The Holy Spirit and Growing from a Life of Sin to a Life of Holiness
The Holy Spirit does not work on the surface or from the outside. He works deep within us, in the hidden places of our hearts.
This is why, if we want to follow how the Holy Spirit works in our lives, we must look deep within ourselves. We must examine our thoughts carefully, check our consciences closely, understand why we do what we do, look at our desires and wants—both good and bad—study how we pray and fast and cry, see how we serve others, and finally understand how we love God and other people.
Only from this deep place can we truly meet the Holy Spirit and understand what He wants from us.
This kind of deep looking always takes hard work. If we avoid looking deep because it is difficult, we stay on the surface. We focus only on words and actions that others can see, and we never really meet the Holy Spirit.
Why does the Holy Spirit only work in the deep places? Because of how we are made as humans. The real reasons we do things, the real causes that move us, the real goals we pursue—these things only exist deep inside us, not on the surface. On the surface, we only see false reasons for what we do. These false reasons come from what society teaches us, from how our families raised us, and from what other people tell us to do.
When the Holy Spirit starts to work deep inside a person, that person begins to see the first effects of His work. These effects show themselves as a battle inside us—a battle in our thoughts, in our conscience, and in our bodies. This battle is between "the spirit of life in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:2)—which means the spirit of truth, holiness, righteousness, and self-control—and the spirit of lies, uncleanness, deception, and lust.
This battle feels hard and almost unbearable to our conscience and mind. This happens because we might fall into sin while at the same time having the Holy Spirit inside us. The guilt and shame reach their highest point:
"For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me... For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice."
— Romans 7:15–19
What is the goal the Holy Spirit wants to reach in this first stage? He wants us to really hate sin. The more the Holy Spirit is present in us, the more convicted we become about our sin. So we grow to hate the life of evil and sin more and more.
At this point, the person's mind or heart—what the Apostle Paul calls the "mind" or "intellect" or "nous"—turns toward the Holy Spirit. (There is some confusion about this word because it changed meaning over many centuries. In Bible language, repentance means a change in the mind—metanoia. In the same way, the Holy Spirit's work to make us new also happens in the mind: "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2)—metamorphosis—which means changing from one form to another, or changing your mind—nous.)
But here is the problem: while our mind turns toward the Holy Spirit, our body still wants sin. "For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish" (Galatians 5:17). This happens because our natural desires and habits need time to obey our conscience and heart, which the Holy Spirit is guiding. We should know that sin always uses our natural desires and tries to twist them into something wrong.
When sin finds a place to hide in our bodies through lust and wrong desires, the Holy Spirit finds His place in our heart (our mind and conscience) to live and start His work against the evil that is controlling our body. "I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16). This is where change and renewal begin in the mind—and this is a little easier to do.
This is what Paul the Apostle explains when he describes what happens to a person when the Holy Spirit starts working in them as they begin to fight against sin:
"For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin."
— Romans 7:22–25
That is, Christ came to us in Himself, going beyond the weakness of our body. He gave us what He had in His body—righteousness and victory over sin—as a secret and wonderful gift through the work of His Holy Spirit in us. He does this by raising our will to the level of Christ's will and raising our mind to the level of Christ's mind, until we can work and fight sin with joy: "For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13).
This is what Paul is saying clearly: God starts the work first through the Holy Spirit in our will. He convinces us to fight sin with joy. Because of this, He asks us to finish what He started in us, doing it "with fear and trembling, lest you stumble" (cf. Philippians 2:12). This keeps us from losing our salvation. Notice how Paul puts the word "because" between "fulfill your salvation" and "for it is God who works in you." Our work depends completely on God's work in us first!!
This wonderful and secret way that God works in us at the level of will and action happens because God knows perfectly how weak our bodies are and how powerless our will is against sin and death. "For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit" (Romans 8:3-4).
We can summarize the different stages of the Holy Spirit's work like this:
Without the work of the Holy Spirit, a person drinks in sin like water, without any struggle, conflict, or feeling of blame or regret—because the standard of righteousness (the commandment) and the voice calling toward it are simply not present.
The Holy Spirit begins His work by placing the commandment before a person's mind as a familiar standard and a messenger demanding God's right!! The struggle immediately begins between the mind, receptive to the call of righteousness, and sin lying in wait in the members like a snake the Devil stirs and moves. This struggle takes place within the person, between the mind (or intellect, heart, or conscience) and the body. In the mind rests the law of "the spirit of life in Christ Jesus," just as in the body rests the law of "sin and death."
The Holy Spirit's work increases in proportion to the mind's acceptance of Him and obedience to His counsel, and the intensity of the struggle grows with it—but the more the struggle grows, the more it proves and measures the Holy Spirit's increasing activity, since His goal is to reach a firm conviction of sin's ugliness.
If the mind reaches full conviction of sin's ugliness and its certain danger, this means the mind has taken the side of the law of the Holy Spirit, and this in itself is a state of holiness for the mind.
The mind's holiness does not remain without effect; as soon as the mind is freed from the law of sin and made holy by the Holy Spirit, the will's fighting power rises, with the certainty of the mind's sound knowledge, to confront the sin lying in wait in the body and stirred by lust, which the Devil inflames through a kind of deceit and false intimidation.
The beginning of the will's victory over sin's movement and its deceptive, lustful suggestions is itself the beginning of a life of righteousness, godliness, or holiness.
This struggle, at its root between the law of the Holy Spirit in the mind and the law of sin and death in the body, never stops or ends as long as the body has the breath of life, but always remains at the highest readiness to flare up in the person struggling in the holy life—rising at times to the highest degree of heat, where the mind rises to the highest degree of holiness, and quieting at times when grace prevails and reigns, taking the struggle's place for a while.
But the mind's mere conviction of sin's ugliness and its corrupting, destructive harm does not justify a person—only God justifies. For it becomes clear that God alone is holy! But it is understood that Christ's righteousness shines upon us, for Christ justified sinners by the shedding of His atoning blood!
Therefore, reaching the mind's conviction of sin's ugliness, together with certainty of Christ's righteousness and His justification, is itself a practical entrance into a life of righteousness or a life of holiness.
Christ's atoning death, by the shedding of His blood, condemned sin and stripped it of its power to destroy people! Therefore, reaching the mind's conviction of sin's ugliness, and consequently rejecting it mentally, is itself the practical way out from under its terrifying condemnation—this can only ever come from the work of the Holy Spirit and the blood of Christ: "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death!!" (Romans 8:2).
Therefore, the mind and conscience growing more and more aware of sin and its destructive effect on a person's life and salvation—even if the person has not yet begun a life of holiness as he ought—should not lead us to despair, because in truth it does not put us under sin's condemnation; on the contrary, it brings us out from under sin's condemnation!! For denying sin and the Devil in the mind and conscience, in sincerity and full conviction, is itself an act of the Holy Spirit, originally the result of Christ's justification of sinners by His blood, and of His condemnation of sin and the Devil on the Cross. This is what the newly baptized does before beginning the practical Christian life of faith.
Therefore, the Holy Spirit's work in a person, which appears as a mental struggle against the law of sin lying in wait in the members, must necessarily keep increasing more and more until the mind moves from conviction of sin's ugliness (which is the holiness of the mind's thought) to the will itself catching fire with holiness in deed. Thus holiness moves from the mind to the actual will, and consequently to the body, and the Holy Spirit reigns over the person in the mind just as in the body and all the members together.
And so Christ's righteousness remains fundamentally tied to our being freed from the law of sin working in the members!
Here we must know very well that our ongoing personal relationship with Christ, through sincere love and through the continuous promptings of the Holy Spirit, is the strong foundation for victory over the law of sin, whatever its power: "And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires" (Galatians 5:24). Here the phrase "Christ's" indicates a very close, continuous, unbroken, inseparable relationship, since it is known that our union with Christ now is union with the Christ risen from the dead, who gives the Holy Spirit through the secret breath, through all the sacraments of the Church: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17).
If, finally, we compare the law of sin with the law of the spirit of life, we discover the terrible depth of the gulf between the deception into which we are swept if we choose sin for ourselves, and the genuineness of the truth and light in which we will walk if we choose the Holy Spirit and hear His voice and do not harden our hearts.
"Wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever... clouds without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots."
— cf. Jude 12–13
The law of "sin and death" is a harsh, tyrannical, savage law, without mind, wisdom, or any benefit—a blind law with no meaning and no purpose except death and ruin, which the Apostle likened to wandering stars straying in the vault of space, burning and dissolving, or to clouds driven by the storm without any order, or to autumn leaves falling however they will, scattered by the wind from the face of the earth with no place to settle (Jude 12–13).
If the law of sin gains mastery over the members, it blinds the mind and strips it, little by little, of the perception of divine truth, belittles chastity and holiness in its sight, and diminishes every virtue and everything that belongs to God. And if the law of sin reigns over the members and over the mind, it overthrows the will as well and abases it under every lust and impurity, enslaving the person completely.
But when we examine the law of "the spirit of life in Christ" we find it, in terms of power, stronger than the law of sin, and more sovereign and dominant, and the Lord Himself likened it in Luke's Gospel, chapter eleven, to "the stronger man." For if the Devil is strong, the Holy Spirit is stronger: "But when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoils" (Luke 11:22).
If the law of sin drags a person down to what is beneath nature until it ends in death in thought and deed, the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus raises thought, will, and deed—yes, even the body—above nature, even to eternal life.
Works in a climate of darkness, on a foundation of lies, deception, flattering speech, and grand, terrifying illusions filled with deceptive pleasure, until the net is cast—and then the Devil quickly reaches out his hand to slaughter the prey before it awakens.
Works in the light, on the foundation of truth, step by step, with proof of its own truthfulness—where the more the Holy Spirit's law reigns, the more a person masters himself, his passions, and his instincts, and the fragrance of holiness breathes from his mind, his mouth, and his conduct, every step of it full of meaning, effect, and ever-greater harmony with the self, with other people, with God, and with the universe and all creation.
It is clear, then, that it is impossible for a person to be set free from the law of sin and death except by this stronger and greater law alone: "the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus."
In Summary
The Holy Spirit works only in the depths of the heart, never on the surface.
His first fruit is an inner battle that produces a real, growing hatred of sin.
Fifteen stages (a)–(o) trace the mind's holiness moving, step by step, into the will and the body.
Only Christ's righteousness justifies — the mind's conviction of sin's ugliness is the door into that righteousness, not its substitute.
The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus is the only law strong enough to free a person from the law of sin and death.