This week we’ve been learning about the first quality in the Galatians 5 list called “The Fruit of the Spirit.” That first quality is love. But there is a roadblock to love, and the roadblock can be deep within us.
There is a story in the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus said that the two greatest commands in the Bible are “Love God” and “Love others…as yourself”, think about that second one.
How can you love others if you don’t love yourself?
What is a healthy love of self? In asking that question it could seem like we’re entering dangerous territory. What I mean is that we don’t want to become self-important, self-righteous, egotistical. Where’s the balance?
We are not to have self-hatred. Have you ever had thoughts like this: “I’m worthless, I don’t deserve anything, I hate myself.”?
Jesus said, “Love your neighbor, as yourself” so there is a sense in which it is okay to love yourself. But why should we love ourselves? God loves us. If he love us, we can follow suit and have a healthy love of self.
Further, being made in the image of God, we see he has created us, given us importance, dignity. We can love ourselves because God loves us. So remember who you are to him and in him.
Lastly, the Scripture tells us we are the temple of Holy Spirit, which means God lives in us, which shows how he feels about us. If God the Spirit lives in us, then he loves us, and we can have a healthy attitude about ourselves as well.
So what does a healthy love of self look like? It means that your value is found in who you are in Christ. Your identity is not found in a vocation, in how much money you have, in what other people think of you. Instead it is being thankful for life, for the good the bad the ugly in our lives, being secure in God’s love for us, no matter what life brings our way. In 2 Peter 1, Peter writes that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. That means we can be secure in who God created us to be, in his love for us, so that when life gets difficult or people mistreat us, we can always go back to the bedrock knowledge that God loves us.
This doesn’t mean that life won’t hurt sometimes. God’s love for us doesn’t mean that we will always experience a pleasant feeling or the ease of life. But we can know, no matter what we are going through, that God loves us.
As a result of God’s love for us, we express healthy love of ourselves by taking care of ourselves physically and emotionally. Healthy eating, exercise, sleep. Since our bodies are the temple of God, this is important for us and for him.
Practice the principle of Sabbath rest. It is right and good for us to make regular time for rest, recharging, worship, family, relaxation, celebration, to be grateful to God for his blessings. In that sense, practicing sabbath is not a 24 hour period each week, but a principle we can apply in our own way, and we can see it as a gift from God to us.
God wants us to know that we can be filled with his love, so that we have a healthy sense of love for ourselves, and then we can share his love with others.
How, then, are you growing God’s love in your life love?
In addition to the word agape, the Greeks had another word for love, and we find out about that in the next post.
In the previous post, I mentioned that, Paul, the guy who wrote about the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23, used the Greek word, agape, when he was referring to love. What is unique about agape love?
Paul describes it much more in-depth in 1 Corinthians 13, which is often called “The Bible’s Love Chapter.” I’m going to quote 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 below, and my guess is that you’ll find it quite familiar. It is often used in wedding ceremonies.
What’s so interesting is that the context of 1 Corinthians 13 is not marriage or romantic relationships. That context is made very clear when you examine the chapters of 1 Corinthians before and after chapter 13. I read from 1 Corinthians 11 almost every month before we observe the Christian ritual of communion. Chapter 11 is about worship, and in it Paul includes comments about how to participate in communion. Why? Because the Christians living in the Roman city of Corinth were disunified in the practice of worship. Then in chapter 12 Paul discusses relationships in the church community, famously using the metaphor of the body, explaining how each person has spiritual gifts and that they should be used for unity. Jump ahead to chapter 14 and we see an interesting parallel to chapter 12. Once again he talks about the gifts and about worship, and his point is to urge unity.
Are you starting to see the singular theme in the larger context of 1 Corinthians 11-14? Do you think Paul randomly placed a chapter about love sandwiched in the middle of a big discussion on unity? Random? “I think I’ll just take the love chapter and plunk it down here!”
Nope.
God gives us gifts to use so that we might have unity with others. There is no place for selfishness, even in the gifts given to us. God’s heart is to show love and care for others through us whom he loves. With that context in mind, we see God’s heart in chapter 13. Love is essential to the unity of the church. Love fuels unity. Love sustains unity. Love should be our passion in the church.
Now we’re ready to read Paul’s description of agape love. Look at how active the description of love is.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
What Paul makes clear is that agape love is not a feeling, but an intentionally selfless choice to treat the other person with dignity, care, kindness, and goodness. As Paul describes it here in 1 Corinthians 13, love is a radically different way to approach relationships that what we normally hear about in our culture. Love is not the flowery emotions of desire, it is the hard work of goodness.
Jesus, on his last night with his disciples before he was taken from them, shared a final meal with them. We call it the Last Supper, and during that meal, John tells us that Jesus gave his disciples some final instructions. One was this, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples that you love one another.”
Jesus talked quite a lot about how he wants us to be his disciples, what that should like, and how we should help other people be disciples. At that last supper he was basically saying, “Here’s a little test that you can use on yourselves and on the people you’re trying to help become disciples: Are you loving one another? You disciples should be known for your love for one another. Is love for one another evident? Is it missing? Is it strong or is it weak?”
I’m not trying to be accusatory or judgmental when I say this, but some of us have a hard time with love. I can say this because I say it about myself as well. Pastors are generally considered to be people who ought to be loving. Especially in a church Faith Church’s size and smaller. But I know I’m far from perfect. I know that some people are harder to love than others. I get it…love doesn’t come easy for everyone.
Check back tomorrow, as we’ll keep talking about how to grow love in our lives.
Our culture has many ideas about love. Here’s a great medley of some famous love songs. How do these songs describe love?
So many love songs. What is your favorite?
How does our culture describe the word “Love”?
I LOVE Pizza! Really?
What does someone mean when they say they love pizza? What they are doing is sharing their opinion. They actually mean they LIKE pizza. If they have too much pizza too fast, their opinion might change. But that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with getting sick of pizza.
My mom’s sister-in-law’s family owns a local fruit company, and I worked there as a part-time job in high school. It was pretty amazing watching all those shiny apples come down the line. They look so good, and we were allowed to eat them. I love apples, and they were amazing. But after a few weeks or months of picking apples nonstop off the line, packing apples, boxing bags of apples and cleaning the conveyor machines. Guess what happened? Yeah, I got sick of apples. I never really loved apples after all. I liked them, and my opinion changed.
So when our culture refers to love, it actually often really means “like.” Imagine how love songs would change, if we swapped the word “like” when the song originally uses the word “love”?
So what is love?
Love mentioned here in the fruit of the Spirit passage (Galatians 5:22-23) is the word agape. Maybe the best way we can distinguish agape from our culture’s description of love is to think for a minute about the time Jesus used the word agape when he said “Love your enemies.” Was he talking about a feeling? An opinion? About liking them?
Do you feel good about your enemies? Do you like them? No! No one does. That’s why they’re our enemies. But when we live in line with the way of Jesus, though we have deep struggles with our enemies, we are to love them.
We agape our enemies. What is this word agape? 1 Corinthians 13 describes it best. In the next post, we’ll learn what how agape helps understand love.
One of my parents’ neighbors is quite a character. He’s lived on their street before my parents moved there in the mid-1980s, and he is probably about 5 years older than me. He has classic car hot rods, and during his late teens and 20s he would rev the engine every morning before going to work. Over and over. I think one time I counted that he did it fifty times, as I was trying to cover my head with a pillow to drown out the sound. The neighbors complained, but it was all part of his persona at the time. What I’m referring to is that he was also a James Dean impersonator. He really looked like the guy, with the big slick wave of hair in front. He would also wear blue jeans and a tucked-in white t-shirt with cigarettes rolled up in the sleeves. As he’s gotten older, my parents have become friends with him, and he really is a good guy. But there was one more thing he did during his teenage years that was part of his persona. He would walk with a super long stride. I remember riding in the bus, watching him crank it out on the sidewalk. We would be wide-eyed looking at his huge steps. And he was fast. It would have been very difficult to keep in step with him.
Are you walking in step with the Spirit? Do you find it awkward or difficult?
In last week’s posts on Galatians 5:16-26, we learned that that when we walk in step with the Spirit we will do two things. First, in verse 24, Paul says that we will crucify the acts of the sinful nature, and second, in verses 22-23, we will leave room for the Spirit to grow his fruit in our lives. Last week we talked about the first part, crucifying the sinful nature. For the next nine sermons we’ll talk about the Fruit of the Spirit. One per week.
As we get started, we need to address a few issues. First, the fruit of the Spirit is not plural. It is not “fruits.” It is a singular noun, meaning that the fruit is a total package. God wants us to grow all these qualities in our lives. Not just one for now, then another one sometime else. When we are led by the Spirit, when we walk with the Spirit, we will see all these qualities growing in us.
Second, growing the fruit of the Spirit is not a passive exchange. As if we are robots waiting for God to upload his fruit into our lives.
Look that words Paul uses. They are activities that we do. They are choices that we make. Qualities that we strive for. We make a choice to be led by the Spirit. This is a very humble posture, saying, “Spirit I need you, lead me.” We also actively walk in step with the Spirit. Have you ever tried to walk in step with someone, like my neighbor? You have watch their gait and then adjust yours so you match.
As I mentioned above, I wonder if we think about the Holy Spirit like that. Wondering if we don’t know how to keep in step with the Spirit, or maybe if we do know what his stride is like, we think to ourselves, “It’s too difficult to live like that.”
That’s why growing the fruit of the Spirit in our lives has a direct connection to discipleship. Let me explain.
To grow the fruit of the Spirit, we must first believe that growing the fruit in our lives is the best way to live. The way of Jesus is what he called The Abundant Life. Too often, though, while we can believe that the fruit of the Spirit describes the best way to live, we might not want to do the work to grow the fruit in our lives. Belief is easy. Wanting to change and then actually working toward change is another story.
Have you ever heard someone use the phrase, “That’s just the way I am”? Maybe you’re one who uses that phrase about yourself. Often people use the phrase like this, “That’s just the way I am, and I am not changing.”
We humans can talk boldly, proudly that way, believing that we are being accepting of ourselves, as if that is mature. It might be mature. But it might not. What it too often masks is an immaturity, a fear of the hard work of change. That’s not how a disciple of Jesus talks.
Certain qualities of the Fruit of the Spirit might be more difficult for you than others. A given personality type might have a hard time with gentleness, kindness and self-control, for example. But disciples of Jesus, no matter your personality type, no matter your upbringing, no matter who you are, will want to have the fruit of the Spirit growing from you and that means you will work towards keeping in step with the Spirit.
When we want the fruit of the Spirit, we take action to adjust our life to get in step with his Spirit. That’s what a disciple does. A disciple changes his own life in order to follow, learn from, and do what Jesus does.
This is hardly possible if your practice of discipleship is primarily summed up by sitting in church worship services for an hour every now and then. Even if you attend worship services every week, what we do in worship services is not what God actually wants. Sermons can too easily be lectures where we listen, maybe think “that was nice,” and then do nothing. As a pastor, I’d rather not preach if that was all there was. Most Christians don’t need to learn all that much more. We need to apply what we know. Make change. We need to actively and intentionally look for the Spirit and seek to make our stride match his. That means seeking to have all these various qualities flowing from our lives.
Where the Lord really speaks and uses sermons is not in the sitting and listening, but in the follow-through. That takes accountability. Do you have a prayer partner or an accountability partner that you meet with on a regular basis? If so, would you talk with them about this blog series, asking them to help you grow the fruit of the Spirit. If you don’t have an accountability partner or mentor, how about selecting one now at the beginning of the series? Maybe you could gather with a small group, or used these posts with your small group.
Finally, my dad pointed out to me that the Fruit of the Spirit are primarily intended to describe how we relate to people. Yes, the Spirit is at work helping to grow these qualities in our lives, but the Spirit grows these qualities to help us in our relationships with people.
There are nine qualities in the list of fruit. This week we start with the most important one, the foundation, love.
If you had to describe God in one word, which is impossible I know, what word would you use? Pause reading this, think about it, maybe write down the word, and then come back to the email.
What word to you land on? Holy? Pure? Trinity? Jesus? Perfect? All-powerful (or its fancy synonym, “omnipotent”)? Another option?
There are so many options. A couple years ago I did a Wednesday evening prayer meeting study through the characteristics of God using the classic book by A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God: Their Meaning in the Christian Life. Tozer makes the following claim that I agree with: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
More than likely the one word you chose to describe God says something about not only what you think about God, but also what you might overemphasize about God. For example, if the one word you use to describe God is “justice,” then you might not be giving enough attention to God’s mercy. If the one word you use to describe God is “perfection,” then you might not be giving enough attention to God’s grace.
What Tozer suggests in the book is that the first word we think about God should be his incomprehensibility, which I find quite helpful. What Tozer means is what God himself said, “my ways are higher than your ways.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) We will never fully understand God, which means that God will always be somewhat incomprehensible to us.
That might sound wrong, as if Tozer is telling us that we should be frustrated because we’ll never really know God. But that is not what Tozer is saying. Instead, he is saying what the Bible teaches, that we humans are and will always be limited in our understanding of the totality of who God is. We should take heart, though, because God has revealed himself to us to the point where we can have a real relationship with him. We can know God, and we can know him very well.
Yet we should be humble and teachable, with a healthy self-awareness of the truth that in our finite minds we will not fully know the infinite God. As theologian Thomas Oden said, we should be comic theologians. What Oden meant is that we should have an ability to laugh at our attempts to fully understand God. In other words, let us not put God in a box, as if we have him figured out.
With all that in mind, if you answered one of the words I listed above, you are not wrong. All of those words describe something important about God. But I think there is one that is superior to them all. Love. God is Love. (1 John 4:7-21) Years ago I would have said that God is “holy” or “perfect” at his core. But the more I study Scripture, the more I read that love is his core. I would suggest that every other attribute only defines his love. He is holy love. Gracious love. Merciful love. Perfect love. And so on. Everything God is and does is flowing from his love.
What does it mean that God is love? Join us on the blog next week, and we’ll talk about it further, as we continue our series on the Fruit of the Spirit, beginning, as you probably guessed, with love.
After illustrating the acts of the sinful nature, as we learned in the previous post on Galatians 5:16-26, Paul has a clear warning for the people. Look at the end of verse 21, “If we live according the desires and indulgences of the sinful nature, we will not inherit the Kingdom of God.” That’s a serious claim. If you are regularly indulging in sexual promiscuity, sexual impurity, anger, divisiveness, envy and selfishness, or drunkenness, don’t think “Well, I believe in Jesus, so I’m going to heaven when I die.” Your actions show that you are not filled with the Spirit. And that means you are not a Christian. I admit that it is difficult talking about this. But if Paul got real, then you and I need to get real about it too.
Paul is not saying that you need to be perfect. But he is saying that if you indulge consistently in the vices in this list, you should not have a sense of assurance that you are a Christian. Instead, a Christian is one who has the good things of the Spirit flowing from their lives.
Look at the wonderful qualities of verses 22-23. This person is positively erupting with godly things. We are going to look at each of these fruits in one sermon, over the next few months. Nine fruits of the Spirit, nine weeks. One by one. We’re going to slow down and focus on each one because they are that important.
In fact, Paul says in verse 24-26, it is so important that we become different people, filled with the Fruit of the Spirit, that we crucify the old sinful nature. Crucifixion was a brutal way to kill. The image is clear. Spirit-filled Christians are people who take drastic action to get rid of any of those sins from their lives. Then we keep in step with the Spirit. We walk with the Spirit.
Our passion as Christians is to distance ourselves from all the vile, underhanded ways of the sinful nature and flow with the good things of the Spirit.
What about you? Do you need to crucify anything? Do you need to make a change? Do you need make a move toward walking in step with the Spirit?
In Galatians 5:19-21, Paul lists some examples of what he calls “the acts of the sinful nature.” It is not a comprehensive list, as that could potentially fill multiple volumes. Instead Paul mentions a dozen or so examples to illustrate how all humans have a sinful nature. In this post we’ll examine his list.
I’m going to organize his list in groups of sinful acts that are related. The first group is the sexuality group.
Paul mentions sexual immorality, which is the idea of fornication. We don’t use that word “fornication” all that much in contemporary English. Throughout Scripture, we read that God’s ideal for expression of human sexuality can be summarized like this: “sexuality is to be expressed within the marriage of one man and one woman.” Any other expression of sexuality outside of that is fornication. God’s heart is that his people will wait to have sex in marriage, and once married they will only have sex with their spouse. Everything else is the sin of sexual immorality.
Next Paul mentions the act of impurity. This is related to sexual immorality, but it is more extreme. This is not only sex before marriage and sex outside of marriage, but it also includes pornography, or other illicit acts.
Then there’s debauchery. That word describes sexual perversity of yet another level of intensity. This the person who expresses sexuality with little or no restraint. The last sin Paul mentions in the area of sexual expression is orgies, and it is just another extreme variation of immorality.
We live in a sexually indulgent culture. Our culture is actually similar to the culture the Galatian Christians lived in. When it came to expressing their sexuality, some people in the first century Roman Empire could be unrestrained, and this was behavior commonly accepted. Paul says that Christians should be different. But how about our culture?
Where our Christian culture today can fall prey to sexual sin is in the growing belief that sex before marriage is okay for two people who love each other. Or the similar belief that two people, if they have been dating a while, can move in together and have sex, because they believe they’re going to get engaged and married anyway. The biblical ethic is that the expression of sexuality is only for within marriage, and this is by far the wisest and best approach, not to mention that it flows from God’s heart for us.
Another way Christians can struggle with sexual sin is pornography. Porn is a massive industry that is addictive, mind-altering, and the women involved are often mistreated. Put it all together and Christians are to practice Jesus’ way of purity when it comes to expressing their sexuality.
But let’s keep looking at the list and next group he mentions is related to other religions. In verse 20, he mentions idolatry. What is idolatry? It is placing our faith, and giving our worship, to anything other than God. It is believing in something else to provide for us.
Money is the most obvious one in our culture. In the Bible, when money is referred to as an idol, it is called Mammon. Some view Mammon as a demonic force, which is common in idolatry. Idols are often rooted in the demonic.
In our society, one way we can idolize money is through the economic idea of capitalism. You can hear people talk about capitalism, as if the making of money is the cure-all for all the ills in the world. The problem is that you don’t read that in the Bible. If you look at the behavior of the earliest Christians, they were decidedly different. They practiced equality among themselves. If one person or family or group had wealth and another person, family or group was in need, the wealthy ones divested themselves of that wealth in order to help those in need. Mammon is an idol that says, “No, you need the extras, the comforts, the toys.” Mammon says, “You earned it. And those people could have it too if they worked as hard as you did.”
Mammon is a lying idol. Don’t believe it.
Media can be an idol. Power can be an idol. Celebrity can be an idol. There are many American idols.
Next in the other religions group, Paul mentions witchcraft. In Paul’s day, as in ours, this is the use of magic spells and potions to influence people. It is an connection to the demonic world. And something we Christians stay far away from.
Next there is Anger group: Hatred. Fits of rage. Anger is a powerful emotion. It is not evil in an of itself. Anger is a neutral emotion. Anger is like an internal warning sign, “Danger! You or someone is about to be hurt, or your will is about to be crossed.” If we can control it, it can lead to good things. Anger can right injustice. But often we can’t control anger. Often anger controls us. And it leads us to hurt others, to lash out.
Then there is Division group: Discord. Dissensions. Factions. This is a person who sometimes sneakily goes around trying to plant ideas in people’s minds, encouraging them to question and distrust and break away. This can happen in a church. That is the act of the sinful nature. If people in the church approach you with even a hint of divisiveness, quote Galatians 5:20 and tell them, “No.” There should be no backroom deals, no underhanded, divisive conversations. They are church family killers and Spirit-filled Christians have nothing to do with it.
Then there is the Desire group: Jealousy. Selfish Ambition. Envy. This person is not content. They feel an emptiness deep down inside. They look at others who seem to be successful, well-liked or wealthy, and it makes them so mad. Green with envy with call it. They start to pursue filling the emptiness.
Finally, one other outlier: drunkenness. Drunkenness is clearly condemned in Scripture. Paul writes in Ephesians 5, “Do not get drunk on wine, but be filled with the Spirit.” When we get drunk, we lose control. The alcohol in our bloodstream makes it difficult for us to function properly. All kinds of bad things happen when people are drunk. So instead, we should be under the control of the Spirit.
Just to show that his list is not exhaustive, he tags on at the end, “and the like.” Paul is just illustrating a concept, that the sinful nature is a powerful temptress.
We’ve had quite a long introduction to the passage we’re studying this week. Two whole posts here and here. We’ve learned that God is passionate about helping people become the kind of people that live in line with his heart. But how? By following laws? No. In those introductory posts we discussed Paul’s clear message in Galatians that Christians are free from the law. But we are not free to indulge our sinful nature. Instead God has set us free from the law so that we can can love. But how do we become people who love?
In Galatians 5:16-26 Paul describes the inward change God desires to bring in his people. Paul talks about this transformation using a variety of terms that pretty much all mean the same thing. In verse 16 and 25 he writes, “live by the Spirit.” In verse 25, he also calls it “keep in step with the Spirit.” In a later writing, Ephesians 5, verse 18, he would call it being “filled with the Spirit.” Christians are inwardly transformed when we are so aligned with the Holy Spirit that we live by the Spirit.
What Paul is talking about is when people say to the Spirit, “I need you. My life depends on you, Holy Spirit. I cannot do this without you.” I wonder how many of us actively, intentionally cultivate that kind of dependence on the Holy Spirit?
Remember that Paul would also write in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you, so honor God with your body. When you honor God with your body, you’re not following a law to look good on the outside. No, you are desiring to live a holy life because God’s Spirit lives on your inside. God is with you. God the Spirit is in you.
That’s why in another writing, Paul says, “You can grieve the Spirit.” In Ephesian 4:30, Paul says that we can grieve the Holy Spirit by how we talk and act with one another. Back here in Galatians 5, he says pretty much the same thing in verse 16 when he says, “live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” He depicts the two as if they are totally at odds with one another: it is the sinful nature vs. the Spirit.
Paul explains these almost as if we have competing forces at work in our lives. It sounds a bit like the classic illustration of a demon on one shoulder and an angel on the other. The demon is tempting us to do bad and the angel is encouraging us to do good. But that illustration is not what Paul is teaching here, as if the battle is coming at us from the outside.
Instead, he is talking about a sin nature within us, and that sin nature is part of who we are. It is in our nature. But what does that mean, our “sin nature”? It might be confusing because when God created the world, including humans, as we read about in the very first book of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1, God looked at his creation and said, “It is good.” In fact, he said, “It is very good.” Not to mention that we are created in the image of God himself (Genesis 1:26-27). So are we good or are we bad?
There’s a lot of disagreement about the question of human nature, and there always has been a lot of disagreement. The disagreement boils down to this: Are humans inherently good or are they inherently bad? What I have noticed is that each side tends to describe their viewpoint as so important, they claim that if you view things from the other side, you are horrible and part of the reason why the world is falling apart. As if they know for sure the world is falling apart. It’s as if they are saying the fate of the world rests on you believing things their way. I think they’re making a big deal over the wrong thing.
What do we read in the Bible? We read that God created us good. And we also read that we have a sin nature. That means we have a possibility for doing good and for doing evil. Clearly, doing evil is out of line with God’s desire for us, and doing good is in line with God’s desires for us. But just as clearly, we still do evil. The evil we do could be small, seemingly inconsequential, but it could be really bad too. Even after they become Christians, Christians still struggle with evil. That is what Paul means in verse 17 when he says that this conflict can lead us to do things we don’t want to do. (Remember the tongue-twister Paul wrote about this in Romans 7? See this post for more details.)
Do you want to act like jerk? Not really. Maybe in your anger, you partially want to act like a jerk, but I suspect most people, when they are jerks, would prefer not to be. Do you want to say horrible things to your spouse? No. Do you want to hurt people? No. But you probably still do sometimes. You get so frustrated or sad or angry or hurt, that you can do something you regret. What do we do when we do what we don’t want to do?
Paul’s solution in verse 16 is really straightforward, “If you live by the Spirit, you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” If you live by the Spirit, you won’t do evil. Whatever Paul means by “live by the Spirit,” it is the key to turning away from the acts of the sinful nature.
What are the acts of the sinful nature? Paul doesn’t list out every possible sin. But he does name a few. Look at Galatians 5, verses 19-21. There are some doozies in there, like witchcraft, orgies, and fits of rage. So be careful not to look at this list and think, “Oh, Paul only cares about the really bad stuff, and I’m not into that.” Instead, there are plenty of sins mentioned that could apply to many of us.
Check back in to the next post as we’ll look more closely at the acts of the sinful nature Paul lists.
In the United States we often say, “It’s a free country, I can do what I want.” But that’s not true. Yes, the USA is a free country, but people are not free to do whatever they want. We have TONS of laws, and if you break a law you will face the consequences. We also lock people up, taking away their freedom, if they break certain laws. Christians also have a similar phrase that goes like this: “I am free in Christ!” It sounds really good to have a life of freedom. But how free are we? Do Christians say, “We are free in Christ,” but actually have laws too? It can seem that way, and frankly become quite confusing. In this post, we’ll try to follow Paul’s teaching in Galatians to sort it out.
This week we are studying Galatians 5:16-26, the passage of Scripture which introduces us to the Fruit of the Spirit. In the previous post, I mentioned that a month ago we studied Galatians 1, verse 1 all the way through Galatians 5, verse 15. It was a kind of overview of the letter to the Galatians Christians. We learned that there were some people in the Galatians churches who believed that non-Jews (commonly referred to as Gentiles), when they became Christians, also needed to become Jewish by observing the Mosaic Law. Why? In the previous post you can read their rationale more fully, but the brief summary is the Jews believed the Gentile Christians, if they didn’t start observing the Mosaic Law, would become lawbreakers. To those Jews’ very important concerns for the Christians’ behavior, Paul says, “I disagree with you…but I also hear you.” Read Galatians 5, verses 13-15, and I think you’ll see what I mean.
Galatians 5, verses 13-15 is an important transitional section in the letter, as Paul answers his critics and moves toward an important conclusion. Here’s how Paul responds to the people who think that being free from the Law will result in Christians doing terrible things. Again, he says two things in response: (1) “I disagree with you,” and (2) “I hear you.” First, he says, “I disagree with you. Christians are free from the Old Testament Law. We do not need to obey the Old Testament Law.” Hold on a minute. Really, Paul? None of it? What about the Ten Commandments? Surely we have to obey the Ten Commandments, don’t we? You are going to say that we need to obey the Ten Commandments, aren’t you, Joel?
Nope. Nowhere in the New Testament do we read anything other than “You are free from the Law.” There is no teaching by Jesus, Paul or any of the other writers that says, “You are free from the Law, except the Ten Commandments. Those you still must follow.” Some people disagree with me, and they describe it this way. “We are free from the ritual law and ceremonial law, but not the moral law. What they mean is that Christians don’t have to practice all the rituals, like the sacrificial system, and all the cleanliness laws, and the hundreds of other laws that make Judaism what it is. But,” they say, “the moral law is different, because that is the foundation of the law, and every other law is based on the Ten Commandments. So, you’re wrong, Joel. Christians do still have to follow the Ten Commandments.”
That might sound good, except that neither Jesus, nor Paul, nor any of the New Testament writers say anything like that. In fact, when people asked Jesus what the greatest commands of the Law are (see Matthew 22:37-40), he could have said, “The Ten Commandments,” but he didn’t. When asked what the greatest commands of the Law are, he didn’t mention any of the Ten Commandments. Instead, he said there are other commands that sum up the Law for us. “The most important command is, Love the Lord you God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself,” which is the very law that Paul refers to in Galatians 5, verse 14.
If this is making you nervous, thinking, “Woah, Joel, are you really saying that it is okay for us to disobey the Ten Commandments? Are you saying that we can make idols, lie, steal, commit murder and adultery?” Of course that is not what I am saying. What I am getting at is what Paul clearly writes. We are free from the Law, every single command of the Old Testament Law. But as Paul says in verse 13, we are not free to indulge the sinful nature. This is the second part of his argument in Galatians, and it leads to what he will say in the rest of the chapter. Paul’s point is this: The Law can still be of use to us, because it shows us the heart of God. Every Old Testament Law teaches us something about who God is, and how we can love him and love our neighbors.
Furthermore, 9 of the 10 Commandments are repeated in the New Testament, which means that we do follow those nine. You know which one is not repeated? #4. Keep the Sabbath. Christians do not have a sabbath day. Sunday is not the sabbath. There is no New Testament teaching that says we need to take a 24-hour period of rest from work each week. What we do learn from the principle of Sabbath though, is that God’s heart desire his people to be sabbath-minded people. That means we trust in him, rather than trust in our own ability to work and make money. We are to be dependent on him, rather than self-sufficient. Then of course we set aside time for rest, for worship, for family, for enjoyment. Sabbath is so much more than a 24-hour period. We do not need to follow a legalistic Sabbath, we need to follow the principle of sabbath which flows from God’s heart.
All this to say, we Christians are free from the law, but we are free for a new purpose of righteousness and holiness, to pursue the way the Jesus lived. That’s the second part of Paul’s response, “I hear you.” The Jews were correct to be concerned about selfish, sinful living. So he says that Christians are not free to indulge the sinful nature. Instead we should look to Jesus as our example for how to live. To live that kind of life, though, can seem impossible. Live like Jesus? Wasn’t he perfect? We think we could never be like that. So we take a different route, the legal route. Why? It is much, much easier to set up a list of laws to follow. It is much more difficult to experience transformation so that we follow the way of Jesus.
Let me explain with a phrase from the Old Testament. There are numerous times when God told his people, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” What does God mean? Is he saying that he set up this vast system of laws, but didn’t really care if they followed it? That’s contradictory. And we know God is a consistent God. Let me try to explain what God means, and I think you’ll see how important this is to understanding Paul’s argument that we are both free from the law, and free to pursue holy living.
God told the people that he desired mercy, not sacrifice, because at the time, the people of Israel were just going through the motions of following the ceremonial laws. Every Saturday, which was their sabbath day, they would bring a sacrifice to the temple, where the priest would sacrifice it. Every Saturday, they would go to the tabernacle, hear the readings of Scripture, sing songs, and prayer. And they kept doing it week after week. In fact, they kept going through the religious motions on Saturday, their sabbath, while throughout the rest of the week, they were living lifestyles that were not consistent with the Law. They were thinking that sacrifices were all God wanted. That he just cared about them going through the rituals, making the sacrifices each week. As if God took pleasure in the death of perfectly healthy animals. Or perhaps he was hungry? No! But they kept offering the sacrifices anyway, wrongly thinking that’s what God wanted. So it wasn’t a big deal to them that they were jerks all throughout the rest of the week, practicing injustice such as paying their workers poor wages, cheating, stealing, lying. God says, “No, no, no…I don’t actually want your sacrifices, I want your hearts. I want you to become different people.”
God doesn’t want us to just check things off a list. Go to church? Check. Give 10% of my income to the church? Check. Pray before meals? Check. Those are all good things, but they aren’t what God really wants. That’s what he means when he says “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” God wants us to become different people. God wants us to change. God wants us to live lives of justice, lives that are in line with his heart. If you’re a jerk at home, at work, or with your friends, don’t think that God just wants you to go to church and that other stuff doesn’t matter. There’s 168 hours in the week. For God, they all matter.
Here’s the thing: just keeping the law won’t change us into people who are living how God wants us to live during all 168 hours. Paul says the Law was powerless to change us. We can keep the law and look good on the outside doing it, but inside, our hearts and minds can be a mess. God wants to change us from the inside out. Because when your insides are changed, the fact that you are free from the law won’t matter. If your insides are filled with love, then you will love. You won’t need a law to tell you to love. You’ll be so Jesus-minded, Jesus-living, that his love will flow from within you.
That idea of people being changed inwardly is exactly where Paul is headed, and we’ll begin learning about that in the next post.
Do you know any tongue-twisters? How about “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”? Or maybe “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck?” Can you say the difficult “She sells seashells by the seashore”?
Did you know the Bible has a tongue-twister? Here it is. Romans 7:15-20,
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”
Could you get through that without making a mistake? I wonder if the translators were smiling when the they translated that including so many instances of the word “do”? They had to know they were making a tongue-twister, don’t you think?
While Paul’s tongue-twister is funny, it expresses very well the struggle we have with temptation. It’s almost as if tongue-twisters are a metaphor for the struggle, because they are complex and confusion.
So what tempts you? Seriously think about what tempts you to do what you should not do. What tempts you? What do you battle with? We can often struggle with sin, giving in, committing sin, feeling guilt and shame, frustration, know the God has already forgiven us through Jesus’ death and resurrection, make up our mind that we have a fresh start and try again. Only to fall into temptation yet again. Over and over the cycle can go. Is there any hope? There is.
A month ago on the blog we studied Galatians chapter 1, verse 1, through Galatians chapter 5, verse 15. That week’s study was to help us understand why the Apostle Paul was writing a letter to the Christians in the region of Galatia. That, in turn, would get us ready to study the rest of Galatians chapter 5, which talks about the Fruit of the Spirit, because our next sermon blog series is on the Fruit of the Spirit. This week we’re talking about the rest of Galatians chapter 5 because that is where Paul teaches the Fruit of the Spirit.
Before we begin looking at Galatians 5:16-26, let’s review what we learned in Galatians chapter 1 through the middle of chapter 5. Paul wrote this letter to the Christians in the region of Galatian because people in the church were teaching that when Gentile (or Non-Jewish) people became Christians, they also needed to become Jews and follow the teaching of the Old Testament Law. Paul clearly says, “That’s not true.” That’s not the Gospel he taught. The Gospel Paul taught is that Jesus has set us free from the law. When the Jews heard what Paul was teaching that Christians are set free from the Law, they would immediately be shocked, thinking that Paul is saying, “Oh, so Christians are allowed to be lawbreakers?”
What those Jews were thinking is that Christians would start to live out of control lives, doing whatever they pleased. This was particularly galling to the Jewish mindset, because God created the Old Testament Law so that the people of Israel would be different from the nations around them, the Canaanites. God wanted the Jews to be different because the Canaanites were brutal. Here’s just a few examples. They drank blood. They practiced ritual prostitution in worship, and they even sacrificed children in worship. So it was right and good for God to call the people of Israel to a different kind of life. If the people could live according to the Law, they would be creating a new society, a new culture, based on God’s truth, goodness and beauty. It was a new culture in line with God’s heart. So from the Jewish mindset, following the law was the best way to live. It was God’s way to live. Why would anyone NOT want to follow that?
Additionally, the Jews also knew their nation’s history, and there were plenty of examples when their own ancestors did not follow the Law. We learned all about that when we studied Ezekiel. The people of Israel had become totally apostate, rebelling against God, and joining in with the perverse ways and religions of the surrounding nations. That rebellion is why God allowed them to be defeated and exiled in the time of Ezekiel. The Jews in Paul’s day knew all-too-well about their forefathers’ rebellion, and they could say, “Paul, if you tell these Christians that they are free from the law, they will be just like our ancestors who didn’t care to follow the law.”
What this means is that the Christian theology of salvation by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, which you and I and the entire Christian church has understood for centuries, was not only brand new when Paul wrote this, but it sounded wrong. It sounded like Paul was teaching something that was going to result in Christians living wild, wasteful, selfish lives, which was totally against God’s desire for human flourishing. And to those Jews’ very important concerns for the Christians’ behavior, Paul says, “I do not agree with you…and yet, I see your point.”
What? How could Paul both disagree and agree? Check back into the next post and we’ll take a look.
Engaging Scripture 