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THE GOSPEL OF GOD'S GRACE ALWAYS PRODUCES A GOOD LIFEGalatians 5:19-26INTRODUCTION If you were to present these two lists, the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, to people living in Janesville and ask which list describes not only how we ought to live but which they would want to live, most are going to choose the fruit of the Spirit life over the works of the flesh life. If you were to ask which kind of family they would want to live in or which kind of community they would choose to be a part of, again, I think the answer is obvious. The question is, however, how do you become a person who is characterized by the virtues in vv. 22-23 and how do you avoid being a person who is characterized by vv. 19-21? How do you grow a community or a family that is characterized by the fruit of the Spirit and not the works of the flesh? Throughout the history of the world the popular answers to that question have always revolved around human effort and performance. The grand assumption that virtually all cultures and systems of human improvement and human religion share in common and which is the presupposition of the false teachers in Galatia is that humans are basically good and have it within their power to live a good life. Humans have the power and ability to do better. All people need is a little more education, a better self-image, a truer knowledge of God and his ways, healing of their inner child, the right meditation technique, more exercise and a better diet, the right religious rituals, medicine to correct the hormonal or chemical imbalances in their brains and they will be loving, joyful, peace loving, patient, faithful, self-controlled people. However, the Bible as a whole and Paul in this text locate the problem and the solution to the problem in an entirely different place. His analysis of the human condition is that we do evil because we are evil and that the only way we will ever do good is to be made good by God. The good news of the gospel is not only that our sins are forgiven and that we are counted righteous but that we are also given new hearts that delight to obey God, to be like Christ. Paul is merely repeating here what the Lord Jesus said, “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.” We are made good by the gospel, not by keeping the law, not by our own moral effort. When we are made good by the gospel, through the Spirit, then we live good lives. Everyone can know whether or not they have been made good by the gospel. There is an absolutely infallible way to tell whether you are walking by the Spirit or fulfilling the desire of the flesh. All you need to do is compare your actual, lived life to these two lists and you will know. The ultimate answer to why you feel the way you feel, think the way you think, act the way you act is that either your flesh is working its work or the Holy Spirit is producing his fruit. Everyone who is walking by the Spirit is exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit and everyone who is fulfilling the desire of the flesh is exhibiting the works of the flesh. The works of the flesh are what come natural to all humans. The fruit of the Spirit is the good life that is always produced in those who belong to Christ, who trust in his saving life, death and resurrection. MAIN POINT The gospel of God’s grace always produces a good life because… I. The flesh produces a life of chaos that ends in eternal death (vv. 19-21) Let me give you a brief definition of this term “sinful nature” by way of review. The “flesh,” which is the literal word that is used in the Greek, is our old nature. It is the life we inherited from Adam. It is our natural, human nature that believes that we are capable of attaining life without God as he actually is. Our flesh is our preference for created things rather than the Creator. It is our affection for sin and the pleasures of this world and our hatred of God and his commands. Our flesh is that core conviction that it is our wisdom, our knowledge, our ability that matters, not God’s. All humans, by nature believe that we are able, without God, to do what is necessary to gain life, whether we define that life as heaven or as an upper-middle class life in the U.S. Flesh is self-confidence rather than God-confidence. John Piper, based on his study of Galatians defines the flesh like this: " The flesh is the ego which feels an emptiness but loathes the idea of satisfying it by faith, i.e., by depending on the mercy of God in Christ. Instead, the flesh prefers to use the legalistic or licentious resources in its own power to fill its emptiness. Flesh is the old ego that is self-reliant and does not delight to yield to any authority or depend on any mercy. It craves the sensation of self-generated power and loves the praise of men. The flesh is the proud and unsubmissive root of depravity in every human heart, which exalts itself subtly through proud, self-reliant morality, or flaunts itself blatantly through self-assertive, authority-despising immorality. " It's important to recognize that for the non-Christian, his flesh is himself and for the Christian the real self is the Spirit created self. However, for the Christian, the flesh, while crucified through our union with Christ is still present and so we can still fulfill the desire of the flesh. If you compare Galatians 5:24 with 2:20 you will see that my flesh is me without Christ. 5:24 says that all who belong to Christ crucified the flesh and 2;20 says I have been crucified with Christ. Therefore, prior to conversion "I" and "my flesh" are identical and after my conversion, while the real me is the Spirit formed me, yet I always feel the tug and pull of what my flesh desires away from what the Spirit desires. Paul says the same thing in Romans 7:18, "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my flesh, for I (the Spirit created me) have the desire to do what is right but I (the whole me who lives by the Spirit while being indwelt by my flesh) cannot carry it out." What Paul says in v. 19 is that whenever you live according to the flesh, which is what every non-Christian does all the time and what Christians do sometimes, then these are the sorts of "works" you will discover in your life. You will notice in v. 21 that he says this is not an exhaustive list. These 15 things are examples of the kinds of things that the flesh always produces in a person’s life or in a community or a family. Whenever you believe that someone or something is better than God as revealed in Christ and that you are able, without God, to get what you want, then you are fulfilling the desire of the flesh. And whenever you are fulfilling the desire of the flesh, then these are the sorts of things that will characterize your life. What Paul is saying here contradicts what most of you believe about why you do the things you do. Paul is giving the answer to why humans do what they do and his answer is vastly different from the answer that you have been given your whole life long. Let's describe a couple of them and then think about what you might be told if you were a person who lived in this way and you went to a counselor, either secular or Christian, it wouldn't matter, and asked them, "why am I like this?" Let's begin with sexual immorality. I'll take a very common kind of sexual immorality, looking at pornography on the Internet. Let's say a wife finds out her husband is looking at pornography and commands him to go get help. He goes to the counselor and after a few sessions of getting to know the man and his background the counselor explains to the man why it is that he is addicted to pornography. Every counselor has to answer the why question before he can answer the “how do I change” question. You need a diagnosis before you can prescribe a treatment. The counselor might say something like this. "You've never been comfortable around women, beginning with your mother. She was always critical of you and you felt like you could never please her. You felt distant from her and not accepted by her. In addition, your dad regularly called your masculinity into question by comparing you to your older brother who was a star athlete. In this comparison you always came up short. You were embarrassed a number of times by women in your teens when you asked them out on dates and they rejected you. Even now, though you are married, you feel that your wife does not really respect you and her lack of sexual interest in you reinforces your self-perception that you are inadequate and unacceptable as a man. It is only in the world of sexual fantasy that you can feel good about yourself as a man. You escape the pain of your emasculated manhood by engaging in sexual fantasy." I'm not just making this up. This is the kind of stuff you will be told by most counselors. You can read this in much of the sexual addiction material. If you went to Paul as your counselor and asked him, why am I addicted to pornography, what would he say? After he patiently listened as you told your story, then he would say something like this: “The reason you are addicted to pornography is because you believe that the pleasure that you receive in sexual fantasy is infinitely superior to the pleasure of having your sins forgiven, being loved by God and going to heaven. You believe that you have a right to sexual gratification and you are unwilling to love your wife with no strings attached. You are unjustly angry at your wife for not being as interested in sex as you are and you are paying her back for her unwillingness to satisfy you the way you want to be satisfied. You think that God's plan for sexual fulfillment, sexual relations with one woman in the context of a marriage in which you must die to yourself and serve her, is infinitely inferior to your plan for sexual fulfillment.” In short, you look at pornography because you are fulfilling the desire of your flesh, not living by the Spirit. Let’s consider a second “work.” The word translated "discord" in the NIV means "fighting." This is the word to describe all the fights you have ever been involved in. A couple has been fighting a lot and they go to see the marriage counselor. They want to stop fighting. First, the counselor listens to them describe several of their fights. He listens to them as they accuse one another and complain about each other’s failings. Then comes the time for diagnosis, he tells them why it is they are fighting. The story he tells could take many different forms but here is a common one. “The reason you are fighting is because you do not have very good communication or conflict resolution skills. Rather than assertively stating what you want you accuse the other person of holding out on you. Rather than carefully listening to what the other person is saying and trying to understand his or her point of view you immediately defend yourself. Rather than viewing conflict as a good and normal part of your relationship, you view conflict as an attack. The solution to the problem is to practice assertive speaking and active listening.” Again, this is only one of many different ways the story might be told. Other counselors might explore family of origin relational patterns. Another might investigate the broader family "system". A "Christian" counselor might explain the problem in terms of not understanding roles as husband and wife. However, if you went to Paul and asked him, "why are we fighting so much?", he would say something like this: “You both believe that having a spouse who cooperates with you, who always gives you exactly what you want and treats you exactly the way you want to be treated is infinitely superior to being justified, to having God's very own Spirit dwell within you and to know for certain you are on your way to heaven. You believe that Christ dying for your sins is meaningless. What really matters to you is a cooperative spouse. You are sure that God is lying when he tells you that it is more blessed to give than to receive or that Jesus doesn't know what he is talking about when he says the way to be happy is to love your wife as Christ loved the church and to submit to your husband as the church submits to Christ. In short, you believe your plan and your way to a happy life is better than God's and that you have more ability to gain what you want than God has the ability to satisfy you. Therefore, you fight because you’re not getting what you want in the way you want it.” Paul concludes his description of the works of the flesh with this warning: "I warn you as I warned you before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God." If you care about your spiritual condition or whether or not you are a Christian on your way to heaven, this statement should terrify you. Paul said it for the purpose of provoking terror in us. Who is there among us, even after our conversion that has not participated in many of these sins? We’ve already seen in vv. 5 & 17 that Paul does not believe there are any Christians who do not sin, who is perfect. The verb that Paul uses here is in the present tense and means to do or to practice. Therefore, this warning literally says that those who continually do these things as a way of life shall never inherit the kingdom of heaven. Christians can lapse into these things but Christians cannot live in these things. How can Paul make such an absolute statement? The reason he can do so is because we have been born of the Spirit, we have begun the Christian life by the Spirit and according to vv. 16 &18 all true Christians are living by the Spirit and therefore they are not fulfilling the desire of the flesh. Christians, while we still commit acts of sin, really are different from what they used to be. We are progressing, yet not perfect. We are declared not guilty but perfectly righteous because of what Christ has done, not because of what we do or don’t do. How much pornography can a person look at before he or she is practicing it as a way of life and thus proving that he is not a member of God's kingdom? How much fighting can I participate in before it is evident that I am a slave to my flesh and do not have the Spirit of God? How much jealousy or hatred can I have and be a Christian? How many times can I get angry before I prove that I'm outside of God's family? First, Christians don't measure their sin and see how much they can get away with. If you are asking these kinds of questions in order to assure yourself that you are on your way to heaven while you continue to live in these ways, then most likely you are not a Christian. Romans 8:12-13 says, “Therefore brothers, we have an obligation but not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” Christians hate performing the works of the flesh. They despise their anger and jealousy and drunkenness and sexual impurity. Christians are in a war against their sin and express it by confessing their sins and fighting to sin less. We are looking for ways to kill our sin, not to live in it. Christians aren't looking for explanations of their sin that place the blame on someone or something outside of themselves. When a Christian sins he says, "Look at what I did," not "Look at what you made me do" or "Look at what my bad circumstances made me do." The gospel of God’s grace always produces a good life because…
II. The Spirit produces a fruitful life that ends in eternal life (vv. 22-23) The contrast between these two lists could not be starker. Part of the point that Paul is making here is that only God can rescue humans from their natural, sinful condition and make them into new people. It is only the life, death, resurrection, ascension and present intercession of Jesus Christ that can overcome evil humanity and produce a new humanity. There is no love, no joy, no peace, no patience, no kindness, no goodness, no faithfulness, no gentleness, and no self-control except that created by the Spirit of God. Now it is true that many humans do exhibit these characteristics but they are all merely a mask, an imitation of the real thing because any gentleness that a human exhibits apart from the Spirit is not a true gentleness but a gentleness designed to obtain a creation pleasure, like a good reputation or avoiding a fight or getting a woman to have sex, rather than out of pleasure in God and his ways. If his gentleness does not get him what he wants, then he will be angry or depressed, where the Christian is gentle because he loves being gentle because he loves being like Christ, not in order to get something else. In other words only the Holy Spirit creates humans who live this way out of faith in Christ and love for God. Right behavior coming from right affections arising from a new heart that trusts Christ is only the work of God. Notice that "fruit" is singular in contrast to "works", plural. Paul uses the singular to show that Christian character is a whole. All of this fruit is being produced in all Christians who are living by the Spirit at all times. They are all interconnected and cannot exist without each other. As many have pointed out this is an excellent summary of the character of Christ himself. By calling it the fruit of the Spirit we understand that this character is not produced by us, even though we are the ones who love, who have joy, who live at peace with ourselves and others. Paul is clearly picking up on an OT symbol that Jesus uses frequently, probably most powerfully in John 15 where he says that he is the vine and we are the branches and that when we abide in him we will bear much fruit. Abiding in Christ and walking by the Spirit are synonymous terms. We bear the fruit. Christ by his Spirit produces the fruit. How does this work? Verse 16 and verses 22-23 are vitally connected. When you live/walk by the Spirit you don't fulfill the desire of the flesh but the Holy Spirit produces his fruit in and through you. I want to revisit that command again and restate what I said last week based on some more reading I did this week that was helpful. John Piper in his commentary on Gal. 5:16 points out five places in Galatians where we find out that living by the Spirit is the same thing as saying that we are living by faith in Christ. Let me point out one of the five. In Gal. 5:6 we are told, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value the only thing that matters is faith expressing itself through love." In other words, genuine faith always produces love. But in Gal 5:22 the Spirit is said to produce love. That means that the way the HS produces love is by our trusting in the promises of God given to us in Christ. Or as Piper says, " … you allow the Spirit to control you by keeping your heart happy in God. Or to put it another way, you walk by the Spirit when your heart is resting in the promises of God. The Spirit reigns over the flesh in your life when you live by faith in the Son of God who loved you and gave himself for you and now is working everything together for your good." Let me try to show how this works in a practical way. Let's say you have a teenager whom you have told on more than one occasion to keep his room clean. One Saturday morning you tell this particular child when he gets up at 11am that before he can do anything else he must pick up his room. After you give him this instruction, you run to the store to pick up some stuff to fix the faucet in the bathroom. When you come home you discover that this child has not only not picked up his room but has taken a shower and left the bathroom in chaos and has taken your car to go hang out with his friends. While you are contemplating the mess you have to pick up before you can fix the faucet, your son calls to tell you he ran a stop sign and got hit by another car. He is fine but your car is totaled. What fruits of the Spirit are you going to need to be exhibited in your life at this moment? Aren't you going to need to have all the fruit produced? Self-control so you don't kill him when you see him. Patience to bear with his foolishness and all the trouble he has brought into your life. Peace to not panic about all the extra work now facing you and the extra expenses. Joy, instead of overwhelming grief and anger at having such a foolish son. Love for a son who needs your acceptance and your loving discipline. Gentleness and kindness as you speak with your son and administer wise and firm discipline to help him embrace wisdom. Goodness as you seek a helpful and fair response to your son and not merely harsh retribution. While it is the HS who produces this fruit, what is it that must take place in your soul? You must trust that God is working all things together for your good and the good of your son. You must believe that God will supply all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ. You must remember God's patience, kindness and gentleness with you in Christ and his command for you to exhibit those same qualities towards your son. You must believe that being like Jesus and glorifying him is infinitely better than making your son pay for what he has done to you. You must believe that being loved by God is better than being respected by your son and getting your work done and not having to buy another car. In short, the way the Spirit produces his fruit is by his showing you the glory of Christ and his salvation so that you trust in Christ and all that he promises you and are satisfied with that. If having a respectful son or getting your work done or not having to buy a new car is what you must have to be happy, then you will exhibit the works of the flesh but if Christ is what you must have then the fruit of the Spirit will be manifest in your life. What does Paul mean when he says, "against such things there is no law?" F.F. Bruce says in his commentary, quoting S.H. Hooke, “A vine does not produce grapes by Act of Parliament; they are the fruit of the vine’s own life; so the conduct which conforms to the standard of the Kingdom is not produced by any demand, not even God’s but it is the fruit of that divine nature which God gives as the result of what he has done in and by Christ.” Bruce goes on to say, “…when these qualities are in view we are in a sphere with which the law has nothing to do. Law may prescribe certain forms of conduct and prohibit others, but love, joy, peace and the rest cannot be legally enforced.” The point he is making to the Galatians, who are being told that they must obey the law to be Christians, is that if they make law keeping the means of living the Christian life the Holy Spirit will not produce his fruit. Rather the works of the flesh will be the consequence. The Holy Spirit produces his fruit only in those who are living by faith in the Son of God, not those who are living by keeping the law. The gospel of God’s grace always produces a good life because…
III. It is the gift of God, not by our work (vv. 24-26) Paul concludes this portion of his argument by showing how he can be so confident that all who belong to Christ are not characterized by the works of the flesh but are characterized by the fruit of the Spirit. First he says that everyone who is trusting in Christ crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. This is simply another way of saying what he said in 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me…" Or as Paul says in Romans 6:3-4, "Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father we too might live a new life." Our old nature, our flesh, which believes that life can be had apart from Christ by reliance upon our own wisdom and strength, has been dealt a fatal blow. We are no longer slaves to sin. We are able to not sin, which is not true of all who are outside of Christ. Not only did we die with Christ but the Spirit also gave us new life through our union with Christ as v. 25 says. The result is that we now live our lives by living in step with the Holy Spirit, by being led by the Spirit, by walking by the Spirit. This again means that we are living by faith in Christ and all that he promises to be for us. Notice that the corollary to keeping in step with the Spirit is that we will not be conceited. The word translated conceited is a very interesting word. It literally means, "empty boasting." Have you ever heard a sports fan, after his team wins say something like this, "We played an awesome game. We're so great. We're the best team in the NFL. Nobody can beat us. We're number one baby." What's wrong with those statements? What's wrong is that "we" didn't do anything. The fan is full of "empty boasting" because he did nothing. The team did much but he did nothing. Therefore, he has no ground for pride. He has no ground for looking down on anybody else. Everyone who lives by the Spirit and thus bears the fruit of the Spirit has nothing to boast about. If you are keeping in step with the Spirit and thus not engaging in the works of the flesh, you have nothing to boast of. If you do boast of anything it is empty boasting. And if you boast about your keeping of the law to be made right with God, your boasting is empty because you have never in your whole life ever kept God’s law. Anytime humans boast about their own goodness or righteousness, their boasting is empty, vain, not true. What is always the result in our relationships when we start boasting about the things we have done? Again, if you think about sports fans you can see what happens. If you start boasting about all that you and the Packers have done together in the presence of a Bears fan they are going to feel provoked and envious. When a Bears fan feels provoked and envious what does he do? He begins to slander the Packers. He begins to wish harmful things upon Brett Favre. Since you are boasting about what you and your team have done, you take his slander personal. In other words, a fight ensues. Paul is going right back to v. 15. If you are living the Christian life on the basis of law keeping then you are engaging in empty boasting and when you do that you are provoking others and producing envy in others and bringing chaos into the church. So again, the only way to have a happy family or a happy church is to live by the Spirit and thus bear the fruit of the Spirit. When you live like this you will not engage in empty boasting and thus bring chaos into your family and church. The gospel of God’s grace always produces a good life because…
© Copyright
2005 John Swanson.
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