message--they believed it! And when they believed, the Holy Spirit came to them, with all of His miraculous power to transform their lives.
Question 6. If you are a believer, please share how you came to faith in Christ. If you are not a believer, what is holding you back? Please share.
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Laura writes, "I grew up in a Christian home and was baptized when I was 13. I didn't have a personal relationship with Christ until I called out to him to help me when I was drinking too much and stuck. He helped me, came to my rescue. Now I am stuck again, but I see that I am only a prisoner of my own misinformation, that I have resurrection power. I am being a foolish bewitched Galatian, believing once again I am under the law. That I have gone too far, done too much, and threw away God's gift of freedom, but that isn't true. I need to learn how to Walk by the Spirit."
If you are not a believer, you need to see Christ crucified for you, to hear that He took your sins and gave you His righteousness and that His resurrection from the dead means your justification before God (Romans 4:25). And you need to believe this message, that Jesus did all this for you!
If you are a believer, you have the Holy Spirit along with all His power to transform you from a lifestyle of gratifying your flesh to a lifestyle of crucifying your flesh. For you, it is now a matter of learning how to Walk by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit, and this is what we will be talking about throughout the rest of this course.
Lesson Summary
So, we’ve seen in this lesson that when we believe the message of the cross, we receive the Holy Spirit. Now we need to learn what it means to Walk by the Spirit and live by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit. Because if we Walk by the Spirit, we will not gratify the lusts of our flesh (Galatians 5:16). In other words, we’ll be free! We’ll talk much more about this in upcoming lessons.
Question 7. What does it mean to you to walk by the Spirit? Please share your thoughts here.
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I think you can see how these foundational principles build on each other, and in the next lesson, we will look at the third principle of freedom.