The Fruit of the Spirit | Galatians 5:18-25

a godly life in this world.

In verse 18, we'll have a look at the power

that has been given to every single Christian

to live a godly life.

In verses 19 to 23, we'll have a look at the pattern

of what a godly life looks like.

And in verses 24 and 25, we'll have a look

at how the Christian is to practice this godly life

to which we've all been called to.

So three things that I want for all of us

to consider this morning, the power, the pattern,

and the practice of a godly life.

So if you have your Bibles with you this morning,

please look with me at verse 18.

Our apostle writes,

but if you are led of the spirit,

you're not under the law.

Right, so the first thing that I want you to see here,

to notice with me this morning, is that word, but.

Because that indicates to us that Paul

is halfway through a thought,

which means he's contrasting what he's saying here

with what's come before.

And you might remember it from last week,

but if not, totally fine.

We'll have a bit of a think of our context here.

You see, Paul has been speaking to us

about a particular battle that every single Christian has.

And it has to do with the flesh.

Now, as we've seen, Paul used the word flesh

as a way of describing our old lives

that remain with us after we've been born again.

That linger with us on this side of eternity kind of thing.

Before God tore us out of this world,

before he gave us ears to hear the gospel,

we lived in whichever way we wanted.

Indulging in sinful desires.

But when God caused us to put our trust in Jesus,

he set us free from the condemnation that we all deserved.

And we were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Our old lives have been defeated in that sense,

nailed to the cross as Paul puts it.

But we still live with the remnants of what we once were.

And so the Christian life is engaged in a battle

in that sense, a battle of what we want to do

and what God is leading and guiding us in by his spirit,

through his word.

Now, we might pause here for a moment and acknowledge

that it's really interesting what the duty eyes is.

The legalists were wanting to do with the Galatians.

They wanted more rules and regulations to be placed on people

and they preached that you'll be more acceptable to God

if you do these things.

For them, the Mosaic law was the key to unlock true redemption

and their solution was work harder and do more.

Do more festivals, have more regulations,

observe more things, get circumcised in the flesh

and God will ultimately save you.

And I want you to note that because as we've seen,

this legalism, this mindset was totally at odds

with the Gospel of grace that Paul has been preaching.

You see, all throughout the book of Galatians,

Paul has shown that the Christian has been set free

from the condemnation of the law

because Jesus acted as a substitute

and took the wrath that his people deserved on the cross.

And says, Paul, if you believe in that work on your behalf,

if you trust all that Christ has done

in his perfect sacrifice for your sin,

then you are washed clean

and the Holy Spirit is given to you.

And thus, if you're led by the Spirit,

if you've come under the Gospel, so to speak,

you're no longer under the law as a system

to make yourself acceptable to God.

No, God has taken care of all of that

in the Lord Jesus Christ on your behalf.

So why would you think going back under the law

and trying to perfect yourself

could make you any more righteous

in the eyes of your Creator?

It couldn't even save you in the first place.

You don't have to be the parents of little children

for very long to see little rebellious hearts

from the youngest age.

When you say, no, don't do that,

it's like fuel for their little brains

to say, just watch me.

Even when you say it for their own good.

Like when you say, don't touch the fire,

don't run across that busy street,

don't pat that feral dog.

And I mentioned that because the law

has the same effect on our flesh.

When it says, thou shalt not,

the flesh still arcs up and says, yeah, watch me.

And so the legalists with their more rules and regulations

and they're pointing to the law

to do battle with the flesh,

that could never be the solution.

It can't be more rules and regulations

to get right with God

because the flesh gets more and more hostile

and rebels harder.

That's why Paul says, dear ones,

it's by being led of the spirit

that we win this battle against the flesh

because the spirit living in us,

he changes everything.

He is the one who changes our little hearts

from being little rebels with our fists up to heaven

to little disciples that love our Lord.

And like sheep, wanna follow the good shepherd.

Brothers and sisters, it's because of the gift

of the Holy Spirit given to us by our heavenly Father.

That when we now hear the word of God,

even in places like the Ten Commandments,

whether it's thou shalt not,

that we don't just hear you won't.

But because we've come to know our Father in heaven

and Jesus as our friend and as our savior,

we now hear truth and promises held out

because we trust our heavenly Father's lead.

But there's more, you see,

he's not just changed our hearts to love his word.

He's also supplied us with the gift of the spirit.

And here's the one that helps us to more and more

align our hearts and wills and affections and words

and actions with all that God has revealed

as pleasing to him.

That's what Paul means here.

When he says in verse 18,

if you are led of the spirit, you're not under the law.

In effect, he's saying you must be led,

you must be directed and governed by the spirit of God.

And when you have God at work in your life

and trust him and love him

and are following his leading from that new heart

in light of the gospel,

well, that is the way that we do battle with the flesh.

In other words, God is the one who gives us the power

through the Holy Spirit to live a godly life.

Church, the Holy Spirit of God in our lives

makes all the difference in the battle.

What once fled up the flesh is now flipped on its head

and seen as good and right and true.

And that is because the Holy Spirit

has come to dwell in the lives of God's children.

He's the one who shows us that God's ways are right

and true and can be trusted.

French theologian, John Calvin says it like this,

is it your desire to terminate the controversies

in which you are now engaged?

Well, walk according to the spirit

and you'll be free from the dominion of the law,

which will act only in the capacity of a kind advisor.

And so that's first, the Holy Spirit is the one

who gives us the power to live a godly life.

He changes our hearts from hating God's instructions

as revealed in his word to loving and trusting him

in his leading and guiding.

The Holy Spirit is the one who makes all the difference.

Next, this won't just be a mental consent

on behalf of God's people,

but our following will produce real change

and a pattern of real godly living in our lives.

Okay, as we've seen over the weeks,

our apostle has drummed into the church

that we are to walk in freedom.

We're not to be legalists in that sense,

but neither are we to be like little punk rockers

that rebel against any type of authority and rule.

And so Paul points out to us,

what a godly life looks like

when you're being led of the spirit.

What a life guided by the word of God actually produces.

But before he shows us the good,

he does it against the backdrop of the very bad and ugly,

being the works of the flesh that linger.

And it seems that Paul has broken down

these fleshly desires that try to pull the Christian

back into slavery into four broad categories.

The first of them addresses sexual sins,

being sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery,

which we see there in verse 19.

Now, in our day and age,

our society deems it incredibly offensive

to call what people do with their bodies

outside what God has designed sex for as sin.

But as God is our creator,

as he is the one who is the inventor of sex,

he is the one who has told us how and when

sexual relations are to be used.

And that is within the union of one man and one woman

in the confines of marriage for life.

And so if God's leading and guiding

is rejected in that area,

the determining factor for what is right and wrong

becomes what feels right to the individual.

And so says Paul, that whole way of thinking,

it belongs to the flesh.

And the acts of that rejection are obvious.

So first, sexual sins are a result

of the flesh being in control.

Second, he points out what I deem religious sins.

I call, sorry, I call religious sins.

We see that there in verse 20,

with idolatry and witchcraft.

Witchcraft is the practice of rejecting the truth for a lie

when it comes to the spiritual world.

In Paul's day and age,

it was about following superstitions

and speaking to ancestral spirits.

This day and age, we see similar things with the occult,

with Ouija boards, with witch doctors,

with ghost hunters, with fortune tellers.

Idolatry is the false worship of the true God.

Paul dealt with that time and time again

with the people he held the gospel up to

with the Greco-Roman gods.

And that is still something that reigns supreme today.

False religion.

And there are ones that deny Jesus

as the only way the truth and the life.

They're obvious false religions.

But idolatry would also include those

who would teach a different Jesus,

who reject his deity and would dismiss

the authority of the Bible.

Any religion that doesn't worship Jesus as God

is idolatrous.

And Paul warns this is all acts of a life

that is void of the spirit.

Third, there's things that I would call relational sins.

We see them there in the rest of verse 20 and 21.

Now incredibly, you might notice it,

that this is the largest group that Paul lists.

Hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambitions,

dissensions, factions and envy.

I don't know about you, but this one hits

pretty close to home.

You might be here this morning and you've beaten

that secret addiction.

Maybe you've come to see the forest from the trees

and left a pretty messed up life to follow Jesus.

But boy, oh boy, you know how to hold a grudge.

Or perhaps you find yourself gossiping

because you're jealous of someone else.

Maybe that road rage isn't quite as dead

as you once thought and your comments

about those people on social media is absolutely atrocious.

Paul says that's works of the flesh.

And the flesh makes itself evident

when the spirit isn't leading.

It manifests itself in sexual ways and religious ways

with relations and forth what we might call personal sin.

You see that there in verse 21

with drunkenness, orgies and the like.

Now just to clarify, orgies is referring to

out of control, wild parties.

And I mention this because what Paul is talking about here

essentially comes down to self-control.

And it's interesting because alcohol

and going to parties aren't really wrong in and of themselves

but the abuse of them absolutely is.

That's because the absence of being able to say no

to your own sinful desires and being ruled

by passions and lusts are obvious indicators

that the flesh is in the driver's seat.

With all of that in mind,

with all of those things listed in verse 21,

our apostle then says,

I warn you as I did before

that those who live like this

will not inherit the kingdom of God.

As many of you know, my dad had a pretty serious

heart attack last week.

Now not once did he say, oh well,

my heart doesn't matter.

But let's just see what happens.

No, he took action because he knew there was something

drastically wrong going on with him.

And that if he didn't do anything,

his condition would indeed kill him.

And so he took the necessary steps to make sure

that his heart is on the mend

and going in the right direction to be healthy.

And in a sense, that's what Paul wants to do

for the church here.

He's writing to us to expose the disease of our hearts.

He's writing to show us the deceitfulness of sin,

the sinfulness of sin, as John Owen put it.

That's still linger in our lives

because the flesh loves sin.

And this is the thing, sin kills.

And if we just say, oh well, my heart doesn't really matter.

I'll just see what happens.

Well, the results will be disastrous.

But this is the thing that I want you to see

in our text this morning.

Paul isn't writing to us so as to discourage us

in our Christian walk here.

No, he writes to us under the inspiration

of the Holy Spirit of God to show us

and to call us to do something about

where we still see the flesh waging war with our hearts.

He writes to us to show us where we're still resisting

and where we might not be walking with God

in the way that we should.

And in all of this, there is good news for the children

of God who have the Spirit of God dwelling in them.

You see, in contrast to the works of the flesh,

Paul starts to speak about the fruit of the Spirit.

He speaks about love there in verse 22.

Now, in light of all that Paul has been saying

to the Galatians, love is a major indicator

that God is at work, not love for self,

but love for God and love for neighbor.

Love says Paul, love fulfills the whole law.

He then lists joy.

Now joy isn't happiness, happiness comes and goes,

usually in relation to the external things

going on around us.

Joy, as Paul uses it here, is a heart that rejoices

in any circumstance because it is a heart

that knows what God has done to make us right with him.

And thus we're secure, we rejoice,

and that leads us to have real peace.

Next, Paul talks about forbearance,

which is another way of saying patience and kindness.

Certainly these are things that we need with those

around us, right?

Then there's goodness, which is a heart that delights

in things that are beautiful and true.

Faithfulness is being someone who can be relied on

and sticks it out no matter the circumstance.

Then there's gentleness and self-control.

Self-control is the ability to be able to govern

the passions and desires,

to be able to put temptation in its real place

and the ability to put ourselves second.

And so in total opposition to the works of the flesh

which are hell-bent and condemned by the law

against the fruit of the Spirit,

there is no law, verse 23.

Now you may have noticed that we broke down

the works of the flesh, but we kind of flew through

the fruit of the Spirit there.

And I did this because I want you to see something

in our text this morning.

Because we're meant to see the fruit,

not so much in individual terms,

but as one coherent whole.

Notice the language in our text this morning.

The works of the flesh is plural,

the fruit is singular.

The works are plural, the fruit is singular.

And our apostle does this for a reason

because we're not meant to think about what God

is doing in the life of his children

as something that's all disconnected from one to another.

But more like let's say an orange

that is in one way in sections,

but in another way really growing as one whole thing.

And I think we're meant to see it this way

because when you stand back and look at it altogether

and see what God is leading and guiding his children

to be through the Holy Spirit and his word,

we start to see that this fruit

isn't describing something, but someone.

Describing someone who never lived or acted

according to the flesh so as to be condemned by the law,

but lived in accordance with the leading

and the guiding of the spirit in every which way.

Think about the testimony of the scriptures about Jesus.

John says having loved his own, he loved us to the end.

Paul said he loved me and he gave himself for me.

Hebrews says for the joy said before him,

he endured the cross.

And again, John reports that Jesus says,

my peace I leave to you.

The Bible says when the disciples misunderstood him,

time and time and time again,

he was patient and kind with them.

And again, he was an unfailing fountain

of gentleness to the lost,

doing good to all those who sought him.

And we read that he was faithful to do his father's will.

All that our father sent him to do, he was faithful in.

And might I say, was there ever a clearer display

of self-control than in the moment

that they nailed the sinless Lamb of God to the cross,

done by the hands of his sinful enemies?

If you wanna look at the fruit of the spirit,

look at Jesus.

And so one thing's for certain, Paul is saying

that for those who have the Holy Spirit residing in them,

for those who have trusted the gospel

and been washed with the blood of Jesus,

though we may battle and clash with the flesh,

though you may see the remnants of the old life at play,

there is a work going on this very moment.

And that is the work of God Almighty

growing his son's character,

our Lord Jesus Christ in all his children

from the inside out.

Do we battle with the flesh?

Absolutely.

Are we perfected just yet?

Be careful how you answer that.

But brothers and sisters,

we are in no way doing heart surgery on ourselves.

We still have the remnants of the flesh wanting to kill us,

wanting to kill relationship with God

and the word of God will continually reveal

where that's happening.

But the Holy Spirit is at work day by day,

hour by hour,

here's the one who is at work conforming you

to the image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Are we to live godly lives?

Absolutely.

But God gives us salvation.

He gives us the power to do so through his spirit.

And it is his spirit who is setting the pattern to our lives

and that pattern is the very life of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Church, that is what we've been set free to do.

We've been set free from the law

to practice a life imitating

our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

So how might we do that?

How might we practice the very thing we have

and are being called to?

Well, that's what Paul tells us next.

Look with me at verse 24.

He says, those who belong to Christ Jesus

have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Rather than sisters, crucifixion was never ever a quick death.

Crucifixion has always been seen to be a slow

and torturous dragged out event.

That's why Paul uses these words here.

It's funny in chapter two,

Paul says that he's been crucified with Christ

and that language there helps us to see

that that was something that happened to him.

But notice in our text this morning,

hear the language changes

and those who belong to Christ are doing the crucifying.

That's really interesting.

And what Paul has in mind here is that the Christian life

isn't about saying, oh, well, I'll let go and let God,

but a concerted effort on our part

to pick up our cross daily and follow Jesus.

Does God crucify us with Christ

and justify us in a moment?

Absolutely, absolutely.

It happens the very moment we put our trust in Jesus,

but that past action has present and ongoing effects.

It's a lingering death, we might say,

meaning our old lives don't die quickly or quietly

as every single one of us in this room know full well.

So how do we practice godly living?

Well, it's not by ignoring our sin.

It's not by excusing our sin.

It's not by hiding our sin.

It's not by nurturing and loving our sin.

No, we practice a godly life by killing,

and crucifying our sin in the power of the spirit.

You know, as we were going through that list of

fleshly things that Paul mentioned before,

it's interesting that he mentions things

that are characteristic of those in the church,

like divisions and factions,

in the same breath as those things

that we might deem to be out there in the world,

like blatant sexual immorality and unhinged drunkenness.

And I think Paul does that because we in the church,

we have a tendency to label the sin of others

as worse than our own.

And so as long as we're not doing those big overt things,

we excuse ourselves from what we deem,

which we judge to be the little things

that aren't so bad, we might say.

But God doesn't make that same distinction that we do, does He?

Like seeing sexual perversion and alcohol abuse

as more sinful than jealousy and selfish ambition,

there are different consequences to be sure,

different consequences, no doubt.

But what I want you to see here is that Paul says,

whatever the sin is, it must be killed.

Give that thing no room to grow,

no matter how small you might deem it to be.

No, the Word of God says, don't play with it.

Don't excuse it.

Don't indulge in it.

Don't compromise with it.

But bring it into the light.

Confess it and you will find the mercy and the grace

of our loving Father time and time again.

Church, don't ignore the scalpel of the Word

that reveals the disease of the heart.

Let's see sin for what it is.

It wants to kill you.

But just so we don't fall into a lopsided Christianity

this morning and back into relying on the flesh

to kill the flesh, our apostle makes something abundantly clear

for every child of God.

You are not in this battle alone.

Christ has won the war.

No, the one who caused your ears to be opened

to the gospel, the one who caused your eyes

to look upon Jesus, the one who applied the perfect work

of Christ to your account is also the one

whom the heavenly Father, our heavenly Father

has given to us to be in the battle with us.

Let me remind you of the first verse

that we looked at this morning.

If you are led of the spirit,

which Paul kind of speaks about again here in verse 25,

if we live by the spirit,

let's also keep in step with the spirit.

You see, for every single Christian,

our life has been infiltrated

and we have the very spirit of God living and working in us.

Yes, he uses the word to expose our hearts,

but look at the encouragement of scripture.

He also causes us to live in the way

that we should live as well.

And so every child of God is called to kill sin in our lives.

That's a definite fact.

And the word of God exposes sin

that needs to be killed time and time

and time and time again.

But also every child of God needs to know

that we're not in this battle alone.

We're not doing the Christian walk in our own strength.

Now, every single one of us has someone

who is closer than any friend

who will never leave nor forsake us.

He's the one who causes us to see,

he's the one who causes us to hear,

he's the one who causes us time and time

and time and time again

to run to our heavenly father in confession

and not away from him,

to indulge in the things of the flesh,

to indulge in the sin that so easily would hinder us.

My dear brothers and sisters,

the word of God calls us to not quench

or grieve the spirit.

To grieve him in his work of bringing us

to the cross time and time again.

Let us hear the word of God

and rely on the spirit of God to trust and obey.

Every single one of us has been called

to live a godly life

and that godly life comes from the spirit of God

dwelling in us.

He is the power, he is the one who is working out the pattern,

he is the one who leads us in the practice of it all.

And this is all for the glory of God alone.

Would you please join me in asking our heavenly father

to live out the things that we've heard this morning?

Let's pray.

Father God, we began our time by asking you

to work in our midst this morning.

And Father, we are thankful that

we don't have to guess what you're like,

that we don't have to make up things in the dark,

but your word is a lamp unto our feet.

This morning we thank you that we have both seen

where our flesh is very much beating and bruising us,

but at the same time where the gospel is the healing balm.

Father God, I ask for all your children who you dearly love,

who you have given the Lord Jesus for,

that you would cause them to look upon the Lord Jesus,

to know Him deeply, intimately, to love Him more

than our own sin.

And that Lord, we would be led of your spirit

all the days of our life to glorify you.

We ask this for your sake and in the name of Jesus, amen.