But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such there is no law. For some time now we have been going down this List of nine virtues that are grouped together under the singular title of the Fruit of the Spirit. The singular is important. These are not so many fruits that you bear some, but you don't need to worry so much about others. The Fruit of the Spirit is found In these nine virtues, as we point out before we're through today, not only in these, but these are representative of all the work of the Holy Ghost in the life of a believer. Now we have finished the nine. Maybe I should say our study of the nine has finished some of you, but we have got through the nine. There is a little statement right at the end of verse 23. Against such there is no law. And usually that statement is skipped over rather quickly as something that is fairly inconsequential. A sort of a little addition, rhetorically good, makes good composition but as to the actual force and power and meaning of the verse not of great consequence the real emphasis is on the list of nine virtues now while commentators and preachers don't actually say that the way they treat this last clause in the verse leads you to that conclusion Yet I couldn't get away from it, saying to Dr. Allison, just before he went off to Kansas City, that I'm going to look all what the experts say here, and I have no doubt, as per usual, when you need them, the experts are conspicuous by their absence, and lo and behold, just about one and all agreed to say nothing more than is in the text. In other words, This doesn't really merit a very close examination. And yet, I think in fact that Paul was inspired to put this here for very good reason. If you understand the whole argument of this epistle and of this chapter, you'll see that this is a very significant statement. and that it completes the thought that the Apostle has been laboriously building up throughout the chapter. Chapter 5 of Galatians is all about life in the liberty of the Spirit, contrasted with life in the bondage of the law and of the flesh. Life in the liberty of the Spirit. Paul's contention is that the Judaizers then seeking to influence the new Galatian Christians who by the way were Gentiles and just for good measure very difficult Gentiles for even better measure according to many scholars these were the Celtic races who later lived in Northern France and made their name in Ireland They later were told became saints. They were very far from being saintly at this time. But anyway, these Galatian Christians were being influenced by a bunch of converted Jews who were ignoring the distinction between the moral and the ceremonial law of God. Let me sum it up very quickly. The moral law is enduring. It is something that God holds all people responsible to, doesn't matter what their nationality, it doesn't matter what time in history they live, the moral law is the enduring law of God. The ceremonial law, however, was not meant to be imposed upon all men, it was Jewish in character and it was temporary in endurance. The Judaizers, failing to mark that distinction, were seeking to influence these people and thus making the law an instrument of bondage. Whereas Paul argues the law is not an instrument of bondage to a believer in Christ, it is not the enemy of living in the Spirit, it is not the enemy of the true liberty of the gospel and thus having set forth life in the spirit in the fullness of the fruit of the spirit he says against such there is no law now obviously the subject of this little text is a vast subject though our contextual dealing with it must be rather more narrow. But the subject is really the fruit of the Spirit or life in the Spirit in relation to God's law. Now, in many ways that sums up the subject not only of this text but of the whole New Testament. The man who does not come to grips with that subject has not come to grips with the real import and application of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The fruit of the Spirit, or our whole life in the Spirit in relation to God's law, that's what Paul is dealing with. And the point specifically that he's making is that the law is not against the fruit of the Spirit. nor is the fruit of the Spirit against the law of God now I will have three very very simple remarks to make and if you pray really hard I may even make them briefly although there are a few very unbelieving leers that I can see on a number of faces right now but we'll try first and foremost Paul is making the point there is nothing in God's law that is contrary to life in the Spirit. Remember the background to the text. Controversy was wrecking these churches of Galatia. And a good work was being brought into such question that Paul was really doubtful as to whether that work would continue and produce the fruit that God intended. These Judaizing Christians were trying to impose the entire legal system of the Old Testament upon these new believers. They didn't deny the efficacy of the blood of Christ. They didn't deny that Christ was the Son of God, that His sacrifice was an atoning sacrifice, that He rose again the third day from the dead. They didn't even deny justification by faith. What they denied was justification by faith alone. What they denied was that you could be a Christian without also being a Jew. You had to take on board the entire system of Judaism, the entire system of ceremonial laws. They charged Paul with being a renegade against the law. They charged him with despising and dishonoring the law. And they maintained that the law of God was the enemy of Paul's theology. But Paul argued that it wasn't he but they who were really betraying both the law and the gospel. And he showed them, I'm not going to preach my way through this, but it will summarize the verses of this chapter. He showed them in the first three verses that the gospel is the gospel of liberty. Liberty from what? Liberty from the bondage of justification by law keeping. J. Gresham Machen some years ago had a great message and study in this. And he pointed out that Christian liberty is the liberty from having to establish your own acceptance with God by how well you work. That's a glorious gospel. The glorious gospel of liberty from justification by law keeping. In verse 13 of chapter 4, he shows them that this liberty is not license to sin. It is a life of faith in Jesus Christ. Verse 13. He says, ye have been called to liberty. Only use not your liberty for an occasion of the flesh, but by love serve one another. Let me say this in passing, and I will not get into it. We will possibly have cause to come back to it from a different aspect later. But in this day in which we live, There are believers and sadly I have to confess most of them tend to be Calvinistic believers. And I say sadly because I am a convinced Calvinist. But these people have the notion that Christian liberty is the liberty to be as like the world as they can be. They think it is a cultural liberation. They booze the same way as the world, they smoke the same way as the world. I've asked some of them when the government finally, as it will, legalizes marijuana, will they do pot the same way as the world? And I have no doubt that many of them will, saying, this is our Christian liberty. Paul says Christian liberty is not a cloak for worldliness. Christian liberty is the liberty to be holy. It's the liberty to be like Christ. It's the liberty to live by the power of faith in Jesus Christ. We were hearing the choir this morning sing about higher ground. The Christian's liberty is the liberty to live on that higher ground. By faith in Christ, by the power of the Spirit of God. Verse 16 and 17, this is how the Holy Ghost leads His people to live. If you're walking in the Spirit, You shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. The flesh lusts against the Spirit. The Spirit against the flesh. These are contrary one to the other. Notice what he's saying. The Holy Ghost is contrary to the flesh. He is not contrary to the law of God. And in verse 18 he says, if ye be led of the Spirit ye are not under the law, in the sense as we see of bondage. God's Holy Spirit leads God's people to live in the liberty of a life of faith. And as we have been studying the last number of weeks, this life in the Spirit, verse 22 and 23, is a life of fruitfulness. And this is how the Holy Ghost leads Christians to live. Leads them to live in the love of Christ. Love. Leads them to live in the joy of sins forgiven. The Holy Ghost is not the author of this miserly and miserable life that so many Christians are living. Paul's whole argument here is that the kind of bondage the Judaizers were introducing, this living in bondage, This is what produces misery. If you're living in the life of the Spirit, there'll be the love, the joy, and peace, and so on down these nine aspects of the fruit of the Spirit. What the law is against is not these things. What the law is against is what we read in verse 19 and following, the works of the flesh. That's what God condemns. And let me make it clear that he condemns it as much today as ever he did before. He denounces it in a Christian just as clearly as he denounces the work of the flesh in an unbeliever. The works of the flesh are manifest. Paul says there is no argument about this. There is to be no rationalization on these things. Adultery. fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revelings and such like. What a mixed up list. There's a beautiful symmetry to the fruit of the Spirit, as I have pointed out in past times, the three threes going to make up the nine, a beautiful symmetry. There is no symmetry in this list. This is the apostle hurling words that describe great sins. And he puts things together that men think shouldn't be together. He talks about variance or emulation, keeping up with the Joneses. He's talking about envying, and then in the very next word he's using murder and drunkenness. These words piled in, he's saying, look, what the flesh produces, God's law condemns. It's easy to multiply proofs of that. You remember what Paul wrote to Timothy? I'm not really going to comment much on the verse because I did so during our studies in the law of God. In 1 Timothy 1, verses 9 and 10, the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient. It's not made for them. It's not made to condemn a righteous man. In other words, it's the very same point. The law of God is not the enemy of the fruit of the Spirit. The law of God is against, and then he gives this list. the disobedient, the lawless and disobedient, the ungodly and sinners, unholy and profane, murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers and mindslayers, whoremongers, for them that defy themselves with mankind. By the way, in passing, the movement nowadays to force the Christian church to accept practicing sodomites as true or possible true believers that it is only our cultural narrowness and our homophobia that rejects sodomy is a plain and blatant lie this is what the law of God condemns that's what Paul says and then he goes on to deal with men stealers liars, perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God. So, the law of God is against the work of the flesh. You could go through the Ten Commandments, that's what they're against. But Paul's question implied here is, where in all the Bible does the law of God condemn the fruit of the Spirit? Where does the law of God condemn faith in Christ? Where does the law of God condemn living by faith in Christ? Where does the law of God condemn setting aside the temporary shadows of the Old Testament and laying hold of the eternal substances of the New Testament? And his argument is, it doesn't do it. First and foremost, and here is the The glorious gospel truth that Paul is giving here, the moral law does not condemn believers. The moral law of God does not condemn a believer. Let me remind you of something I dealt with in detail some time ago. Anybody who uses the law of God to bring a believer in Jesus Christ back under condemnation is not preaching the law rightly, and he's denying both law and gospel. You can't bring a believer in Jesus Christ under the condemnation of God's law. Because if he's justified, there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. I heard, and I wish I could give you the exact quotation, but I heard a very encouraging quotation When Dr. Connolly was here, he was telling me of the good preaching he had heard at the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship meeting. And he mentioned a preacher from one of the northern states, I forget which one. And he was making a very, very blunt statement. It rejoiced my heart to hear the drift of it. And it was, remember, preaching to preachers. And he was saying to them, that if you are using your pulpit to bring Christians under guilt, you are denying the gospel. And I was delighted to hear that. Now, if Christians sin, you face them with their sin, but you show them what to do with sin. But if you're trying to get Christians to be holy by the power of making them feel guilty, If you're trying to get Christians to do right under the fear that if they don't, God will not love them anymore, and God will not accept them anymore, you're denying the gospel. Why? Because the law of God does not condemn believers. Understand this. Believers in Christ are justified by faith in Him, and they are legally justified. God hasn't broken the law in justifying Christians. He has fulfilled the law. Now the law condemns all who use it to work their own way to heaven. It never condemns those who trust in Christ by His work to bring them to heaven. So the law doesn't condemn believers. The whole point that Paul is making here is look Those who believe in Christ are acceptable to the law of God. Now we all know that if we know the doctrine of justification. But here's an added truth. And this is something that Christians don't often live in the joy of. That the same thing is true of a Christian's works of faith, as is true of himself. The work of faith in a Christian, this fruit of the Spirit, is produced by the Holy Spirit. Now, are we perfect? Do we love perfectly? No. Do we rejoice perfectly? No. Do we always show peace and long-suffering to a perfect degree? No, we don't. There is not one thing perfectly developed in the life of a Christian where still works under construction. But here's the glorious truth of justifying grace. that the Christian's work is just as truly covered by the merit of Christ as the Christian himself is. This is how God can rejoice in and accept the work of a believer. This is how we can pray, but we're not praying perfectly. We believe, but we're not believing perfectly. We love, but we don't love perfectly. We try to win souls, but we don't do it with perfect zeal. And yet God accepts it and rejoices in it. Instead of condemning us for our imperfection, He cools our work of faith in the merit of Jesus Christ And it's Christ who makes it acceptable. We're not gaining more acceptance by how we work. We're simply working in the light of the acceptance we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's a glorious and liberating truth. You find it, for example, if my memory is right, in the 8th chapter of the book of the Revelation, with the prayers of the saints, is offered very much incense. Now go back to Old Testament typology. What is the incense? It is the picture of the ascending merits of Christ, our great priest, in His sacrifice and in His intercession. That's the import of the incense. Now, did you ever wonder, why would God hear me when I pray? Why would God pay attention when my mouth is opened? Why? Because when a Christian prays, his prayers in faith are enveloped in the merits of Christ, and there ascends to God that sweet incense of the absolute righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what Paul is emphasizing. The law is not against a Christian's life of faith. It does not condemn it. Rather, God and His law accept both the believer and his work in faith on the merits of Jesus Christ. Even the ceremonial law doesn't condemn life in the Spirit. The whole meaning of the ceremonial law really is that it prefigures the work of Christ for us and the work of Christ in us. That's, in a nutshell, the whole meaning of the ceremonial law. The work of Christ for His people, the work of Christ by His Spirit in and through His people. And the ceremonial law finds its meaning in the Holy Ghost application of all Christ did. On our behalf, isn't that the whole message of the book of Hebrews? We're not going to go through that book this morning for it's a huge study, but you could take any number of places, the 7th chapter for one, but take the beginning of chapter 10. The law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image meaning here is the essential substantial form not the very image of those things can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers there unto perfect he goes on to argue that God has in the Old Testament itself made it clear this is but for a time there's coming the great fulfillment. It's not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sin. We don't for a moment believe and even the Jews cannot believe that it's the actual blood of a bull or a goat that could take away sin. That's clear to anybody. I mean, at the end of the day, a goat's blood is just that. It's the blood of a goat in and of itself. It is a totally and absolutely valueless thing as far as moral cleansing is concerned. Can't do a thing. But God used it to point forward to a day when he would send one to fulfill all the types and the shadows. And then Paul argues in verse 9, he takes away the first, that's the picture that he may establish the second, that's the substance. He takes away these prefigurings of grace and he gives you the substance of grace. The ceremonial law, far from being against that substance, was actually a light shining forward to point men to it. Now that being the case, believers should live their life in the substantial realities of the gospel, not in the shadowy figures of the types and pictures of the Old Testament. Paul's argument then, there's nothing in the whole of God's law, moral or ceremonial, that's against life in the Spirit. But a second argument is that therefore there's nothing in the life of the Spirit that's contrary to God's law. Now we get on to a different grind. There's nothing in the life of the Spirit that is contrary to God's law. I want you to understand me very fully here. What is the fruit of the Spirit? How could we put that in other words? The fruit of the Spirit surely is the spiritual fulfillment of our duties toward God and man as set forth in God's law. Indeed, a spiritual application of the precepts of the law is much more penetrating than any legalistic observance of it. Thus why Christians are led by the law and therefore no longer under the law. They honor the law by obeying it. Now some Christians tend to think that the very opposite is true. That if you're led by the Spirit, you're antinomian. You don't need to pay any attention to God's law. To them, to be not under law but under grace means free from any of the strict requirements of the law. Now, it's grieving to admit it, but this is the abyss into which most of Protestant evangelicalism has fallen. They have come to the place of thinking that God in the Old Testament had very strict standards for His people, but somehow we're under grace and God no longer requires strict adherence to His standards. Somehow they think if they're led by the Spirit, that allows them to transgress the law of God without displeasing God. Indeed, there are Christians who even claim that the Holy Ghost directly leads them in ways that break God's law. You see that all around you today, and it's a false spirituality. All a man needs to do to justify his behavior, however unbiblical, is to claim, well, I feel like it's what God is leading me to do. I've talked to people like that. God is leading me to do this. You open up the Bible and say, look, there's where the Bible is against it. Well, I just feel that God wants me to do this. What they really mean is that their flesh wants to do it And since they can't find any support in the Bible, they invoke the Holy Spirit. And then for good measure, most of these people condemn as legalists all who want to maintain some standards of moral law among God's people. You're a legalist. Now there's nothing new about that. Back in Reformation days, the Reformers. by the so-called spiritualist Anabaptists were called legalists because he took time to expound the law of God Calvin was a legalist some people are still saying the same today but let me make the point to you very clearly The Holy Ghost never, never, never leads a Christian contrary to his moral law. Look at the text. There is nothing illegal in the fruit of the Spirit. What the Spirit produces in you is never illegal. Now he's not just speaking simply of these nine virtues. Notice he doesn't say against these things there is no law. He says against such things. In other words, these are representative of all the things that the Holy Ghost produces in the life of a Christian. Whatever the Spirit produces in the life of a Christian is never and can never be illegal. Why? Because a contradiction, get a wee bit of philosophy here, a wee bit of logic, a contradiction is a non-entity. And when you reduce the God of heaven to a contradiction, you become an atheist. He's a non-entity. Paul refuses to deal with that sort of heresy. The Holy Ghost does not contradict Himself. When He says, thou shalt not do this, then He does not proceed to lead a Christian to do it. Doesn't that make simple sense? That's what Paul is emphasizing. And underneath that, there is a truth that we need to emphasize. This idea that, well, this strict holiness, these strict standards of life were for the Old Testament but now we're free, we're in the New Testament I've heard that so often from unthinking, shallow minded people that I sometimes feel like being sick Listen, what are they saying? They're saying grace lessons our obligation to God Grace lessens our interest in holiness. Grace lessens our observance to the moral enactments of our God and Savior. What Paul is saying is the very opposite. Grace heightens our observance of God's law. If you're redeemed by precious blood, then all the more should God's law be something that you love to fulfill. After all, when God saves a man, how does He describe the change? What is God's own way of defining the great moral revolution that happens When he makes a man a new creature in Christ, he says, he writes his law in their heart. That's where he writes it. I have quoted Spurgeon in this again and again and again. But it's worth quoting the thousand and first time. Commenting on a verse in the 37th Psalm, he says, of the law of God, in the head it puzzles, and there are people who simply make it an intellectual puzzle. God save us from eggheads whose theology is all empty theory. In the head it puzzles, on the back it burdens. But in the heart, it delights. God says, I have written my law in your heart. And that makes, for a Christian, obedience to God's revealed standards a matter of spiritual joy and liberty, not bondage. For a Christian, it's great to be free. from the power of lust and sin. I think of people I've known, some of them I've led to Christ, who couldn't pass a bar without going in to get drunk. Then God saved them. They're rejoicing, not that they, according to some nitwit Calvinist, Not that they have the right to go into that bar now that they're saved. Not that they have the right to go and imbibe the devil's liquor. No, they're rejoicing in the liberty that they don't any longer have to do it. They're living in the freedom of holiness by the power of the Spirit of God. grace heightening their observance of God's law that is always scriptural. So what have we seen? God's law is not contrary to the fruit of the Spirit and there's nothing in the life of the Spirit that's contrary to God's law. One final thing that I put in however as a writer something that you should always keep in mind however is very very big Christians must always be careful to look at this matter of obeying God's law from the vantage point of the liberty of the gospel and never the other way around. What do I mean? We obey because we are free and we are accepted freely by the Lord. We must never return to the ground of legal obedience in order to gain acceptance with God. Liberty comes by faith, and it's evidenced in victorious obedience. And here's a statement I want you never to forget. It's the key to so much in the Christian life. It's the way out of misery and bondage for so many struggling Christians. Faith is never the result of obeying. Obeying is always the result of faith. Faith is not the result, it's the cause of spiritual obedience. I'm not going to take the time to expound that, for that will take me off on a whole new tangent. I want you to think of it. How many of you are living your lives? And some of you have been brought up to this. I don't want to sound very critical. It's not my purpose, you know me, those of you who come here, I'm the most uncritical being on earth. But, how many of you grew up, you learned the chorus about obey, obey, obey, I forget it all, but it is the very best thing. That's true in its place, but out of its place, it is to enchain you in bondage. Obey, obey, obey. I have heard preachers say, if you will just obey. As if by the flesh, you could just make up your mind, I'm going to... Where do you get the strength to obey? By faith. There's not a Christian here this morning, does not know fundamentally what he ought to do and how he ought to live. Oh, there are some decisions here and there that take much more pondering and much more prayer. But for the most part, we don't live our lives in a great deal of worry and concern about what we ought to do. Even in the things that you don't like to do and you don't want to do, you know your duty. And what stands in the way? The flesh, the pride of the flesh. the great ego, the love of the world, the love of yourself, it could be a thousand things, but you know what to do. How do you get the power to obey? By faith in Jesus Christ. Paul says, the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. That's how we live. Faith produces obedience. When a Christian sees Christ, is there anything too hard for him? Is there anything too much for God to ask of him? How do you think Christians went to the stake and sang in the flames? Because they were supermen? Because somehow their flesh was made of wood or plastic and didn't feel what yours would feel? No, no, no. They were just the same flesh and blood and bones like you and me. Some of them, in trembling, recanted and almost denied their faith in order to escape the flames. And then what happened? They caught sight of Christ and faith made them obedient. It's always the way. Obedience comes from faith. If you turn that the other way around, you'll live in bondage. If you think that by your efforts to live up to certain standards, however good and holy and scriptural those standards, but your efforts to do that will somehow make you a better and happier and more faithful Christian, You're in for a rude awakening. In fact, I think you've already had the rude awakening. That's what leads to this grinding through life, this bondage, this defeat, this misery. If I keep on doing, believing will follow. No, no, no. Christ is the key to Christianity. Faith in Christ. is what leads us to obedience. We must always look at this matter of obeying God from the vantage point of the gospel and our acceptance in Christ. We must never turn that, put the cart before the horse. So this little clause at the end of verse 23 is an important conclusion to the whole text. The law does not condemn Christian living, Christian living honors the law of God because the Holy Ghost is the author of both. Thus, as verse 6 teaches, faith in Christ is the all-important thing. In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love. Here is release from bondage. Here is power to live. And as verse 5 makes clear in the statement, we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. Here is confidence for the judgment day.