Spirit Formed - Becoming What We Are

All right, so look, we're looking at this sermon series, the church, the spirit builds, trying to look at the distinctiveness of the role of the Holy Spirit in forming and creating the New Testament church that was purchased by the blood of Christ, that was decreed by the will of the Father, so that we can have this value, we can have this understanding of the Spirit's distinctiveness in the Godhead, and we can fully worship God as we've been called to as his people.

So last week we looked at a people born of the Spirit.

Now we're going to be looking at a people formed by the Spirit.

You have this sense of right and wrong.

You even have this desire creeping up within you of what you want to do.

But when the moment comes, you don't.

Or many of us, we do the exact thing that we promised ourselves we would never do again.

We find ourselves slipping into these old behaviors, these familiar patterns that we've experienced and struggled with for the majority of our life.

And in those moments, you're left wondering am I even Christian?

Am I even saved?

Does the gospel actually transform me?

During the Reformation, Martin Luther gave us language for this tension that we feel.

He said this Simul Justice et pecator.

This tension, this mantra, it actually became a confession of the church because it names what every Christian feels.

We're still wrestling with sin, yet Jesus has given us the status and declared us righteous.

The phrase simulus at pecatory simply means simultaneously justified and sinner.

Simultaneously justified and sinner.

And this short but significant confession speaks to the reality of what we feel or even experience in our daily lives versus what the gospel declares is true about us.

Now, for the Christian, confession means two things.

It means declaring what we believe and admitting where we failed.

Confession can hold both of those practices in harmony together.

Declaring what we believe, admitting where we fail, and in both senses of the word, confession requires an acknowledgement of truth.

Confession requires us to be honest about our realities.

And so it's healthy and good for us to acknowledge the truth of our present ongoing struggle with sin that is affected by our sin nature, and to declare what is true about our righteous state by grace through faith in Jesus.

You see, God is not afraid of both of those truths.

And as children who are called to be in the light, we're called to walk in both of those truths simultaneously.

Because the Christian life is lived in constant tension of both of them.

He says this, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

There it is.

The war that is inside every believer.

However, this tension of desire to do good, but failing to actually do it, it doesn't negate or disqualify our righteous state in Christ.

One is a behavior produced by us, while the other is a status produced by Jesus and given to us.

Let me say this as clear as I can.

Your behavior is one thing, your status in Jesus is another.

And this morning, what we're going to do is see how we can be honest about what we do while being even more confident in who we are, a people born of the Spirit and fully justified by Jesus.

So, Galatians 5, 16 through 25, let's dig into this together.

Paul starts this passage off with an imperative command about what we do, what we ought to do, that's actually presented as a remedy toward the struggle that we wrestle against.

He says in verse 16, but I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

So that command to walk is something that we are called to as Christians in Christ.

But Paul presents this as a remedy to the struggle that we experience in our everyday life.

If you walk by the spirit, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

What does this language of walk by the spirit even mean?

What it shows us is that we're being led by someone or something.

To walk by the spirit, it actually means to follow him, to let him lead, to keep in step with his direction.

And Paul ties this in separately to how we actually live.

So what is the remedy to not giving in to the flesh?

It's be led by the spirit.

You see, one thing we have to understand is that our daily lives are shaped by who or what we're following.

None of us were created to be our own autonomous captains of our fate.

You and I were made to follow.

The question is, who or what are we following?

Because we'll either follow God into the life that He offers us, or we'll follow sin into the death that it promises won't actually come.

So Paul calls us to walk, to be led by the Spirit into the righteous living of which our status declares us to be.

Which means when you find yourself doing the very things you hate, you have to ask yourself honestly, who am I actually following?

Because your life reveals who's leading you.

If your life is consistently marked by sin, you just have to be honest.

You're being led by your flesh, you're not being led by the Spirit.

Now, here's what we can't miss in this text.

The flesh, it isn't passive by any stretch of the imagination.

The text says that it has desires that it longs to gratify.

You see, your sin nature is active within you, working to persuade you to fulfill its will.

Hear that once again.

Your sin nature is active within you, working to persuade you to fulfill its will, and it desires to enslave you, to use you for its own satisfaction.

Right?

Here's the great deceit.

It makes you think that you will be satisfied, it promises gratification, but what it really wants is to gratify itself by enslaving you.

This has been the strategy from the very beginning.

Right?

Back in Genesis 4, the Lord warns Cain, Genesis 4, 7.

He says, Cain, sin is crouching at the door.

Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.

That word desire, it's not neutral, it's a desire to harm, to enslave, to destroy.

Sin wants Cain.

Not for his good, but for his ruin.

And Cain didn't listen to God.

Cain murders his brother, thinking it would satisfy his anger.

And instead, what did it do?

It marked him for life as an outcast, as one rejected by God, enslaved to the very sin that he was convinced was going to somehow satisfy.

Do you see it?

Do you see how sin's desire is to be gratified by using you, by enslaving you to itself?

So Paul's call here in the text is one to freedom.

Walk by the Spirit.

Follow him into the abundant life that Jesus has promised and secured for us in his finished work.

Don't let the flesh lead you into slavery, deceivingly dressed up as some sort of satisfaction.

Now, this seems easier said than done, right?

Just walk by the Spirit and you won't satisfy or gratify the desires of the flesh.

Why is it so hard for us, though?

Why does this seem so challenging?

Paul shows us the very core of the conflict in verse 17.

Here we're brought into war.

Spirit against flesh, righteousness against sin.

And Martin Luther called these the two captains.

I think that's very interesting language for him to use.

The two captains fighting for control within us.

And that image, it helps us see what's really happening.

You see, in Christ you have a new nature.

The spirit dwells in you.

You've been made new, but the pattern and pool of your old way of life, what Paul calls the flesh, it's still there.

It's still working against the spirit.

It's still trying to rebel against the righteous obedience that the spirit is forming inside of you.

This is where we need to understand something crucial.

This battle that you feel.

It's not a sign of something wrong.

It's evidence that the spirit is actually at work within you.

This battle that you feel is not a sign of something wrong.

It is proof and evidence that the spirit is warring inside of you.

Think about it.

If the spirit wasn't there, if you did not have newness of life because of grace through faith in Jesus, there'd be no conflict.

You just follow the flesh without any resistance.

Do you think the unregenerate and unredeemed with inside culture feel this same conflict?

No, they lay their head down at night in peace.

Now it's a false peace, it's a deceptive peace, but they're not warring inside of themselves the way that a person who is filled with the Spirit is desiring to do what is good and righteous, but feeling the struggle and inability to carry it out.

But now, now, because of Jesus, you feel the weight of it.

You want to do what's right, and you feel the flesh fighting every step of the way.

And sometimes it feels so strong that you you wonder if you're ever actually going to do the things that you want to do.

But that tension, oh, it's glorious tension.

That's the proof of life.

That's the spirit warring against the flesh on your behalf.

So when you feel that battle raging within you, do not be discouraged.

You have the spirit, and by his strength, you can resist the flesh.

You can lay hold of the hope and promise of Jesus by faith that you've been justified, declared righteous through his finished work, that he's given you his spirit, who is now the captain of your heart.

You see, you fight the flesh by walking with the spirit.

You resist by following the true and better captain.

The flesh is no longer in charge.

He wants to convince you that he is.

He will fight desperately to maintain his influence.

But for the believer, the spirit is now the captain of your heart.

And when you're led by him, you walk in righteousness.

Now, we we've been given the command to walk by the spirit.

We've seen the conflict of the flesh against the spirit.

Now, Paul wants to remind us of the comfort that comes in the gospel promise of our justification.

Verse 18.

Look at it with me.

It says this.

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Look at what Paul does.

Right in the middle of a passage about how we should be living, he inserts his doctrine of justification by faith alone.

You gotta love Paul.

He's like a pit bull on a bone.

He will not let go of this reality that we are justified not by our works, but by faith in Christ, and we are free because of him.

What's he saying?

If you're in Christ, if you're being led by the Spirit, then you are not under the law.

You cannot stand accused, you cannot be condemned, not even for the sin that you still commit.

In Christ, by faith, you're no longer under the law's verdict, and so the law cannot condemn you.

Here's what we need to grasp.

It wasn't your works that made you have right standing before a holy God.

And it will not be your remaining sinful works that condemn you before him either.

If you are in Christ, you are mysteriously hidden and covered by his blood.

There's a distinction that you and I need to work to understand.

And this distinction is between behavior and status.

This is where we get caught up in the Christian life, not clearly articulating the distinction between the two.

When Luther said that we are simultaneously justified and sinner, he was not saying that we have two competing statuses.

He was saying we have one status justified, even while we still struggle with the behavior of sin.

You see, the battle raging inside of you is real.

But even more real is the status that Jesus has given to us by faith.

Justified, righteous, saint, son, free, beloved, chosen, elect.

Your comfort does not come from looking at your behavior.

Whether it's in you seeing victory in your life, nor is there despair that should overwhelm you when we are evidence or we experience the struggle of our ongoing sin.

Your comfort comes from looking at your savior, not your behavior.

Your comfort doesn't come from looking at your behavior and seeing victory.

You don't be overwhelmed with despair as you see your losses.

Your comfort comes from looking at your status in Christ and seeing that it can never change because of him.

Luther put it like this So great is the power of the Spirit that the law cannot accuse the godly, though they commit what is sin indeed.

For Christ is our righteousness.

As long as we cleave fast unto him, we are led by the Spirit and are free from the law.

Paul talking about our works doesn't want us to get focused on our works.

He wants to fix our gaze on Christ, the source and substance of our justification.

And do you see what Luther says?

The law can't touch you.

Not because you're sinless, but because Christ is.

And he is our righteousness.

So even as Paul's going to instruct us about good works and righteous living, he does not want us to forget, he's going to beat it into our dense skulls that our justification is spirit born through faith in Jesus.

So it's not because of how good we've been, it's not how many times we've won the battle against the flesh.

That's not the focus.

But let me say this, and this is important.

Paul doesn't just stop there.

He doesn't say you're justified, so sin doesn't matter.

We have to hold these two things in tension.

He's about to get very specific about what the flesh produces and what the spirit produces, because while sin can't condemn you, it is still fighting to enslave you.

And the spirit has not set you free so that you can go back to bondage.

So let's look at this together.

If the law can't condemn us, and our status in Christ is secure, does that mean that the Christian life is just about believing the right things and then living however we want?

Well, no, not at all.

Because the same spirit who brought you from death to life, who gave you this new status, he's not finished with you.

He's at work in you right now to conform your being, behavior, into the status of which Christ has given to us.

And here's what Paul wants us to see as he unpacks the rest of this passage.

The spirit produces in us what we cannot produce in ourselves.

The spirit produces in us what we cannot produce in ourselves.

This is the heart of what it means to walk by the Spirit, to be led by Him, to allow Him to be the captain of our heart.

You cannot, and hear me clearly, you cannot manufacture godliness.

Through sheer willpower.

You can't white knuckle your way to holiness, but the Spirit can produce in you what you could never produce on your own.

Now, verses 19 through 23, it works through the distinction between works as that which comes through the flesh and fruit as that which comes through the spirit.

Now, while Paul curates a list of works and fruit, we won't be working through them individually.

I don't have enough time this morning to do that, but here's what we're going to do: we're going to focus on the principal distinction between them.

And here's the core distinction works, what we produce through our effort and striving, fruit, what is produced in us by another source.

I think Paul's very intentional about using this language, calling that of the flesh works, calling that of the spirit fruit.

Anything that we try to produce in our own effort and striving is sin, whether it looks godly or it doesn't.

Because even our self-righteousness is an offense to our holy God.

And so anything we try to produce in our own effort and striving is going to be sinful before his throne.

What we have to do is allow the spirit, this outside source, produce in us what we could never accomplish on our own.

The flesh works, it's active, striving, laboring to produce sin through our effort.

But the spirit produces fruit.

That's something that's grown in us that we bear but don't manufacture.

You see, the flesh works at sin.

It labors, it exerts effort, sexual immorality, idolatry, rage.

These take effort, devising, scheming, pursuit.

But the Spirit doesn't ask you to work at producing fruit.

He asks you to follow him as he produces it in you.

You see, you bear it, but you don't make it.

Now, Paul also distinguishes the works of the flesh plural between the fruit of the spirit singular.

Here's what we need to see in that.

The flesh produces these scattered, disconnected works, one sin here, another there, scattered throughout and filling our lives eventually, becoming the people we never thought that we would actually become.

But the spirit produces this unified fruit, a whole character transformation.

Not just these isolated virtues that are scattered throughout our lives that we're trying to achieve autonomously from one another.

No, this is a character transformation, unified fruit driven by the Spirit.

And fruit is fundamentally different than works because you don't make it, you bear it.

Think about a branch on a tree.

The branch doesn't produce an apple by trying really hard.

By straining and striving to fabricate fruit through some sense of sheer willpower.

No, the branch bears fruit because it's connected to the tree, and the life of the tree is flowing through it.

You see, we're going to bear fruit in our lives according to the source of life that's flowing through.

That's why Jesus says, Stay connected to me.

I am the vine.

You are the branches.

Life comes to the branches through the vine.

Jesus says, we will be known by our fruit.

As a tree is known by the fruit that it produces, so shall we be known, have evidenced, verified of who we are by the fruit that is produced in our life.

And this is the same gospel truth that Paul's been preaching throughout this entire letter.

You weren't saved by your works, and you are not sanctified by your works either.

Your works are an evidence of the fruit that is being produced in you by the Spirit.

So understand this in your relationship with God.

You don't stand before Him, His holy throne, because of how good you've been in your life, nor do you remain standing before Him or be cast out because of the works of your life either.

It is a status accomplished by Christ alone that we can ever even come to the throne of grace and stand before Him.

You're not saved by your works, you're not sanctified by your works.

Both of these are fruit produced in you by the Spirit.

Now, before we move on, we need to feel the weight, though, of what Paul says at the end of verse 21.

I'm not going to skip over that, right?

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

That should grab our attention.

This is a loving shepherd urgently warning his flock that a life characterized by the works of the flesh reveals evidences that you do not belong to the kingdom.

Fundamentally, it proves that you do not have the spirit.

The spirit produces fruit, the flesh produces works, and your life is evidence of who is the true captain of your heart.

And I want to take a minute to try to distinguish between our falling into sin and those whose lives are characterized by sin.

Right?

There's a difference.

That's not the marking of our salvation.

The marking of our salvation is the Spirit's fruit being produced in us, our ability through the Spirit to get back up in repentance and faith and continue to walk toward the cross, to continue to walk in faith toward Jesus and the person that He's making us to be.

A Christian's life will not be absent of sin.

However, someone who falls in sin and stays down, digs their heels in, becomes stiff-necked and hard-hearted, and won't repent, won't feel sorrow about their sin, but they allow sin to characterize the very nature of their life.

They can say they're Christian all day long.

The fruit on the branch tells me that the spirit is not at work within you.

So you may be a cultural Christian, you may have grown up in church, you may have your parents' faith, whatever it might be, right?

But you're not a spirit-filled, born-again believer in Jesus.

Show me that truth by showing me your life.

Here's what happens with us.

You see, we constantly fail to pursue spirit-produced fruit.

We hear that the spirit produces fruit, and instead of walking by the spirit in dependence, we do one of two things.

We either try to manufacture it ourselves for our own self-justification, or we give up entirely and just live however we want, persuading ourselves that grace will cover it.

But both of these responses miss what Paul's calling us to this morning.

For some of us, we we just pursue the desires of the flesh.

We're not ashamed about it.

We talk about grace, we talk about how we've been forgiven and how because of Jesus we can live however we want in this freedom.

And we understand freedom by giving into the desires of our flesh that is continuing to try and be the captain of our heart.

You see, many of us we respond to this passage, this declaration of war within us by simply giving in.

We hear that there's this tension between flesh and spirit, and we just let the flesh win.

We pursue what feels good in the moment.

Sexual immorality, drunkenness, fits of anger.

We're not trying to hide it.

We're not even trying to dress it up.

We just want to declare cheap grace.

We can live however we want in response to the gospel because somehow this cheap grace covers it.

The flesh is running the show.

It remains the captain of our heart, and we tell ourselves grace is going to cover it.

God understands our weaknesses.

But let me warn you, like Paul does, a life marked by pursuing the flesh is not a life being led by the Spirit.

And myself and others are only left with an understanding that you have not been born again.

But some of us we hear this passage and we pursue self-justification.

A lot of us in here, we're gonna pursue self-justification.

We're gonna respond to this passage by trying harder.

We hear that we need to bear fruit, and what do we do?

We set out to manufacture it ourselves somehow.

We strive to achieve our own standards of godliness in our life.

We we look disciplined, moral, put together, but underneath, underneath, who are we trusting in?

Ultimately, we're trusting in ourselves more than we are trusting in the spirit.

We're producing our own righteousness through sheer willpower, comparing ourselves to others for feeling superior when we succeed.

This is the older brother full of judgment against those around us who don't live up to the standard we've established in our own eyes.

We're exhausted, though.

We're exhausted because we're trying to do what only the spirit can do in us.

Our fruit is not spirit-produced, it's self-produced.

And we believe that we can have right standing before God by the things we do.

So whether we're openly pursuing the flesh or we're secretly trusting in ourselves, we're both failing to walk by the spirit.

We're both producing works instead of bearing fruit.

So what hope do we have?

We can't manufacture spirit, produce fruits, we we can't white-knuckle our way to holiness.

Left to ourselves, we're either gonna do one of two things: indulge in the flesh or exhaust ourselves trying to be righteous.

But the good news of the gospel changes this for us: that Jesus pursued spirit life and crucifixion death for us.

Jesus pursued spirit life and crucifixion death for us.

Jesus lived the spirit-filled life that you and I never could have.

He displayed in himself perfect love, perfect peace, perfect patience, every fruit of the spirit perfectly and in its full.

So, because of what Jesus has done, because he lived the spirit-filled life and crucified our flesh on the cross by faith in him, we now have the spirit dwelling in us.

His resurrection life flows through us, which means this passage isn't giving us an impossible standard, it's calling us to live out what has already been made true.

Look it back at verse 24.

And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Have crucified past tense.

It's already done for us in Christ.

So now verse 25 says, If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Here's what that text actually means.

If we live, it's better translated, if we've been made alive.

If we've been made alive by the Spirit, connecting us to last week's text, that we are spirit-born, right?

For the glory of God.

And if we've been made alive by Him, then let us prove it.

Let us have evidence of it.

Let us in our life follow this true and better captain.

Let us keep in step with him.

So, what would we do in response to this?

We should walk by the Spirit and crucify our flesh.

This is what Paul's calling us to in this text.

Walk by the Spirit, crucify your flesh.

Here's something I've been trying to learn and understand and studying.

The scriptures have no problem with this seeming contradiction of has been done, is being done, will be done.

Think about your salvation.

You have been saved, you are being saved, you will be saved.

The scriptures have no problem with that trichotomy of thought.

And in the same way, your flesh has been crucified, you are crucifying it, it will be fully crucified in glory.

You see, you belong to Christ.

Your flesh has been crucified with him.

But here's the crazy thing about crucifixion.

Do you know what they used to do?

They used to put a guard at the foot of every cross because of one simple thing.

The person on the cross would do everything that they could to persuade someone to get them off of it.

And so they put a guard there to keep him nailed to that wood.

This is what our place with inside this Christian life is.

Your flesh is nailed to that wood, and he's crying out with everything within him to get him off of that crucifixion device, that cross, right?

He's trying to persuade you with everything that he has.

Get me down from here.

Let me be the captain of your heart once again.

I'll satisfy you.

I'll give you everything that you want.

Just get me off of here.

And what do we do?

We stand guard.

No, flesh, you're dead.

You're crucified.

You're nailed to that cross.

I'm going to be dependent upon the spirit.

I'm going to lean into the new life of which Christ has given to me.

I'm going to allow the fruit of the spirit to be produced in me.

I'm going to live in my status rather than give into my behavior.

You're crucified.

So we have to walk in line with this reality.

When the flesh rises up this week, when he's screaming out from the cross, just get me down.

Remember, it has no power over you anymore.

It's not your captain.

You don't have to give in to its desires to gratify itself through you.

Don't be used by your flesh.

But hear me say this: you also do not have to be exhausted through striving for self-righteousness.

Walk by the Spirit, by grace, through faith, keep in step with him.

Let his fruit grow in you.

Love in your relationships, patience in your trials, self-control in your temptations.

Church, you're not producing the fruit, you're bearing it.

Because the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you.