Knowledge of the Law apart from the Spirit is Useless

As per the past year: It seems the soul/heart/mind(but more than that...) I once had has been evicted/transformed/wrecked. The previous self I was, with its life categorizing, double standards, and general selfish tendencies, allowed such painful regressions to sin, showing no true repentance. Yes, there was promise in 'mind', but not transformation in heart. There was awareness/conviction of sin, yet not the overwhelming desire to fix it in my life. (Possibly what we so often say, 'conviction' we may only be referring to the knowledge of presence of sin, which the word implies. The idea only that there is 'belief of' sin, rather than the necessity to do something about it.) So often I knew what I must do: turn away, flee, don't play the line of sin, yet when the tests came I failed. Surely my mind did not change in those times, as that I retained the knowledge of what was right, and what was wrong.

That is exactly what relying on the self and not Spirit looks like: failure in walking righteously. John's words from his first epistle are never so true as now to me. If we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. This truth is that God is light. They cannot coexist in one heart. Categorizing life is death. Death eternally, temporally. Death to joy. Can one, then, have the awareness of sin which comes with the Spirit, yet do nothing to stop sinful acts and begin righteous living? No I tell you. For presence of the Spirit, truly, alive and active in you can only bring such joyful pain of awareness of sin in one's life that the only course to take is action for that Spirit. It must be that when He is grieved, you are grieved, and sorrowful, as the bible will tell us leads to repentance. Our Spirit is changed, mine is changed.

And in this, we have faith in the strength given us to complete this end. Apart from walking in the Spirit we are working from our own power. Tozer will say,

"through the body of Christ, God is doing an eternal work above and beyond the realm of fallen nature. this requires supernatural working..."

Let all we do, then, have the after effects in eternity and this only through the Spirit.

Note: On this I could write a book on now that I have thought and developed this more. The knowledge of the Law apart from the Spirit can only lead to the situation described in Hebrews chapter 4:

Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us fear, lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened

and later,

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

What does 'strive to enter that rest' mean but to live a righteous life?