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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.
Freedom … To Serve
Series Galatians
| Sermon ID | 1016119141510 |
| Duration | 48:00 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Galatians 5:13-26 |
| Language | English |
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