Romans 8:9
New International Version (NIV)
“ 9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.”
Romans 8:9 is a good scripture for those who believe that the body and the spirit are separate and that we are just flesh and blood. We are spirits that live in a body.
The importance of this is that we are not to “walk in the flesh”, meaning we are not to act on our own emotions and interests without the Holy Spirit. We should not act out of the Holy Spirits intentions. For example if you know that the Holy Spirit does not get angry and lash out at somebody, but when we are pushed we want to cause some type harm to the person who rubbed us the wrong way, we should not act on our feeling of anger. Fulfilling that urge to act out on our sheer emotions is acting according to the flesh.
A simple way to tell when you are operating according to your flesh is when you literally have a physical reaction to a happening or person that makes you do or say something that you wouldn’t usually do or haven’t done in a while. Another example is the urge to have a shot of alcohol because you got in an argument with someone or because you are excited about something and want to “celebrate”, knowing that it isn’t the best choice to do so for whatever reason.
A lot of Christians don’t believe in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but it is important to have the Holy Spirit operating in you and not just with you like when you become born again. The relationship you build with Christ is so much more intense, meaningful and powerful when you get “filled” with the Holy Spirit. You become more sensitive to the leading of the Spirit in various situations when you are filled with the Spirit, with the evidence of speaking in tongues. Your prayer life becomes more fluid and helps you when you don’t have the words to express what you need to pray, the Holy Spirit does it for you because he knows what we need to say.
Embracing the Holy Spirit, the spirit of God, will prevent us from making choices or simply being led by the flesh.
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