WALKING IN THE SPIRIT
C. R. Byng
The apostle brings in this exhortation as part of the positive way in which he sought to help the brethren in Galatia who had moved away from a system of power into an outward order of things. The general teaching of the epistle shows that the liberty of sonship is one of the great thoughts that is in the mind of God, but in the working out of it the apostle does not exactly bring in the matter of walking in the liberty of sonship, but of walking in the Spirit.
Walking in the Spirit would be the way in which the liberty of sonship would be maintained, and opens up thus an order of liberty and power which is in no way related to this world’s system of things connected with “flesh’s lust” and “the works of the flesh” (Galatians 5: 19).
Other scriptures remind us of the scope of things which are characterised by being “in the Lord” and “in the Christ”. “In the Lord” involves a system of authority where the rights of the Lord Jesus are honoured in a way which brings in sanctification and help. “In the Christ” brings in a system of things where the divine Operator is working in relation to the filling out of the divine thoughts, as the apostle says, “God, who always leads us in triumph in the Christ”, 2 Corinthians 2: 14. That is related to a sphere where Christ is working out everything for the glory of God.
But “walk in the Spirit” involves a more intimate area. Authority must be related to it, and yet it opens up a sphere of power and liberty and joy. So that the first three features of the fruit of the Spirit, the result of walking in the Spirit, are love, joy, peace (Galatians 5: 22). This is not the outward matters which would flow out of that, but the inward fruit of walking in the Spirit is primarily what is secured Godward in relation to love, joy, peace. The Spirit peculiarly enters into this, as it says, “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5: 5), and as walking in the Spirit, beloved brethren, we prove the reality of the expansion of the love of God. You cannot link anything small with the love of God. The love of God is to fill a universe eternally for God, and walking in the Spirit means that we are enlarged in love toward God.
There is also the side of joy, not joy in filling out the lusts of the flesh, but joy in relation to what is for God, and as we are helped to walk in the Spirit, the Spirit of God will open up to us increasingly all the vast area of things where God Himself is able to rejoice.
It is a feature of the eternal realm that God will “rejoice over thee with joy” (Zephaniah 3: 17), but the reality of walking in the Spirit is to bring us into the anticipation of the joy that is to fill eternity. It is one of the services of the Spirit of God that He brings us into the reality of the experience of what will fill eternity without limitation, interruption or diversion. It will not be something different, for He brings us into the enjoyment at the present time of what is to be enjoyed eternally. The fulness and the character and the power of it are the same, but at the present time there are the frailty of the flesh and the limitations of time. Matters come in so that the enjoyment of what is eternal in principle may have to be interrupted in some sense by other matters, but the joy that is related to walking in the Spirit is really the joy that is to fill the new heavens and the new earth for the pleasure of God. It is thus joy Godward.
Another feature of the fruit of walking in the Spirit is that the saints can be preserved in peace Godward in the midst of a world where there is trouble and sorrow and strife. This is even more extensive than that because the apostle brings this in where there were disturbances as to the truth. The setting of the epistle is unusual in that it is addressed to the assemblies of Galatia. It is not to the assembly, as in Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, and Colosse, but to the assemblies of Galatia, showing that there had been some influence affecting more than one local assembly and that would tend to bring in disturbance and unrest. But walking in the Spirit would preserve the saints in the peace that is related to the liberty of sonship. There is power in the Spirit to be maintained in what is for God, for the Spirit would serve so that the saints are preserved in response Godward in the service of God, and too in the testimony so that this is not affected by difficulties that the enemy might seek to bring in. The Spirit of God would thus maintain us in the liberty of communion with the Father. The dignity and power of sonship is to find expression in what is for God in the filling out in our hearts and in our lives and in our assembly experiences of the features of love, joy and peace.
The Spirit of God would encourage us to make way for His own personal power that characterises this great realm that is referred to here as ‘walking in the Spirit’. May He help us in this way, for His name’s sake.
Word in meeting for ministry, Plainfield, N.J.
22 November 1977