So, we are in Galatians. And we are in chapter five. I'm going to start in around verse thirteen when I get to it, but I want to start off by giving you a quote that I read in Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians this week. And I kind of had my jaw drop on the floor, and I'll tell you why after I read the quote. This is what Martin Luther writes. A man is righteous and holy. and does not sin insofar as he walks in spirit, but insofar as he is still prompted by lusts, he is a sinner and carnal. Now, listen to this. Therefore, he has sin in his flesh and in his flesh sins, but he himself does not sin. This is a strange thought. The same man sins and at the same time he does not sin. It is here that those two statements of the Apostle John are brought into harmony. The first is found in first John one eight. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. The second occurs in first John three nine. No one born of God commits sin. All saints, therefore, have sin and are sinners, yet no one of them sins. Hmm. And when I read that this week, I thought to myself, at least I'm not the only crazy person out there. You see, I thought for a very long time now that the Christian is a walking contradiction. I've never read anyone say my own thoughts. So exactly as what I read there from Martin Luther, this bizarre state that we find ourselves in makes talking about the Christian life at the same time, simple and difficult. obvious and confusing. What we have before us in our passage is perfectly simple to understand. God does not like sin. God does not tolerate sin. The law continues today to show God's righteousness. The law never becomes obsolete. Now, who can't understand that? At the same time, it is difficult to understand this in light of the last three chapters that we have been told repeatedly that to return to the law is to make Christ of no value. That is why so many people play games with the law on every conceivable level, it's confusing. Now, again, what we have before us is obvious. For example, in verses 19 through 21, Paul talks about the works of the flesh. It is a big, long list, and he says that they are evident or obvious. In other words, everybody knows about the things mentioned in these verses, and they all know that they're wrong. Even pagans like Aristotle and Greek stoics like Zeno make lists exactly like this, and they live before the New Testament was ever written. Now, on the other hand, even though that's self-evident, it can be terribly confusing. At the end of this list, Paul says, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, one scholar makes my point about confusing this is. When he says, although Paul is emphatic that we cannot, by doing the works of the law, enter our promised inheritance. is what he says, but that entry is by faith alone. Yet he strongly asserts here that by doing these very things, we can bar ourselves from the kingdom. How confusing is that? What are we to make of such a warning is this. Let's start talking here about the spirit and the flesh. In light of these difficulties, perhaps the best place to start is verse seventeen. It shows the struggle between two opposites. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. Now, this verse is a summary of a larger verse in the Bible, can anybody think of what it is? Romans chapter seven. where it says things like, I do not understand my actions for I do what I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Or he says, I have the desire to do what is right, but I cannot carry it out. Or he says, I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. It's amazing that anybody could argue that Paul, who talks the exact same way in both passages, would say that he has the Christian life in mind in Galatians five, but the creek pre-christian life in mind in Romans seven. But they do say that, and it only goes to further demonstrate that this confusion exists even in the strongest and best of Christian minds. So this is difficult. We're looking at, even though it's simple. Try preaching a sermon like this sometime. To appreciate our passage, it's critical to understand what is meant by flesh and spirit. A lot of people get this confused. The word flesh occurs six times in our text and the word spirit occurs seven times. And both are far and away more than any other words in the section, so that is what we have to focus on when we think about what's going on here. We have to understand this. A lot of people have this idea that flesh is my body and spirit is my spirit, sort of the inner me and the outer me. The NIV renders a potentially disastrous translation of this. Where it calls the flesh, which is the word Sark's, the sinful nature. And it is potentially disastrous, especially if you think that the spirit here refers to your spirit. As if this is like another nature within you. That would mean that anyone who's a Christian has two natures. Now, do you see anything problematic about that or even heretical about saying a Christian has two natures? You should, because there's only one person that's ever been born who has two natures and it isn't you or I. Jesus was fully God and fully man, two natures in one person. We do not have two natures in one person. Christians are not like this. We do not have a good nature and an evil nature inside of us battling it out in some Gnostic cosmic war or like our flesh is evil. That would be more Gnostic to think that the outside, the physical is evil and immaterial is the good part of me. That's not what's going on. What is a Christian, then, if we're not two natures? OK, listen to this carefully. A Christian is a person with one regenerated nature called a new creation, for example, living between two worlds. We are new creations united to Christ by faith, we are in mystical union with him like a head is to a body, like a branch is to a vine, like a husband is to a wife. We have been resurrected now, you know, that all says it. Colossians 2, 12, you have been raised up with Christ. But our resurrection now is only as we are in union with Christ, for he has been raised. Paul says it's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, right? Our physical resurrection, however, awaits the coming dawn of the age to come. So mysteriously, we are both raised and not raised. Like I said, try preaching a sermon on this sometime. The spirit we walk by is not our spirit here. It is the Holy Spirit. God in us, the spirit of Christ giving us life, bringing new fruit in our verse. Creating new desires, so our problem is not that biological, ontological, metaphysical, whatever philosophy you want to put on it. Our problem is eschatological and ethical. Let me give you some examples to help you think about it. We are in the already not yet. We've been raised. We haven't been raised. We live in the present evil age, but we belong to the eternal age to come, which has already come. Our feet are in the world. Our head, which is Christ, is in heaven in the world above. We are new creations in Christ, but the old creation, which includes the world, the flesh and the devil that we've been looking at, have been conquered and yet they haven't been judged. The kingdom of God has been inaugurated. It hasn't been consummated. Today, it is invisible. Tomorrow it will be visible with our eyes. We see through a glass darkly, but what does Paul say? But then face to face, we taste of things to come. Now we tasted it, but we do not understand its power in Hebrews six. We come to heaven in worship, but we leave to go back to our daily routine. You see the difficulty. It's easy to understand, but it's impossible to comprehend it. So the spirit refers to the Holy Spirit and flesh refers only partially to my wicked body. It also includes more broadly the present evil age that we live in. It includes powers and principalities in heavenly places that align themselves against us for our undoing. It includes the temptations that come from without from Satan, who uses both good and evil things to get me to fall into sin. It includes the pattern of this world with all of its vices, and that's the big long list that we read about, which are the things of the flesh. But also its basic desire to run and flee from God, it includes my own wicked heart that continues to beat and which longs for the day it will be resurrected on the day of the Lord. It includes my body, which is decaying. and rushing towards death. All of these things are what is included in the flesh. Why, oh, why does Paul begin to contrast these two things here at this point in this letter? It's because at this point he has finished giving the milk of theology. And some of you have never heard me talk about this before. And others of you have, I want to give you all a refresher on what my opinion of milk and meat is in the Bible. Paul is going to move into at this point in his letter, the meat which is ethical living. He has told us about how we are justified by faith alone. He has told us that if we seek to merit God's favor through anything other than trusting in the merit of Christ alone, that we will be damned for all eternity. He has explained that the law was given to increase, not decrease our sin. He has pleaded with us not to give into our own base instinct, which is to try and please God on our own. He has denounced anyone who preaches another gospel than this. He has proclaimed that the gospel must remain at all times absolutely free to the Christian. Even once the Christian life has begun, it must remain free for them. So all of that is now behind us in the letter. There is no more to be said about that. It's time to move into something both obvious and yet difficult to understand, to chew on the paradoxical implications of what he puts before us now. At no time is the Christian ever encouraged or commanded to break God's law or even to entertain breaking it in his mind. Have you ever read that anywhere in the Bible? Of course not. Yet at no time is the Christian ever under an obligation to keep the law to merit God's approval. At no time does God ever approve of the works of the flesh. Yet at no time does stopping the works of the flesh ever make God approve of us. At no time will a person who practices ungodliness be allowed to enter the kingdom of God. And yet, those who commit ungodly acts can always be forgiven in Christ and have already been justified. And those who've been justified continue to commit ungodly acts. And we do inherit the kingdom of God. You see why Paul waits until the end to speak about ethics. People think now doctrine, that's the meat of the scripture. I've been told this several times, by the way. Doctrine is a hard food to chew on. It causes discomfort and smelly gas and loose bowels. Now, they never use that language, but I thought that was a good analogy. Better to give people milk to swallow if their constitution can't handle the real food. Better to just preach the law than get into all that divisive stuff. Now, I've often wondered about this, if that's really true about lactose intolerance from milk, but that's beside the point. I'm saddened when I hear such things. Knowing doctrine is our only way of being able to properly digest the meat of the law. Doctrine is like a good tea or a probiotic or a digestive enzyme. It helps me swallow and digest the ethical part of God's word. Knowing the law. Knowing what it does is doctrine. How God approves of us is doctrine. Why God will look upon us with favor is doctrine. How Christ did everything necessary for our salvation is doctrine. How God applies salvation to us through election and effectual calling and faith and repentance and mortification of sin is doctrine. How God has already Yet one day will resurrect us from the dead is doctrine. This is the only way that we can ever possibly hope to obey God's law in a way that pleases him, which is out of thankfulness and love and no longer compulsion or duty or obligation. So if you didn't understand those things, you would mess up why you're to obey. If people don't have the first thing, they will find an infinite number of ways of perverting obedience into one of two things, either pride. Look at how well I'm doing or discouragement. Look at what I can't do. They will turn the ethics into a way of salvation. Humans have been doing this since the Garden of Eden. And that's why the ethics is the meat and it always comes at the end of Paul's letters. Now, we talked last week about freedom in Christ and how under no circumstances are we to ever live as if we're not truly free in Christ, as Luther once was asked, Dr. Luther, if you're right, we are free to do anything we want, including sin. And Luther responded, yes, that's right. Now, before I finish the rest of this quote, let that sink in, please. That's what freedom is, we have the freedom to sin, because whether we sin or whether we do not sin, we are not saved by what we do or do not do. We are saved by faith alone. But of course, Luther was not finished, he concluded we we can do whatever we want. He said, yes, you can. Now, what do you want? His point is that Christians wants to please God, because they've been given the desire to do so out of love and thankfulness from being new creations. Luther was hardly an antinomian, like a lot of people accuse him of. That's somebody who hates the law, anti-against-nomos law, somebody who's against the law. All you have to do is read his commentary on Galatians 5, 19 through 21, and you will see quickly enough He hates unbridled, unrepentant, flagrant hatred of God's law. Nothing is more repugnant to him, especially when self-professing Christians in his day, like popes and bishops, are the perpetrators. Now, because he's finished with doctrine, Paul is now able to set a straight about Christian freedom. What should we do with our freedom? That's how he starts off the passage. Well, by no means, he says, verse thirteen, for you were called to freedom brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. Now, what I love about Paul's ethic, Jesus's ethic and the Bible's ethic is that it is not the ethic of the mystic. There is no navel gazing here. It is not obsessed with self. Paul does not focus on inward spiritual disciplines, but upon outward acts of love and kindness. Notice the same Paul, who just a moment ago said in verses two through three says, if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no value to you. And he says every man who accepts circumcision is obligated to keep the whole law. He just said that now, he says. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And he thinks that's a good thing. He says the whole law, that phrase whole law twice. In one instance, he stays entirely away from it, and in the other instance, he rushes outstretched arms to embrace it. Is Paul crazy? Is he schizophrenic? Is he nuts? He's finished talking about the laws and means of salvation. And now he's talking about it as a means of acting righteously in the kingdom of God. Now, as I wrote this and finish this sentence, I thought, well, that's obvious, but I thought it's actually very interesting. Listen to this. You can only act righteously in the kingdom of God if you're already in the kingdom of God. Right. Paul's words here remind us of the words of our Lord, who was asked more than once, what's the great commandment of the law? What did Jesus respond? He said, twofold, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. So Paul quotes. Now, Jesus didn't just make that up on the spot. Instead, he was quoting the very words that he gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, which are recorded in Leviticus, 1918, which is exactly those words. Love your neighbor as yourself. It's so sad when people try to pit Paul against James or Jesus or Jesus against the Old Testament. All of them go back to the same verse as the summary of the law. None of them will say, well, you know, now we're in the age of grace, so don't worry about all that love business. No, it's still obtains today because love is a reflection of the unchanging heart of God, he never changes. God is what God is love. Paul now adds in verse 15, that if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. Now, this verse is completely ironic for these Galatians. They are being seduced into returning to the law of circumcision. In order to call themselves good little Christians. The temptation is to legalism and Paul says, or they're being told, if you just do this one little thing, God is going to be happy with you. But Paul told them, if you return to the law of God to make God happy, then you have to realize you have to keep the whole thing. And he says, your problem, dear Christians, is that you're not keeping the law perfectly already, even amongst yourselves. You're biting and devouring one another. The whole list of vices that he gives. In some ways, a summary of some of the things that they were doing to each other. Now, this metaphor is really quite vivid. The way they are treating one another is that they are acting like cannibals. They are eating one another. And he says, if they're not careful, then this ghoulish dinner will see them not as the eater, but the eaten. The little pecks and nibbles will turn into bites and swallows. You see, sin against other Christians is so horrible that it's like cutting them up, putting a skewer through them, putting them on a hot fire, and eating them for dinner. Now, Hannibal Lecter might lick his lips at that, but the Lord God turns his face at our sinful banquet. But we often think, well, the sins God really cares about are those in my heart. Well, it's true, of course, that God cares about what's in your heart, because out of your heart comes all manner of sins. But acting upon your evil desires is even worse. Jonathan Edwards used to speak directly to the unconverted in his congregation. He would implore them that if they're not going to trust in Christ, he'd give them the gospel message. Please trust in Christ. Then he'd say, look, even if you're not going to trust in Christ, at least do good and right things so that it won't be as bad for you in hell. Not a lot of people preach like that anymore. He says each outward sin added another coal to the fiery furnace below. When we stand against each other in church, well, there's really nothing worse than you can do. The only body that we are allowed to only body that we're allowed to consume. Is Christ's body because Christ's body is the only food that will sustain us and that will save us, but if we eat one another, we will be consumed. Verse 16, so comes up and it talks about walking by the spirit. And this is an idea that's quite misunderstood today, but it's actually really pretty simple. There's nothing mystical here or magical about walking by the spirit. We're not talking about higher life, victorious Christian living, living above all known sin, holiness, perfectionism, putting God on the throne of your life or any of that other stuff. But very simply serve one another. Paul actually defines what it means to walk by the spirit, you're not left to guess about this verse 13. Let me stop and back up a minute. In college at a class in the life and teachings of Paul. One of the only things I still remember from that class is his lesson right here. This is burned into my mind. Because it's profound and so simple. Verse thirteen is an inverse parallel to verse sixteen versus fourteen and fifteen are one of Paul's parenthesis. He does this all the time. Look at the two, the inverse parallel, he says, do not indulge the flesh flesh in verse thirteen and he finishes, you will not indulge the flesh in verse sixteen. In between, he says, serve one another in love and walk by the spirit and therefore. To walk by the spirit is to serve one another in love. It's very simple to understand. And this is where the rubber meets the road. Paul does not say that walking by the spirit is fasting and praying and reading your Bible every day. Those are not bad things, but it isn't what he says. He does not say. Walking by the spirit is learning all the theology and doctrine that you can in church. Theology and doctrine are not bad things. He does not say get involved in every activity in church as much as possible, then you will walk by the spirit. Getting involved in church is not a bad thing. He does not say stop doing evil things, then you will walk by the spirit. Now, evil things are not good things. But what the spirit of Christ loves most is the bride of Christ, he's the one washing her by the word, he's the one overseeing her until the wedding day, he's the one given to her as a deposit to come. The Holy Spirit loves the church and therefore the church ought to love one another. Notice that the law is given to prove all of this, the law expects you to love yourself. Have you ever thought about that? Love your neighbor as yourself doesn't say don't love yourself. It expects that you're going to love yourself. Self-love is a good thing. Self-worship is not a good thing, but self-love is a good thing. But it adds that you are to love your neighbor as you love yourself. The law is broader than what Paul applies it to here. Your neighbor includes anybody that you run into, especially your enemies, those who are hardest of all to love. Jesus proved that in the Sermon on the Mount. Hopefully you won't think of any enemies in church here today, but I know people have had them in the past in churches. Churches are full of that kind of thinking about one another. I know this is true. But in church, especially we are to love and serve one another and especially the people that we don't particularly like within the church. Now, what does it mean to serve? Serving does not mean be and let be. It does not mean do good if they do good to you. It does not mean harm none. like Wicca or something like that, it means going out of your way in church to serve and help one another. It means looking for things to do and ways to help and then figuring out how to do those things for people without them coming to you and asking about. Some of you are so consumed here with other things that you don't even think about how to serve those in the church. Your work is all encompassing. Your children take all of your time, your health gets you completely down. Good things become idols. Bad things become excuses. And the church is harmed, not even so much out of bad things, but out of people not doing good things. You see, you could preach on this kind of thing all day long. Couldn't you? There is no end of the application of the law. We've seen verse 17 and how there's a war within us, the spirit of God wants one thing, the world wants another thing, and we are stuck in the middle, we're stuck between two worlds. We're in a kind of a no man's land where we do what we don't want to do and we don't do what we want to do. And suddenly we find ourselves returning to the law for help. And that's a good thing. But before you know it, we find ourselves becoming either prideful again about that law that we wanted to help us, but how well we're actually keeping it or we start to become depressed again about how badly we perverted. And so Paul gives us good news in verse 18. says we do things you don't want you don't do things you want to do what you know in Romans eight was still wretched man that I am who will rescue me from this body of death. He says praise me to God. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ. We do something similar here. He goes back to the good news. The gospel verse eighteen. If you're led by the spirit, you're not under the law. You see commandments here. No commandments there at all. This is indicative. This is good news. This is simply what is true. If you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. This reminder encapsulates everything that's been told in the last several chapters. Now, listen to this, you're not under the law, you're free, you're not under the law, so use your freedom to serve one another. You're not under the law. Don't use your freedom to indulge the flesh. You're not under the law. What have I done here? I've gone back and forth between the law and the gospel, and this in my mind, it kind of coined the term or not, but I call it the spiral of sanctification. People wonder how in the world are we sanctified? This is how we're sanctified. By the law and the gospel, and it's a spiral and it's a spiral that moves upward like this. The spiral starts with good news. And through the good news, the Holy Spirit converts you and changes you. Then it moves to the law, which is wholly righteous and good. But our flesh begins to take pride or to lose faith because of the law. And then comes the good news again to set you free again, to show that you are free again. And then we turn to we return to the law to see the things that God loves. And then we start to become prideful or despair in the law again, and then the good news comes again. You see, this is a movement back and forth and it's a movement up and down. And thanks to God, it's more up than down. Because of his work. The spirit lifts us up through the gospel. We knock ourselves down when we hear the law or we pop our pop ourselves up even higher than we should when we hear the law. The good news is that we are already seated in heavenly places, which means we're as high as you can be seated without usurping the throne. We don't have to try and reach up into heaven any longer by our works. And so our definitive sanctification becomes the grounds of our progressive growth and godliness. They say, what does that mean? Definitive sanctification, there's two kinds of sanctification in the Bible, definitive and progressive. Sanctification means to be set apart from something. In the temple tabernacle, the priest would take an instrument outside and make it and put it in the tabernacle and it would be sanctified. It would be set apart as a holy thing. Definitive sanctification is the initial act of God setting you apart and placing you in his temple as a vessel of worship. It's been done, there's nothing more you can do about that. God doesn't throw you out of the temple, then have to go and clean you off, put you back in the temple every time you sin. Progressive sanctification, that's usually the only way we think about sanctification. This is the personal appropriation of the truth and the way that you act, think and live. It is all the work of God. I hope you hear that. This has been kind of a new revelation to a couple of you the past couple of weeks. It is all the work of God. And then it is all the work of you. It's not a 50-50 thing, it's a 100-100 thing. God does all, then you do all. You're not passive, but through the means of grace, God moves your will and changes your desires. Through word and sacrament, The Holy Spirit creates life and fruit in you. It becomes the fertilizer of your life. And then you go out and you display the beautiful ripe fruit. So there's two contrasting ways that you can act. One is the works of the flesh and the other is the fruit of the spirit. Now, I want you to notice about this. One is a work. One is a fruit. It's not that one is a good work and one is a bad work. Say that one is a work of the flesh. One is the production of the Holy Spirit. One is what you do to merit or to demerit. The other comes a result of something completely outside of yourself. The works are the works of the flesh and their vices. Now, Paul does not see the vices the same way pagans do. With the works of the flesh being things that we ordinarily don't want to do, but only occasionally fall into because we're basically good, that's the way the Greek philosophers thought about the vices. Paul sees them as ordinary works of the flesh. This is what you do. It's our default mode. It's our self probe, simple programming code. Now, pagans also saw the virtues as things that we can and should achieve on our own. Paul sees them, however, as the fruit of the Holy Spirit. So the way Christians and pagans view these things are different, although they view the same things. Christians commit works of the flesh. Unbelievers have a kind of fruit of virtue. Both kinds of people participate in the same kinds of ways in both or in certain kinds of ways in the same categories. This is not the issue, the issue is not, well look, unbelievers do all these bad things and believers do good things. People try to make it out to be that way. Not the case at all. I know a lot of non-Christians that are really a lot nicer than some of the Christians I know. The issue is that when Christians act virtuously, it's because of God's work in them, the fullness of his love overflowing through them. And conversely, when Christians sin, it is not what they want to do deep down, because there they have the Holy Spirit and they've been regenerated. They have a war between pleasing God and carrying out evil desires. Unbelievers have no war like this. Now, they may war against the consequences of their sin or against being found out or even against some higher ethical principle, because they know it's true. But they don't war against causing God displeasure. And also, when a non-Christian displays love or patience, they do not do it out of worship for Christ, but only out of self-exaltation, or they might do it out of a higher ethic of pleasing another person. But in no case does God's glory ever come into their mind, ever. And that's the critical difference. Also, many of the vices were viewed in the pagan world as either not so bad or sometimes even perfectly acceptable. Those that were viewed as pretty bad were still viewed only this way because of how they affected those around us. They were never concerned with how God viewed these things. And that's the root of the matter. Now, these lists are so extensive and I've already gone so long this morning that I can't possibly look at all of it this week. So we're going to look at these two lists next week and the things that come within that little context. Today, I can only just list them. The vices are perhaps just random things that came to the apostle's mind. It's a possibility. Some have tried to categorize them. give you the most popular category of the vice is kind of four categories. The first category is sexual deviance with immorality, impurity and sensuality. Second category seems to be kind of religious practices of idolatry and sorcery. The third category seems really particularly fit what we're talking on a Galatians five, the way we treat one another. enmity, strife and jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions. And then the fourth category seems to be kind of self-destructive behaviors like drunkenness and orgies. What I want to point out about the list here this morning is the last phrase of it and things like these. These kinds of lists are never meant to be exhaustive. I kind of laugh because Remember the guy who came to Jesus and he said he wanted Jesus to give him a list? What things do I need to do to have eternal life? And Jesus gave him a popular list called the Ten Commandments. And he said, why did all those? And so Jesus added one more thing to the list, the thing that he knew that the man could not admit to keeping. And so, if you're smug, and I hope none of you are this morning, looking at this list, and you look at it and you go, well, I'm glad I don't do any of those things. Well, I can add about 650 more from the Old Testament to rub it in, I guess. What does it mean, though, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God? I'm going to tell you this morning, and I'm going to tell you again next week, because this is a hard one. Has Paul suddenly reverted to keeping the law for salvation? Of course, he has best way to explain this is by going to another list, similar list in First Corinthians six verses nine through ten. All of this like this all over the place, doesn't. In that list. He says something similar, the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. But he concludes it this way, he says, and such were some of you. He then goes to definitive sanctification, verse eleven. But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of God. He's not so foolish as to spend five and a half chapters defending faith alone, only to give it up right here. He does the same kind of thing in Galatians 524. He says those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. That is both definitive, we died with Christ and it's progressive, we continue to mortify sin by putting it to death every time we're tempted. So definitive grounds progressive like an anchor grounds a boat in a storm. Paul's confident the Galatians are believers. He has great hope for them. Verse ten of chapter five. And so he concludes, if we live by the spirit, let us walk by the spirit. Let's not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Living by the spirit includes the following virtues that you're all very well familiar with. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. He says, against such things, there is no law. What he means is that you can't get into trouble being gentle with somebody. There's not a law that's ever been passed against being kind. And God certainly hasn't passed the law against that. The practical way to overcome vices is to engage in virtues. So when you read a big list of things not that don't be like this, here's a list of the things of the flesh. How do you solve the problem? serve one another in love. The best way to kill weeds in the lawn is to grow a healthy lawn, not to kill all the weeds and keep pulling them out. I wish I could learn that in real life, but I can't go look at my lawn. Now, even Aristotle understood this. They see in Christ, we understand that it's God who's working out our salvation through the Holy Spirit. These are the fruit that he gives to us because we live in the vine and we draw our life from the resurrected life of Christ. And therefore, in light of these things, I beseech you come to the law with humility, knowing that this is complicated, but also come to the law like a little child, knowing that this is obvious. You know what God desires. You know what he wants you to do. I've kind of been baffled by this over the years, I'll be honest. There's so much law preaching from pulpits today. And I sit in these sermons and I go, I know all that. Tell me something I don't know. And it's an arrogance, but it's the fact that God put the law in our hearts. We know what's right and wrong. Everybody knows what's right and wrong. My littlest children know what's right and wrong. What I don't know and what I forget, because I keep sinning, is that there's good news out there for me. And if you trust in Christ by faith alone, God loves you. And if you're in Christ, you know what God is like. And so therefore, do not leave here desirous to walk out and commit all manner of sins, but grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ. and display such knowledge outwardly in the way that you serve one another in love. Walking by the Spirit is what? Serving one another in love. And my prayer this morning is that God would give you the grace to do just this. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word, and it's a powerful sword that cuts to our hearts and divides us. And we are divided people in the law shows us this. We thank you that. When we think about our failures, how we. Displease you on such a regular basis and how we hate it so much. Father, we just give you praise that you are the one who continues to hold us close to yourself. That you have justified us, you have sanctified us, you've set us apart. In one sense, Paul is able to even say you have glorified your saints. And I would pray, Father, that through the word that's been spoken today, it would be powerful in the lives of the people here and that they would leave here wanting to obey you more and also knowing the motivation for that in a better way than they did before they came. Pray that your Holy Spirit would produce fruit in their life. through the word that it would be planted deep within them and that it would be watered and then it would grow and that the way that they treat one another, especially in church, but everywhere that they go would be a sign to them that you're working in their life. Don't allow this to be the only sign, but allow them to always look to Christ and to the sign of the cross that they trust in. Thank you for how you work in us. Thank you for promising to be in our midst and doing all the things that we have praised you for already this morning. We continue to do that even now as we come to the Lord's Supper, as we prepare our hearts to think about what our Savior has done for us and how he has given us food to continually keep us alive and make us happy as we walk our way towards our heavenly goal. It's in Jesus' name that I ask you to hear our prayer, because he's our great high priest. Amen.