Set Free to Live Free - Living the Christ-Life - January 25, 2026

No perfect people, right? And there are no perfect

churches, right? See.

See. Yes, there we go.

It's true. That became really true for me

when I was 22. When I was 22, I signed on to

become a youth minister at a church.

That church had had 11 pastors in a nine year period.

I was 22 and I didn't think that was a really big deal.

It should have been like this major red flag saying no.

But I I really said God had called me or God had given me an

assignment. Maybe that was more appropriate

is to say that I said God had given me an assignment.

I was working on my Master's at the time of was living in Fort

Worth, TX. I was dating Ellen at the time,

so she came along to that church too, and by year 2 at that

church, Ellen would cry in the morning on Sundays all the way

to church and then she would just go to sleep when we left on

the drive back to the city and the campus.

It was a hard place to be. The little community that it was

in was called the Armpit of Fort Worth.

You ever been in a place like that?

It was just sort of this forgotten place.

And if if you forgot about it too long, it would stink, it

would smell. It was a really difficult place

and it was a really difficult church.

I my assignment was to build up a youth ministry and so I have

never done that before and just trusted that somehow God would

help this happen. So I started meeting youth and

God was so gracious to us as we sort of built this bubble inside

the Church of kids who are really loving each other and his

parents who are enjoying each other most of the time.

I tried to go door to door until there was a church, a person who

let their Doberman pincher dogs out on me at the porch, and I

was like, door to door is a bad decision in this neighborhood.

The youth asked for a lock in. Anybody done one of those?

They're terrible. I had said I would never, ever,

ever do a lock in. Never say never.

So I did a lock in at about 1:00 in the morning.

I hear all this rattling around and and a youth she had snuck

out the window. So I go running around and I'm

in the parking lot and there's a truck and there's a guy driving

the truck and she's in the passenger side and they're

backing up. So what do I do?

I just stand behind the truck and this kid gets out.

He's 20, I'm 22, she's 16, and I say you are not leaving with her

unless you run over me. It was such the moment, right?

I don't know what possessed me in that moment to do that, but I

was like, I've been given a responsibility, I've been given

an assignment, I've been given a charge, and she is my

responsibility. I said, let's compromise.

You can come in for the Bible study we're about to do in the

middle of the night and you can sit beside her if you need to.

Is it OK? Churches and life situations can

be really, really difficult. The church in Galatia was

experiencing a really, really difficult time.

And Paul is writing to them about this to say your conflict

with each other that you've been thrown into now as Jew and

Gentile and how to figure this out and a really stressful

situation there in the retirement center of Roman

soldiers. You're trying to be church here,

and I've given you an assignment as a church to humbly serve one

another in love. And I think some of them were

probably thinking, how do we do that?

How do we do that? Where do we find the power to do

that? Won't you just give us a list of

things to do, a recipe? I think Paul anticipated their

question after he's been pressing theologically his point

over and over to say you must not become circumcised, you must

not live under the law, you must live and run the race of grace.

Now some of them are going humbly serve one another in love

when we're already fighting with each other.

How do you come down off that ledge in order to love?

So I think that's the question he's answering now in Galatians

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

chapter 5. If you have your Bible, open it

and let Let's imagine that Paul's inviting some people to

stand behind a truck. In order to see Christian unity,

to stand behind a truck, in order to see that they're

treated well, to stand behind a truck, to see that they actually

grow in maturity. And so here's what he here's

what he writes. Galatians 516.

So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the

desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is

contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the

flesh. They are in conflict with each

other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.

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

law. The acts of the flesh are

obvious, sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery,

idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage,

selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness,

orgies and the like. I warn you, as I did before,

that those who live like this will not inherit the Kingdom of

God, but the fruit of the Spirit is Lovejoy, peace, forbearance,

gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no

law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus

have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each

other. Remember what Paul is

envisioning. Paul is envisioning that this

church would know God in his fullness, that they would know

the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that they would come to

deal with this trinitarian reality of God, and that they

would experience deliverance from sin and deliverance from

the powers of darkness. This is what he was envisioning.

He had the Longview for the finish line.

Remember our marathoner? He was running that race fast

last week, but it was a long run.

Likewise, he envisions that they would be a new family, Jew and

Gentile, slave and free, male and female.

That they would be following Jesus, the crucified Messiah.

We use the term Messiah there very particularly to say we're

reaching back to the promise that God made to Abraham to

create a family. He's doing it now through

Messiah Jesus. And that they, this church would

actually reveal Jesus and the freeing power of his gospel by

transforming relationships everywhere with God's love.

That they would transform all of their relationships in the

church and they would they would transform relationships in their

society. Now Paul is directing the church

to use their freedom. He says, yes, you are free, but

you are free to love. You have been set free in order

to love others. Particularly he phrases it this

way, to serve one another humbly in love.

Let's call this little phrase Serve one another humbly in

love. The Christ life 'cause I need a

shorthand reference today. What is the Christ life?

It's to serve one another humbly in love.

You know Jesus told his disciples, Look, you watched me

wash your feet, you actually experienced me washing your

feet, and you call me Lord and Savior or Master.

That's what I am now. You will be blessed if you do

the same thing. This is the Christ life, serving

one another humbly in love. And I think this people in

conflict are wondering, how do I serve humbly in love someone who

wants to run me over with a truck?

How do I serve humbly in love someone who wants to devour me?

How do I serve humbly in love someone who wants to curse me,

cut me, ruin me, exclude me? That's not the church I want to

be a part of. I think I'll just go.

He's pleading with them to find a way to Christian unity in a

church that was struggling. He wants them to live the Christ

life, serve one another humbly in love.

Even Jesus served Judas. This is a huge calling.

Where do we find the power for such extraordinary expressions

of love? Let's see what he says.

Let's review what he said since we just read it.

I mean, he's pointing them to a who perhaps they wanted to know

how, how can we do this? And he says, I don't want to

give you a how I want to give you a who the Holy Spirit

empowers you for the Christ life.

Over and over through Ephesians, he's been emphasizing this.

He says, look in verse 5, through the Spirit we eagerly

await by faith through who? Through the Spirit he encourages

them, I want you to walk by the when we use the word walk, walk

this way, he's actually using what we would sometimes call

your lifestyle, your way of life.

So your way of life is to be by the Spirit of God.

The Christian way of life is meant to be guided,

personalized, animated by the Spirit of God.

The Spirit of God then is not an it.

The Spirit of God is a who he says, listen, if you are led by

the Spirit and he goes on, he says, look, the fruit of the

Spirit can be in your life. And he says since we live by the

let us keep in step with the Spirit over and over and over.

He's just sort of repeating himself.

Look, your life now in Christ is to be by the Spirit.

You know, Jesus, the Spirit didn't just spring up out of

nowhere. We see the Holy Spirit involved

in the creation, right in Genesis chapter one.

It says that the Spirit of God that was hovering over the deep.

The Spirit of God is always involved in the creating of what

God desires and wants in his world and in our lives.

And Jesus says that his gift of the Spirit is actually also our

life. On one of the festival days that

actually speaks about water, Jesus stood up and he said, let

anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink, whoever believes in

me. As the scripture has said,

rivers of living water will flow from within them.

By this he meant the Spirit whom those who believed in him were

later to receive. Up to that time, the Spirit had

not been given since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Now one of the interesting things about John is that when

John speaks of the glorification of Jesus, he's actually Speaking

of Jesus being lifted up on the cross, being crucified.

And so the pathway to the Spirit of God being released in our

lives is Jesus cross. Do you know when I do tabling

like in Totem and we set up a table and I've got chocolates

there, sometimes students will run up and say, can I have one

of those chocolates? And I'm like, yeah, the pathway

to the chocolate. Chocolate is the question.

And so there's a question there. So answer the question.

You can have a chocolate, OK? And then they go for it.

But here's Jesus showing us that the pathway to him releasing the

Spirit of God to us was through the cross, and that's the great

miracle of God's work in our lives.

Jesus goes on to speak about the gift of the Spirit, he said.

Next slide He says in in Luke 24, after His glorification, He

opened their minds so they could understand the Scripture and He

told them, this is what is written.

The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day,

and repentance for this forgiveness of sins will be

preached in His name to all nations, beginning beginning at

Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these

things. I am going to send you what my

Father has promised, but stay in the city until you have been

clothed with power from on high. What is the gift promised by the

Father? It's the Holy Spirit.

What is your inheritance from the promise of Abraham?

It's the Holy Spirit. Now Paul's bringing it very

clear to say, look, this pathway for you to live in unity

together as the church is to take that suffering and go

through it with the Spirit of God.

This is where moral and character transformation

happens. As a people, if we are willing

to go through the awkwardness and difficulty of relationships

in the church to experience the fruit of the Spirit in our

lives. But there's a problem which

we've been dancing around here, and that is that the Christ life

actually contradicts and conflicts with the flesh.

This idea of serving one another humbly in Love Actually

conflicts and contradicts the flesh.

When Paul speaks to the flesh, we can say there's three things

he's sort of interested in here. One, there's the the flesh work

of these agitators, the false teachers who had come and said

you need to be circumcised in order to be complete in front of

God, in order to be fully accepted.

We could say, Oh yeah, that's part of the flesh.

But there's a second part of flesh.

And that could be the fleshy desires of each member of that

church, just the desires that they wanted.

Most of some of us are a couple ways when it comes to conflict.

Some of us run away. Are you a runaway when it comes

to conflict? Some of us are run right towards

it. What there's conflict, I'm going

to run right towards it. And then some of us, we are

freezers. That is possibly what happened

to me behind that truck because I just froze.

But some of us very similar are sort of like fawners.

We sort of fawn, OK. Four kinds of responses to

conflict. And in each mode the flesh may

desire something that's opposed to the Spirit of God.

That's why you need to listen and know the Spirit of God in

your life. There's another kind of flesh

that he might have had in mind, and that's this idea that that

there's a societal norm that could be idolized.

That's actually an aspect of the flesh that said, oh, that's now

normal. And we idolize that.

We aspire to that and we'll we'll get to this a little

further next slide. Notice he says, walk by the

Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

I know my flesh has desires. I have human desires, but it can

also have disordered desires. This is where addictions come

from, where I'm trying to solve a problem and I become addicted

to something else as a temporary solution to a greater problem.

He says, listen, the flesh desires what is contrary to the

spirit and the spirit desires what is contrary to the flesh.

They are in conflict with each other.

We are sometimes walking conflict zones.

Ellen's dad used to say to her when she was a teenager, you are

just a conflict looking for a place to happen.

And sometimes we are. We are just a conflict looking

for a place to happen. And we don't even realize it

because those habits are so automated.

Somebody offends us and we just thought, but then we get in

another setting and we take it out on somebody else.

We have stress in one area. It squeezes the balloon of our

life, and we pop out over here in a rage.

They are in conflict with each other.

Paul wants you to know that sometimes you are a walking

conflict. Notice how he says this in

Romans. This might be another great

cross reference for you to study later.

He says once I was alive apart from the law, but when the

commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.

I found that the very commandment that was intended to

bring life actually brought death for sin.

Seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me

and through the commandment put me to death.

He's saying, look, this is how God's law works.

Sin comes up in our flesh. The law points it out, but then

sin just holds on tighter. How do you get free notice?

He says, I find this law at work in me.

Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me, for in

my inner being I delight in God's law.

But I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law

of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at

work within me. What a wretched man I am who

will rescue me from this body that is subject to death.

Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.

He's saying, look, you are a walking conflict zone, you

yourself. And sometimes we need to realize

that even in the life and church and fellowship of the large body

and even a small group, we can have walking conflict zones.

But most of us really don't like conflict.

And so we ignore the conflict in ourselves.

Unless you're journaling. Is anybody journaling here yet?

Do you journal honestly about the conflicts you're

experiencing? Let me encourage you this week

to maybe take a little time and journal your conflicts.

I was listening to Darryl Johnson, who's was a pastor at

the Way Here and, and he was saying that he journals and then

after he gets everything out, he takes a black marker, a Sharpie,

and he covers up some of it. He's like, yeah, I don't.

I wrote it down. It was real.

It was the truth. I just don't need anyone else to

read this, just me and God. That's a good journaling process

for those of you who are anxious about what if somebody picks it

up? But we need that process of

actually being honest about the conflict within ourselves.

And that honesty with the light of the Spirit of God actually

brings us to the cusp of a miracle.

He says, look, the actions of the flesh are obvious.

I, I don't know that these seem so obvious to them.

Maybe he was thinking that they, they had this sort of grade.

Well, this kind of act of the flesh is only a 70, or this act

of the flesh is only, you know, a 10.

And maybe they graded the acts of the flesh.

I think we do that. But he starts off with what they

would have known as familiar sexual immorality, impurity and

debauchery. Then he says idolatry and

idolatry and witchcraft. And they would have been going,

yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, You're right.

And then he gets to this other part of the list that would have

really frustrated them because they felt like they were

standing behind a truck. Hatred, discord, jealousy, fits

of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy.

And they would have gone. Oh my goodness.

Like, why did he put that in the list?

You know, I'm just trying to find my people.

I'm just trying to be comfortable.

Why do you have to put that on the list?

And then he he lets up and he gives them the familiar thing,

drunkenness, orgies and the like.

And he's grouped all that together and he says, look, if

you're living like that, you're not inheriting the Kingdom of

God. The rule and reign of God is not

at work in their lives. You will not inherit the Kingdom

of God. And so those are all symptom of

the conflict that's happening inside.

So what is the solution? The solution is a who?

The Christ life actually requires your cooperation, your

willful participation, your willful cooperation, He says you

have been crucified with Christ, it has happened, you have been

redeemed, you have been delivered.

And now to walk in that way, you have to cooperate with the

Spirit of God. Dallas Willard said it this way.

He said, listen, God is not opposed to effort.

He is opposed to earning. We do not earn the Kingdom.

We do not earn His approval. We do not earn His love.

We do not earn His forgiveness. That is a free gift of grace.

But it does require effort now to walk in the way of God.

And when you walk and keep in step with the Spirit, He

actually generates fruit. He generates fruit.

Would you say them with me? Lovejoy, peace, forbearance,

kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and

self-control. Against such things, there is no

law. My friend who was pastoring up

at SFU at at the Point Church, Victor Thomas, before Victor

went back to South Africa, he sort of lived through some of

the COVID difficulties and people would get frustrated

with, you know, what are we doing?

What are we not doing? And he could feel the, the

temperature rising among them and the conflicts that they were

sort of having inside and outside the church.

And he says, hey, let's do the things for which there's no law,

things that there's no law against it.

There's no law against loving. So go humbly, serve one another

in love, find a way to do it. There's no law about that.

He's right, Right. I think Paul was sort of tongue

in cheek here saying, hey, look, there's no law about this.

So do it when the church finds itself under pressure, whether

it's in China or Iran or Myanmar or Canada or the US or Mexico,

wherever the church finds itself under pressure, we must return

to this. Hey, let's do the things for

which there is no law. Let's be the things for which

there is no law. And the only way to get fruit is

to actually tend the soil in which you have been planted.

So I can't make an apple tree, make apples, but I sure can tend

to the conditions of the soil that help produce it.

Here's three ways to tend to the soil of your life.

Well, let's let's look at this. So some of some of us get into

this temptation to make religion and life with God sort of a

tourist mindset. So here's what Eugene Peterson

said. There's a great market for

religious experience in our world.

There's little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of

virtue. Isn't that great line?

Virtue, Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,

gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

All of those are virtues, and they're achieved or acquired

through patient endurance, a long obedience in the same

direction. So here are three things I want

to suggest to you. One, make it your habit to

simply pray. Come, Holy Spirit, come, that

when you're having a time before the Lord and you just sit and

rest and come, Holy Spirit, come.

And let your heart and life settle and just trust that the

Spirit of God is coming. Second is treat the difficulties

of your life as if they're seeds to be sown from which the Spirit

of God can produce his fruit in you.

For Ellen and myself, when we were serving in that church, it

was a difficult time, but God was sowing seeds in my heart and

life that changed my character, that transformed virtue and

changed relationships, changed my whole vision of what it was

like to serve and lead in a church.

We stayed there 3 1/2 years and then the only reason we left is

because we were moving to Vancouver.

A long obedience in the same direction means that you're

going to take the difficulties of your life and say these are

actually seeds. If you read the Bible, you will

find that the Bible is replete. It is full with really difficult

experiences in life. I don't know what difficulties

you're facing right now. Some of you have put them in

your prayer requests. And so we know that anxiety is

on the rise. We know that some have returned

to this new term with dread. We know that some are struggling

financially. We know that some feel awkward

about relationships. We know that some are longing

for some breakthrough in their life.

Let those difficulties actually be the seeds from which the

Spirit of God brings new fruit. Teaches you how to love, teaches

you and generates the joy of the Holy Spirit.

And then third, persevere in the community of the church even

through awkwardness and conflict.

It's the spirits school of love. Some people get anxious because

they're like, why does Paul always talking about loving each

other? Why won't he talk more about

loving the world? Wouldn't you rather love

somebody on the other side of the world?

It seems easier to do that rather than love the person

sitting next to you in church. And so one of the challenges for

university church life, let's be honest, is to actually find

yourself with the people and stay there longer than a year.

To stay there two years, three years, four years, and then

you're like, my struggle now is to graduate.

But what if you stayed with a people for longer and actually

saw what God might do in your life and in a people because you

were with them longer? Something to consider.

Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, I want to just pray

right now as the worship team comes.

Lord, you know those who are struggling with anxiety today,

They're anxious about something. I pray that you would come and

meet them. Lord, You know those who are

anxious about their future and money.

We pray that you would come and meet them.

We know, Lord, You know those of us who are just preoccupied with

our Saturday night life and anxious about our Sunday morning

life today. Lord, you know, those of us who

are struggling with relationships with family and

somehow, Lord, we, you know, those of us who are struggling

because we've, we've seen terrible things on our feed and

we're like, how could, how could people do that?

So we pray, Lord Jesus, that today you would transform our

character. Come, Holy Spirit, come.

Lord, it was the, it was one of the names of our ministry here

that we were born for more. And I, I really think as a

church we were born for more love, more joy, more peace, more

forbearance, more kindness, more goodness, more faithfulness,

more gentleness, and more self-control.

So come, Lord Jesus, and see our yielded lives, that you might

yield that fruit in our relationships.

Lord, you've said that unless a seed dies, it will not bear

fruit. And we thank you, Lord Jesus,

that you laid down your life and we are the fruit of your laid

down life. And so now we live by your

Spirit, we come to your table by your invitation, and we

celebrate and remember your body broken for us, your blood poured

out for us, that we might now enjoy the age to come.

In the communion of your Spirit. Let's stand together.

If you need someone to pray with you, I'm going to invite our

prayer team to go ahead and move to the landing.