For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.
A kingdom must have a king. It must have its subjects. Without any one of them, there is no kingdom to begin with. The King of the Kingdom of God is God Himself. God is Spirit (John 4:24), and when He created man, He breathed His breath of life, His Spirit into man, and he immediately became a living being. It was right in the beginning that God shall rule through man on earth, who was created in His image and likeness. The Kingdom of God was to be established on earth through man.
Then, something went terribly wrong. Man chose to live contrary to the will of God, walking and living against the way of the Spirit, thus forfeiting the authority to rule. The flesh sets in and begin to war against the Spirit. The flesh by its very nature, is enmity against God. It provides the opportunity in man to “cooperate” with the devil, the king of the Kingdom of Darkness. If we make conscious or careless choices to live according to the flesh, we render ourselves vulnerable to the devil and his control. Though the devil is the author of evil in man’s life, we cannot always “blame it on the devil” alone without taking responsibility of the way we might have lived according to the flesh.
If God’s Kingdom is in us after we have received Jesus into lives, we need to live according to the Spirit, yielding to Jesus and His Lordship in every part of our lives. The devil too, seeks to expand his kingdom on earth through man. He seeks to appeal to the flesh in us, so that we might live according to the flesh. If we live according to the flesh, his kingdom grows in us and through us. There is a clash of the 2 Kingdoms in man!
Choose wisely, therefore, and cultivate a lifestyle of God’s Kingdom characterized by love, honor, righteousness and obedience. Sow to the Spirit and expect to see the Kingdom of God grows in us and through us!