When the Spirit is at Work in Us

The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him (Luke 2:40).

As the child Jesus grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, so too is our path/ growth in the spiritual life.  As the Spirit of God enters us and begins to re-shape our desires from the inside, we find that what once appealed to us has now lost its appeal and we are more drawn to the things of God.  The process is not an overnight change, but one that lasts a lifetime. 

The "thou shalt nots" of the Old Testament were, like parental rules, intended to keep the "children of God" safe from harm and danger until they were old enough to take upon themselves a personal relationship with the Almighty.  The problem with "thou shalt not" is that there is a stronger "law" in our human nature that is determined to break the rules, or at least to bend them.  Every teacher knows that no child breaks the rule exactly the way it is written, but figures out instead how to get around it without breaking it.  That is why the Jews had to write more and more "laws" to "build a fence around the law."

[In fact, now that I think about it, we should have forbidden our children from the start ever to eat fruits and vegetables.  We should have had "Do not touch" signs all over the apples and bananas, over the spinach and squash.  Then they would have been sneaking fruit into their bedrooms and hiding under the covers to eat it.]

We love to get away with forbidden fruit, not realizing that we are harming only ourselves along the way.  In changing our desires, the Holy Spirit deals with each one of us differently.  Only He knows where change truly needs to begin; even we ourselves, looking at symptomatic behavior, do not know where we need to begin.  What we believe to be the problem in our personalities may be only the symptoms of more deeply-rooted problems.

We try to improve our nature when the plan of God is to scrap it, to bury it, "crucified with Christ," and to give us a whole new nature created in the image of God.  When the Holy Spirit enters into us and is welcomed in us, He begins to "tabernacle" with us, as God dwelt in the midst of the Israelites in the desert.  Then we begin to experience the "newness of life" of which Paul spoke so often.

Even in the Old Testament, the prophets were looking forward to a new covenant:

But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts...no longer will they have need to teach their friends and kinsmen how to know the Lord.  All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the Lord (Jer. 31: 31).

I think Romans 7-8 are among the greatest chapters in the Bible for explaining the gracious plan of God to deal with our human nature.  Paul says that he does not understand himself at all, for in his mind, he agrees with the law of God, but in his human nature, he always ends up doing the very thing he determined not to do and failing to do the very thing he intended to do.  ( I love this because I can so relate to it.)  Then he says, Unhappy man that I am!  Who will release me from this law of sin and death at work in my members?

In Chapter 8, he goes on to say, Thanks be to God; it has already been done, for the [new] law [new covenant] of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed me from the law of sin and death.

The Spirit of God dwelling within us gradually fills us with new desires to walk in new ways.  In total freedom, God does not seek to force us to change, but instead puts new desires into our hearts.  Jesus says, "My burden is light and my yoke is sweet;"  He means of course that it is no burden to live with the Spirit, for we actually want to do the right thing.  So as we open ourselves to the Spirit and give him permission to change us, we find ourselves going from "glory to glory, reflecting as in a mirror the face of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3:18).

I love this!