Well, it's that time for us to dig into the Word of God, so take your Bibles and turn to Galatians chapter 5. Galatians 5, we're looking at verses 24 to 26. We have finished with the fruit of the Spirit, and hopefully you have delighted in that as much as I have and found it to be as profitable as I have. A lot has been said there and we've spent, oh boy, four or five months just in the fruit of the Spirit. So hopefully we will become better at displaying that. But now we turn our attention to some other matters and Paul picks up with his argument in the letter and we go forward. In verses 24 to 26, those verses do present to us sort of a complete thought, and I'm looking forward to getting into those with you. The title of the message that I have this morning is Faith, a Matter of Life and Death. That sounds serious, and it is for a number of reasons. Certainly for the unbeliever, without saving faith in Jesus Christ, he faces God's wrath at the end of time. Peter once said to Jesus, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. There is no one to whom we can go other than Christ. He is the only hope for humanity. The gospel deals with eternal consequences. It comprises the words of eternal life. And anyone who rejects it remains in his condemnation. And that is serious business. But another reason why faith is a matter of life and death has to do more with the process for believers. I'm kind of taking this this expression and using it a little bit differently, there is death and there is life that those of us who are in Christ have experienced, and there is also an ongoing dying and an ongoing living as well for us, and it's this process which I will address this morning. It's rather foreign, really, to many in evangelicalism, but it is vital to their Christian walk, make no mistake. While it's natural, I should say, or part of the nature of the new birth, in all Christians experience what I'm talking about to varying degrees without ever knowing it, the effectiveness of this process is directly proportional to your deliberate involvement in it, your active participation in practicing it. Obviously, I'm I'm talking generally about our sanctification, but we need to get very specific this morning in our understanding of this holy process. Paul teaches us in our text and with a view to bringing about godly change in the Galatians, a very specific understanding of sanctification. I want to look at it with you now. Let's read the text and then we're going to dive in. Paul says, beginning at verse 24, going to 26, Now those who belong to Christ Jesus crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let's follow the Spirit as well. Let's not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. Alright, the first part of this sanctification process that I'm talking about is spelled out here in verse 24, and I'm calling it mortification. Mortification. Mortification. You've crucified the old man. keep crucifying the sin that remains. This is the essence of verse 24, and it is under the category, as I say, of something called mortification. Now, mortification is one of the most neglected doctrines in the church. Few Christians have ever heard of it, much less practice it knowingly and effectively, but we're commanded to practice it. And we really have no choice not to if we're going to run well the race of faith. So what is this exactly? Well, you probably are more familiar with the word than you think. We do use it in regular conversation. People use the word mortify, really, in everyday speech. with a slightly tamer meaning, though, embarrass. Oh, Phyllis, I was absolutely mortified when it happened. It's the idea. But it's used in theology with its most natural meaning, and that is to put something to death, or to use another word from our text, to crucify. It comes from the old Latin mortificare, which means to kill. Our modern English has that idea in some of its words. Mortician, for example, someone who deals with the dead. It's found its way into biblical theology and it refers to the process of putting to death indwelling sin. Really, that's all we're talking about. putting to death and indwelling sin. Make no mistake, we're talking about a biblical process here. This is not man-made. This is not anything that we're putting onto the text. This comes right out of verse 24, and I'll show you in just a few moments. We find this doctrine, though, expressed all over the New Testament, and that's why we should know it experientially. It's in our text for this morning. Look at verse 24 again. Paul says, Now, to those who belong to Jesus Christ, crucified the flesh with its passions. The word crucify in the Greek New Testament refers to crucifixion of Christ in most of its occurrences, so obviously it means to put someone to death, specifically to nail him to a stake. But in our verse, Paul is referring to a process that Christians do. Crucify is the verb, the subject of the verb are Christians. You put to death the lusts and the passions. The verb is active as well. And we are the subjects of that action. We are to be crucifying. So what did we crucify and when did we do this exactly? Well, first of all, it's true that we have crucified the old man at conversion. Let's begin there. In three of its occurrences, where it doesn't refer to Jesus himself directly, the word crucify refers to this process whereby our old selves were put to death, nailed on the cross with Christ the moment we became believers. Paul tells us as much in Romans 6, verse 6, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Christ. in order that our body of sin might be done away with so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. So the old self, or in some other versions the old man, refers to our unconverted selves, who we were before we came to Christ and to salvation, we were by nature depraved individuals destined for condemnation. That's who we were. But when we trusted Jesus for salvation, spiritually speaking, we crucified the depraved nature on the cross with Christ. We nailed our unconverted self to the cross so that it lives no more. It died. In Galatians 2.20, Paul uses it again this way. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. In the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. If there's any question about whether the old unconverted person lives, this settles it. He doesn't. He's been put to death. Now, please notice the past tense here. I have been crucified. And in our text as well, you crucified. Now, the spirit of Jesus indwells the believer, and the believer now lives a completely different lifestyle by faith, completely different. In fact, the third text that we consider is Galatians 6.14. By Paul's hand, he says, but far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Here we see that through the cross of Christ, not only was Paul's old nature put to death, but he became dead to the world and the world dead to him. In other words, his relationship that he once had with the world system, which taught him self-righteousness, that world has been obliterated. Paul doesn't live in that realm anymore. It's dead to him. He lives in a completely different realm, a spiritual realm. He is of the kingdom. If we were to put it in terms of Ecclesiastes, he lives above the sun. Now, when you consider these three uses of the word crucify, all from Galatians, mind you, we're obligated to see the same meaning of the word in Galatians 5.24. If Paul uses the same meaning of the word in Galatians in the other three Galatian texts, then we can be sure that he uses the same meaning here, unless he were to give us reason to believe otherwise, but he doesn't in this verse. Gives us no indication that he means anything different. Paul tells us that those who belong to Christ, Jesus, crucified their old unconverted selves along with their passions and desires when they repented of their sin and turned to Christ in faith. At that moment we became What became true of them is that they identified with Christ's death and burial and resurrection, a great truth that we communicate in the ordinance of baptism, right? Now, when you said yes to Jesus Christ's gospel, you said goodbye to your love relationship with the world. You turned from all its allures, all its false promises, and embraced a new life in Christ, an eternal life. You essentially nailed your old life to the cross with Christ and you put it to death. Now the world no longer has control over you. It is dead to you as well. But that's only half the truth. The other half is just as important, but sadly not well understood by many Christians in the church today. And that is that we continue to crucify sin that is characteristic of the old man. There's something more going on in this text. This isn't the last word. Yes, it's true. Believers have crucified themselves with Christ. They've turned from dumb idols to the living God, and they've left their old man in an unmarked grave. The old man is dead and buried. However, if this is the case, why do we still sin? If our relationship to sin has changed so that it no longer has mastery over us, that we're no longer obligated to sin as we once were in our unconverted state, then why do we still struggle with sinful lusts and passions? It's a fair question. How come rogue, unprofitable thoughts still plague us? How is it that idolatrous thinking still captivates us? We answer this question in part many months ago when we addressed the flesh. If you remember back in chapter 5 verses 16 and 17, Paul said, I say walk by the spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh for the desire of the flesh is against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh for these are in opposition to one another. Paul commands us clearly to walk by the Spirit, which is shorthand, of course, for obey the words of the Spirit written for us in the Bible so that we will not carry out the desires of the flesh. But I thought I was dead to all of that. What's going on? Well, the answer is not complicated. It's true that we are new creations in Christ. God has replaced the heart of stone with a heart of flesh. That is, he has replaced the old nature with a new nature. We are new creations. The old is gone, the new has come. We are certainly perfect in Christ positionally. If you were to drop to the ground and close your eyes and expire, you would be with Christ immediately because you're perfect in Christ. But experientially, we're far from perfect. And though we've crucified the old man, many of the characteristics of the old man still linger. We don't just drop or lose everything, shed all. our sinful habits at the cross and become immediately perfect when we are born again. No, we drag all of that right into the faith with us. There's still ungodly habits that we've trained ourselves in over many years of our unconverted life that we've not put off yet. Still ungodly ways of thinking and urgings and yearnings that we've not replaced with godly passions and thinking as we should. And the reason is because our inner man is now growing in grace, learning to be what we have become in Christ. This is really where the battle rages, beloved, where the fight is. We need to learn new godly habits, renew our minds to think biblically so that we can act biblically and not conform to the world. We need to put off the old ungodly habits and ways of thinking, renew our mind, and then put on, in their place, godly habits that are characteristic of the new self. Paul's clear about this in Romans 7. where he says that indwelling sin is a force to be reckoned with. And though it is no longer our master and we are no longer obligated to it, it is ever present, luring, tempting, badgering us. But we have to put to death the sin that remains, we continually crucify it when we are confronted with it. This is the doctrine of mortification. It's a big word, but it's an uncomplicated concept. And it's helpful. to understand it. In his commentary in Galatians, Phil Reichen gives four realities of mortification that I thought was worth rehearsing with you. So let's do that. The first reality of mortification, this process, is that it's necessary. It's absolutely necessary. Paul told us already back in verse 16, Galatians 5, to walk by the Spirit so that we don't carry out the lust of the flesh. So there is a deliberate action on our part to walk or live by the Spirit. It's deliberate, which means obey His Word. Walking by the Spirit means to obey His Word. Let it abide in us. Elsewhere in Romans 6, verse 11, Paul says that this important process of mortification starts by simply acknowledging what's true of us in Christ. He says, consider yourself to be dead to sin and alive to God. If we're dead to sin and we're alive to God, we'll continually be on the lookout, making sure to kill any thought or passion that wars against the Spirit. We get better at this, controlling our minds, guarding our hearts, and we need to be aggressive in the fight. Paul continues in verses 12 to 14, he said, sin is not to reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts. And do not go on presenting the parts of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as those who are alive from the dead, and your body parts as instruments of righteousness for God for sin shall not be master over you. There's no question that this fight of putting to death the lusts of the flesh is absolutely necessary, since all that we do in the body is motivated by desire, right? Matthew 16, verse 24, Jesus said to the disciples, if anyone wants to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. Be prepared every day to follow Christ even to the death, if that is necessary. The second reality of mortification is that it's painful. It's painful. And let's be clear about what exactly this pain is about. I'm not talking about physical pain in our bodies. Martin Luther, when he was still a Catholic monk, before his conversion, practice a form of self-flagellation, where he would whip himself in the back and inflict great pain to himself as a way really to further atone for his sin, if you can believe that. It's actually quite common. He just did it to excess. It was a painful, bloody, and futile practice. Didn't do anything. Obviously, mortification of sin has nothing to do with beating up our bodies, literally mistreating them, hurting ourselves in any way to atone for our sins. That is a completely foreign thought in the Bible. That's not biblical. It takes away, of course, from the sufficiency of Christ's atonement. Now, we're talking about killing our sinful lusts that swirl around in the heart, and we're talking about guarding our hearts from being infested and overtaken with them. And if we're honest, then we'll admit that killing off what we idolatrously embrace can be painful. Christians are reluctant to slay their passions, no matter how ungodly they are. That's why they're passions. The moment that sin is conceived, we love our sinful idols, we crave them, we bow the knee to them, we want to serve them, and God God help anyone who comes in our way or in between us and them. Do you see how deceitful this dynamic is? The lust of the heart are perhaps the strongest thing in life that we know. They grip us, they rule us, they direct us, they make promises to us that they cannot keep. Don't underestimate the power of ungodly passion. What must override any lust of the flesh is love for Christ and a desire to please him more than anything. That's why Paul said that's the goal of the Christian life. Second Corinthians 5.9, we make it our ambition, whether in the body or away from it, to please him. That is the most wholesome and the primary passion that must rule our hearts. Christ must be the object of our affections. The third reality of mortification is that it's gradual. It's gradual. Ryken says, quote, When it comes to eliminating sin, there are no shortcuts, only a long, slow, painful death, end quote. There is certainly this is certainly the case, I think, with life dominating sins. They become habitual in our lives. We've taught ourselves to respond a certain sinful way to our ungodly passions, and habits die hard, right? They die hard. God created us as creatures of habit so that we can move through life with ease. It takes months to learn a process or a procedure, a new habit, And even longer if one is complicated in detail. It seems, of course, mechanical at first, but after a long while of painstakingly applying ourselves to adopt this new habit, it eventually becomes second nature. We've all experienced this, driving a car. learning a particular process at work or procedure. We don't even think about all the steps and the sequences of them because we've got it. It's second nature. It's instinctual at that point. We could do it in our sleep. Well, the same is true in the Christian life. Once we've repented in the heart, we then need to have to renew our minds and reprogram our thinking and then relearn new behavior. We put off the characteristics of the old man by the renewing of our minds, and we learn to put on in its place the corresponding godly characteristics of the new man. And it may seem mechanical for a while, but that's okay. Every good process is that way. We have to let the actions of the new godly behavior become muscle memory. And soon godliness in a particular area of weakness will become second nature. It's great when godliness becomes second nature, but we have to train for it. Colossians 3.5, therefore, treat the parts of your earthly body as dead to sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. There's the mortification. 1 Corinthians 15 31, I affirm, Paul says, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, that I die daily. This is a daily dying. That's how deliberate it has to be. Every day until Christ returns or you go home to be with him first, whichever comes first. Number four, and the last reality of mortification that Reichen mentions is that it's final. The hope that we Christians have is that we will be perfect experientially when Jesus comes and we see him face to face. Sin and our old man received the death blow on the cross, and in that instance, sin was stripped of its place as our master over our lives, and we're not slaves to it anymore. In fact, we are called to have mastery over it, as Cain was. Of course, Cain failed. We're to have mastery over our sin when it comes knocking on our door so that it doesn't rule us. And in this process that we need to engage in until our new man is fully redeemed, both inwardly and outwardly in heaven, again, we need to be aggressive, conscientious, deliberate, It is a daily event. The Christian faith is very much about how we continue to crucify remaining sin in our lives. Now mortification is only half the sanctification process. That's sort of the negative side, if you will. The other half, the positive side, is just as necessary, and it demands just as much of our labor and struggle. We might think of mortification as, say, one side of the coin of sanctification, and the positive side we will call vivification. Yes, vivification, right? Just matches mortification, right? Vivification. You're thinking, what in the world is that? I've never heard of vivification. I'm not making it up. It didn't originate with me. It too is from a Latin word, vivere, which means to live. It's just a fancy word. to mean live, and in the spiritual sense, vivification means to live out one's faith in concrete, tangible ways. And you can see the difference, right, between the two. In mortification, we are to put to death sin constantly, continually, daily. And in vivification, we are to live Christ to the world and make him the object of our affections. So, let's look at vivification. You've been made alive. Keep living. This is the essence of verse 25. We find the doctrine mentioned here where Paul talks about it right on the heels of mortification and the sequence here is a good reminder that the two always go together in sanctification. We need to constantly put to death. the lust of the flesh and at the same time nurture and live out holy affections for Christ and seek to be like him. So let's look at verse 25. Vivification is all about being what we have become in Christ. That's perfect. That's what it's about. Being what we have become. Paul says in verse 25, if we live by the spirit, let us follow the spirit as well. So first thing I want to point out to you is that we were made alive in the Spirit. Just as we were crucified with Christ on the cross, we were made alive in Christ by the Spirit. That's the first part of verse 25. It's really a statement about what is indicative of us, what's factual about a Christian. We've been made alive by the Spirit. We've been born again. That's what Paul means when he says that we live by the Spirit. We are alive by him. The reason that we are alive spiritually is because the Holy Spirit's regenerating work in us. He made us alive. He brought spiritual animation to our dead souls and raised us from the dead with Christ. And at that moment, we saw with new eyes that our sin was sin, and we heard the gospel with new ears. and we can embrace it. But having said that, this is the other part of this truth, we go on to be guided by the spirit. That's the second half of the sentence. It complements the first and it speaks about the result of having been made alive. It's this, follow the spirit. If the Spirit indwelt us and regenerated us and equipped us, then let us seek his guidance for faith and godliness. You might say that whereas the first half of the sentence told us what's indicative of us, we've been made alive by the Spirit, the second half of the sentence speaks about what is imperative now about how we should live, and that is, be guided by the Spirit. The Greek word behind the translation guide is an interesting one, and it's quite deliberate by the Apostle Paul. He could have used other words, but this particular one is a military term. And it refers to soldiers who keep in step with the commanding officer's cadence. who walked in formation with other soldiers, right? You've heard this before. Your left, your left, your left, right, left. Maybe not. It eventually was used figuratively to mean live in conformity with some presumed standard or set of customs. So to abide by a rule of order is really the idea. Now let's use the military formation of soldiers as an illustration of the meaning here, and others have explained it this way as well. Soldiers march, and they run in tight formation, tight formation, so tightly that the chest of one soldier is pressing up against the back of the other soldier in front of him in this very close kind of marching. There's Marines in the audience here. They'll confirm what I'm saying. As you can imagine, in this formation, there's the risk of tripping up the line if you get out of step even slightly. Hence, the importance of the cadence. The drill sergeant calls it out to keep each soldier stepping at the same time, in the same place, as everyone else. In this maneuver, the soldiers are concerned with only one thing. listening to the DI's instruction. That's it. That's all they're interested in. He not only maintains their cadence, but directs them where to go and when to pick up the pace. But that's his business, not theirs. And in the same way, Christians listen to the Holy Spirit's voice, his cadence, his word establishes in us a certain rhythm of life that directs our steps, tells us how to move, how fast to move and where to move. It's all the more important that we know God's will and be quick and precise in our execution of it. What does it mean, then, to be guided by the Spirit? It's an important question that we need to answer accurately and biblically, especially today, if we're to be precise and confident about whether it is the Holy Spirit that's guiding us or something else. There's been so much error out there floating around in the church scene. which is really characterized by a lack of Bible study and a great emphasis on feelings. We're not surprised at that. Is there a great emphasis on feelings just in the secular culture as well, even to the contradiction of biology and scientific fact? So those in the church who claim to be Christian but don't know the word well are going to follow what makes them feel comfortable and avoid that which makes them feel uneasy. And that becomes their standard for confirming whether they are in the will of God and being guided by the Holy Spirit. But feelings, beloved, are deceiving. And to make peace and your comfort a determining factor is a grave mistake. There are plenty of things that God calls us to do that will not give you warm fuzzies. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. Well, that's not a warm fuzzy. Most Christians don't enjoy confronting people. And for that reason, they won't, and they'll justify by falling back on some mistaken notion that God wants them to be at ease with whatever they do. Church discipline, as it is laid out in Matthew 18, is not for the faint-hearted. The writer of Hebrews commands every Christian to submit to elders of a local church, but how many refuse to join a local church and come under the oversight of local elders? Yet that is the Holy Spirit's command. It's because of this that many contemporary churches don't have membership. It turns people off. They don't like to come back. Many don't keep the Lord's Day holy and they refuse to allow anything except emergencies to interfere with their worship of God because of the of the flack that they'll receive, perhaps from unsaved family and friends. It's too painful for some Christians to alert their family and friends that Sundays are off limits. Beloved, there is no such notion taught in the churches in the New Testament of knowing God's will by feelings or circumstances. But there is plenty in the New Testament that directs us to the text of Scripture, to rightly divide it and to follow it. Just one we'll do here for an example. In Ephesians chapter 5 verses 15 to 19, the Apostle Paul says, watch carefully how you live. not as foolish persons, but as wise. Now he's going to tell us what is wisdom when it comes to living. Making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. So we got to redeem the time. Therefore, do not continue in ignorance, but understand what is the will of the Lord. So it's the will of God that we need to know. And do not get drunk on wine in which lies debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit, which is shorthand for obeying the word once you know it. His exhortation to live wisely calls for making the best use of our time, which demands that we know what the will of God is. And there's no question that the will of God is the word of God on the printed page which the Holy Spirit himself produced, bearing the men along to write exactly what he wanted written, and then preserving it down through the centuries that it would wind up in your hands so that you could have it. And we must listen to his words. figure of being filled with an intoxicating influence is meant to teach us that if we're going to put ourselves under any intoxicating influence, it should only be the Holy Spirit's influence and we should be controlled only by him. And how do we make sure that we are controlled by the Holy Spirit? by doing what he says in his word. Very simple, not complicated. Follow the command and principles of scripture even if they violate your tradition, even if they violate your feelings, even if it seems illogical, even if it makes situations for you worse. Trust the Lord and leave the consequences of your obedience to him. We don't look to those things to confirm that we are in God's will, those external things that we mentioned. It's what the text says we should do. Jesus says, if you love me, you will what? Keep my commandments, which are in the word. Nowhere else. Since the Spirit has given us life, we should also let him control our lives, Paul is saying here in Galatians. Paul puts it this way later in Galatians 6.16, and all who will follow this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. All right, so so far we've drawn from Paul's words in verses 24 and 25 a very crucial principle for godly living, mortify and vivify. continue to crucify, continue to live, put to death, and keep reviving, keep living. Revive the godly passions of the new man. Continue to crucify remaining sin in our lives while at the same time living Christ, setting our affections on him, walking by the Spirit. And while it would have been enough, I think, for Paul just to rehearse this Very simple and profound principle with the Galatians. He brings it up for a practical reason. Remember, this is a letter, right? It's a letter. And he wants to encourage, really, a godly one-anothering among them. That's why he brings up this mortification, vivification principle. It naturally leads to edification. And I want to point that out to you with verse 26. Edification, serving one another. If we're continually putting to death ungodly passion and living by the guidance of the Holy Spirit's words, well then we're in the best position to avoid pride, prideful activity that ruins the spiritual health of the local church, as well as the case in churches of Galatia. It didn't stop there. It's certainly true today. Because they started to embrace the teaching of the Judaizers and They started operating by a gospel of works. They actually began to develop ungodly lusts, which led to ungodly behavior, and the kind that would actually cause dissension in the church, and that was bound to happen. In their case, for example, Jewish believers in Galatia learned to look down the end of their nose at the Gentile believers who were slow to buy into the gospel of law. And in response, the Gentile believers could start to look back with disdain at the Jewish believers in Gentile. Soon they would all segregate into their own little groups and refuse to have table fellowship with each other. Either group could become boastful, claiming that their position was better. They would no doubt waste the Lord's time by spending hours challenging each other. their positions and quarreling out of an envious posture that craved to be right. Listen to verse 26. Let's not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. There is perhaps no clearer passage that I can think of that reveals the connection between ungodly passions and ungodly behavior than James. Chapter four. James chapter four. In the first three verses, James shows the cause and effect relationship that takes place and that many church folk actually don't realize. I want to read this to you. James says, what is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is the source not your pleasures that wage war in your body parts? You lust, you do not have, so you commit murder or hate. And you are envious, and you cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. And when you ask, you don't receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend what you request on your pleasures. What a revealing text this is. It's so relational. I mean, it speaks to us. I think we understand what's happening here. The source of our quarreling and conflicts are our own pleasures. And, of course, we're talking about sinful pleasures, right? Ungodly ones, selfish ones. In this case, they're ungodly. They were waging war in the body. in the actual mind of the believer there in James Church. We've urges, we have yearnings, and we cater to them. They become idolatrous. We want them so badly, And if we cannot satisfy our pleasures, then we begin to fight and we quarrel and we hate. James says that's the way it goes and it shouldn't go that way. He's clear about it in verse two. You lust, you do not have, you commit murder. You're envious, you cannot obtain, so you fight. It's undeniable, this cause and effect relationship. And I want to emphasize that the way to avoid this kind of idolatrous thinking and behavior is by the process of mortification and vivification. If we are going to put ourselves under the control of the Holy Spirit's written word and live godly lives, we must, at the same time, continually put to death the ungodly lusts of our hearts. Let's go back to our soldier illustration. just for a moment. We march in formation to the Spirit's call and cadence, right? But we are not marching alone. We're marching in formation. This is a unit. We're marching together. And if I'm out of step with the Spirit, not listening to His word as I ought, then I will surely cause problems in the ranks. I can cause people to trip up, I can cause them to stumble, be out of step as well. I cannot march to the beat of my own selfish passions, nor can anyone else, while in formation. We're always in formation because we belong to a body. With these passions, I cannot march to them in formation and not push and not shove and not bump others about, which amounts to pride and provocation and envy that Paul's talking about. We maintain our unity by keeping in step with the Spirit's truth. and being of the same mind, all agreeing, all encouraging others to keep in step. We read in Romans 6.16, be of the same mind toward one another. Do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. In Philippians 2.2, Paul says, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. As Paul will make clear in the next chapter, we come alongside those who break formation to gently restore them to formation again. So faith is a matter of life and death. We need to continually die to self. to our ungodly passions, slaying idolatrous lusts and desires, and live what is true of us aggressively, skillfully, for the honor and glory of God and for the benefit of his church. Our Father, we are grateful for your goodness to us, your mercy, your grace in preserving for us your truth that we might study together. We thank you for the Holy Spirit's help And as he has given us greater understanding of these texts and given us a clearer idea of how we are to live for Christ. Oh God, we do pray that you will see us putting to get to death the remaining sin in our lives. and living for Christ that you would be pleased and that you would be honored so that you might use us in great ways for your honor, for your glory, and for the benefit of the church. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.