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On Moody's campus today, Conference Ministries will be hosting the Chicago Women's Seminar. Express appreciation to God for this ministry, and raise up before Him the hundreds of women who will be gathered to gain spiritual insight and to deepen their relationship with Christ.
TODAY IN THE WORDLife in the Spirit, Scripture tells us, is a rich and satisfying experience. The brilliant Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards, who found this to be true, once wrote:
""I have many times had a sense of the glory of the third Person in the Trinity, in His office of sanctifier...God in the communications of His Holy Spirit, has appeared as an infinite fountain of divine glory and sweetness; being full and sufficient to satisfy the soul: pouring forth itself in sweet communications, like the sun in its glory, sweetly and pleasantly diffusing light and Life.""
Elsewhere, Edwards called the Holy Spirit ""a divine supernatural spring of life and action."" To ""live by the Spirit,"" as Paul put it (v. 16), is to allow the Spirit to be the governing principle of our lives. If we permit the Spirit to control, we will not ""gratify,"" or allow to be accomplished, ""the desires of the sinful nature.""
Verse 17 describes essentially the same struggle as appears in Romans 6-7. Within the believer are two natures: an old, fleshly nature and a new, spiritual nature. The first we receive at birth and the second by regeneration. The new nature is enabled by the Holy Spirit to overcome the downward pull of the old nature. The Spirit is the seal of our being in Christ (Eph. 1:13), and therefore we are no longer under the condemnation of the law (Gal. 5:18).
The next few verses (vv. 19-21) go on to detail the acts of the sinful nature and to show the heinousness of that nature and its potential for evil if left unchecked. Paul does not view the sins here as a complete listing, but only as examples. These sins fall basically into four categories: (1) sexual sins; (2) idolatry and magic; (3) sins of strife (conflict); and (4) sins of indulgence or intemperance, such as drunkenness.
TODAY ALONG THE WAYGalatians 5:19-21 is one of the Bible's lists of what God hates. These verses make a counterweight to the famous ""fruit of the Spirit"" we'll study tomorrow.
Do you need to confess sin in any of these areas? Don't delay--when we do what God hates, we grieve our heavenly Father. As His children, we should instead be doing things that bring Him joy and glorify Him. As mentioned on Thursday, God ""is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness"" (1 John 1:9).
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