NOTES for Gal 5:25
Paul formulates the essence of Christian life briefly and pointedly: if we live by the spirit, we must also walk by the spirit, as the corresponding Greek text literally says. What does he mean? The answer depends on what is meant by "spiritual life." Often even Christians understand by it something more or less figurative. By "spirit" they mean certain new principles of life or a changed worldview. It is then assumed that one or the other appears in a person when he becomes "spiritual." And life corresponding to these new principles or this new worldview is called "life according to the spirit."
Meanwhile, that spirit, or more precisely, that breath, of which the apostle speaks has no direct relation to any principles or any worldview. Of course, a person living by this breath may have his own principles and worldview. And if he remains consistent, both will correspond to the life he lives.
But what is primary is still life itself, not principles. Life according to that breath of God with which the Kingdom is permeated. It is precisely of this breath that Paul speaks. It is not principles, not rules, not a worldview or a feeling about the world. It is the real experience of the real, living presence of God. The experience of it in one's own life, external and internal. This presence is what makes a person a Christian. Contact with it makes life spiritual in the proper sense.
Of course, a certain measure of spiritual life was open to humanity even before Christ came into the world. For the breath of life that God breathes into the human person at creation is also presence. God's breath cannot be anything else. And if such breath is in everyone, this means only one thing: every person, regardless of what he thinks about this breath and whether he thinks about it at all, lives in God's presence. Not an external presence, but an internal one.
And it depends on the person himself how much this God-given breath will determine his life, how much it will be spiritual in the proper sense of the word. But the breath of the Kingdom, which entered the world with Christ, is not given to everyone, but only to the one who has established real and living relationships with Christ. Yet it is still the same breath, only in a greater, one might say absolute fullness. In such fullness that it can make a person's life spiritual in all fullness as well. Even to the complete transformation of human nature, making it an integral part of the Kingdom.