The word used in the New Testament for ‘walking in the Spirit’ is the verb peripateti – from which we get our word peripatetic – which was used to describe Aristotle’s teaching style, as he ‘walked around’ with his students, teaching them in their shared journey. This is the rabbinic style adopted by Jesus.
This is a walk of becoming – as we walk with Jesus, (and embrace the practices that He embraced) then we become more like Him. Our task is availability and surrender: His is the work of transformation. The Bible Project podcast uses the illustration of us ‘growing’ tomatoes. We can’t actually grow anything – the sun and the rain does that, together with the earth’s nutrients, etc. What we do is tend the garden of our lives to put us in the place of maximum cooperation with the Spirit. Our developing character is a gift of God’s Spirit – an act of his grace. But we are also asked to work to be part of this development. Paul wrote ‘God is working in you to make you willing and able to obey him’ (Phil. 2:13, CEV). But Peter added; ‘Do your best to improve your faith… by adding goodness, understanding, self-control, patience, devotion to God, concern for others, and love’ (2 Pet. 1:5-7, CEV).
Following Jesus is not just about embracing a set of principles, or even asking ‘What would Jesus do?’ It is a good starting question, but a limited one. We don’t know if Jesus would have had a mortgage, invested in the stock market, or what His decision would have been on a host of other complex ethical dilemmas unknown in the first century. But there’s another reason for the question being limited. The Christian life is not just about imitation, but transformation. As we are changed by the Holy Spirit each day, we don’t just do the right things in a crisis, we become the right kind of people who instinctively respond rightly because of the kind of people that we have become. Paul uses what is most likely a hyperbolic statement to describe this ‘highway’ of walking in the Spirit that we’re called to, as he says, ‘against such there is no law’. This was a saying of Aristotle, who taught that some people were so virtuous, they were way above and beyond laws.
Judaism, into which Jesus was born, was seen as a ‘way of life’ rather than a religion, in which one chose to walk. During the period of Rabbinic Judaism, the Hebrew term halakhah (literally ‘walking, proceeding, going’)… designated the religious laws and regulations to follow so one might keep straight on the road of life. It provided a map from the start to the end of the journey. So, the Prophet Isaiah claimed of Yahweh’s revelation: ‘This is the way; walk in it’ (Isa. 30:21, NIV). In this context, Jesus’ words, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’ (John 14, NIV), take on an extraordinarily dynamic and subversive edge. And, in exactly the same way, the Early Church’s designation of their faith as ‘The Way’ (see Acts 9:2; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:14,22) was a revolutionary statement. From Luke’s perspective (the writer of Acts), to be a disciple is to walk in the footsteps of the Master.