The “natural walk” of those who are in the Spirit is spiritual. When a believer has had his eyes also opened to the fact that he has died and is free from the law and therefore married to the Lord Jesus, he must believe by faith that God has put the law of the spirit of life in Christ within him, to operate the victory of God within him against the law of sin and death.
If he is ignorant of this, he will not enjoy all the benefits that are his, not because these benefits are not there but because ignorance has robbed him of what is his.
So, the one whose eyes are opened to what is his so that he begins to enjoy them will find that the law of spirit of life in Christ just gains victory for him without strife. Normally, a “normal” believer, that is, one who has entered into his inheritance and is enjoying all that is his, will not make an effort to pray, read the Bible, worship or witness. The life in him just flows out effortlessly to the Lord and to others because it flows from the Spirit of Life in him, even the blessed Holy Spirit who life in him.
Before a person is saved or when he is saved but still bound by the law of sin and death, the law of sin and death operates in him so that he sins “naturally” and with ease. It all happens in an effortless way. Such a one will have to make a great effort not to sin because not sinning is foreign to his way of life. Take the sin of lying for example. There are people to whom lying is so “natural” that it would disturb them if you found fault with them. They are being themselves. If they are not to lie, they must overcome a barrier in order to do so. So occasionally, they exert a force and speak the truth. To such people, Bible study is abnormal, prayer a bore, evangelism near impossible and worship is our of the question. They live in the environment (an inner environment) where the law of sin and death reigns.
When a person is saved and enters into his inheritance by knowing, reckoning, yielding and accepting God’s facts of his deliverance from the law and marriage to Christ, an addition to the fact that God’s mighty victory law – the law of the Spirit in Christ has been put into him to enable him to life a holy life, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus will become operative in him and he will have to make an effort to sin. He will have to make an effort not to witness. For example, he will have to make an effort by building all excesses against the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit that tell him to let the life of Christ flow out in witness to the unbeliever. Each time, he sins, he will have to overcome a big barrier before he does anything that God does not want and he would feel pain inside him as he overcomes the barrier and disobeys or make a special effort and harden his conscience in order to reduce the pain that sin causes him.
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Therefore, it is spiritually normal that Christ produces the righteous demands of the law in us. The Bible says: “For God has done what the law, weakened by flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:3-4).
Christ does this by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. At the basis of the law is the Lord Jesus who by His death on the cross, His resurrection and His enthronement guarantees that “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” will always work in those who walk after the Spirit.
My beloved brethren, I want to assure you that this law is at work in you. Do you remember the things that you used to love so dearly? Do you also remember the things that you used to love so dearly? Do you always remember that without any effort on your part the love for them went away completely? Can you not look at your character and see that it has changed and that the change has been radical and far-reaching? The change took place so gradually and unconsciously that you did not know that it was taking place. Do you now find that you love people that you did not and could not before? Have you not found that some people you once taught were very terrible now appear to you as wonderful? All these changes are because of a law at work in you. You are obeying it often without noticing it and the result of that continuous obedience is the changes we have been talking about.
