First To Be Anointed With The Holy Spirit

In the 10th chapter of Acts, I just want to show you one verse in that 10th chapter, but it’s a wonderful one. Verse 38. Peter’s preaching, and he says in verse 38, you know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil. For God was with Him in the form of the Holy Spirit, God was with Him in the form of the Holy Spirit. So answer to the question, how did Jesus do the will of God, the work of God in the way that God did it? How did He render perfect love toward God, perfect obedience toward God? The answer by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The very person who empowered the perfect obedience of Christ is the very person that takes up residence in our lives as believers. So Jesus obeyed the Word of God perfectly in the power of the Holy Spirit. Now listen, 1 John 2 6 says this, the one who says He abides in Him, in Christ, ought Himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. If you say you abide in Christ, you ought to walk as He walked. How did He walk? He walked in the Spirit. He walked in the power of the Spirit.

Listen to Colossians 2 6, therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. How did He walk? How do we walk? How do we walk in Him? In the power of the Holy Spirit. Now someday we’ll do that perfectly, because it says in 1 John 3 that someday we’ll be like Him, and so we will have perfect love and perfect obedience. But now we are striving to walk like He walked. We have been given the Holy Spirit. The power is there. We are being led by the Spirit, as He says, and I read it earlier in Galatians 5.

So if you’re led by the Spirit, then walk in the Spirit. There’s no such thing as a Christian who doesn’t have the Spirit. There’s no such thing as a Christian not being led by the Spirit. So follow and walk in the Spirit. Now one other portion of Scripture needs to be brought into consideration, and it’s Romans chapter 8. This is wonderful, encouraging truth. Romans 8-3, for the law could not do. Let me tell you about the law. The law makes demands and pronounces judgment if you violate them. And so we’re all under the law, and we’re all basically guilty of breaking the law.

I’m talking about God’s moral law. We’re all then sentenced to death and punishment. The law has no power. The flesh has no power. The law can’t help us. It can’t empower us. It’s outside of us. The law, what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh. The law can’t help us, and we in our flesh can’t help ourselves. But what the law could not do, because it’s weak to the flesh, God did, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh. God sent his son into the world as an offering for sin.

By that offering, he condemned sin in the flesh. So verse 4, that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. How then is the law fulfilled in us? By walking according to the Spirit, not walking according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit, you want to fulfill the law of God, walk in the Spirit. This is so very important, because these legalists had come to the Galatian church and said, you need to conform to the external rituals and ceremonies and rites, including circumcision of Judaism. Mass, you can’t be saved without that, and you can’t be sanctified without that.

Paul has been saying, no, you’re free from all of that. You’ve been set free from all of that. The question then comes, if I don’t keep those rules and rituals, how do I please God? How do I do the will of God? And the answer is, you walk in the Spirit. Legalism isn’t going to work. Legalism cannot overcome evil desire. Legalism cannot restrain the flesh. Wherever you see a religious legalist, you see a hypocrite every single time. They may appear to be moral, but it is hypocritical morality, because they have no ability in their flesh to conform to the law of God, or the will of God.

The only way that happens is when there is a new nature and the indwelling Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit enables us, Romans 8 says, to do what the law and the flesh could never ever do. Yes, we have been set free, but set free from the bondage of the law, which cannot save us and cannot sanctify us. The Holy Spirit alone can save us through belief in the Gospel. The Holy Spirit alone has the power to conform us to the Word, and thus the will of God. So we want to be like Christ. We’ve talked about that a lot in Galatians.

We want to be transformed into Christlikeness, which means that we want more and more to walk as He walked. How did He walk? He walked in the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, with that in mind, let’s go back to Galatians 5 and look again at verse 16, and just consider this one verse. Here’s the command, but I say, walk by the Spirit. Literally, present tense imperative, keep on walking, keep on walking, continually be walking. It implies effort. It implies consistency. It assumes difficulty because we have to be commanded to do it. That is evidence that there’s going to be resistance, that there’s going to be conflict.

We’ll see more about that next time. But you can see for yourself in verse 17 that the flesh and the Spirit are in opposition to each other. The flesh is producing all the horrible sins in verses 19, 20 and 21. The Spirit is producing all the virtues in verses 22 and 23. Both of those things reside in us because we still have unredeemed humanness, which is our flesh, as well as the indwelling Holy Spirit, which is why we’re in a war, we’re in a battle, we’re in a conflict, and we have to be commanded to walk in the Spirit because there is so much resistance.

Now, let’s talk about walk. What does walk mean? It’s simply the ordering of life, one step at a time in life, putting one spiritual foot in front of the other and doing it consistently. And the Bible talks a lot about walking. Walking is just the normal process of progressive sanctification, one step at a time. And walking is a big theme in the New Testament. Spiritual progress isn’t a sprint, it’s a long, lifelong walk. We read in Romans 6 about walking in new life. We read in Romans 13 about walking decently. We read in Ephesians 4 and Colossians 1 about walking worthily.

In Philippians 3, walking in unity. In Ephesians 4, walking in humility. In Romans 13, walking in purity. In 1 Corinthians 7, walking in contentment. In 2 Corinthians 5, walking in faith. In Ephesians 2, walking in good works. Second Thessalonians 3, walking in separation from sin in the world. Ephesians 5, walking in love. Again in Ephesians 5, walking in light. Again in Ephesians 5, walking in wisdom. In 3 John, walking in truth. Summing it up, we walk like Jesus walked. He walked. He walked in perfect divine life. He walked decently. He walked worthily. He walked in integrity, humility, purity, contentment, faith, good work, separation, light, wisdom, truth.

So we are to walk the way Jesus walked. And this assumes an effort. This isn’t let go and let God. This isn’t passivity and it isn’t some kind of antinomianism where now that we have been saved we have no responsibility. No. Walk, put one spiritual foot in front of the other and do exactly the kind of walking Jesus did, which meant conform your life to the will of the Father, the word of the Father and the work of the Father. Do what God wants you to do, do what God has told you to do and do what God himself does.

Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the first to be anointed with the Holy Spirit. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].