What is it to walk in the Spirit? Does he mean that there is a way of getting the Spirit to so take control of our lives that we are guaranteed victory over sin, so that we should seek first of all to obtain a certain spiritual state in order that the matter of our obedience to the law follows automatically? No, the Spirit is already written within us if we belong to Christ. He does not take over the spiritual life for us, but he wants us to live that life ourselves with his empowerment. It is we who are to walk in the Spirit, not he who walks for us. There is a battle which we are engaged in; there are temptations for us to resist, and there are commandments for us to keep. The imperatives of the New Testament are not given for nothing.
How does the Spirit speak to a believer, how does the believer hear the Spirit’s voice? How is a believer aware of the Spirit’s presence within? Certainly the believer is not aware of two separate personalities within him: his own soul and then the quite separate presence of the Spirit. The Spirit does not make his presence felt in a frightening or spooky way. Sometimes we imagine that if the Spirit of God, who is infinite and powerful, is within us, we must discern him as a separate presence. But no, he makes us aware of the things of God by clothing the word of God so that we have the mind of Christ. The Spirit of God gives us victory over sin at a point in our experience that is very familiar to us. We may struggle with temptation and realize that what we are being tempted to do is wrong and yet we feel drawn to sin by our own desire. We know we should resist but we feel we will suffer loss if we do not yield to our desire, but the Spirit of God helps us to see that it is really no loss and stirs up faith within us by which we are able to resist. We see that it is to our profit that we obey God.