Welcome to lesson 7 in the series titled Galatians the Grace Gospel Under Attack brought to you by Mission 119 Ministries. This is a verse-by-verse study through the book of Galatians. The title to this lesson is Grace Alive and we'll be covering Galatians chapter 5 verses 1 through 25. If you are interested in other resources from a grace perspective you can find several verse-by-verse studies. on the sermon audio page, as well as several books on Amazon. Because this is a verse-by-verse study, it's always important that we begin with some review to get our grounding and context for the passage under consideration in this lesson, and I recommend that you have your Bible open, if that's possible, to read along with us. So, by way of getting into a review, this book, you know, the big picture version, is it is all about faith alone in Christ alone. That is the issue, and there are some false teachers that have come around to these churches in the province of Galatia, and Paul warns sternly against adding anything to faith alone in Christ alone, and you see that especially in, for example, Galatians chapter 1, verse 9. Now, a perverted or a twisted gospel is faith in Christ plus anything else. And there's just so many things that might get added, many of which are good things, but they're not part of the gospel. We do not want to confuse the gospel or to change it. Things like you've got to live in a certain way or perhaps be, you know, water baptized. You've got to repent of your sins, whatever that means. In Galatians chapter 1 verses 10 to 24, the Apostle Paul stresses that his gospel has divine origin. It's very easy for people to say, well, this is just your idea, Paul, and we've got our ideas. Paul says, no, no, no, this gospel that I preach, I didn't get this from people. I didn't get this from Peter. you know, as good as Peter was. I didn't get it from from James, the Lord's half-brother. I got this directly from God, specifically that Jesus Christ revealed it to him. Galatians chapter 2 stresses that the content has divine sanction. It's come from God, and that Paul goes out of his way. He gives autobiographical material explaining how after he was saved on the Damascus Road, he didn't immediately go to Jerusalem. He didn't visit with the apostles there because he had direct revelation from God. Chapter 3 stresses the supremacy of faith and grace to the law, and he's saying to us, and I'm going to read some verses for you, You're made alive by faith, that is, or by grace, but through faith. And because of that, your Christian walk needs to be the same way. So look at these key verses to have this framework in mind. Galatians chapter three, verse two and three. Paul writes to them, he's heard about the false teachers that have come in, and it just changed them overnight. And heresy always works that way. For some reason, we can spend years of growth in a proper way on the Word of God. Jesus said in Matthew 4 that we should live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, and we're doing that. But I tell you what, we can just change overnight. We get hold of a bad idea, and Paul says, this only would I learn of you. Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? That's a rhetorical question. The answer is, of course, they received the Spirit of God, by the hearing of faith, not by doing. They could never do enough to have the Spirit of God come in and dwell them. He continues, are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, that very first step, that step when they trusted Christ and they became a child of God, that happened in or by the Spirit. He says, are you now, he says, now that you're a Christian, you're going to move forward. Are you now going to move forward? Are you going to be made perfect? Are you going to be made mature? All full grown-up believer, are you gonna do that by the flesh? That's absurd. If you couldn't do step one and become a Christian by the flesh, what makes you think you can become a mature Christian by the flesh? And the answer is, you can't. But all the false Gospels out there, in one way or another, make it about the flesh. Galatians 3.24, Paul says, you know, the law that these false teachers have come in and they've packaged it up and they've said, Yeah, I trust Christ, but you also need to be a law keeper. He says we're past that. He says the law was our schoolmaster. That's the King James translation, but it's a word for something akin to like a nanny. It's someone that has a full charge over a child and helping them grow up. He says the law was our schoolmaster. Sometimes you'll read a tutor or something like that. And it was a tutor or schoolmaster with a purpose, you know, unto Christ. And I know that King James adds words in italics, to bring us. It's really not that. It's until Christ, until Christ would come. Because what Christ would do on the cross would change all of that. That we might be what? Justified. That we might become righteous, by God's declaration, by faith. That's what changed. You know, before we have the schoolmaster, we're children, we need the schoolmaster. Do this, don't do that. But when Christ comes, it's gonna be by faith. And by faith, we get declared righteous, what we could never accomplish through our works. And then he says, in verse 25, but after that faith has come, and that's the faith that's come, he's talking doctrinally of what came with Christ, this belief we have, this gospel message, we're no longer under schoolmaster. There's so many verses in the New Testament that say that the law is a system for salvation, for sanctification, has been set aside. It's just over and over, and this gets built out at length in the book of Hebrews because it has been replaced. A new priest named Jesus Christ, our high priest after the order of Melchizedek, a new priesthood, us as Christians, a royal priesthood, as Peter says in 1 Peter, and a new system to administer. We call it sometimes the New Covenant, and so you see that also in Hebrews. But it's just to say this, there's always some folks come and say, and they'll fight you to the teeth, just like talking to somebody about whether the earth is flat, They love the fight, and they'll tell you you're under the law, and I'm telling you right here in Galatians 3, 24, and 25, you're not. And what Paul spends this whole book saying is, you're not, and not only that, to put yourself under the law is a recipe for disaster, and we'll get more into that. Galatians 4, 19, stepping into the next chapter, he uses this interesting allegory We'll just overview that in a moment, but I want you to see something about what the goal is. He says, my little children, Paul speaks as a pastor. He cares about these people. The false teachers do not. They're targets. They're notches on their guns, so to say. Paul cares about these people. He says, of whom I travel in birth. He likens the pain he's had over knowing that, first, the work he put into their lives to bring them to salvation, and the pain he feels as they've been moved astray. And he says, I travel in birth again, he says, until Christ be formed in you. And that's ultimately the goal. Not just that we would be a Christian, but that Christ would be formed in us, that we would become Christ-like. There's this allegory where Paul compares, from the history of Genesis, two women and two sons. Sarah and Hagar both had children through Abraham. One was the wife, Sarah. One was her servant, her handmaiden, Hagar. And following what was common in that culture when she was barren. And God had said she'd have a child, but she was not being very faithful. She did what a lot of women would do. She said, why don't you go have a child through Hagar and we'll more or less adopt the child and he'll be our son or daughter. And so, I'm assuming that Abraham didn't take much convincing and went and had sex with her and they had a child named Ishmael. This was real history. Paul uses it as an allegory for the law system, which brings nothing but bondage for the Christian, and for the faith system, the grace system, which brings liberty and ultimately godliness. And we're going to see that. And in that story, in that allegory, Hagar, who was the servant, she's the bondwoman or the slave, she has a son named Ishmael, he's not the child of promise, and she is likened to Mount Sinai. That, of course, is where the law was given to Moses. But Sarah, on the other hand, the actual wife of Abraham, she eventually has a child years, years later after Hagar has a child, and this is the child of promise named Isaac. And she represents not Jerusalem on this earth, the current Jerusalem, but the heavenly Jerusalem, the one you'll read about in the last couple of chapters of the book of Revelation and in Hebrews and other places. And she represents the freedom, Because she's not a slave, and is a free person. Her son is free, and he will inherit of Abraham. And it's a picture for us. The children of the bondwoman, those who identify with the law, with Mount Sinai, they're not heirs. But the children of Sarah, born after the Spirit, chapter 4, verse 29, they're heirs, and they're free. And this all builds up to saying, first of all, why would you not want to be free? But second of all, after Paul spends four chapters telling us, don't go back under the law system, telling us, of course, by application, speaking to these folks that he had ministered to in the first century, a natural question for a lot of folks is, well, if I don't go under the law, what do I do? How do I know how to live? And I'm gonna tell you, this is the most critical lesson in this series on Galatians. I have found that many, if not most, Christians just don't know the material we're gonna cover, and it's not something that's only taught here. I'm gonna go through a lot of verses to belabor it. I usually try to just stick to Galatians, but not this time. You need to know that what Paul has to say here is pervasive in the New Testament. Paul was not the only one that taught it, but I'll primarily focus on verses that he wrote. And it's just this, how does a Christian live a victorious life? If it's not rules keeping, what do I do? And we're gonna see that, and I hope I can make it as practical and as plain as possible. I would do my best. So let's look at chapter five then. The main divisions at a high level, the first 12 verses, are liberty with the law, and it should be liberty without the law, rather, and then liberty without license to sin, verses 13 to 25. So Galatians 5.1, Paul says to stand fast, therefore, in the liberty the freedom wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." I mean, this is as plain as he can say. Don't get entangled with this law-keeping system. And we can make application, as I've said in prior lessons, to all kinds of new performance Gospels. And what Paul's going to make clear in a moment, if you put one regulation of performance You ruin the whole thing. And you who want to go and say, well, I want to mix. Yes, I need some grace, but I need some rules. He says you're going to become entangled in a yoke of bondage and you will fail to live out the holiness. You will fail to have Christ formed in you. The very system, the very rules you think are going to generate that, they won't. And he's going to talk about why they won't. So, nothing here about becoming a Christian, by the way. Why? Paul speaks to people who are already Christians. He's not concerned that they weren't really saved. He's not concerned that they lost their salvation. He is concerned that they're making bad decisions. because it's very difficult to be a Christian and experience failure in your life over and over again when God has these glorious promises about how we can live different and we can be better than we were before. Not necessarily better than other people, but better than we were before. And if you keep failing, you're going to wonder, well, what's the problem? Well, the problem is that you're not doing it the way God said. And he says, if you get entangled again, that's going to be a problem. So they need to take a stand. There's a lot of things Christians fight over, and that's unfortunate. On the other hand, we have a lot of folks now who say we should never fight on anything. Now, they won't quite say it that way, but when you pin them down, that's what they believe. Because I have found that most Christians today don't think we should divide over the content of the gospel. That is the issue Paul's writing about. And he is saying this is an issue to divide about because it matters a great deal. It has long-ranging consequences. They should take a stand, and so should we. We're in a time when so many people are repackaging work systems. They won't call it law-keeping. Some do, most don't. They'll call it something else. They'll make it sound very pious, like lordship, salvation. Paul says, if you're free, why would you go back to bondage? So, verse 2. Behold, I, Paul, say unto you, that if you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Now, this is a verse, a couple of verses, that if you just started here without reading the first four chapters, you could easily misconstrue these verses. Lots of people, and certainly in the United States, men, of course, are circumcised as babies, and they're not even Jewish. It's a very common practice, and he's not saying anything about that issue. What he's talking about, these people as step one to reengaging with the law as a system for justification, and a system for sanctification, their step one was to get circumcised. And Paul is saying, if you do that, Christ profits you nothing. So we look at this. He says, if you take step one, you will give up your liberty in Jesus Christ. He profits you nothing. And two, you place yourself under the entire law system. He says, it's not just about being circumcised. What you're doing, the moment you decide that I need to get circumcised because that is part of my justification you take the entire law system. You're a debtor, he says, to the whole law. You know, why is it Christ will profit you nothing? This is not a loss of salvation issue. What he's telling you is Christ has brought you liberty, but the moment you personally make the decision to go back in the jail cell and close the bars behind you and lock yourself in, That liberty, you've set it aside. Now you can get it back again, but you have set it aside, and you have chosen. You can't blend it. You can't have, I want some sanctification the way Jesus teaches it through Paul, and I want some of this rules keeping. You don't get to do that. The moment you start with the rules, you're done with Jesus's way, and you're on a road with a bridge out ahead. So he says, you know you're not able to do the whole law. That's the problem. You become a debtor to do the whole law, except you're not capable, and neither am I. You can't straddle the fence, my friends, between works and grace. It has to be grace if you want this life to be the victorious Christian life that God wants for you. Verse 4. I don't want to belabor this verse a whole lot, but I will tell you this is one of the most common proof texts for those who say that you can lose your salvation. And they have to therefore teach that these people in Galatia either had or would lose their salvation, something Paul never suggests. It's real simple. He's choosing, he's dealing with people who are choosing between two systems, grace and law. Grace is a means of both sanctification and justification, and law is a means of sanctification and justification, and they're all in water. And so when you pick law, You've fallen away from grace, not from salvation. He doesn't say that. He doesn't say you're not a child of God anymore. He's just saying you've fallen away from that freedom, that liberty, and that power by the Holy Spirit to live the life God wants you to live, and you've fallen away from that. You've put yourself away from it. So we can see a comparison here between grace and law. Grace says you're justified at the moment of faith, and then you're sanctified after that. But he speaks to the people who, they're already Christians, and yet they're going back to law, and so he doesn't say sanctified, he says justified, and there's a reason. You see, because when it's works, justification and sanctification are the same. They're blended together. And worse than that, you never know if you're saved, in the sense of eternal salvation, because it's works-based. You spend your whole life working, not knowing. hoping that maybe you were good enough. It blends the justification and the sanctification. There's much more freedom when you know that by faith you've become a child of God. You are justified, and now you're free to serve in faith. And so, if you believe keeping the law is necessary to be justified, you won't know whether or not you're really saved until you die. This is the uncertainty that comes into, in this case, the life of Christians. Now, they're really saved, but they're going to have the doubt because they've pinned their hopes not merely on the promise of God, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever, that's you and I, You know, believeth in him, would not perish, but have everlasting life. That's a promise. When you have a promise of God, you know. But when you set aside the promise of God and you say, I gotta be good enough, gotta be circumcised, gotta keep the rules, keep the feasts, do this, do that. You don't know. You may be a real Christian, but you don't have all those doubts. What a bad place to be. Christ is of no effect because you're not looking to Him and the promise, you're looking to the works. And in that sense, you've fallen from grace. Well, verse five and six, for we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith for in Jesus Christ, neither circumcision avail anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love. Now, Paul is contrasting the justification of sanctification under the law system versus the grace system, if you will. What does grace say in verse 5? Grace says, through the Spirit. It's the power of God, the Holy Spirit. that is going to enable this life. And he's going to put some more meat on the bones here in a minute as to why that's necessary. But friend, there is no other way for us to live the life of righteousness that God wants for us, except through the Spirit and by faith. Faith always has content. This isn't about believing the gospel. It's more than that. It's about genuinely believing God's Word. And I want to talk more about this nuts and bolts. How do we live through the Spirit and so forth? But don't lose the connection between the enablement of the Spirit, through the Spirit, the content by faith. We're believing, we're taking in the Word of God. And so we're able to wait. That's our life, the whole life, the whole Christian life. There is a certain sense of waiting for the hope. Hope always is used in the Bible, not in the sense of like maybe it'll rain or maybe it won't, but in the sense of the conviction of what God has said about the future. Hope always has this future orientation. Our Christian life is a waiting in some sense. It doesn't mean we're sitting around doing nothing, but we are waiting for the hope. All those things God has promised as He is changing us now and will ultimately glorify us, the hope of righteousness. We have all of that in Jesus Christ. Now, what does circumcision say? Well, circumcision is a metonymy for law-keeping. It's just, you know, it's a piece that stands for the whole, and it doesn't accomplish anything concerning sanctification. That's why Paul says, neither circumcision accomplishes or availeth anything, nor uncircumcision. When it comes to your sanctification, circumcision or not is a neutral matter. What avails something? What does or accomplishes something in our life? Faith, faith, now faith is in your head. It's believing what God has said, but it works its way out. by love. Jesus said that. What was the greatest commandment? He said if you love people, love God and love others, and so faith, what we believe in our head, working its way out by love, and we'll see how that works some more. Verse seven through nine, he says, you did well. You did run well. He pictures them in a race. Who did hinder you that you should not obey the truth? This persuasion come if not of him that calleth you, And he warns them, a little leaven leaveneth a whole lump. You know, he pictures them as being off to a great start. The Christian life is not a 50-yard sprint. It is a marathon. And we're not in a competition with one another. It's interesting that the writer of Hebrews in chapter 12 uses that imagery of sort of the marathon and We're all running, and we have a great cloud of witnesses, and so forth. I'd encourage you to go read that. We're not competing in this race, but we are running with our eyes fixed on the Jesus, on the Savior. If you go back to just the prior verse, the hope of righteousness and faith, that's what we've got. We've got that hope while we're running, and we're running by faith. And then he says, someone cut you off. It's like you were running and someone held their hand up in the air to see if you'd stop, and you stopped. And how did you stop? You stopped obeying the truth. The truth was just the content of this grace gospel, and you have all these other great promises of God, and then all of a sudden someone said, well, no, no, it's not by grace. You need to do this and do that, or you're not a believer. Who hindered you, he said. He said, that persuasion, this false teaching, it's not from the one that called you. It's not from God. And the key principle, a little lovin' lovin' up the whole lump. I said earlier, people, you know, one end of the spectrum, willing to fight over anything. You know, I've usually been in Baptist churches, and God bless them, but a lot of times they fought over some silly things, and I suspect it's not just them, but that's a shame. But at the other end of the spectrum are those who won't fight for anything, won't take a stand for anything in the scripture. That's a problem. It may be a worse problem. And Paul is saying, when it comes to the gospel, a little leaven, a little spoiled, a little of contamination ruins the whole thing. As soon as you blend even a minute amount of works for your salvation or for your sanctification, you ruin it all." And he's going to defend why this is the case in a minute. He's going to give the argument, but just understand what he's saying. This is a strong statement to those who may be listening and saying, well, you know, I've got a different view of the gospel than the other people that we fellowship with at church. We always kind of believe what we want to believe, and it's a little different, and that's okay. Paul says, a little leaven leaveneth the whole up. Okay, it's not okay. The one thing we should have some unity about as we participate in our local church is about the gospel. There's just not a whole lot of other things that are deal breakers, but this one should be. We need purity, clarity, urgency with this gospel. Now, one little regulation, that leavens the whole thing. Well, it's faith in Christ, but you've got to be baptized. It's faith in Christ, but you've got to keep the Sabbath. Those might be good things. I'd love to take every Saturday off, and baptism is commanded in the scripture, but that has nothing to do with whether we blend it into the gospel or the sanctification process. It should come as no shock to you that someone could keep the Sabbath, be baptized, maybe even keep the Ten Commandments, and in truth, be a very poor quality Christian when it comes to holiness. I mean, these are just rules, and they don't generate holiness in your life. Verses 10 through 12, Paul continues, he says, I have confidence in you through the Lord that you will be none otherwise minded, but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be. I brethren if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? Then is the offense of the cross ceased I would they were even cut off which trouble you a lot here to unpack but just quickly Verse 10 Paul expresses his optimism that they're gonna get back on track. He refers to a In the singular, to he that troubleth you, it may indicate that there was a single false teacher that perhaps was leading these so-called Judaizers. We can't be dogmatic about that. But it does seem from verse 11 that when they came into town, they probably said, you know, Paul's teaching the same thing. He teaches circumcision. You won't be doing something different than what Paul teaches. Now, they hadn't heard this from Paul, but this has apparently been raised. And Paul is saying, that's dumb. If I was preaching circumcision, I wouldn't suffer persecution. Now, why is Paul suffering persecution? Primarily from other Jewish people. Why? Because of the offense of the cross. Now, the offense of the cross is you're not saved by the law, and in fact, the cross has brought the law to an end. And Paul's saying, if I were adding the law on top of the cross, nobody'd be mad at me, and they wouldn't persecute me. It's precisely because I don't teach circumcision, and he's using that to stand for all the law, right? It's a metonymy, it's not just the circumcision itself. He says, you know, if I was teaching law plus cross, The Jewish people will be fine with that. They may not agree with the cross, but they won't be persecuting me. It's because of that. And he says about the false teachers, it's hyperbole, but he says, I wish they were even cut off, which trouble you. The King James is sanitized, this verse. It's castrated. They're telling you to be circumcised. I would they were even castrated, which trouble you. Don't cut a little off, cut the whole thing, he says basically. And it's a powerful verse. It's offensive to these people, I'm sure, but you have to understand it was such a serious matter. A little lovin' lovin's the whole lump. Verse 13 and 14, for brethren, you've been called unto liberty. Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. That concept is repeated 10 or 12 times in the New Testament. Jesus said it. The righteousness of the law is fulfilled if we love one another. Are we gonna love one another by keeping the rules? I say not. we're going to love one another by enjoying this liberty we've been called into. But Paul warns them, beginning in this verse, don't use liberty for a license, a license for sin. That's always the accusation against those who, like the Apostle Paul, teach a grace gospel. It's, well, if you can get saved and you don't have to do anything and you don't even have to commit to change your life, then you'll just engage in sin. And Paul deals with that argument. He deals with it in Romans. He deals with it here at length. He says, don't do it. It's not an occasion for sin. He's not saying it can't be done. He's saying don't do it. It's an occasion to fulfill the law by loving one another. Don't give the flesh, he says, an occasion. Now occasion's kind of an unusual word for us, but it's a beachhead, it's a base of operations in military terms. He says don't give the flesh a base of operations in your life by how? By going back to the law system. He says you've been called to liberty, you've been called to grace, but don't use that as a basis to, in a sense, go right back to the very flesh Which is the problem, it's the reason the law system won't work. We do the law when we try to do it from the flesh. This physical body, he will go on and say in a moment, was crucified with Christ. The problem is we still have it. And when we die and get a resurrection body, we won't have a problem with the flesh anymore. As a Christian, we have a renewed, regenerated spirit, and the Spirit of God indwells us. But we got an old flesh hanging on to us. It's how we interact with this material world. As soon as you try to be holy on the basis of an old, dead, corrupted, sin-nature flesh, it's obvious it won't work. And so he says, don't set aside, you've got your liberty, but if you go back and you try to use it as an occasion for the flesh, either to keep the law or just to engage in some sinful behavior, obviously that's not gonna reflect the holiness of God. And so every justification, sanctification system based on works, ultimately has some way you're gonna be holy by doing and not doing. And you do and not do on the basis of the flesh, and it can't work because the flesh is utterly corrupt. You're going to have to live on a new basis. So, he says, by love serve one another. We saw this earlier when he spoke of letting faith work its way out in your life in love toward one another. That's how we use our liberty to do that. We fulfill the righteousness of the law, the holiness of that Old Testament stuff, which Paul said elsewhere is good and it's holy. We fulfill it by love. Look in verse 15, if you bite one another and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed one of another. I think what he has in mind is, you know, when you take up this law system, Everybody's doing, and I guarantee you, I'm doing better than you, and you're doing it better than me. And I've got my standard, and I meet my standard, but you don't meet my standard, and I don't meet yours. This becomes a problem. We start one-upping, we start comparing, we get critical spirits, pride sets in. You look like the Corinthians who are fighting over who baptized who. Everyone has their standards, their rules, and it leads to ruin, and you consume one another. and you don't look much like a church should look. Well, what a terrible thing. In contrast, he says, this I say, verses 16 and 17 and 18, this is the key of the whole book, and it's taken all this time to get here, but people ask me all the time, how do I have this victorious Christian life? What do I do? And they just kind of naturally think it's rules. And maybe it's not the rules of the Old Testament. Maybe it's some other rules. And maybe it's, you know, read your Bible this much a day, and pray this much a day, and do this, and do this, and do this. And yet they're trying it, and they're failing. And it's making them think, well, this Bible thing doesn't work. Well, the problem is you're not trying the Bible thing. Because the Bible thing says it's going to be a God, the Holy Spirit thing. Look at verse 16. This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary, the one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would. But if you be led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. So we're going to unpack this. And we're going to unpack this at some length. But I think it's just a critical doctrine. It's worth the extra time. He says we're to continually walk. Walk is an idiom for live. Paul uses it all the time. If you use a King James like I do, you can do a word search and repeatedly find that walk is either literally to walk or it is used idiomatically for life, for how you live or behave. And so he says, live, and the word in could be by, that preposition could be either one, I think it makes a little more sense to say by, but you live by the spirit. And there's a little syllogism here. If you're gonna live by the spirit, you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh. Note he doesn't say the works of the flesh. It's the desires, the lust of the flesh. See, what's being contrasted here is so critical. You need to understand that works systems attempt to do something that cannot be done, which is why they fail and they make you in despair. They want to change you from the outside in. I'll make you do and say and look a certain way, and that will generate an inward reality. That's absurd. What will happen, God's way, is we will get an inward reality that will come out. And so, this happens between the ears. How we think, our thought life, our mind, if you will, our desires, King James frequently uses, as it does here, the word lust. What's in our head matters. I'm not speaking of the physical brain so much, but what I am telling you, your flesh has a set of desires. They come natural, and they're not good. And the Spirit now, God, the Holy Spirit, has renewed the spiritual part of you. You have a material and an immaterial person, not two people, but in a union. We can't even sense that there's two, but we have a body that enables us to inhabit this physical world. But the real us is this Spirit that's been made, as Paul would say elsewhere, a new creature in Christ. And each of the flesh and the spirit within us, enabled by God the Holy Spirit and dwelled by the Holy Spirit, they have their own distinct sets of desires, of lust, of thinking, and they are all in water. There's no overlap whatsoever. And you now as a Christian have a freedom you didn't have before as a non-Christian. It is a freedom to live by the spirit as opposed to by the flesh. You will always, and this is so key, as long as you're alive, that flesh will be there. Those desires will be there. People will say, well, I just can't get past this. Those desires can be managed because you make a choice to live by the spirit. but those desires are always there. You can be walking along and you're doing great, and anger can erupt in you just in less than a second because you feel you've been wronged in some way, someone cut you off, a police officer pulled you over and gave you a ticket, whatever it is, boss says something, and it just takes a moment, and your whole composition seems to change. Because those desires of the flesh are there. But it's a choice we make. And we need to understand that it's on the inside. It's the desires, the flesh, the mind that's so critical here. And that's what needs to change in order to change the outward behavior. So he says, if you're led by the Spirit, verse 18, you're no longer under the law system. See, you're going to choose one or the other. You can't choose a blend. But if you'll do it God's way and be led of the Spirit, you won't be under the law. If you're under the law, you're going to fail. If you're led of the Spirit, you're going to do the things of the Spirit. You're going to succeed in the way that he's going to describe here in a moment. So let's try to get a better idea of what it means to walk in the Spirit or be led by the Spirit, to live by the Spirit. But it's critical in this immediate context that the issue is the different desires of the flesh or the spirit. We are going to live out the lust of the flesh or, and I don't mean lust in a negative way, but the lust, the desires of the spirit, of the flesh or of the spirit, one or the other. So look, I've picked some verses that have the expression of walking, and I won't spend a lot of time on any of them, or this will take way too long, but Romans 6, 4, and I encourage you to go study all of these verses in some detail, get the context, but Paul begins dealing with sanctification issues in Romans 5, and especially in Romans 6, continues talking about sanctification. He says, therefore, we're buried with him by baptism into death. That's how your flesh has died, and you still have it around, but it's been judged, condemned, it's before the cross, and eventually it's going to be replaced with a new body. He says, this was with a purpose, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also shall walk in newness of life. Now, we're not going to walk in newness of life on the basis of the dead crucified flesh, are we? We're going to walk in newness of life based on that which is new, and that's this spirit within us that's been regenerated, that's been indwelt, and can be led by the Spirit of God. Romans 8, 4, he says that the righteousness of the law, we talked about that right here in Galatians. Paul said if you'll fulfill this one command to love one another, you will fulfill the righteousness of the law. You see, he's talking about the same thing right here in Romans 8. He says that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. Not by rules keeping, he says, who walk not after the flesh. And we're never gonna fulfill the righteousness of the law by walking after the flesh, any kind of rules keeping, but after the spirit. He's teaching the same thing in Romans he teaches in Galatians about this issue. He says, this is so key, he's gonna get it back to our thinking, how we think is the key to the whole thing. If you wanna walk or live in the spirit, it's gonna be a changed mind, a changed thinking. Verse 5 Romans 8 5 for they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh But they that are after the spirit and the things of the spirit for to be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace the point is that the people who are after the flesh are the ones who think about the flesh. Their mind, their thinking, is about things of the flesh. Your thought life has so much to do with your behavior. Your emotions are triggered from how you think. Right thinking will produce a whole different set of emotions, including anger, but not just anger, than wrong thinking. And so those who are after the flesh are people who mind, they think about what they are consumed in their thinking about are the things of the flesh. It's no coincidence that our televisions primarily focus on literal flesh that we can see, because especially for men, but not just for men, we're visually motivated, aroused, and we're shown these images over and over and over. Why? Because if that's what you're always thinking about, that's what you're gonna do. In contrast, those that are after the Spirit, people that live after the Spirit, people that are basically walking in the Spirit, what do they do? The implied verb is they mind, they think about, they're meditating on the things of the Spirit. See, it's in this thought life What does that mean? This picture is somebody that's in God's Word. Read Psalm 1. The person who delights in the law of the Lord, in the sense that he meditates on the scripture day and night. And then Paul adds, and this is of Christians, to be carnally minded, a mind that's fleshly minded. It's stuck in the things of the flesh. And it's not just thinking about sexual sins or things like that, but it can include that. But you're consumed with the things of the flesh. Some of these things aren't even bad things per se. I mean, you need to have a job, you need to work hard at your job, but that's all you think about. And advancing that career, you're consumed with the things of the flesh. Well, guess what? You're going to experience death. Your life as a Christian isn't going to be different in the way you sense it, in the way you experience it, than what it was before you were a believer. But to be spiritually minded is to experience life in peace. Eternal life is not just about duration, it's about quality. And it begins now. And it begins now to be experienced for those who are spiritually minded. So we need the Word of God in our head, in our mind, so that God the Holy Spirit can use that to lead us, so we can be led by the Spirit, as Paul said in Galatians 5, and we'll experience life and peace. 2 Corinthians 5, 7, Paul says we walk by faith, not by sight. We do not lose sight of the fact that when he's talking about a grace life, he's talking about a faith life. Faith has to have content. We saw in Galatians already the hope, By faith, I hope of righteousness, this kind of future orientation to our thinking about God's blessings for us. We walk by faith. Faith in what? Some amorphous faith, like people say, well, you just gotta have faith. No, faith in God's word. We have a whole Bible to look at that tells us all kinds of things about God. This is not rules keeping. What it is is allowing God's word to transform our thinking, something that is enabled by God the Holy Spirit. He changes who we are on the inside and uses that word as we make life's choices day by day. We're led by the Spirit because we make decisions on the basis of the Word of God. We assess the information given to us. We discern on the basis of the Word of God. We employ wisdom on the basis of the Word of God. We're walking by faith. A lot of things God says in the Bible aren't what people on daytime TV say. Who are you going to believe? You're gonna walk by faith, but your faith may be in Oprah and your faith may be in God, but you're gonna pick. And we're to walk by faith, not by sight. Sight's what you see. Sight is looking just through your eyes of flesh and looking at what you see, and God says, let me tell you what reality really is, and you live on the basis of what I tell you it is, you'll experience life and peace. Well, 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verses three to five, a wonderful passage that reminds us that the battle that we wage is over our thinking, because our thinking's the key to being righteous or not. And Satan knows that. A lot of Christians don't get it. They're trying to keep rules instead of seeking internal change of the mind that will express itself in love and the other fruit of the spirit that we'll see momentarily. And so Paul tells people in 2 Corinthians 3, though we walk in the flesh. He's just saying, you know, we're in the real world. We have a real body. But he says, you know what, our warfare is not after the flesh. I realize that there's weapons of war and that sort of stuff, but when you look at it from an eternal perspective, Paul says in verse four, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they're not fleshly, they're not material, they're not physical, they're mighty, however, they are strong. They don't have to be physical to be strong, they're strong, why? Power of God. Strong, mighty through God, to do what? To the pulling down of strongholds, where? They're not physical. He just told us that. We're not warring physical things. Pulling down strongholds. Where? In your mind. Okay? Because bad thinking produces bad behavior. Spiritual thinking produces spiritual behavior. Casting down imaginations, he says. That's in your head. And that's why we're flooded. with information more and more every day through the internet, through these supposed news channels, and through television, and through the characters in the stories that are designed to warp our thinking. They're designed to be anti-God. And he says, though, if you have the thinking of God in you, you'll cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and you'll bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. So this spiritual walk is all about our thinking, and we have to have a knowledge of God on the basis of scripture to bring into captivity our thoughts, and not have our thoughts taken captive, you see. Ephesians 5.8, he says, you who are sometimes darkness, that means in the past when they weren't believers, but now you're light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. This is another way, I think, of saying walk in the spirit. It's the same concept, basically. Walk as children of light. For the fruit of the Spirit, see how he connects the two in verse 9? Galatians 5 isn't the only place that talks about the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. See, it matters. The truth matters. Proving what's acceptable unto the Lord. People say, I just want to know what the will of God is. Walk in the Spirit and you will find the will of God. You'll actually prove it in your life. and it will be acceptable to God. It will be well-pleasing. It will be your spiritual worship. Ephesians 5.18 and Colossians 3.16 are parallel passages and they're so critical. There's a lot of misunderstanding now about this concept of being spirit-filled. We have some references to being spirit-filled that happen in the book of Acts. This is not dealing with that issue where people are filled for a moment. They don't ask or seek to be filled, but Peter or Paul would be filled for a ministry moment and then apparently not filled after that. It enabled them for some ministry task. This is speaking in Ephesians 5.18 of a consistent filling of the spirit. It's a different Greek word for being filled. But the concept is simple. Being filled is like if I said you were filled with rage, it means you're being influenced or controlled by your rage. Here, being filled with the spirit is in contrast to being filled with liquor. Liquor can control and influence your behavior physically through drunkenness or inebriation. But to be filled with the spirit, he says, Being led, controlled, influenced by the Spirit of God will do what? Well, one of the things it will do is it will result in speaking to yourselves, and I think this has a church context, but you're speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. These people are thinking about the things of God, and when they're filled with the Spirit, that's what comes out. What comes out are words that betray their thought life, which is about the things of God. They sing, they make melody in their heart to the Lord. This picture pictures happy people experiencing life and peace. Colossians 3.16 is the parallel passage. Notice how he describes it in a very different way. But it helps us understand that the spirit feeling here is not some experience where you pray for the Holy Spirit to take you over and speak in tongues. Lots of people did that in the book of 1 Corinthians. They were not mature. They were living like the devil. But these people, Ephesians 5.18 and Colossians 3.16, are going to live better because this Spirit-filling is when the Word of God comes into us and dwells richly, and the Holy Spirit uses that Word to guide, to lead, to influence, to control our thinking and ultimately our decisions. Let the Word of Christ, he says, Colossians 3.16, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. This isn't memorizing a verse, and this isn't reading a verse to dwell in you richly. It becomes part of the tapestry of your heart. It becomes that grid through which you think. He says, in all wisdom, this informs how you think about the world. So you live on the basis now of God's wisdom. Why? Because it's become your worldview. It's become how you think. What's the result? Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns." Wait, Paul, that's what you said the Spirit's filling does. Of course it is, because the Spirit filling is the flip side of the coin of letting the Word of God dwell in you richly. And both of them result in the same thing. Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Singing with grace in your heart to the Lord. So, To walk by the Spirit is to live on the basis of the desires of the Spirit, which is done by faith with content specifically in the Word of God. It's not another law system, but an inward change that occurs in the heart by the Spirit, using God's Word in our lives. Romans 12.2 kind of pulls this all together and says, don't be conformed to this world. Don't allow yourself to be pressed into the mold of the world, and that's what Satan's trying to do. God brings you out of the world to be a child of God, and Satan wants you to push back into that mold. And Paul says, if you don't want to do that, you want to follow the will of God, know the will of God for your life, here's how you do it. Be transformed. That word is the Greek where we get the English word metamorphosis, like a butterfly changing from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Metamorphosis. Be transformed. How? By law-keeping? No. By renewing of your mind, how are you going to do that? Well, you've got a lot of junk in there that you came to Christ with a lot of bad thinking in your head. You got it from the world. And he says, I'm going to push that stuff out. We're going to renew. Renew isn't polish and wax. Renew is to build it up. from the foundation. We're going to go all the way down to the foundation and start building it up brick by brick in your mind. That's where the war happens. That's where imaginations try to take over and strongholds get formed. But we can take every thought captive. So we're renewed in our mind on the basis of the Word of God. What will the result be? We will prove what is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God. You want to know the will of God? be transformed by renewing your mind on the Word of God. God will then lead you by your desires. You will find and prove the Word of God as you live by the Spirit. Well, getting back to Galatians, I know that was a long sidetrack, but I hope that helped give you a practical understanding of what it means to walk or live by the Spirit. Well, if you walk by the flesh, the works of the flesh are obvious. There's a number of them, and Paul's not listing them all, but he's hitting a bunch of big ones. You may find yourself in the list. None of us are perfect. He says they're manifest, they're evident, they're obvious. Adultery, ow, fornication, that's all sexual sin. Uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry. And someone will just say, well, I don't do that, I don't do that. Well, you're in the list somewhere, just keep reading. Witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife. You get in a fight with anybody? Now, I will mention as an aside, I'm not going to go there and read it, but I do have it on the slide here. There are three places in the New Testament where Paul says a very similar thing to what he says here in Galatians 5. And there are those who take this out of context to say, this is showing that if you behave in this way, you're not a believer. Now think about the logic of that. He's got a whole book, the purpose of which is to say, you don't have to be a law keeper. and in fact should not be a law keeper in order to be justified, be saved, or sanctified. He said it doesn't work. You don't get saved that way. It has to be by the Spirit. Why would he in Galatians 5, 19 through 21 then teach, here's a whole bunch of things. If you don't do them, you're lost. He would then be teaching a rules system. He would be teaching the very thing that he spends the whole book saying no. But that's what happens. People do what we might call proof text theology. The only sound way to study a book of the Bible is to start in the first verse and move slowly. You're far better to do that than do proof text theology, where you've got this little verse over here supposedly stands for this, and that verse stands for that, and you might be right about some of them. This verse gets used all the time to say these people either aren't saved or lost their salvation. what he's describing is what people who are in the flesh, not Christians doing things of the flesh, but people who are unsaved. He's describing unsaved people, and if you go to the first Corinthians parallel passage, verses chapter 6 verses 9 to 11, you'll see that. He says, you guys used to be this way, you're not that way anymore because you've been washed. You're acting that way, but you're washed. And so, just understand, all Paul's doing is saying, this is what the works of the flesh look like. And friend, when you decide to engage a works-based system for salvation or sanctification, you're going to do these things. Because your flesh is good at these things. You have a Ph.D. in doing these things, and everyone's different, so you might be someone who can, honest to God, say, well, I won't engage in fornication. Yeah, but hatred's on there. I bet you're good at that. See, there's something in here, and probably several of these things, you've got a Ph.D. in, and as soon as you say, I'm gonna be holy by relying on my dead, corrupt, sin-natured flesh alone, this is what you're gonna do. On the other hand, What if you relied on the Spirit of God? He says the Spirit produces fruit, and it's singular. That's critical for us. The fruit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such there is no law. He contrasts these works of the flesh with the singular fruit of the Holy Spirit. It's one Spirit, and walking the Spirit produces all of this fruit at the same time. It doesn't necessarily mean that you couldn't have You know a bit more love than joy, and you know it could be a lot of balance I suppose, but but it's not like you say well. I've got love, but I don't have joy Friend if you don't have joy you don't have the fruit now. We're gonna have our days when we don't feel very good But in that moment you're not walking in the spirit when you're walking the spirit all of these things are yours because it's then the Spirit of God Working through you and and and you'll fulfill the righteousness of the law that those other people who are trying to put you under a rules-keeping system, a lordship salvation system, or whatever else it may be, a perseverance of the saints, or you know, baptismal regeneration, all these work systems, what they claim to seek, and they claim you will get, You cannot get through your flesh, that's what Paul's saying, but you will get through the Spirit, through walking, living in the Spirit. Well, they that are, this is verses 24 to 25, they that are Christ have crucified the flesh with its affections and lust. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. The point of verse 24 is that our flesh, when we became a Christian, we're in Christ, we're in his crucifixion, and we identify with it by faith. Our flesh dies in his death, and it's dead, and what that means is you don't have to live by the flesh. You may choose to live that way. And if you choose a law-keeping system or a works-performance gospel, you are choosing that. But you don't have to. When you weren't a Christian, you didn't really have a choice, because your spirit wasn't made alive. Now that your spirit's made alive, and that flesh is dead, it's still with you, but you have a choice. If you'll live in the Spirit, he says, or live by the Spirit, He says if, now in the Greek, it's translated if, but it really means since or because. It assumes the reality of it. You as a Christian, you're alive, you're made alive by the Spirit. Therefore, you should also walk by the Spirit. He's just putting a summary on what he said before. So what? The conclusion to all of this, a few principles first. Christians need to be well-grounded in Scripture. Remember what he said in verse 27, you know, you were running so well, who hindered you? As I said before, heresy takes over so quickly. I've many times experienced this. I've worked with somebody, they're growing, they're on fire for God, they're studying the Word. And they're growing because they're living by faith. They're just believing what God said. And God the Holy Spirit uses that belief, that faith in their life, and love flows out. Then someone comes up and says, you're not doing good enough. You need these rules. And they'll package it in different ways. And I've seen people just overnight. all of a sudden they've decided everything I ever told them was false, and this other person just sort of captivates their mind. The way to deal with false teachers, remember what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10, your thought life matters. These thoughts that are that are exalted against God, you got to watch out for them. Well, we need to be well-grounded. If you're well-grounded in doctrine, if you understand what Galatians says about walking in the Spirit, anyone who comes up to you telling you, here's the rules you gotta keep, you'll know that it's a false gospel. You'll know that Paul condemned it in the strongest words, and you'll get away from those people. Now, the mark of people that grasp their liberty in Jesus Christ is not a license to sin, but love as they serve one another. It's so simple. You want to know people who really have the spiritual walk down. You'll see people who just love other people in a genuine way. Not loving in a worldly way where they need something in return. They just real love and you'll know it. You know some people like that and hopefully you're like that. If not, you know how to be like that, and it's gonna be a spirit thing. Any rules-keeping system, any performance gospel for justification or sanctification, no matter how much they try to dress it in the garbs of making you more holy, it ultimately depends on your dead flesh, who Paul said, your dead flesh, it has desires, remember this? The desires of the flesh, the lust of the flesh, And you get the lust or the desires of the spirit, and they're all in water. And when you choose to try to live on the basis of a flesh that's contaminated with those lusts, you're going to fail. You're going to be in bondage. You're never going to achieve the holiness you wanted. And you're going to keep saying, why do I keep failing? Why do I keep making these bad decisions? Well, because you're not doing it God's way. You need the power of God. You're not strong enough without Him. And so that's the principle. Finally, meditate on this manner of walking, living by the Spirit. It's so critical. This is fundamental. It's not high-level stuff, even though so many people seem to be oblivious to it. It's pervasive in the New Testament. I showed you it was in Romans. It's here in Galatians. This is the key to this victorious Christian life, the life of life and peace, the life that's a testimony to other people about the grace of God in our life, the life that's not one of despair, the life that is Spirit-led, Spirit-filled, living by the Spirit. Meditate on it, it's so critical. God bless you, and I hope you'll join us for the next and final lesson in this series through Galatians.