The Christian Life is a Spiritual Walk

     The Christian life is a spiritual walk; it is not about a new religion or religious experience.  The new creation we have become is unlike the person whose end is to live in the world.  A person who is living in the world, would embrace Christ as Saviour, but lives in pleasure and puts earthly pursuits above that of the Lord, and sinks his life into acquiring name, fame and money (1 John 2:15-17; 2 Peter 2, 18, 20).  This is walking in the flesh.
     Human wisdom and strength are useless in spiritual endeavors (John 3:6; John 15:5).  The desire to make a name for oneself is carnal and antagonistic to the Spirit of God.  All these are a contradiction to the Spirit of Christ.  Therefore, these are a preference, an attempt to make a good appearance on the outside while the inside is corrupt.  The Christian life is beauty from within and radiant reflection of Christ outside.
     This person possesses a divine life and is capable of making God visible on the earth and ruling the planet with divine authority.  As a Christian, one has been given God's uncreated life.  As such, one is not called to live by "a Christian code of ethics".  Instead one is called to live God's life.  When a person lives by God's life, that person would possess divine impulses, instincts, promptings, senses and tendencies.  This would yield to the person the secret of growing up with the Head, who is Christ (Ephesians 4:15).  When collectively as a Body we live by the Lord's life, the character of Jesus begins to take shape within (Galatians 4:19).  In the words of Detrick Bonhoeffer, "Jesus calls men not to a new religion, but to a new life." (John 10:10; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 3:4; 1 John 5:11-12).
     God's mind is that humanity would share His life.  He wanted us to live in union with Himself and express His goodness in the earth.  That is what the Tree of the Lord offered.  Hence, Frank Viola, warned that when we strive to be "good Christians we are eating from the wrong tree. " Living by 'right and wrong' is not Christianity.  It is old covenant living and its very human, certainly not spiritual.
     By contrast the Christian life is to live by the energy and direction of divine life which dwells in us.  It is to depend upon the living Christ rather than upon one's knowledge of good and evil; right and wrong.  Thus, the man who partakes of the divine nature lives by the indwelling Christ rather than by ourselves (2 Peter 1:9).
    Having been transformed into a new creation in Christ, one who walks in the Spirit is largely delivered from idolatrous abominations and Protestant misconceptions of Scriptures, and brought again to own in simplicity to the headship of Christ, the presidency of the Holy Spirit in the assembly of God's people and the authority of the written Word over the conscience of all who call upon the name of the Lord.
     These believers consciously seek to avoid losing sight of the tremendous importance of walking in the Spirit in living, fully realized fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, to whose peerless name God would gather all His own.  Their Christian walk or life points always to Christ in them, the hope of their glory.  They are creations in Him, walking in the Spirit.

T. Cyprian Kia