Why Your Struggle against Sin Won’t End This Side of Heaven

Walk by the Spirit...

Galatians 5:16

What does it mean to walk by the Spirit? How would you know if you are walking by the Spirit?

One mark of the person who walks with the Spirit is that you are waging war against sin. When you become a Christian, you become a new person in Christ, but you still live life in the body. There is a tension. Christ is your liberator, but there is active resistance to Him within you.

Perhaps you have heard the story of the new Christian who was baptised. After coming up from the water he was so full of joy that he said to the pastor, “It’s so good to know that I won’t be struggling with temptation anymore!” The pastor said, “For that blessing I would have had to hold you under for longer!”

Your struggle against sin goes on throughout the entire Christian life. “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit,” (5:17). Seeing this in the Bible should help you because it tells you that you are normal. The normal Christian life is one of sustained warfare against the ongoing resistance of our flesh to the rule of Christ.

If you give the flesh what it wants, what will it produce? “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” (5:19-21). It’s a wide variety of sin. What do they all have in common? Self!

Are you walking by the Spirit? Are you waging war against your flesh? What is one sin you can fight against today by the power of the Spirit dwelling within you?