The Answer

“. . . so that you may be faultless and innocent, children of God

without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation,

among whom you shine like stars in the sky.”

Philippians 2:15

What Jesus does by the Spirit to those who trust in him does not so much give them the answer for this wicked world as it does make them the answer for this wicked world.  Jesus makes us the light for mankind and the salt of the earth; he doesn’t just tell us about those things.  It was because Paul understood this that he exhorted the saints to “walk worthy of the calling to which you were called” (Eph. 4:1).

The Impossible New Way

Jesus did not suffer and die for something we already possessed or could already do.  If man possessed it or could do it before Jesus came, then what need was there for the Lamb of God to die to make it possible for us?  The “new and living way” that Jesus made for us was impossible for humans before he came.  And this new way of life includes nothing that the flesh can do; it is entirely of the Spirit and in the Spirit.  This is why Paul said that if we walk after the flesh, we will die, but if we walk after the Spirit, we will live.  We were all living “after the flesh” before Jesus came, but with his sacrificial death, Jesus made it possible for us to live a new way, and in this new way of the Spirit, there is no death.