Galatians 5 - Walk by the Spirit
Tom Shrader teaches through Galatians 5:16-26, examining the ongoing spiritual battle between the flesh and the Spirit in the Christian life. He contrasts the destructive works of the flesh with the beautiful fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Shrader emphasizes that these spiritual fruits are not optional extras for super-Christians, but the normal, expected evidence of anyone walking in step with God's Spirit.
“We cannot get away from this - there is to be something distinctive and different about us, unique, contagious.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Galatians
Recorded: 2012
Duration: 47 min
Themes: spirit, flesh, temptation, fruit, love, peace, self-control, holiness, struggling with sin, new believer, facing temptation, seeking spiritual growth, parent, dealing with grief, young adult, mature christian
Scripture: Galatians 5:16-26, Galatians 3:16, James 3:13-18, 1 Corinthians 15:56, Ephesians 6:10-12, Philippians 3:9, Matthew 5, 1 John 4, 1 John 5:21, Galatians 2:20, 1 Corinthians 13:7
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual warfare, fruit of the spirit, holy spirit, spiritual maturity, christian living, pneumatology, spiritual growth
Full Transcript
We were in Lynchburg, Virginia, at the end of August, preparing for our daughter's wedding, Leslie's wedding, to Joe Gahagan, a First Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. There was a hurricane coming up the coast of Florida and North Carolina called Hurricane Earl. We didn't have flowers. We didn't have 13 neckties for the groomsmen and the groom and the dads. Joe was potentially going to get mobilized to help hurricane victims up and down the coast, and potentially Neil and Katie were going to be stuck in Boston because of canceled flights.
We were wondering if God was going to bring these pieces together so this wedding could come off. As the days went by, things just started falling into place. Joe didn't get mobilized. He got off a day early, came to Lynchburg. They were able to get their wedding, their marriage license, and things just started falling into place.
The church was a hundred-year-old church, granite, beautiful wood, big silver pipe organ, just beautiful. Leslie was beautiful. The bridal party was beautiful. Everything was great. Neil did a great job in the service. The reception hall was beautifully decorated, beautifully lit, big, long staircase that Joe brought Leslie down into the crowd. Great food, lots of fun, great music, lots of dancing, lots of laughing.
The Storm That Hit
Then we get a call from a battalion chief of the Lynchburg Fire Department that was horrible news. Two off-duty police officers that we hired at the reception got the news that somebody had been mugged. We didn't even think that would be my dad. Got the news that it was him, rushed to the hospital, walked into the emergency room and we just understood right away that he was beaten.
Three boys attacked him, beat him up, knocked him to the ground, kicked him in the head, kicked him in the ribs. There was a 911 call, witnesses called 911. Lynchburg 911, an elderly man was just beaten, kicked in the head, and they left him on the ground here, we just found him.
His pupils were dilated, blank stare, no response to voice or touch. We just got horrible news from a neurosurgeon that was there about the injury to his brain—he was basically brain dead. We were told that it would be a couple of hours, a couple of days, a couple of weeks, he could have stayed in that state for that period of time.
Finding Peace in the Storm
So Zach, my son Zach and I stayed in the room with my dad as kind of the first shift. They cleaned up my dad, he was sitting up in bed, still with those pupils dilated and fixed, no response, just breathing. But in the midst of that shock and trauma, being there with my son who was curled up on this little couch, looking like he looked when he was 8 to 10 years old, as cute as could be, just the peace that came over that room, the peace and quiet was something that I'll never forget.
Upon hearing that we were going to take my dad off life support, Leslie got physically sick and Joe had to hold her hair back while she threw up in the toilet. I don't know why, but Leslie, after she was done, said to her husband of all of six hours, "I don't hate who did this to grandpa, they need grace just like I do."
The day my dad died, the media requests were already piling on top of each other. The first interview I did was a phone interview with the local ABC News affiliate. In that interview, the reporter asked me, "What does justice look like to you in this case?" And I couldn't answer him right away, I didn't know.
After I thought about what Leslie had said, I called the reporter back and told him, "I don't want retribution, I want redemption. I want God to reach out and touch these boys. For us, it's a reflection of what God's doing in our lives, and what God's doing in this situation to minister to other people."
God's Sovereignty Through the Storms
At the beginning of the week, there was Hurricane Earl. We didn't know about this other storm that was brewing and hit us, this storm that our family's been through. God can call off the storm and build your faith. He can walk through the midst of the storm and refine your faith. But for my dad, He took him home and perfected his faith. And that provides a lot of peace and a lot of comfort.
If you don't have a Bible and you raise your hand, you'll get a Bible from us. If you get a Bible from us, it's page 633, and it's Galatians chapter 5. Today we're going to look at verses 16 through 26. Next week we'll look at verses 1 through 10 of chapter 6, and then the last week in our study of the book of Galatians, we'll look at verses 11 through 18.
The Role of the Holy Spirit
As we look at this today, I have a habit that in the Bible I have, when I see something that's repeated in a passage I'm looking at, I try to mark it in such a way that my eye is drawn to it. So if you look at that passage in front of you, the phrase, "the Spirit"—if we believe that there's one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that's the Holy Spirit. Look at verse 16, 17, 18, 22, 25, you'll see that reference to the Spirit of God. So clearly a key part of this passage is the Holy Spirit.
Now Paul is going to make a point that God has delivered us out of bondage to sin, but the battle continues. We were children of wrath, we're now children of God. There are times when we sin, we relapse. There are those in chapter 5 verse 13 we looked at last week that have this freedom that we find in Christ, and that freedom becomes a license or excuse.
The Battle Between Flesh and Spirit
You just get the picture, let's look at verse 16, 17: "But I say to you, walk by the Spirit and you'll not carry out the desires of the flesh, for the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, a spirit against the flesh, for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please." You get the picture of opposition of warfare. There's a battle between, a cataclysmic battle between good and evil, God and Satan.
But in our lives there's a battle against Satan and his demons, against the world system, against our own flesh, and what Paul gives us—
Here in verse 16 of Galatians 5 is a command, it's in the imperative mood. It says, here's what I'm telling you, it's not a suggestion, it's not an option. He's not saying think about this, he's saying do this. Walk by the Spirit and you won't carry out the desires of the flesh—flesh against spirit, spirit against flesh. In verse 18, but if you're led by the Spirit. The idea of walk there is an idea of lifestyle. He says, here's what I want you to do—as you live life, I want you to live life in light of the Holy Spirit of God that indwells you, that the battles between the Spirit and the flesh.
We understand, and this is what we've been looking at now for nine weeks, that our sin has separated us from God and it is through a right relationship with Jesus Christ that we come into a right relationship with the Father. But then Jesus told, in a moment of dire need—though at the time they didn't even really know it—the night before Jesus died, He had the disciples together and He said, "Let not your heart be troubled. I'm going to go, I'm going to leave you, and I understand that concerns you, but the Father is going to send another—it literally means the same substance, another one—it's the third person, it's God the Spirit, and I won't leave you as an orphan. And He'll indwell you, He'll convict you, He'll give you strength, He'll bring into your life a peace that passes all understanding." But now the battle still continues, the battle still rages on.
Understanding the Flesh
Between the flesh—when the Bible speaks of the flesh, it speaks primarily of one of three ways: either skin, muscle, body; or flesh, meaning those who are unsaved, they are in the flesh; or the one that's used here is the idea of the flesh refers to a moral or spiritual weakness or helplessness of human nature that still clings to us even after we're redeemed. One author writes, "The flesh for Christians is the propensity to sin, their fallen humanness that awaits redemption, which will be new and holy," and he's talking there about the end, not just of this life, but now, ultimately, glorification.
So here are three words we use regularly: justification, sanctification, glorification. Justification is that moment in time where God declares us who were sinners righteous, and it's based on the finished work of Christ, totally a work of God, beginning to end. God is the one who redeems us, Christ is the one who dies for our sin. It would be impossible for us to experience justification or redemption without Christ.
What Paul's telling us here is it's equally impossible to experience sanctification without the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, to become Christ-like, that I should start to look more and more like Him.
Looking Like Jesus
I went for a walk last night and I'm walking along, I'm walking with Sandy and we're walking along and we're talking back and forth and there's a person coming with a dog. You know the old kind of adage that people start to look like their dogs. This was a rather large dog, rather sloppy dog, kind of a drooling dog, and she looked remarkably like the dog. Trying to find a nice way to say that because I said she looks like her dog.
Here you go, this is a big deal. When my kids were little, if I brought 10 kids up here and you didn't know who they were and you sat them here and I said which one are Susan and mine, you'd go that one and that one. How do you know? Little round face, pasty skin, little eyes drooling—and that's them. They look just like you and Susan. Here's what the sanctification is. We're supposed to start to look more and more like Jesus.
People are supposed to start to look at you and glorify your Father in heaven, and that's not a matter of resolution of your will. In fact, He's going to identify today the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and fruit is the result. Fruit is a byproduct of a healthy vine.
The byproduct of a right relationship with God through Christ is that you start to look like your Father, that your light shine in such a way that people see your good works. Jesus says in Matthew 5 and glorify your Father in heaven. We cannot get away from this. There is to be something distinctive and different about us, unique, contagious. People might not be able to go, "I can explain what it is," but they at least recognize it. And it begins really with a whole way that we see ourselves in the world around us.
Two Types of Wisdom
Keep your finger right there in Galatians chapter 5. Go to the right to the book of James. It's page 655 in the Bible we gave you. James is talking about wisdom. And when I was thinking about the idea of the flesh and of the spirit and the opposition, I was thinking about worldview and how we see God, how we see ourselves, how we see the interactings of the things around us, and my mind went to James chapter 3, verse 13.
James asks a question: "Who is wise and understanding? Let him show it by his good behavior and his deeds." Now he's going to talk about earthly, natural, demonic thinking and heavenly, supernatural, godly thinking. And what I hope you'll notice between this moment and the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit—as we see them, you're going to see there's great similarities here.
He says, "If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom"—so this thought process that's bitter and jealous and selfish, ambitious—"that wisdom does not come down from above, but it's earthly, natural, demonic." And here's how you know: where there's jealousy and selfish ambition, there's disorder, there's every evil thing.
So if I were to step back and look around in my life, here's what he's saying. If I see disorder, selfishness, ambition, if you're at odds with your spouse, at odds with your parents, at odds with your kids, there's this constant tension in your life, you should stop and look at you and ask yourself, "What is my contribution to this?" Because I'm acting like, thinking like, a style that's earthly.
Understanding True Spiritual Wisdom
Natural wisdom and demonic wisdom stand in stark contrast to the wisdom from above. If I'm thinking like God, that wisdom is pure and peaceable and gentle and reasonable, full of mercy and good fruit, non-wavering and without hypocrisy. This brings us back to that whole tension, that idea of the fruit that reveals the source of our thinking.
Let's return to the book of Galatians and break apart this section, focusing particularly on the fruit of the Spirit that we see in Galatians chapter 5, verse 22. We'll begin in verse 16, where Paul commands us to walk by the Spirit. This is written in the present tense, indicating continuous, regular action. It's a way of life, the way we're meant to live.
Just as Colossians 3:16 tells us the word of Christ should richly dwell within us, and Philippians 3:9 expresses Paul's desire to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, we are to walk in—or live by—the Spirit. That word "walk" describes a lifestyle, and if we live by the Spirit, we won't carry out the desires of the flesh.
The Ongoing Spiritual Battle
Verse 17 reveals that the flesh and Spirit are in opposition to one another, which is why Paul wants us to be led by the Spirit—because there's a battle raging. First Corinthians 15:56 reminds us that the power of sin is in the law, but thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
In Ephesians chapter 6, verse 10, Paul tells us to take a strong stance in the Lord and put on the full armor of God. Verse 12 explains that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers and powers, against the forces of this darkness and spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. Therefore, we must put on the full armor of God.
What's lost in the English but clear in the Greek is the specific tense Paul uses. In Greek, it would read: "Put on once and for all and leave on once and for all the full armor of God." We ask the question: when do I put on armor? I put on armor when I'm going into battle. But the Greek tells us to put it on once and for all and leave it on once and for all, because our battle is 24/7, 365 days a year. There's never a time when this war ceases to exist.
Battle in Unexpected Places
I have a friend who's a little older than I am, and pornography has always been his struggle. One Christmas, he had given a bunch of presents to his grandkids that needed batteries. So Christmas morning, he's going to Circle K to get batteries. They were really busy, and the clerk said, "The batteries are back here, just come and get what you need, then get in line."
So he goes back, and here he is on this mission of mercy to get batteries for his grandkids' toys on Christmas. The batteries were right there—bam!—right next to all these magazines that were his constant downfall. He said, "Here I am on Christmas morning at about 8:15 in the Circle K, and I'm right in the middle of a spiritual battle." For him, it was a huge spiritual battle. The battle never stops.
You can be sitting here in church, and maybe it's not something like that, but maybe you're thinking about the people around you. Maybe it's the way you're thinking about tomorrow or whatever else occupies your mind. That battle never ends—it's a battle between the flesh and the Spirit.
Indicators of Spiritual Health
Paul wants us to have some understanding of how we can know how we're doing in this battle. So in verses 19, 20, and 21, he gives us what he calls the deeds of the flesh. Some translations say "works of the flesh." Then in verses 22 and 23, he lists the fruit of the Spirit.
Both of these are partial lists, and I think this is significant. He hasn't listed every sin here, though we tend to think that way, nor has he listed all the fruit of the Spirit. He doesn't mention holiness and some other qualities. But he says these are indicators.
What we're going to do—which should be particularly fun and unusual—is give you an opportunity not to judge the people around you, but to look at your own life. And not to judge it by activities. Remember Jesus' comment to the disciples: "Here's how the world's going to know you're My disciples—that you love one another." Very humanly, if we were to list what God produces in our lives, we'd start listing activities: going to church, Bible study, and so on. He doesn't do that. Instead, He says it's attitudinal.
The Categories of Fleshly Deeds
The fruit of the flesh—or the works or deeds of the flesh—are evident, and Paul lists 15 of them in three groups. The first is sexual sin. The second is man-made religious sin. The third is interpersonal sin.
He talks about immorality and impurity and sensuality—being driven in a way that's strongly sexual, uninhibited, unabashedly wrong, and not caring who knows. In my experience, I could be wrong, but most people immediately focus on this list, and it becomes the big issue. I don't think I need to spend time on it because you already understand it.
The second list involves man-made religion, where he identifies idolatry and sorcery. Idolatry is the obvious sin of worshiping any man-made image. Sorcery comes from a Greek word from which we get "pharmacy" or "pharmaceutical." Its origin relates to medicine in general, but it came to be used primarily of mood-altering drugs, similar to those that create havoc in our own day.
Paul says we tend to be idol worshipers. It was Calvin who said our heart is an idol factory, meaning we're continually creating idols. I want to make a pitch here for your study guide. If you bought one and haven't looked at this lesson yet, you should. If you didn't buy one, no problem—you can go online and download it for deeper reflection.
Identifying Our Idols
There's a section of the study guide that's really helpful. There is what has become for us—I'll use the term classic, though that's not really fair—but it's certainly an article that a lot of us guys read over and over again. It's by Tim Keller called "Idols of the Heart."
An idol—and I remember the first time Larry was leading a study, and we were studying 1 John, and I just remember 1 John chapter five, verse 21, it's just the odd ending to that letter. It just ends this way: "Little children, guard yourself from idols." The classic definition, really, of an idol is anything in our lives that occupies the place that should be occupied by God alone.
In this article—and I'm not going to read you this article, nor do I need to, but you should go and explore it—Keller talks about idols, identifying idols, and then even gives us a test. There are twenty idols or idolatries that he identifies, I'm sure there could be more. Power idol, approval idol, control idol, helping idol. I like this one: "My life only has meaning or worth if people are dependent upon me and need me." Some of you are very needy in that you need to be needed. Dependency idols, work idols, achievement idols. Irreligious idols, racist idols, family idols.
A Simple Test for Idols
Here you go. You can go do the article, or we can just do it this way. Take whatever it is: "My life is only worth living if I have..." and you fill in the blank. Or conversely, say it negatively: "My life wouldn't be worth living if I didn't have..." If it's anything other than Jesus in that sentence, it's an idol. And they can be very good things.
I believe I have friends whose kids are their idols. These kids become everything. Certainly we know the work thing, but it's much more subtle than that. Again, I like the approval idol or the power idol. For me, it's comfort. I just can't stand anything that upsets my comfort.
My Personal Idol: Comfort
I love my house. My favorite part—I love my bed. I have the greatest bed. I'm the only guy... somebody asked the other day, I've had this bed for... it's a water bed. I'm the only guy you know still sleeping on a water bed. I've had this bed for 40 years. I love this bed. Thread count on my sheets has got to be about 5,000. You just come in and it wraps all around you, and it's just perfect.
I'll be all settled in, and then I'll hear, faintly but clearly, "Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof"—the sound of a dog barking across the lake. Then you hear the sound of the gun loading, and I'm going, "Why do I have this dog?" Just FYI—how many of you have dogs? Lots of you. I should not know you have a dog unless I see you walking it. But why do I care? It interrupts me. All of those things. Comfort is my idol.
So I'll get a call and someone says, "Can I meet with you?" And I'm going, "But I'm so comfortable." So it can be any of those things. Look at my work—my work is where I find value. We find value in Christ. It's not to say the other things aren't important.
Healing Idols with the Gospel
So a very helpful article then on dealing with this, and what I love about it is he doesn't leave you there. He talks about healing those idols with the gospel. And here's what he says. Let me quote this: "Your problem is that you're looking for something besides Christ for your happiness."
The Works of the Flesh: Sins Against Others
He starts with those two groups. He goes to the third group, and it's sins toward others. And look: enmity—and it's actually in the plural. It refers to hateful attitudes. And the result of that, you see it in the list now, we're in verse 20. The result of that now is strife. And jealousy. There's kind of a progression in all of this.
One of the authors writes this: "The list goes on, for sinful nature produces a seemingly endless variety of sins. Some people want to get ahead at others' expense, so they're guilty of rivalries, dissensions." This is really good. What are some of the other works of the flesh? People tend to be unhappy when others succeed. The proper term for such a grudging spirit is envy. Socrates wrote, "The envious are pained by their friend's success."
I used to say, when I was in the commercial real estate business, the next best thing to making a deal was seeing someone else lose one. It's that kind of darkness. So you see it, and it serves us in all sorts of ways. Holiday time, where you're going over to your brother or your sister's house, and they've got this wonderful house, and we live in this dump. And it goes on, doesn't it?
The Progression of Fleshly Sins
And it's outbursts of anger. And it's disputes and dissensions and factions and envy. And they're not made any better by the last truth. Now there's drunkenness and carousing. And he said there are all sorts of things like this. You know them, and I've talked to you about them before.
One of the authors would suggest this is a list that would have been very common to those in Galatia, both in and outside the church, and they're common to us today, so he really didn't need to spend a whole lot of time about what they were.
A Pattern of Life Driven by the Flesh
Here's what I'm saying: If those are the characteristics of your life—and the whole tense is there, the idea of a practicing thing, they're ongoing things—then you need to understand that you're being driven by the flesh, not by the Spirit. And this is great: If your life is in turmoil, it could be circumstances around you, or it could be you.
When I see people who are in broken relationship, after broken relationship, after broken relationship, after broken relationship, something's probably wrong with you. And the same thing with churches. We see people all the time. When we get together, it'll be interesting. We had somebody from another church here in the East Valley come here and they said, "I saw nothing but people from our church when I was at Gilbert." And I said, "Well, I was at your church and all I saw was everybody..."
I knew who had all the Bibles marked up with notes that they'd done from the studies here. So you see people going from church to church to church to church to church. Why? Something's wrong with you, probably. Could be the church, but it's unlikely that, or you don't even have any discernment. You can't even pick a good church, apparently. But there's problems, problems, problems.
The Fruit of the Spirit: Plural versus Singular
But more importantly now is verse 22. It's the fruit of the Spirit. Now notice this contrast. It's plural versus singular. The deeds of the flesh are, the fruit of the Spirit is.
So we suggest this, that there's nine characteristics here and they come as a bunch. It's not a smorgasbord. It's not so you get to go, "Okay, let's see. I'll have love, peace, goodness, and I get one more free, faithfulness." No, I've got all nine, like a bunch of grapes. I have nine individual grapes, but a bunch of grapes.
One author, and there's more than one who believe this, that the fruit of the Spirit is love, and then these other eight characteristics just kind of flesh out what love is. These are what I see in love as I look around. Either way, He's talking about these characteristics that should be present in my life. 106 times in the Old Testament, the idea of fruit is introduced. 70 times in the New Testament.
Love: A Choice with Feeling
So He says, let's work our way through it. The fruit of the Spirit is love. Now we know that this is the agape love. It's a love that the secular authors really never wrote about, but the Christian authors do.
Again, John MacArthur writes, "Love is a form, this form of love is the most reflective in personal choice. Now I'm referring to a simple, pleasant emotion or feeling." Agape love is a mark of salvation. Here's what I don't like about that. Love is a choice. But I'm afraid that we make it so much about choice that we deny that there's a feeling attached to it. Agape love has a feeling attached to it.
If you can honestly contemplate on a Good Friday or Easter the fact that you were lost and separated from God, and while you were still lost, Christ came and lived and died for you, if that doesn't move you emotionally, I'm not saying every time, every Sunday, every moment, but if that doesn't move you emotionally, something's wrong. It's a choice to be sure. And at times we'll be in very difficult situations.
We say this all the time, especially in a context like a church like this, is that we have people in our life who we're called to love, we may not even like them. But we're in this relationship with them where it's a loving relationship.
Jonathan Edwards, and some of you are unfamiliar with Jonathan Edwards, or maybe you've read his stuff, but haven't seen a picture of him. Go home and Google Jonathan Edwards and click images, and just look at the images. This is not a guy that you look at and go, "Boy, he would be fun to go to a ballgame with." This is a very stern dude. He's a guy who's very critical of revival that he saw going on in his time. He said, "This is too emotional." Yet, He wrote a classic work called Religious Affections where He said, there are appropriate affections that we should feel, and we should, in this sense of love, be driven to emotions sometimes overwhelmed by them.
Joy: Spiritual Reality, Not Circumstance
Love, joy. That phrase is used 70 times in the New Testament. It signifies a feeling of happiness based on a spiritual reality. It's not circumstantial.
So if you're in the stock market this week, and you had banking stocks other than Citicorp, if you had banking stocks, you have Wells Fargo. So Wells Fargo was at 24 bucks like two weeks ago. It's almost 34 bucks now. Well, happiness goes like this. Here's my happiness chart. Here's my stock market chart. As this goes up, this goes up. As this goes down, this goes down. Happiness is circumstantial.
I come home from work, and she said, "Oh, I'm so happy to see you. It's great to have you here. Dinner's ready. Why don't you watch a little TV? And then everything will be ready for you." I come home from work, and she said, "Dinner, you want dinner? You got two hands. Go ahead and get dinner there." I'm like, "Oh, happiness question." I'm like, kids are doing well, kids are doing bad.
Joy, like we're going to look at peace in a minute, joy transcends that. Paul can write the book of Philippians all about joy from prison, because my joy is derived not from my circumstance, but my relationship with God through Christ.
Peace: The Tranquil Presence of God
Peace is the same way. Love, joy, peace. It's not the absence of turmoil. It's the tranquil presence of God in my mind. "Let not your heart be troubled." The night before He goes to the cross, when these disciples are going to have, these 11 guys, they're going to have the most difficult, probably, arguably, one of the most difficult days of their life. They've invested three years in Christ. He's going to be killed the next day, and they're going to go, "What in the world happened?" Peace.
Again, it's the presence of God in the midst of even the most difficult circumstances. So let's just go back to the video that we saw. You have scenarios, we all have scenarios, and it's like whatever you lay out, you can find something worse. I know, when Susan and I used to go, and I would take her to the oncologist, we'd walk down the hall, we always came the same way, and if you went to the right was her oncologist, to the left was pediatric oncology. I mean, that was even tougher. So you always find something tougher.
But what you saw in Greg's story, that's pretty tough. How do you find, and He described it. He described, let's see, coming back and talking about even in the midst of all this, there was a peace. That's the promise that God gives to His children. "My peace, I leave you. My peace, I give you. Not as the world gives." The world goes, "snort peace, touch peace, rent peace." That looked a little too realistic, didn't it? I know. I got all these diseases, and I keep asking, "When's the one where I get the medical marijuana?" but I never
I digress. But it's that peace. It's not this snorting peace. It's the peace that comes from understanding God and who He is, and understanding that even in the midst of the worst storm He can bring into your life, there's this sense of "it'll be okay." I was talking to somebody the other day, and I was painting a set of circumstances that I thought were dire, and this person said to me, "It'll be okay. God is the one who will provide the strength."
Patience in Big and Little Things
Love, joy, peace, patience. Patience has with it the idea of tolerance or long-suffering, enduring injury. As I said, these disciples, the 11 of them, He said, "Let not your heart be troubled." There's this moment where Christ is killed, then He rises from the dead. There's exhilaration, but of the 11 of them, 10 suffer agonizing deaths. It's patience in the big things, patience in the little things.
It's this silly light down here at McQueen and Elliott that is my nemesis. Susan was in the hospital nine times, and all nine times, checking out was a nightmare. At one time, they told us we'd go at 7:30, we didn't get out till 4:30. The other day when I was there, the doctor, who was an extraordinary guy, who really did well by us and spent an enormous amount of time with us, very kind to us, I'm telling him, "You gotta move this along." But there'll be another doctor on call who has to sign it, and he said, "Fine, I'll take care of it, I'll be back."
And then I thought, well, I can help here. Because I had all this monitor stuff on, so I just took it off, and I put it on the bed. And the monitor nurse came in and said, "What happened?" I said, "A nurse came in and said I'm going home, and I didn't need it anymore," which isn't totally true. But then the nurse came in and said, "Well, what happened?" And I said, "Well, the monitor girl," I lied, really, is what I did as I looked back at it. I said, "The monitor girl said I didn't need it, and I thought I'd go home." Primarily through this help, but we got out of there in like two hours. I can't stand that.
True Character Revealed Under Pressure
Here's the deal about patience, and love. By the way, love, joy, they're all the same. You never know if you're a loving person until you're put alongside people who are unlovable. I'm really loving when everything's going my way. I'm really patient when every light is green.
Kindness, it's just being tender, concerned for one another. And I add to this, at home. So I watch these guys, it's amazing. So we'll be at lunch, and they'll go, "Tom, could you pass the butter?" And then I'll see them at home, and they knock people down, grab the butter. It's not like a license to be a jerk at home. It's kindness, it's concern.
I'm walking into a building the other day, I got all this stuff, there's a guy, we're going into a Bible study, this guy going to the Bible study, looks at me and doesn't hold that door. That drives me crazy. It's like, we're not talking about big things here. We're not talking about putting a man on the moon. We're talking about being nice.
The Ultimate Example of Gentleness
And it's goodness. It's that kindness in action. And it's faithfulness. It's being loyal, and trustworthy, and gentle. Gentle could also be translated meekness. And the definition that we use for that is strength under control. And to me, all of these, by the way, all of these, the ultimate example of that is Jesus.
But I've shared with you before, and it is, I was just rereading the passages the other day. Jesus is on the cross. He's hanging there. They've beaten Him. They've crowned Him with thorns. They've nailed Him to this cross. Now He's got all that. Now He's got all these guys walking by. "A king of kings, I thought He was a king. He saved others, He couldn't save Himself. If you're really the Messiah, why don't you come down here and get me?"
And I've said it a million times, that would have been my break point. I would have gone, "Really? Come here, little." Pow, that's the end of this. "Not dying for you. Dying for anybody, but you." But Jesus could, and He could have done that. But He didn't. Gentleness, or meekness, is saying, just because I have my rights, and I have this control, and I might even have authority over you, I'm not going to use it in some way that's wrong.
And then the last is self-control. It's just some sort of restraint that would take place. And so you can look at them and kind of go, one leads to the other, leads to the other.
The Process of Crucifying the Flesh
Now, here's what Paul says, we got about five minutes. He says, in the midst of this, verse 24, if you belong to Christ, you have crucified the flesh. Back in chapter two, verse 20, classic passage, "I've been crucified with Christ," so it's Christ who was crucified there. Here's what he says, he said, we're in the process now, mortification is the word, we're in the process of executing the flesh. And he uses the imagery of crucifixion.
And several of the authors point out that crucifixion has with it some sort of shame, but it's painful. But one of the overriding things that we see, it's a gradual process that inevitably kills the flesh. So here's what's going on, I'm crucified. Now, we understand crucifixion wasn't like getting a shot in the head, it was a slow process. But we know Jesus was on that cross, what, three hours? Sometimes in crucifixion, it could go on for days and days and days, depending upon the intention of the executioner.
As we're crucifying this flesh in the battle of the flesh, as we're crucifying this, it's a slow, gradual process, but inevitably, it will take place. Inevitably, that flesh will die. Now, for us, it's going to die when we are placed in right relationship, ultimately, glorification with God forever. Therefore, in verse 25, if we live by the Spirit, let us walk by the Spirit. Some of your translations will say, let us, the idea of let...
Keep Step with the Spirit
It's a Greek term that comes from the military. It speaks of getting in rank and file and remaining disciplined in rank and file. Keep discipline, that this is a struggle. J.I. Packer writes, holiness by habit forming is not self-sanctification or self-effort, but simply a matter of understanding the Spirit's method of keeping us with step in Him, meaning we need to be in the process of discipline, of spiritual growth.
That in our life, this is to be—and here's what I want you to see. This is the norm. This is not the exception. Paul is not saying, "Boy, if you've really arrived and you're really exceptional, we'll see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control." He's not saying that at all.
He's saying those are the inevitable byproducts of a right relationship with God through Christ, and there's no exception to this. That's why they're in the form of a command. That's why they're to take place continually.
Not Comparing Ourselves to Each Other
Verse 26—and I'm going to be honest with you, I almost forgot it. In my Bible, it's at the top of the right-hand column, and then chapter six starts right after. You almost ignore it, but here's what he writes: "Let us not become boastful, challenging one another and envying one another."
It seems to me that he's writing in the context of right relationship. Here's one paraphrase: "That means that we are not comparing ourselves with each other as one of us is better or worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our life. Each one of us is an original."
He's saying as you begin to live one another, now we see how these are fleshed out, and he seems to say this in the context of the church as well. Last week, I closed by saying this week, I'd spend some time looking and exploring the idea of love more. We didn't get a chance to do it, but we ended last week with, I think it's chapter 13, verse seven of 1 Corinthians, that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and my question was, imagine a church like that.
When Churches Devour One Another
As I was reviewing the book that we're going to look at Tuesday night, His very first section has to deal with the church, and it's part one, it's called "Indefensible Things We Do to One Another." He has a severely needy child, and they go into a church, and after a period of time, they just tell him, "We don't want this kid in here anymore," and he talks about how devastating that was.
Now, I get how that happens. I get things like that happen, but he talks about the way we eat and devour one another. I look back over the 21 years here, and by far, the most painful thing to me has been people that have devoured one another, hurt one another, made accusations, or say things that are just stupid. They're just stupid things. They have no basis in fact. They're spoken by fact, and then somebody else will pick them up and assume they're fact, and then you'll see 10 or 12 people all upset about something, but nothing that had anything to do with them. They're taking out somebody else's cause, and they don't even know who it is. It's amazing, and it's so destructive.
How the Family Should Look
This is to be how we're to live. This is how the family's supposed to be. So what's the family look like? I'm not talking about busy now. What's the family look like? Combative, each kid in the room, door closed.
Like my dad, the worst thing my dad could do to me is other than just beat the snot out of me, he'd go, "Go to your room." That was the worst. Now you go to your room. Well, that's a killer. I got this. I got that. I got everything I want in my room. The worst thing you could say to these guys is go outside. They've never been out there. Never occurred to them to go outside. Really? Outside play? That doesn't sound good. Oh, no, I don't want to go outside.
Is that the family? These are going to be the characteristics of our life. Now, inevitably, in the midst of that, there'll still be sin. How do we deal with sin? That's what we pick up next week, chapter six, verse one.
A Personal Challenge
I'd ask you to take a look at your life. I give you those things, not as an objective study, but so you can objectively study them and now subjectively apply them to your life. Which of those two lists represent you most often? Because if it's that list of the flesh, you got a lot of things to be worried about. And what do you do? You repent, you rejoice, you come to Him.
Let me pray as the guys come. Father, thank you for this awesome and amazing truth. You are a God who loves us and cares for us. You're a God who saved us and sustains us. Father, we pray that we would be men, women, children, students, who would love You, care for You. God, we pray that Your Spirit would invade our heart and bring us to a point of redemption. We pray it in Christ's name, amen.