Galatians 5:16-26

16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

The climax of Paul’s letter to the Galatian churches came in 5:1-6, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. … 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.”

Paul has taught there is no act any human can perform that will earn them merit with the Most High God. God no longer operates on the “give-to-get” plan he once offered to Adam in the Garden.  God has his own exclusive method of dealing with mankind after Adam’s rebellion – one he purposed to use before he spoke one particle of the universe into existence.  God designed the world as a great cosmic stage upon which to act out his one-way love displayed in and centered upon the Promised Seed, Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul is passionate to defend God’s glory reflected in God’s one-way love.  The nice men from Jerusalem came into the Galatian congregations offering an alleged means to get more approval from God, to earn greater assurance of salvation, and to achieve a higher life.  It was a “Yes grace, but…” plan:

“Yes, Jesus is Messiah; yes, he died for your sins and earned favor between men and God.  BUT if you really want to earn assurance of your salvation and achieve true holiness of the higher life, then you need to perform certain rituals, keep certain fasts days and celebrate certain feast days, dress a certain way, separate yourselves from the unclean gentiles, and strive to live according the thousands of sincere opinions handed down by our learned Rabbis.  Only then will you have God’s complete approval and achieve true higher-life holiness.”

Living under a system of the “5 Steps to a Yeast-Free Home,” and the “10 Steps to An Acceptable Wardrobe” and the “15 Steps to a Godly Diet” and the “20 Steps to Acceptable Worship) made the Galatians angry and agitated as they judged themselves and one another according to the rules given by the nice men from Jerusalem.  Their gospel joy had been stolen by inward-facing works of the flesh (Augustine: incurvatus in se).

Paul teaches that we are set free from the system of the Mosaic Law with all of its intricate and exhausting and excruciating rules for holy living.  We cannot earn God’s approval.  We trust God’s announcement that He has provided everything we need in Christ Jesus; even our trust is a gift from God.  So the question remains, “What does freedom look like?”  Paul answers, “trust expressed by means of love” (5:6).  Okay, Paul, show us what trust and love look like.  Paul does that by contrasting the works of our sin nature with the fruit of God’s gift of supernatural trust.

Our passage this morning shows us: (1) what inward-facing trust produces (trust in self); and, (2) what trust in God produces. One of these things is not like the other.

  1. TRUST IN SELF (5:19-21)
    1. People of Faith
      1. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
      2. Every human being is a person of faith. The only question for us is, “What is the object of your faith?”  Man’s sin-corrupted nature always looks inside of itself to meet its deepest longings for security, approval, success, freedom, peace, etc.
      3. When our broken sin nature hears God’s Law, it believes that the goal of life is to get better. It lures Christians into believing that the focus of Christianity is the life of the Christian, not the life of Christ.
      4. Our flesh reads the commands of God as prescriptions for better living rather than descriptions of what our new nature in Christ performs by instinct as we continue to avail ourselves of the means of grace: the Word read, preached, sung, prayed, and displayed in the Lord’s Supper and baptism.[1]
      5. When we try to follow any other prescription than the means of grace, the product is unfruitful bitterness. Paul reminded the Asian Gauls that they once had joy (4:15) when they heard God’s announcement of freedom in Christ as they sat under the apostle’s preaching.
      6. But when the Jerusalem gurus gave the Asian Gauls a long list of rules for higher living the Gauls become neurotic, narcissistic, and self-absorbed as they struggled to assess how they were doing at getting better and how well they were helping God fix themselves.
      7. Their trust shifted from Jesus alone and all that He provides to “Jesus + my faithful works.” Ironically, that sincere desire to help God help them kept them from truly loving God and their neighbors.
    2. Works of Self-Focus (17, 19-21)
      1. A law-driven life produces bitter works of the flesh. Look at v. 17, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”
      2. Literally, the text reads: “For the flesh is desiring against the Spirit, but the Spirit [is] against the flesh” [Trans. Mine]. Paul develops this further in Romans 7 when he writes of how he desires to live as opposed to how he actually lives.
      3. The great bible teacher H.A. Ironside used to illustrate this verse by speaking of two dogs fighting. The dog that wins, he said, is the one to which we say, “Sic ‘em.”
      4. But Paul is not describing a battle for behavior modification. He is speaking of the bitter efforts of men against the triumph of God the Spirit.  This is why Paul later writes to the church at Philippi, “…he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”  Resist the Spirit if you will; your struggle will bring more bitter works.  But in the end He WILL have His way.
      5. This is not a struggle for behavior. This is a struggle over trust.  On the surface, our problems seem to be greed or anger or bitterness or needing to win.  But down deep in the heart, our problem is a lack of trust in God’s provision to us in Christ Jesus because believers are always simultaneously saved and sinner.  And sin (whatever its outward manifestation) is ALWAYS a self-salvation project.
      6. Paul’s list of fleshly works is more than the struggle between lust and chastity. Luther: “Just as ‘spirit’ in this passage does not signify chastity alone, so it follows necessarily that ‘flesh’ does not signify lust alone.”[2]
      7. Paul does list sins of sexual and sensual nature: immorality, impurity, sensuality, drunkenness, and orgies. The word orgies sums up that list of physical indulgences since orgies were organized overdrinking, overeating, sex parties often held on Roman feast days in Roman temples to Roman idols.
      8. But that isn’t the end of Paul’s brief list. There are more bitter works of the sin nature:
        1. Idolatry – seeking contentment in ANYTHING other than Jesus; “I will not be satisfied until _____ happens.” Or, “If only _____.”);
        2. Sorcery — seeking control of your environment through a “give to get” scheme. It may be sacrificing an animal to a pagan god for a good harvest.  But it can also be “Christianized” into, “If I work really hard to love my neighbor, God won’t strike me with cancer; I will get a better job.  If I sow a financial seed with Rev. Jim Bob’s ministry, then God will give ME more money.”
        3. Enmity and strife – I am really angry with Joe! He shouldn’t have done ____; he never should have said ____.”  He’s on my permanent naughty list.
        4. Jealousy – “I can’t believe Fred got that promotion over me!” Or, “She just thinks her kids are just SO special.” Paul told the Corinthians, “For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” (1 Cor. 3:3).
        5. Fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions – Remember, Paul is speaking to church people about what goes on in church! If you are angry with someone, no matter how much magic Jesus language you sprinkle on it, you are performing works of the flesh.    You need to repent, study Jesus’ loving perfection, and ask him to love through you as you go to your brothers and sisters to humbly seek forgiveness and reconciliation.
      9. These bitter works spring from the soil of a law-driven sin nature. We punish others for breaking our little “l” laws.  Someone says something you don’t want to hear.  Someone does something opposed to yours demands.  People have broken the laws of your “kingdom.”
      10. Our sin nature creates little “l” laws to provide need-fulfillment. I and people around me must say and do certain things for ME to be content.  When my needs aren’t met, I make more laws and work harder to enforce them and to get others around me to live out my laws.
      11. A law-driven life produces the bitter works of the flesh, even in church where the whole body is to be distinguished not by clothing, rituals, bells or smells, but by the open and continuous display of the love of Christ toward one another. A law-driven life makes me live for myself so that I become a self-indulgent person either by moralism or materialism.
      12. The root of the problem that produces the bitter works in Paul’s partial list (and things like these) is lack of trust in God’s provision for your life. When I am seeking to validate myself, I am seeking a righteousness of my own rather than the righteousness of God that comes through trust (Phil. 3:9).
      13. The sin underneath all sins is that we cannot trust the love and grace of Jesus and that we must take matters into our own hands to achieve our needs (Jn. 6:26-29).
      14. This is how all relationships fall apart (marriages, family, church, etc.): I am not GETTING what I need from this person. I want approval, attention, respect, love, help, money, etc. This person has broken my law of need.  The burden is on me to GET and upon you to GIVE. The root of the bitter fruit is distrust in the sovereign promises of God.  But a gospel-driven life (trust in God’s provision) produces fruit of the Spirit.

 

  1. TRUST IN GOD (5:16-18, 22-25)
    1. Spirit vs. Law
      1. 16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. … 18 But if you are being led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
      2. Notice the distinction between what the sin nature wants (desires of the flesh) and performance. The flesh longs to perform.  The Spirit longs to testify about Jesus and his benefits.  In the Spirit’s leading  “…the desires of the flesh are not ‘gratified,’ even though they occur. Nor are our good works ‘achieved,’ even though they occur.”[3]
      3. The old Adam groans to keep a moral law it can never keep perfectly or joyfully and it manufactures its own little “l” laws; both of which produce sour results. But in the Spirit “… the Law of the Lord is fulfilled, not with gloom or out of necessity but with gladness and pleasure.”[4]
      4. The gospel-driven life grows pleasant fruit. The fruit of the Spirit is not produced by the Law, but by trust in the gospel.
    2. Fruit (22-25)
      1. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
      2. “Notice that Paul speaks of ‘fruit,’ not ‘fruits,’ of the Spirit— the fruit of the Spirit is not a checklist to work through but the unified blossoming of a heart liberated by the gospel of grace.” [5]
      3. Have you ever posted these verses on your mirror or your refrigerator and read them like a list of things you need to work on and acquire? Our fleshly bent is to turn fruit of the Spirit into a prescription for higher life, rather than a description of gospel-centered living – the very thing the Asian Gauls were doing under the guidance of the Jerusalem gurus.
      4. Paul has made a careful distinction between works and fruit. In other words, one of these things is not like the other.  One is active; the other is passive; one is performed BY you, one is accomplished IN you.  We receive fruit because of Christ’s hard work for us; we don’t earn it by our hard work for Him.[6]
      5. The free life that brings the fruit of the Spirit is not a self-indulgent life. It is an others-indulgent life, a “my life for YOU” and not a “my life for ME” posture.  The result of Jesus’ infinite love for us is that his love grows IN us just as naturally as fruit grows on a tree.  Unselfish acts flow from receiving God’s unselfish love.
      6. Paul has declared that those trusting in Jesus have been set free from slavery. Real freedom happens only when the resources of the gospel destroy any sense of your need to secure anything beyond what Jesus has already secured for you.
      7. We get infinite love from Jesus so that we can give it away to others. Compared to that, says Paul, there is no Law. Paul Zahl writes, “There is either grace in love or law in judgment. But law always destroys love in its reception. No exception to this exists within human experience. Either grace is entirely grace or it possesses not a drop of creative worth. There are no double messages in grace. Grace in this sense is against the law.”[7]
      8. But, “grace is not finally against the law, because the qualities that grace births in people are the same qualities that the law sought but failed to birth. …When grace produces its natural fruit, the law drops away. There is no need for it anymore, because its work is done. It did not do anything!” [8]

In the Garden of Eden, God provided all the fruit that his people needed to perform the duties he gave them.  Sin entered when Adam, by a work of the flesh, took a fruit that God had not provided. Adam refused to believe that all he truly needed, God had already given.

Paul wants all of us to know that the fruit you need is no checklist.  You have it, not by bitter works of the flesh by means rules for higher life and rededication of your efforts, but by ever-increasing trust in the sufficiency of Christ Jesus.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:1-2).

When the aging faithful disciple whom Jesus loves was banished to an island for his testimony, Jesus came to him and showed John the consummation of all things.  And the last thing John saw of God’s great plan of the universe was the New Jerusalem.  In its center flowed the great river of the water of life, the life-giving Spirit Jesus promised to all who came to him (Jn. 7:38-39; Rev. 22:1-5).

Lining the banks, “on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”

“In grace everything is naturally produced. Everything springs without artifice. Everything comes spontaneously. It requires no “tweaking.” The healing of the nations, according to John, is the result of the growth of fruit. This is grace and not law.”[9]

 

[1] LCWS, Q&A 195.

[2] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 27: Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 5-6; 1519, Chapters 1-6, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 27 (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 362.

[3] Luther, op. cit., 361.

[4] Id at 367.

[5] ESV Bibles by Crossway (2013-09-30). ESV Gospel Transformation Bible (Kindle Locations 262287-262288). Crossway. Kindle Edition

[6] Tullian Tchividjian, Free at Last, Part 10.

[7] Paul F. M. Zahl. Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life (p. 92). Kindle Edition.

[8] Id. at 93.

[9] Id. at 57.