Daily Word

When we “walk in the Spirit - walk in faith”, in full dependence and focus on Christ, we manifest Jesus all the time and live in victory over the flesh with all its lusts.

The basis for this is our union with Christ in death and resurrection, so that it is no longer you and I who live our independent lives, but Christ who lives in us.

This is not something we can achieve on our own. The Holy Spirit makes us Christ-focused so that our union with him becomes ever deeper and stronger.

Then Jesus can live his victorious life through us.

The secret is that the Spirit in union with Christ makes his victorious law of life our innermost driving

force: “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.”

Through that law, Christ did what is completely impossible for us to accomplish on our own.

He conquered the flesh with all its destructive desires and put an end on the cross to the corrupt “old man” full of deceitful lusts.

We have had Christ’s mighty law of victory implanted in us and are therefore empowered to “put to death the deeds of the body”: to say no to every temptation that comes our way, so that we can continually live the victorious spiritual life.

But Christ’s law of victory only works as long as we are focused on Him and on the cross, where our old self was condemned to death.

Peter could walk on the waves as long as he kept his eyes fixed on Christ. When he looked at himself and the waves that were rising so high, he immediately began to sink.

As soon as we become self-centred and self-conscious and try to do the impossible ourselves, we ‘sink’. Then it is so easy to suffer from condemnation and feelings of defeat and become even more self-absorbed.

It is a lifelong exercise to learn to constantly look to Christ away from self, leave the old behind and

move forward as an overcomer.

The one who makes this victorious life possible for us is the Holy Spirit!