Walk by the Spirit or Walk Away — Galatians 5:16–24

So I got to make good on my promise.

The theme of the day is apostasy.

Now in terms of our three readings this morning, the Proverbs reading from Proverbs 4, apostasy looks like being taught the way of the righteous, being put on the way of the righteous by your parents, by God, and then leaving that path to walk the path of the wicked.

To know what is right, to know what leads to life, to know how to walk on the path that is brighter and brighter and brighter until full day, just like the dawn, but to instead choose to hang out with those who lose sleep when they do not have the chance to hurt somebody else or cause them to stumble.

And in the terms of our epistle reading from Galatians, apostasy looks like knowing the benefits of Christ, being brought out of darkness into his marvelous light, but then to persist in the works of the flesh and to ultimately not inherit the kingdom of God.

And in our gospel lesson, the picture here of apostasy is those nine lepers who received this great blessing from Jesus that they asked for by name.

They knew his name.

They called him Master and asked him to have mercy, and he did, and they just kept right on walking.

For all we know, they never saw him again, never thought about him again.

These ten lepers call out to Jesus to be healed.

Jesus heals every one of them, but Jesus only says to one of them, your faith has saved you.

Now, in the ESV, it's translated, made you well.

I don't like that.

I very rarely disagree with our translation of choice in the LCMS from the pulpit, but this word, sozo, that stands behind made you well, is also the word that stands behind salvation, saved you, rescued you.

Your faith has saved you.

So I think that's a legitimate translation, just as legitimate as made you well, and it's less confusing because they were all made well.

But there's something different about this one leper.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

As soon as the Lord had blessed and purified and healed this one guy, a new life began for him, a life that was not focused on his own healing, but on worshiping the one that brought him out of darkness and into light.

Lepers could not live in the towns and villages.

They had to live outside in their own colonies.

They were alone.

They had to shout out, unclean, unclean, everywhere they went so that people knew to keep the right amount of distance away from them.

What Jesus did for these lepers was incredible.

And for this one, it changed him more than just in the sense of physical healing.

St. Paul is saying something about this to the believers in Galatia this morning in our epistle lesson.

So that's actually what I'm going to preach on, is Galatians 5, so that I can say the same thing to you that Paul is saying to them.

We who believe in Jesus must now walk according to the Spirit so that we do not end up like those nine lepers, people who received a blessing from Jesus but never turned back to praise him, thank him.

If we walk by the flesh instead of the Spirit, we do enjoy a little comfort and peace for a time, as those nine lepers surely did.

Their life was radically transformed.

Things did get a lot better for them.

But if spiritually we make the same move they did, we do not receive what matters most, which is not just the healing from leprosy, but that, like Jesus said to that one leper who came back, your faith has saved you.

This is what's at stake with how we walk, how we live our lives now, as those who profess the name of Christ.

And so, this morning I say to you, walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh and its desires.

When Paul says that the desires of the flesh are against the desires of the Spirit and that these two are opposed to each other, he's talking about two external powers that are at work in the world.

He's not describing an internal struggle alone.

He's talking about things that are at work in our communities, in our society, in our world.

And Christians, we are caught up in the middle of that struggle.

It's not an equal struggle, we've got to be clear about that, as if the power of Almighty God is equaled by the power of sin, death, and the devil.

And the decisive factor, you know, like it's 50-50 and it's up to us to decide the battle for evil or for good.

No, God is Almighty, it's in the Word.

Paul is clear that Christ has achieved victory on the cross that reaches to the ends of the universe and that Christians must live in that victory.

But as we do, we've got to be aware that the flesh, although it is defeated, is still fighting a losing battle in our world that does affect our lives.

The flesh is trying to claw back those of us whom Christ has claimed for his own.

This power that Paul calls the flesh, it wants to keep you from living as a Christian.

It's great, Satan's got you right where he wants you if you claim to be a Christian but you don't actually live like a Christian and you're not bearing fruit because then you've lost any sense of urgency about this and he can kind of mark you checked off and done and he's just got to wait for you to die and he's won again.

The flesh tries to keep us from living as a Christian, not primarily by just tempting our body.

It's kind of ironic.

Instead, the primary thing here is a focus inward on ourselves, on our own wants and needs.

Again, not just physical needs but at least with the list that Paul gives in Galatians 5 here, primarily social, relational needs, emotional needs.

The majority of the works, I'm going to read it from a scholar here, the majority of the works have nothing to do with satisfying one's physical desire.

Paul is not speaking of human flesh but rather of flesh as a power that is asserting itself over and through humanity.

Sexual sins hardly exhaust the darkness in that realm.

The next two, idolatry and sorcery, are primarily sins against God.

The eight sins that follow manifest themselves within community relationships.

Enmities, strife, jealousy, rage, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy.

The final two, drunkenness and carousing, are sins of excess.

Here's the point of this here.

The evil works Paul lists exemplify the chaotic and destructive self-centeredness that accompanies rebellion against God.

I'm going to read that last sentence one more time.

That's the kicker.

The evil works that Paul lists here in Galatians 5 in our epistle for this morning, they exemplify the chaotic and destructive self-centeredness that accompanies rebellion against God.

And now against the power of the flesh is the Holy Spirit who makes us participants in the divine nature and makes us holy through the word and sacraments, both forgiving and cleansing us from sin and training us as our lives go on in righteousness so that we learn how to avoid sin in the future.

And the apostolic testimony to the Holy Spirit's ongoing work in believers, this is all over the New Testament.

Just like I told the kids that honor your father and mother is all over the Old Testament and in fact the New Testament as well.

St. Peter writes here in 2 Peter 1, 3 and 4, by his divine power God has given us everything we need for living a godly life.

We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence.

And because of his glory and excellence he has given us great and precious promises.

These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world's corruption caused by human desires.

And St. Paul again, writing this time to Titus and to the church that Titus pastored, says this in Titus chapter 3, Once we too were foolish and disobedient.

Titus 3 · chapter mention

We were misled and became slaves to many lusts and pleasures.

Our lives were full of evil and envy, and we hated each other.

But when God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.

He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.

He generously poured out the Spirit upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior.

Because of his grace, he made us right in his sight and gave us confidence that we will inherit eternal life.

This is a trustworthy saying, and I want you to insist on these teachings so that all who trust in God will devote themselves to doing good.

These teachings are good and beneficial for everyone.

The Holy Spirit and the flesh are opposed to each other, and we who follow Jesus are caught up right in the middle of this struggle in the world.

And this struggle is extremely high stakes.

In the Lutheran Church, there is this annoying tendency to inappropriately maximize God's grace and scandalously minimize the severity of sin by throwing slogans around like, Sin boldly, but believe more boldly still.

Well to that, we have to respond with these next verses from Galatians 5.

I warn you as I warned you before, that those who do such things, these works of the flesh that Paul lists, will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Although we should never treat sins lightly, if entering God's kingdom required us not only to believe in Christ but also to never sin, none of us would ever enter heaven and the gospel would come undone.

So if you've ever fallen into sin, your toast cannot be what Paul means here.

Alright, that's a relief.

So what does he mean?

The scriptures do teach that sin still clings to us, yeah, but the scriptures also teach that Christians are no longer under the spell of sins so as to be ruled by them.

We can and we do still fall into sin after we've been regenerated through the washing and renewal of holy baptism, after we've been catechized in the truths of the scriptures, after we've taken a confirmation vow to live the rest of our lives as Christians, after we've been fed the Lord's body and blood again and again.

We can and we do still fall into sin after all of that.

But Christians, this is not a Christian thing to do, to intentionally defy God's word and then think, I gotta get out of jail free card here through the gospel.

That is a very dangerous place to be.

When believers fall into manifest sins where there is no doubt, like King David fell into adultery, murder, blasphemy, false witness, coveting, I mean, David broke like every one of those commandments when he took Bathsheba, Uriah's wife, to be his own and then had Uriah killed in battle.

When believers do this kind of thing, just like David did, faith and the Holy Spirit have departed from them.

The Holy Spirit in a believer does not permit sin to have dominion.

Remember what I said, it's not like the Holy Spirit and sin are evenly matched.

They're not.

The Holy Spirit is stronger than sin.

Sin can't beat the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit represses and restrains sin so that believers can say no to temptation.

But if you decide to give in anyway, then the Holy Spirit and faith are not present because you drove them out.

When David committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband to cover it up, the Holy Spirit departed from him.

Which is why, in Psalm 51, he writes, Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

As we sing in Divine Service, setting three.

Do not take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation.

David is begging for something.

He wants God to give back what his sin drove away.

And in America, we are surrounded by Christians who will tell you that once you are saved, you are always saved.

And that a believer cannot lose the Holy Spirit.

That this doesn't actually happen.

And in the Lutheran Church, we condemn that teaching.

We have for 500 years.

We have this weird reputation for being so soft on sin as Lutherans, but in fact, we are much more serious about sin than most other Protestants.

Maybe all other Protestants.

Christians cannot indulge wicked lusts without fear or shame, resist the Holy Spirit, purposely engage in sins against conscience, and yet still retain faith in God's grace and salvation.

Let me say it again.

There cannot be in the same heart both saving faith in the Lord Jesus and at the same time a wicked intention to continue in sins.

Here's what that means for your life.

The Holy Spirit comes to you through the Word of God and through the sacraments.

No other avenue that he uses than these.

This is how Christ delivers to you what he won for you on the cross, forgiveness, life, and salvation.

They only come to you by the Holy Spirit using God's Word and the sacraments as instruments.

That's how you receive everything.

But when you persist in sin against your conscience, when you know what God's Word says, and you choose to keep doing what it forbids, you are driving the Holy Spirit away from you.

And when the Holy Spirit goes, so does the faith that he gives you.

You lose the faith through which you receive forgiveness by trying to do this thing where you say, I believe in Jesus, but I'm going to refuse to forgive somebody else.

Or I'm just going to call my porn habit a struggle.

Or I'm going to live with somebody I'm not married to.

Or I'm not going to put to death my addiction to alcohol.

Whatever it takes.

I'm not going to honor my parents.

You cannot pick and choose what you're going to do.

When you persist in sin, you lose the very thing that makes the Word and sacraments do you any good.

You can still sit in a pew.

You can still hear a sermon.

You can still think of yourself as a Christian.

You can justify it.

But if you are persisting in sin against your conscience, you are receiving God's Word.

And if you're keeping it from me, you're receiving the Lord's Supper without true faith, which means you're receiving it to your own judgment and potentially your damnation.

It's that serious, guys.

These things condemn you if you receive them without faith because you are treating holy things as though they don't really matter.

Again, this is not the same thing as saying, if you have ever fallen into sin, you're lost.

Christians do still sin.

Despite their best efforts, the Lord's Supper is given for anxious consciences who desire God's forgiveness and know that they need to leave things behind in their life.

It's not given to be abused by those who are comfortable with the sin in their life.

Christians who persist in sin against conscience lose the Holy Spirit.

The difference is not between big sins and small sins.

The difference is between the sin that you fight and that you spend your life repenting of and the sin that you have made peace with and that you might not even think about as a sin anymore.

So the question for you this morning is not whether you have ever sinned.

Of course you have.

Of course I have.

The question is, what are you doing with it?

How are you thinking about it?

Are you fighting it?

Are you repenting of it?

Are you, by God's power that he gives to you through the Word and through the sacraments, putting it to death?

Or have you made your peace with it?

Because those who make a practice of the works of the flesh, who persist in sin against conscience and comfort themselves with a grace from God that they are actually in the process of throwing away, these people will not inherit the kingdom of God.

And I don't want that to be true about a single one of you or anybody you love.

Walk by the Spirit because those who practice the works of the flesh will not inherit God's kingdom.

Notice that Paul calls what the flesh does works and what the Spirit does fruit.

The works of the flesh are things that you do.

The fruit of the Spirit is something that grows.

And it differs from the works of the flesh in two ways.

First in direction.

The works of the flesh, we talked about this already, they're all inwardly focused.

Satisfying my desires, protecting my interests, getting what I want.

The fruit of the Spirit is outwardly focused.

Love, patience, kindness, gentleness, all of these things directed outward toward other people for their good.

Second, the difference is whose action makes it happen.

The works of the flesh are all you.

Your and my corrupt self-interest driving, like the pilot of a plane, our reason, our senses, all of our powers toward sinful ends.

The fruit of the Spirit, on the other hand, is God sharing with you what He already is and then working these things in you for the benefit of other people.

So this sermon is not going to conclude, we are coming up to it, with me standing up here saying you need to love people more, you just need to be more patient.

Come on, work out that face and crack a smile, bear the fruit of joy.

You guys are really intense when you listen to sermons, by the way.

You could smile a little more, that would help.

You need to work harder at self-control.

That's not the way this sermon's going to end, because that's not the point.

Fruit grows when the conditions are right.

Some years, you plant 10 tomato plants and you get 1,000 tomatoes.

Cherry tomatoes, God be praised, not full-size tomatoes.

Other years, you plant one tomato plant and you get one tomato, like me, this year.

The conditions aren't different, they're not right this year.

I goofed somehow along the way, because if everything was right, the fruit would be there.

The conditions for us bearing the fruit of the Spirit, they're not that complicated.

Think about that one leper in today's Gospel reading who turned back.

All 10 of them received this real gift from Jesus, but 9 of them kept on walking.

One, when he realized what had happened, what Jesus had done for him, he turned back.

He gave praise to God, and then he fell at Jesus' feet and gave thanks to him.

Jesus said to that guy, your faith has saved you.

Not just healed, we talked about this already too, but saved.

What did he do differently than the 9?

He turned back, yeah, but it's more than that.

When he fell at Jesus' feet, that is an unmistakable act of worship.

And given what he just said, he was thanking and praising God, and he's falling at Jesus' feet and worshiping him, which means he's confessing that Jesus is God.

The other 9 who did not return, they did receive something from Jesus.

Again, their leprosy was gone.

It didn't come back while they were on their way to show themselves to the priest.

He's like, ah, darn it, what happened?

I thought he said he was going to heal us.

That's not what happened.

They were healed, but they were still going to die at the end of their life.

There was a greater gift that Jesus had for them, not just healing, but what?

Salvation.

And they walked away from it, because to them, Jesus was just an impressive man who worked a kind of miracle for them, but he was certainly not God.

They weren't ready to make that claim about him.

Jesus was not the Lord before whom they needed to fall on their faces.

So they kept right on going.

This is exactly what happens when someone is baptized, confirmed, received Lord's Supper, they receive all these real gifts from Jesus, real things from him, and then they walk away.

They're like the 9.

They got something good, but they're not going to inherit the kingdom of God because they never came back to confess that Jesus is their God and their Lord, and to keep receiving from him what only God can give, forgiveness of sins, life, salvation.

The difference between the 9 and the 1 is not just gratitude or effort.

It's faith more than anything else, faith that recognizes who Jesus is, and here's really the edge on this, and will not walk away from him.

That's exactly the dynamic Paul is describing in Galatians.

When you persist in sin, you're walking away from Jesus with your blessing, like the 9.

But when you turn back to Christ and his finished work for you, when you do what you're doing right now, when you come to church to receive his gifts and worded sacraments, when you read your Bible outside of here, you pray with your family, when you carry out your callings faithfully, you are like the one who turned back because you're keeping your eyes on Christ.

You're not letting him out of your sight, and as you do, the Holy Spirit bears his fruit through you.

You're not producing love and patience and self-control by your own effort, as if these things are just a new law for us to follow.

No, these things are what God produces in people whose faces are always turned toward him in whatever situation in life they're in, or who are realizing that they're not turned to him anymore, and are repenting and turning back.

The Old Testament reading this morning says the same thing in a different way.

Proverbs 4 says, the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn that shines brighter and brighter until full day, and this is how the path gets brighter.

Solomon tells us, let them not escape from your sight, keep them within your heart.

Keep what within your heart?

Let what not escape from your sight?

The words of eternal life that Jesus has for us.

Where else will we go?

Keep these things always in front of you.

Don't let them out of your sight.

This is how the path gets brighter for you, Christians, day by day.

The Christian life is not that complicated, then.

The Holy Spirit works through the means of grace, which are the word and the sacraments, and if you never let these things out of your sight, so to speak, right?

I'm not saying you always have to be facing the church, no matter where you are.

It's not like that.

I'm talking spiritually.

If you never let God's word get too far away from you, too far outside of the realm of your attention, if you're always turning back to thank and praise God, keeping your focus on Christ and the victory he won for you, like our memory focus says, call upon God's name in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks, if you keep your focus on Christ, the Spirit will bear his fruit in your life.

It's that simple.

That's how you walk by the Spirit.

Walking by the Spirit is not a new complicated thing like Christianity 201 that you move on to after the basics of the gospel are kind of done and graduated from.

No, this is the whole thing.

It's all right here, one day at a time.

We walk by the Spirit by keeping our eyes on Christ as the Spirit leads us, and each day as we do, the path grows a little brighter, a little clearer, until full day does dawn, either when Christ returns or when he calls us home, when we cross our finish line.

And this is why it matters how you think of yourself.

This is another one of these slogans, saint and sinner, sinner and saint, all right?

You in Christ are not sinners anymore.

Jesus has done something for you.

You have crucified the flesh with all its desires.

So if you believe in Jesus, you are a saint who still sins in this life and needs God's forgiveness.

That is more true of you than to say you're a sinner who Jesus forgives again and again and again, because if you think of yourself as a sinner, you're going to start to give yourself a pass on little sins and then bigger sins and then bigger sins, and then pretty soon you're living like you've got to get out of jail free card to hands to God when you die.

And as we've heard this morning, that's not going to go well for you.

When you sin, Christians, because your identity is found in Christ and in Christ you are holy, when you sin, you're not acting like yourself, you're acting like the old you, you're acting against yourself, and the Holy Spirit calls you back again and again to remember who you really are, Christ alone.

So walk by the Spirit, not by the flesh and its desires.

That's what Paul says to the Galatians, that's what I'm saying to you this morning.

What we are doing right now is not some kind of preparation for the Spirit to do His work, it is the Spirit's work in us.

You're hearing God's Word preached to you, you heard the promise of forgiveness as if Christ were here Himself speaking it to you.

In a moment we're going to receive the Lord's body and blood.

This is how the Holy Spirit bears His fruit, through the means of grace delivered to His people, so that those people will bear those fruit, so that others might be drawn to the Gospel also.

And if you're sitting here this morning knowing that you have been walking like the nine, that if you've taken what Jesus gave you at some earlier time in your life and you've walked away from Him into sin, that you have made your peace with.

And be aware of what is happening right now.

Don't miss this moment, don't harden your heart against it.

You're once again hearing the Word of God that is not neutral.

The Holy Spirit is calling you to repentance right now, in this moment.

He's calling you back to who you really are, who Christ made you by His Word, by the washing of holy baptism.

The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, it shines brighter and brighter until full day, and that path isn't out there somewhere.

It's pretty mundane, it's ordinary.

It runs right here, through the font, through this pulpit, through the altar.

And it starts, or starts again, today.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.