Galatians
“Living Free”
Main Teaching: 1:10-6:10
5:1-6:10 Responded Grace
5:1-12 Practical position
Vs. 1 Lost their freedom
Vs. 2-6 Lost their wealth
Vs. 7-12 Lost their way
Intro.
Freedom is a noble ideal, but its practice is a much more difficult reality. With emancipation comes personal responsibility and many a person, once freed, has wished to return to their former status where the master provides for all their needs. The Jews in the wilderness frequently stated their preference to return to the slavery of Egypt to flee the personal responsibility of trusting a benevolent God.
Freedom demands that the freed person make their way, making their own decisions, suffering their own consequences for wrong choices. They themselves are responsible for their choices, not someone else! This prospect can be overwhelming and frightening to the immature, regardless of how attractive the absence of restraints may be. What many want in our society is called the “Peter Pan Syndrome” of the benefits of freedom without the responsibilities it carries, whereby they never grow up. Thus legalism appeals to folks as a way of claiming superiority over that of Peter Pan’s of this present day. The Church battles legalism today for much the same reasons the early church did. Leaders in the Church fear that if you do away with rules and high standards, then the Church will fall into “Never Neverland” becoming a congregation of Peter Pan’s.
The error is not so much in legalism as it is in not understanding grace. Paul clarified this in his letter to Titus (2:11-12) saying that “the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age.” His argument in these 12 verses is to show his readers what they lose when they follow legalism instead of grace:
- Vs. 1 They lose their freedom
- Vs. 2-6 They lose their wealth
- Vs. 7-12 They lose their way
Vs. 1 Lost their freedom
Vs. 1 Notice that Paul doesn’t merely tell these believers to intellectually agree with grace, he admonishes them to live by this truth. It boils down to a choice of how each believer chooses to live out their relationship with God, in bondage or freedom, in fear or love! Jesus bore the yoke of bondage for us as He carried His cross up the hill to Calvary. Paul uses words like liberty but we need to define what he meant by that word in his time not ours.
- Liberty today has the meaning of the pursuit of doing whatever a person wants to do. Not denying any desire! But this isn’t what Paul was speaking by the use of this word. The liberty Paul speaks of is the freedom from the tyranny of having to earn our own way to God. It also includes the freedom from sin, not the freedom to sin.
Paul wants them to “stand fast” which suggests that they were already in the right place when they received Jesus and that they need to make sure that they stayed there. Jesus Christ has given us an “Emancipation Proclamation,” but our “old master” tells us that we are still slaves to a legal relationship with God. These Galatians lived in bondage because their “old master” had deceived them. Jewish teachers of that day spoke of the Law of Moses as a yoke, but they used the term in a favorable light, but Paul sees it as a yoke of bondage. It was related to slavery, not liberty, as it entangled them.
In the mitzvot the Rabbis count 613 commandments to keep in the Law of Moses. One site on Judaism commented that “Judaism is more of an action-based than faith-based religion, performing mitzvot, or God’s commandments, is central to leading a Jewish life.” Even remembering all 613 would be a chore but to keep all 613 each and every day is an impossibility. The moment you try to do so you become a law breaker and enter back into slavery.
Vs. 2-6 Lost their wealth
Vs. 2-4 Paul uses three phrases to describe the losses if they turn from grace to the law as the basis of their acceptance before God:
- Vs. 2 “Christ will profit you nothing”
- Vs. 3 “He is a debtor to keep the whole law”
- Vs. 5 “You fallen from grace”
Those three phrases tell us the consequences of choosing the law over grace as, “It will not profit you anything and make you a debtor to the law having fallen from grace!” Paul is not suggesting that the Galatians had “lost their salvation” as 9 times he calls them brethren. What he is saying is that they had fallen out of the influence of grace and were no longer enjoying the benefits of grace. To receive circumcision as a gentile, (which was the sign to the Jews that that they were under the law) was a sign that the gentile no longer trusted in Jesus as the sole basis of their right standing before God; they now trusted in themselves instead. Notice the words “Indeed I, Paul…” as he is making a personal appeal so that these beloved believers would know what is at stake: If you try to make yourself worthy you make Christ worthless!
Furthermore, you are debtor to keep all 613 commandments each and every day for the rest of your life without fail or excuse. The Judaizers from Jerusalem were trying to convince these Galatian believers that they were only bound to keep some of the law, not all of it. James wrote in his letter in 2:10 that “whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.” If we come to God on the basis of our own law keeping, then our law-keeping must be perfect. Think of it this way:
If you are pulled over for speeding, it will do you no good to protest that you are a faithful husband, a good taxpayer, and have obeyed the speed limit many times in the past. That’s irrelevant; you have still broken the speeding law and are guilty under it. Literally, this phrase reads “you have fallen out of grace.” Most people think of “falling from grace” in terms of immoral conduct, but we are not saved by our conduct.
We are saved by our continuing reliance on faith in the grace of God. Boice remarked on this phrase saying, “The phrase does not mean that if a Christian sins, he falls from grace and thereby loses his salvation. Or to put it another way, to choose legalism is to relinquish grace as the principle by which one desires to be related to God.”
Vs. 5-6 The answer is not more laws and effort in our strength but greater dependence upon the Holy Spirit as we wait for the hope of practical righteousness by faith which is the fulfillment of positional righteousness. No one can be into self effort if they are dependent upon the Holy Spirit! You aren’t better if you are circumcised or uncircumcised. You aren’t worse off if you are circumcised or uncircumcised. It doesn’t matter if you worship on Saturday or Sunday, whether you eat meat or feast on birdseed, drive a V8 S.U.V. or cruise on your Schwinn as far as a relationship with God everything is irrelevant except faith in Jesus alone.
Vs. 7-12 Lost their way
Vs. 7-12 The word “hindered” in verse 7 is a military term that means to “break up a road to make it impassable.”As the saying goes it’s not how you start a race It’s how you finish it that matters. These believers were in danger of leaving the race because the false teachers had torn up the path throwing the debris of legalism on the road making it impassable. It hadn’t taken much to get them off track, as a “little leaven leavens the whole lump.”
But as corrupting an influence as legalism is, Paul was far more confident in the resurrection power of Christ to restore what had been destroyed. It also sent a warning to those who were to get them off course that they will be judged no matter who they are. James warned in 3:1 “…let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.” Just because someone is a popular teacher doesn’t exclude such judgment if they are taking people away from Jesus onto other things.
It seems as though some falsely accused Paul of still preaching the necessity of circumcision but Paul says if this is true then why is he still enduring persecution from the very ones that were saying this? The whole point of Jesus dying on the cross was to say, “You can’t save yourself. I must die in your place or you have absolutely no hope at all.” Paul’s idea here is: “If cutting will make you righteous, why don’t you do like the pagan priests, go all the way and castrate yourself?” Circumcision stands for a religion of human achievement, of what man can do by his own good works; ‘Christ’ stands for a religion of divine achievement, of what God has done through the finished work of Christ. The Christian faith is not founded upon a book but upon a person; its dynamic is not obedience to a law but love of Jesus!
Galatians
“Living Free”
Main Teaching: 1:10-6:10
5:1-6:10 Responded Grace
5:13-26 Power of performance
5:13-18 “The Fifth Freedom”
Vs. 13-15 Purple elephants and Ice cream Sundays
Vs. 16-18 New hard drive
Intro.
On January 6th 1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to persuade Americans that it was in their interests to align themselves against Nazism and dictatorship. He spoke of what America stood for in Four Freedoms including two values that went beyond the United States’ constitution – freedom from want and freedom from fear.
- The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world.
- The second is the freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world.
- The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world terms, means economic understanding which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world.
- The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world.
It is too bad that Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t include one other freedom, a fifth freedom: The freedom from our self and the oppression of our own sinful nature. The legalists believed that they had the answer to the “fifth freedom” in laws; but no amount of outside regulations can change an inward nature. It is not law on the outside but love on the inside that can change nature. And the love on the inside is the power from the Holy Spirit. In this book there are over 14 references to the Holy Spirit. It is His ministry within us that enables a believer to enjoy their freedom.
Vs. 13-15 Purple elephants and Ice cream Sundays
Vs. 13 Jesus came to set the captives free not to put people into bondage. It’s unfortunate that as far as the world is concerned they often see Christians as people that are more bound up then they are free. The one word that sums up the law is not legalism but LOVE! The antidote to struggling with the flesh is to serve people in love.
Are you bored? Are you battling the flesh in some area? Can’t get along with a co-worker or someone else? I know how to fix your problem, get busy loving people and you will find more joy and peace then you knew was possible. Friend, freedom is the essence of all that encompasses being a Christian it is how we are to live our lives, “freed up”.
The word “opportunity” in verse 13b is a military word that means a base of operations, or the starting-point for an attack. This leads to the fear from some that such freedom will be used as an opportunity to live according to the old fleshly nature. Paul isn’t questioning the possibility of this; he is challenging the antidote, legalism! Having started this chapter with the exhortation to “stand fast” in “the liberty by which Christ has made us free” there is a question that needs to be properly defined:
This liberty that Paul says the believer is to stand fast in must be understood in the context as one in which Christ as made us free. It is a liberty that Jesus has given us not one in which the world or the flesh has given us. It is a freedom FROM sin not a freedom TO sin! Why does God give us freedom with the possibility that we can miss appropriate this freedom as an opportunity to pursue our flesh?
It wouldn’t be freedom if we had no choice! The flesh expects others to conform to us, and doesn’t care about others. But when we, through love, serve one another we conquer the flesh. Think about Jesus; He had more liberty than anyone who ever walked this earth; yet He used His liberty to love and serve others. Notice that Paul is very specific; he says through “LOVE” serve one another. That love is the love of Jesus as it is our motivation.
Vs. 14 It’s as if Paul says: “You want to keep the law? Love your neighbor as yourself and you have fulfilled the law in one word.” The question folks have is: What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? Some have twisted this into the idea of self-love as the foundation for a healthy self-esteem.
But the idea is that we are to love others as we naturally take care of ourselves. “The meaning is not that we must properly love ourselves before we can love others . . . but that we are to love our neighbor with the same spontaneity and speed with which we already love ourselves.” The truest measure of our spiritual state is not: How much we pray, how much of the Bible we know, how many times we attend Church. No, the measure of our spiritual state is: “How we treat others!” Friend, you will not be able to accurately gauge your spiritual state on those that treat you well, or upon those you already love. No, you will need the nastiest, meanest, person who takes pleasure in hating you to see if you love this “neighbor” as you do yourself.
Vs. 15 Paul warns that the loveless life is a life lived on a level of animals who are only concerned for themselves. They bite one another! What would happen if every time we said an unkind word about another person, rolled our eyes uncaringly, acted in a way that showed indifference we would feel the pain that our words and actions caused others? Would we be doubled over in excruciating pain?
Ah but what does it feel like if every time we treated folks the way Jesus treats us we would experience what they felt by our words and actions? The key to walking in the Spirit friend is not “suppressing the flesh” it’s “surrendering to the Spirit”! Far too many are battling the “Sin-drome”. The law says to the flesh, “Don’t think about purple elephants!”
But as soon as it says that all we can do is think of purple elephants. Grace places before us a chocolate Sundae with all the fixings and says dig in and you know what happens? As you pick up the spoon for your fourth bite you have totally forgotten about the purple elephants. Think about Moses who we are told twice that he didn’t eat or drink 40 days and nights. Was the reason for his fast to impress God? Nope, he was in the presence of the Lord during this time and was so enjoying the Lord that forgot to eat or drink!
No amount of writing down and pledging to never think of purple elephants is going to keep you from dwelling on purple elephants. So whatever your purple elephant is, the way to not be overrun by your heavy pachyderm of a problem is going to be found in replacing your purple elephant with pure blessing and joy of our glorious Sunday!
Vs. 16-18 New hard drive
Vs. 16 If we walk in the Spirit (instead of trying to live by the law), we naturally will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. The fear of the legalist is that walking in the Spirit gives license to sin, and that only legalism can keep us holy but that is wrong. Our walk is to be in the “Spirit” which speaks of three things:
- First, it means that the Holy Spirit lives in you
- Second, it means that we are open and sensitive to the influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives
- Third, it means we pattern our life after the influence of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit doesn’t move in us to gratify our fallen desires and passions, He guides us in the path of Jesus.
Vs. 17 The Greek word translated flesh: “Means all that man is and is capable of as a sinful human being apart from the unmerited intervention of God’s Spirit in his life . . .” Paul tells us that walking in the Spirit is not a scenic leisurely walk picking daisies; it’s a battlefield trying to avoid landmines of the flesh. The “new you” doesn’t get along with the “old you” and when the old you is winning the battle you don’t do the things that the new you wishes to do.
Even though the old man was crucified with Christ, and is dead and gone (Romans 6:6), his influence lives on through the flesh – and he will battle against us until we experience God’s final antidote to the flesh: a resurrection body. I believe ignorance of the fact that we are in a battle with our old nature is Satan’s biggest advantage because if we don’t realize this truth we will always lose the battle.
Martin Luther said, “When the flesh begins to cut up the only remedy is to take the sword of the Spirit, and fight against the flesh. If you set the Word out of sight, you are helpless against the flesh.” It’s like we are a computer, and we have two hard drives in us. One is programmed according to the Spirit, and the other is programmed according to the flesh. In any given situation, we have to decide which “drive” we will access. You can’t take the “drive” of the flesh and make it as efficient as possible. God wants you to run off the “drive” of the Spirit of God.
The law is like an error message that keeps popping up on your flash “drive.” It doesn’t fix the drive, and it sometimes makes the system crash – but it does tell you something is wrong, and it points you in the right direction. Instead, the Spirit “drive” has programming on it that will make your software run better – and one day, when we get to heaven, God will replace that “flesh” drive with a resurrection upgrade.
Until then we are told in Jeremiah 31:33 the Holy Spirit will “put His law on our minds, and write it on our hearts; so that we will operate as He is our God.” This is the great work of the New Covenant, promised in the Old Testament. The inner influence is far more effective than the outer influence. The mistake that is made is that the Mosaic law is substituted for the restraint of the Holy Spirit, and with disastrous results.
Only in Christianity could you ever have a true democracy, because in a true Christian state everyone would only think as much of their neighbor as they do for themselves. Christian freedom is not a license to sin, for the simple reason that the Christian is not a person who has become free to sin; they are a person by the grace of God who has become free NOT to sin.
Galatians
“Living Free”
Main Teaching: 1:10-6:10
5:1-6:10 Responded Grace
5:13-26 Power of performance
5:13-18 “Seventeen bad works”
Vs. 19-20a Sensual and religious sins
Vs. 20b-21 Impersonal and social sins
Intro.
Author Phillip Yancy made this observation with regards to this passage and the Sea Gull. “The seagull is a different bird. Watching one bird fly in majesty is breathtaking but watch that same gull as he dive-bombs into a group of gulls, provoking a flurry of scattered feathers and angry squawks to steal a tiny morsel of meat. The concepts of sharing and manners do not exist among gulls.
They are so fiercely competitive and jealous that if you tie a red ribbon around the leg of one gull, making him stand out, you sentence him to execution. The others in the flock will furiously attack him with claws and beaks, hammering through feathers and flesh to draw blood. They’ll continue until he lies flattened in a bloody heap.” Such is the difference between “the works of the flesh” and the “Fruit of the Spirit”. Paul reveals three works of the Holy Spirit that he exhorts these Galatians to walk in:
- The Holy Spirit enables the believer to fulfill the law through love
- The Holy Spirit enables the believer to overcome the flesh as we are preoccupied with the goodness of God
- The Holy Spirit enables the believer to produce Spiritual Fruit that is both a blessing to others as well as beneficial to the believer
Vs. 19-20 Sensual and religious sins
Vs. 19-21a Paul lists 17 specific works of the flesh that walking in the Spirit enables us to overcome. In verse 17 Paul had written about the battle between our two hard drives in every believer. This battle is inward but the results of this invisible battle are outwardly evident. We can’t see our inward old nature but we can see what it does. A general observation of these 17 things will reveal four categories that though not exhaustive do supply an adequate list. While having 17 “bad words” there is also a list 9 “good words” which points out that the human language is always more loaded towards evil than it is good.
- Sensual sins: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness and lewdness: We are appalled at the sexual immorality of our day, but Paul wrote in a day where things were far worse. “The sexual life of the Greco-Roman world at the time of the New Testament was sheer chaos and the evidence of this fact has come not from Christian writers but from the non-Christian who was disgusted with the unspeakable sexual immorality.”
- Adultery: This word isn’t included in the list of many ancient manuscripts, so translations like the NIV don’t include it. Adultery is violating the marriage covenant by sexual immorality and the bottom line is The Holy Spirit never led anyone into adultery.
- Fornication: In the Greek the word is porneia, and it speaks of sexual immorality in a broad sense. Webster’s dictionary defines fornication as “Voluntary sexual intercourse between two unmarried persons or two persons not married to each other.”
- Paul calls sex before and outside of marriage –fornication and at this time it was so widespread that it was apparently accepted as a normal part of life. The Word of God doesn’t accept this view as the Holy Spirit never led anyone into fornication. Adultery and fornication are understood in relation to marriage.
Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary uses this definition: “The social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc.” Many want the benefits of marriage without the commitment of marriage. The Bible has a word for that: fornication.
- Uncleanness: Uncleanness refers to the opposite of purity. The word for uncleanness is general enough to let us know that all of these things are works of the flesh. It covers impure speech, or suggestive speaking filled with double meanings.
- Lewdness: Lewdness has the idea of “ready to sin at any time.” It speaks of someone who flaunts their immorality, throwing off all restraint and having no sense of shame, propriety, or embarrassment. The chief characteristic of lewdness is that a bad person usually tries to hide their sin; but the lewd person no longer cares how much they shock public opinion so long as they can gratify their desires.
- Religious sins: Idolatry and sorcery: These are sins of worship, and remind us that it isn’t only tragic to worship the wrong God, or seek the wrong spiritual power – it is sinful as well.
- Idolatry: Idolatry is the worship of any god except the LORD God revealed to us by the Bible and in the person of Jesus Christ. Idolatry is simply putting things ahead of God. The Christian who devotes more of himself to his car, house, or boat than he does to serving Christ may be in danger of idolatry.
- Sorcery: Sorcery is also translated witchcraft and is the service and worship of occult and spiritual powers apart from the true God. Paul uses the word “pharmakeia”, which we get our word for “pharmacy.” In the ancient world, the taking of drugs (especially hallucinogens) was always associated with the occult, and the Bible’s association with drug taking and sorcery points out that drugs open up doors to the occult that are better left closed.
Vs. 20-21 Impersonal and social sins
- Interpersonal sins: Hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions and heresies. These sins primarily express themselves in how we treat others. God cares about moral purity, but He is also passionate about how we treat one another. The fact that Paul uses more words to describe these interpersonal sins shows how important our treatment of each other is to God.
- Hatred: Hatred is the inner motivation for the ill treatment of others. The word expresses an attitude of heart that expresses itself in actions such as contentions, outbursts of wrath.
- Contentions: Originally, this word had to do with the rivalry which has found its outcome in quarreling and wrangling. Most commonly it is translated as strife and speaks of a combative and argumentative spirit.
- Jealousies: Sometimes this word is used in a positive sense – as for being zealous for something good. But here, in this context it means “the desire to have what someone else has.”
- Outbursts of wrath: This word speaks of a sudden flash of anger, not a settled state of anger. It means to lose your temper, being unable to control your anger.
- Selfish ambitions: This word has an interesting history. It started out meaning “to work for pay” in time it meant work that is done for no other reason than money. Finally it was used to describe politicians who campaign for election, for what they can get for their own glory and benefit. It is the heart of a person whose first question is always, “What’s in it for me?”
- Dissensions: This word literally means “standing apart.” And describes a society . . . where the members fly apart instead of coming together.
- Heresies: The word originally meant “to choose” but came to mean someone who divisively expressed their “choices” or opinions. We think today of heresies in terms of wrong ideas and teachings; but the emphasis is actually the wrongful dividing over opinions. Barclay said, “There is all the difference in the world between believing that we are right and believing that everyone is wrong. Unshakable conviction is a Christian virtue; unyielding intolerance is a sin.”
- Social sins: Envy, murder, drunkenness, revelries and the like:
- Envy: The word means being bitter just because someone else has something and we don’t. The Stoics called this “grief because of someone else’s good”!
- Murder: This word is not in every ancient text, but murder is a work of the flesh, and that the Holy Spirit never led anyone into murders!
- Drunkenness: Christians may differ on if a Christian can drink alcohol but what is not debatable is that the Scriptures forbid drunkenness. Being impaired in any way by drink or drinking with the intention of becoming impaired, is sin.
- Revelries: The word doesn’t mean having a party or a good time. It means unrestrained partying. Barclay says, “The kind of party which lowers a man’s self and is a nuisance to others.” The fact that Paul includes these two sins in his list shows that they were works of the flesh that the Galatian Christians had to be on guard against.
“And the like”, these words demonstrate that Paul understands that his list is not exhaustive. It isn’t as if you can find a work of the flesh not covered here you are free to do it! “The early church was not made up of people whose pre-Christian lives were of the highest standard but Paul reminds his readers that whatever kind of sin they had favored in their pre-Christian days they must be abandoned.”
Vs. 21 The danger of the works of the flesh isn’t just a path of destruction; if continued without repentance it could reveal where you will spend eternity. Paul preached salvation by God’s grace but he also taught that those who are saved by God’s grace have an obligation to live it in consistent living. The verb tense for “practice” is in the present which indicates a habitual continual sin and not an isolated lapse. Paul is not talking about an act of sin, but a habit of sin. Boice said, “Those who continually practice such sins give evidence of having never received God’s Spirit.”
What is the outcome of such habitual continually practice sin? “They will not inherit the kingdom of God!” Charles Spurgeon said, “The grace that does not change my life will not save my soul.” The idea isn’t that a Christian could never commit these sins, but that they could never stay in these sins. Martin Luther said, “Those who sin through weakness are not denied pardon as long as they rise again and cease to sin.”
Galatians
“Living Free”
Main Teaching: 1:10-6:10
5:1-6:10 Responded Grace
5:13-26 Power of performance
5:22-26 “The Secret of Life”
Vs. 22-23 Total makeover
Vs.24-26 Dead men don’t walk
Intro.
For 11 years Merhan Nasseri (who had been expelled from his native country of Iran) was a man without a country. He was allowed to live in Terminal 1 of the Paris airport in 1988. There he stayed for 11 years, writing in a diary, living off of handouts from airport employees, and cleaning up in the airport bathroom. Finally, in September 1999 the situation changed as French authorities gave Nasseri an international travel card and a French residency permit. Suddenly he was free to go anywhere he wanted.
But to their surprise when airport officials handed him his walking papers, he simply smiled, tucked the documents in his folder, and resumed writing in his diary. You see he was afraid to leave the place that had been his home for 11 years. Can you imagine a more unnatural home than an airport? Friends when we come to Christ, we have a move to make that can be as frightening as the move Nasseri had to make from the airport. We are beckoned to leave our home of the ways of this fallen world to our new home: the ways of the kingdom of God.
Vs. 22-23 Total makeover
Vs.22 Looking at the list of 17 works of the flesh realizing that it is not an exhaustive list causes a person to feel overwhelmed by the reality of battling our old nature. The Holy Spirit is big enough and good enough to change you from the 17 works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit. Love always triumphs over the flesh. We cannot defeat the work of the flesh with work empowered by the flesh; it can only be defeated by the Fruit of the Spirit! Paul is careful to call this fruit because fruit has 5 chief characteristics:
- It is produced by abiding not by working
- It is fragile
- It reproduces itself
- It is attractive
- It nourishes
It is one thing to overcome the flesh and not do evil things, but quite something else to do good things. The legalist may try to boast that they are not guilty of adultery or murder but can they boast in the Spirit that they are guilty of the fruit of the Spirit? A machine in a factory works, and turns out a product, but it could never manufacture fruit. Paul begins with love because all of the other fruit is really an outgrowth of love.
- These first three qualities express the Godward aspect of the Christian life: Love, Joy, and peace
- The next three express the manward aspect of the Christian life: long-suffering, gentleness, and goodness.
- The final three qualities are selfward: faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
When Paul described the life lived after the flesh he used the plural form calling it the works of the flesh; but here he uses the singular fruit. The Holy Spirit has only one work to do in all of us, LOVE! No Christian can claim, “Well the Holy Spirit didn’t give me this gift.” The empowering, indwelling Holy Spirit can change every believer no matter what works of the flesh afflict them. If you want to know what the Holy Spirit’s fruit of love looks like in action you can best see it at work in these 8 characteristics. There are four distinct words in the Greek for love:
- Eros: Describes a romantic, passionate love.
- Philia: Describes the love we have for those near and dear to us as in family and friends.
- Storge: Describes a love that shows itself in affection and care.
- Agape: Describes a different kind of love that is more of a decision than a spontaneous action.
Agape chooses to love the undeserving, thus its action has to do with the mind and not just the emotions. It is an “unconquerable benevolence” No matter what a person may do to us by way of insult, injury, or humiliation we will never seek anything else but their highest good. Barclay described it as, “the deliberate effort which– (only with the help of God) – we never seek anything but the best even for those who seek the worst for us.” When you have been badly treated, and you think of returning evil for evil, remember, “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” Do not imitate evil for evil, imitate Christ.
Godward aspect of the Christian life
- Joy: The Greek word is not the joy that comes from earthly things or triumphing over someone else in competition. It is a joy whose foundation is God. Spurgeon wrote: “This joy does not come from what a person has, but from what they are; not from where they are, but from whose they are; not from what they enjoy, but from what was suffered for them by their Lord.”
One of the greatest marketing strategies ever employed is to position hell as the place where the fun is and the kingdom of God as the place of gloom and misery. This is a joy that can abide and remain, even when circumstances seem terrible. It is this joy that Paul knew in Acts 16:25 that caused him to sing when he was beaten and chained in a dark dungeon!
- Peace: The Greek word for peace does not just mean freedom from trouble it reaches into the positive and claims everything for our highest good. It means tranquility of heart which comes from the consciousness that we are in the hands of God. The early Christians loved these two characteristics of love so much that the two most popular Christian names were Cara “Joy” and Irene and “Peace”. This peace is peace with God and with people, filled with blessing and goodness – not just the absence of fighting.
The manward aspect of the Christian life
- Longsuffering: Longsuffering is that quality which enables a person to bear adversity, injury, and reproach, and makes them patient to wait for the improvement of those who have done him wrong. Luther said, “When the devil finds that he cannot overcome certain persons by force he tries to overcome them in the long run.” To be long-suffering means that you can have love, joy, and peace even over a period of time when people and events annoy you.
- Kindness: This is the same kind of kindness by which God acts towards humanity. The Christian is to treat people in the same manner in which God has treated them. Kindness is a question of disposition whereas goodness is a question of action in words and deeds.
- Goodness: These two words are closely connected. The only difference is that goodness also has with it the idea of generosity.
Selfward aspect of the Christian life
- Faithfulness: The idea behind this word is that the Spirit of God works in us faithfulness both to God and to people. “It is the characteristic of a man who is reliable.” The ability to serve God faithfully through the years and through the temptations of life is something that can only be achieved by the Spirit.
- Gentleness: The word has the idea of being teachable, not having a superior attitude, not demanding one’s rights. It is the quality of a person who is angry at the right time and over the right things and never at the wrong time and over the wrong things. In our society what is prized is self-assertiveness but what God values in the heart is gentleness.
- Self-control: The world knows of self-control and self-sacrifice, but almost always for a selfish reason. The self-discipline and denial of the flesh are only for themselves, but the self-control of the Spirit will also work on behalf of others.
Paul concludes this list with a double truth, “Against such there is no law”. Love with these characteristics is what lawmakers would desire to legislate if they could. It is possible for the old nature to counterfeit some of the fruit of the Spirit, but the flesh can never produce the fruit of the Spirit. The difference is that when the Spirit produces fruit, God gets the glory. When the flesh is at work, the person is inwardly proud of himself and is pleased when others compliment him.
The fruit is produced to be eaten, not to be admired and put on display. People around us are starving for love, joy, peace, and all the other graces of the Spirit. We do not bear fruit for our own consumption; we bear fruit that others might be fed and helped, and that Christ might be glorified.
Vs. 24-26 Dead men don’t walk
Vs. 24 Notice that Paul says here that those who are in Christ “HAVE” crucified the flesh. He didn’t say “SHOULD”, or “BETTER HAVE” but rather he describes it as having already taken place and something, therefore, we need only be reminded of that truth. Friends, the flesh no longer has dominion over us, it’s been crucified, so next time it wants to act like a “zombie” walking around getting you in trouble you only need to remember that in Christ “dead men don’t walk.”
Paul chose to use the word “cross” instead of just saying kill it because the cross reminds us that this is what Jesus did with our sin and it is what we are to do if we wish to follow Him. It reminds us that doing so is painful but we have to take direct action against the flesh. The verb is in the active voice and points rather to what the believer has himself done and must continue to regard as being done. “When Christ came in the flesh, we crucified him; when he comes into our hearts, he crucifies us.”
Vs. 25 The Greek word for walk here is different from the word for walk in verse 16. Here the word means “to walk in line with”. The idea is, “Let the Holy Spirit continually direct your steps.”
Vs. 26 Pail ends this chapter with the need for each believer to examine their own hearts. The problems are in us and need to be dealt with by the Spirit of God. Augustine used to often pray, “Lord, deliver me from that evil man, myself.” All we must do is yield to the Spirit of God, and begin to truly walk in the Spirit.