Daily Living

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Because we live in a world of self-incitement all around us, to which our normal humanity (our flesh) has been formerly geared to respond, Paul
does lay stress on walking after the Spirit and not alter the flesh. Does that mean we had better be very careful, for surely we are inclined to flesh walking? The lie again! That would be guarding against independent self uprisings which might respond to those “ought to’s.” But that is not our Spirit drive. We don’t walk fearfully, as if we are still plenty of flesh. No! Our human selves are now Spirit-kept and Spirit-driven.

Certainly there are flesh pulls—sin’s self-for-self nature getting at us through all the world’s atmosphere around us. But we don’t resist them
by any false self-effort. We recognize and admit them, but then we affirm who we are and know we are—Spirit expressers, Christ in our forms; and our faith affirmation puts to death those “deeds of the body” (Rom. 8:13). Light swallows up darkness.

The Spirit, says Paul, also now permeates our physical bodies, though we remain mortal. The Spirit is the quickener. So we walk not as body
fussers. We accept where there are physical infirmities, but our bodies are His temples; and in freedom of faith—not in negative unbelief or foolish questioning—we often experience His quickenings and healings (8:11).

The normal background to our daily lives is the Spirit’s witness with our spirits that we actually are God’s children (8:16). By the Spirit we are at
home now with our Father/Daddy, which is very different from our former fears of Him in our old false self-condemning life (8:15). We are
naturally Spirit-led in the affairs and decisions of our lives, and take that for granted (8:14).