Walk In The Spirit

¹“This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:16-17, 21-25). To the extent that we at times become possessed by the lusts of the flesh or by any desires that run contrary to the will of our Heavenly Father, many of us are perfectly willing to crucify the flesh. We may even take a kind of perverse pleasure in pounding in the nails a little more cruelly than necessary if we feel that we are particularly deserving of pain and suffering given how worthless and pathetic we sometimes believe ourselves to be. But a lot of us stop at the crucifixion stage. This is not where we are supposed to stop! Christ wasn’t just crucified for our sins, full stop, end of story. He also was resurrected. Jesus is the living Christ. He went through the whole Atonement so that we could all live again. When we face a particular temptation or desire or lust of the flesh, it is not enough for us to attack ourselves and nail ourselves to the cross for being too prideful and weak and inherently flawed. We can’t just keep up a constant stream of insults and demand that we kill all desire for whatever illicit or immoral or improper temptation has gripped us. All of that desire has to go somewhere. We can throw it in a tomb and roll a big boulder over it, but it’s not going to go away. That’s where the resurrection part comes in. That’s where we walk and live by the Spirit and the many and wonderful fruits that will flourish as we allow the Savior to transform or redirect our lusts and desires and appetites down paths that are consistent with the principles of the gospel and the pursuit of true and lasting joy. If we are experiencing a temptation, it is because Satan is trying to divert our God-given desires down a path that will destroy us. We don’t want to get rid of the desire, but just point it in the right direction. That way, we can truly walk and live in the Spirit.