Last time I mentioned the following passages from the Bible that exhort us to vigilance in our lives:
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. (1 Peter 5:8-9)
"But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. (Luke 21:34)
Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:11-14)
These are just a sample. One of the themes of the New Testament is endurance in the resistance of our sins but it has been one of the most troubling themes for me to deal with throughout my life because I feel so inadequate to resist the devil. I will freely admit that I fall repeatedly. When I was little I remember watching bigger kids push smaller ones in the dirt and then pushing them down every time they tried to get up. It didn't require a lot of effort on the part of someone so much stronger, and I often feel like I'm the little kid and the devil is the big kid. I think I must be so easy to make stumble that rather than God pointing me out as a shining example like he did Job, the devil must go to God and say, "Have you seen your servant Justin lately? I pushed him in the dirt a few more times when I was down there on earth yesterday."
My weakness in the face of temptation is one of the reasons that I mentioned that we have a helper. I think that the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a teaching of the Bible. What do I think the Spirit does? Well, I can tell you that I don't think that the Spirit leads Christians into truths that aren't in the Bible. What I do think is that the Spirit helps us to resist temptation and aids us in our fight against the devil. I think that this view is clearly upheld by verses like Romans 8:13:
For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Notice that this verse clearly says that, "if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." This says to me that I cannot by myself put to death the deeds of the body but rather I require the Spirit's help to do so. A similar thought is found in Galatians:
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. (Galatians 5:16)
Now, I used to read this to be saying that if I control myself to walk according to what the Spirit tells me in the Bible then I will not gratify the desires of the flesh. This would make the verse into a tautology. I no longer believe that this is what the verse is saying. The remainder of the passage is this:
For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. (Galatians 5:17-25)
The passage tells me that if I am led by the Spirit then I am not under the law. How is one led by the Spirit if it is simply a new law unto me? That is, if being led by the Spirit merely means following the words of the Bible then that means that I have the choice of the words of the whole Bible to follow versus the words of just the Old Law. These are the opposing forces in verse 18 - Spirit and law. I have a hard time believing that God has simply given me a new law to follow that is similar in many respects to the Old Law but somehow I am to try harder than all of my forebears, none of which could follow the Old Law (Acts 15:10). That is simply setting me up for failure. I cannot do it. I cannot follow the Bible without the aid of God any more than the Jews could follow the Old Law without the aid of God.
So after all of this what do I think the Spirit does? I remember hearing somebody say once, "What do you want the Spirit to do for you? Do you want him to lead you into truth not found in the Bible?" In response I thought in my head, "No, I want him to help me follow the truth that is in the Bible." I find that I cannot do right if I only draw upon myself to do it. But I find that if I admit my own inability then I can do right by drawing upon the power of God rather than my own power. This is what I think the Spirit does for me. The Christian, we know, has the Spirit:
And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:38)
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:11)
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" (Romans 8:15)
In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
(Ephesians 1:13-14)
And the Spirit is our help in many ways, both to our prayers (Romans 8:26) and also to our will so that we can bear, not our own fruit and not the fruit of our flesh, but the fruit of the Spirit:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)
