Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. I'd like to welcome you to our
program today. I'm glad you could join us. If you'd like to follow
along in your Bibles, I'll be preaching from basically two
passages of Scripture, beginning in the book of Galatians, in
the New Testament, the Apostle Paul's letter to the churches
of Galatia, chapter 5. And then I'm going to go over
to Romans chapter eight. That's Paul's letter to Rome,
to the church at Rome. And if you'd like to get prepared
and follow along in your Bibles, I'm gonna be talking about this
in the next couple of messages. It's called Walking After the
Spirit. Walking After the Spirit. This
is part one. And then next week, part two.
And what I wanna talk to you about is what it is to walk after
the Spirit. The apostle wrote, here's in
Galatians chapter five, in verse 16, listen to what the Holy Spirit
inspired Paul to write here. And he says, this I say then,
this is Galatians 5.16, this I say then, walk in the Spirit,
and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. And then he
speaks of a warfare, an inner warfare that is the experience
of every sinner saved by grace, every true believer. And he says
in verse 17, for the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit
against the flesh. And these are contrary, opposed,
the one to the other. They're not in unity, they're
not in harmony. It's an inner warfare. It's a
struggle. And he says, so that you cannot
do the things that you would, the things you desire. And we'll
talk about that. And in verse 18, he says, but
if you be led of the spirit, you are not under the law. Now
what that means, if you're led of the spirit, you're not under
condemnation. That's what that means. But here
he mentions two entities. He mentions the spirit. Now the
Spirit here, when he says, walk in the Spirit, the flesh lusteth
against the Spirit, what he's speaking of, or who he's speaking
of here, is God, the Holy Spirit, who indwells every true believer. This is the third person of the
Holy Trinity. God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit indwells the people
of God. And He indwells us by His influences,
His power, His principles, and the Word of God. The Bible says
that when God saves a sinner, when they're born again by the
Holy Spirit, and a new life, spiritual life, is given to them,
that the Holy Spirit implants, imparts, infuses, if you will,
the Word of God upon their hearts. And the heart is the mind, the
affections, the will, the conscience. It's the inner man or inner woman. In other words, that's the very
center of our being. And the Holy Spirit indwells
us in that way. And then he mentions the flesh.
Now that's the opposing principle, the opposing power. And what
is the flesh? Now, we know who the spirit is. Now, what does the spirit do
when he applies spiritual life in the new birth to a sinner?
The Bible speaks of that. When we talk about the Holy Trinity,
the Father, the Son, and Spirit, we're talking about one God.
not three gods. And I know this is a mind-boggling
truth, and people state it in different ways, but we believe
in one God who subsists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. And to be honest with you, we
cannot explain that. We cannot really doctrinalize
that in terms that is adequate to satisfy our limited, finite
minds. This is God who is so high above
us, but He's one God. We're not polytheist, as the
Muslims accuse us of. No, it's not three gods. We're
monotheistic. We believe one God. who subsist
in three persons. And so we speak of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, why do we do that? Because
the Bible does. This is how God reveals Himself
in His Word. He reveals Himself as Father,
as the Son, and as the Holy Spirit. And in the plan of salvation,
God's saving centers by His grace based upon the blood, the righteousness,
the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ, whereunto He justifies
His people. He forgives our sins by the blood
of Christ. He declares us righteous based
upon the merits of Christ, His righteousness imputed to us.
And from that ground and that source, the Holy Spirit applies
that salvation to each and every one of God's chosen people in
time under the preaching of the gospel. So that the Father represents
the sovereign authority of the Godhead. The Son represents the
one who provided the ground and the cause of that salvation. And he has the preeminence because
it's through the Son, Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, that
we come to God and are accepted of God and that we see God as
he reveals himself. The Bible says, in Christ, in
him dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead Father, Son, and
Spirit bodily, and you are complete in Him. So our connection to
God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is through Christ, the one mediator
between God and men, and based upon His death on the cross,
and that's the merits of His righteousness, the very righteousness
of God. That's why the gospel is the
revelation of the righteousness of God. That's what I need in
order to be saved. That's what I need in order to
be justified before God. I cannot be forgiven of my sins
based upon my works. I cannot be forgiven based upon
my suffering. I can only be forgiven of all
my sins based upon the blood of Jesus Christ. What can wash
away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus,
okay? And so in order for him to have
blood, he had to have a human body in order for him to die. And yet he had a human body,
he's God-man, God manifest in the flesh, yet without sin. And
then, so he's the ground, he's the cause, he's the one who brought
about salvation so that sinners can approach God and be accepted,
we're accepted in the beloved, that's Christ. And he has the
preeminence because you cannot have anything to do with God
savingly without Christ. God's grace is in Christ. God's
mercy is in Christ. God's love is in Christ. God's
justice is satisfied by Christ for His people. Christ is the
surety of the covenant. Christ is the substitute of His
people. Christ is the Redeemer. Now from
that source, that is Christ crucified, risen from the dead, His blood,
His righteousness, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity,
comes and applies the benefits and blessings and the power of
that salvation to each and every one of God's people in time. When He brings us providentially
under the preaching of the gospel and by His power, not by the
free will of man or the decisions of man or the goodness of man,
but by His power, He births us again. That's the new birth.
You must be born again. And the new birth is applied
and empowered and enacted by the Holy Spirit who is sent forth
from the Father and the Son to apply all the benefits and the
power and the blessings of salvation to each and every one of God's
elect in time. And what does he do? He imparts
life from Christ, the resurrection life of Christ. Christ's righteousness has already
been imputed to every one of God's elect. The Holy Spirit
comes and gives life from the dead. By nature, see, we fell
in Adam, and we're born spiritually dead in trespasses and sins.
And so therefore, in order for us to believe the gospel, to
have the gift of faith and repentance and perseverance, we have to
be given life from the dead. You must be born again or you
cannot see the kingdom of God. Why? Because you don't have spiritual
eyes unless you're born again. And that new birth does not come
about by your decision or your goodness or your free will, so-called. It comes about by the power of
God. It's not of him that willeth,
nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. And
so the Spirit imparts life under the preaching of the gospel.
He imparts and plants the word of God in the hearts of God's
people. And he brings us to be spiritually
alive. You see, before that, we're spiritually
dead. Now man has a spirit, but it's
a spirit of death and destruction, headed for damnation. but the
Spirit gives spiritual life from God. He makes us new creatures,
new creations in Christ. Ephesians 2.10 says, we are His
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, not because
of good works, not based on good works, not conditioned on good
works, but unto the result, the fruit, good works, which God
hath before ordained that we should walk in them. And so the
faith that we believe, the faith that I have to believe God is
the gift of God, given to me through the knowledge of God,
imparted to me by the Holy Spirit. And that's what He does. He's
the spirit of conviction. He convicts us of sin, shows
us our sinfulness and depravity and inability. shows us that
God cannot save us based upon our works. That if God ever gave
me what I deserve and what I have earned, it would be death and
damnation and destruction. And so sin has to be measured
in the light of Christ. And the Holy Spirit shows us
that. He convicts us of righteousness. This is in John 16. The Spirit
convicts us of righteousness because Christ did a great work
and went unto the Father. What did Christ do? Christ accomplished
righteousness for His people. He satisfied the justice of God
by His death. He kept the law perfectly and
brought in everlasting righteousness. And so that righteousness is
imputed, charged, accounted to his people. And so the Holy Spirit
convicts us of righteousness by causing us to see our sinfulness
and to look outside ourselves and look to Christ for all righteousness,
for all forgiveness, for all salvation, for all glory and
eternal life. And that's what the Bible means
when it says, with the heart man believeth unto righteousness. How do you believe unto righteousness?
You believe in Christ. You rest in him. You plead his
merits, not your own. You see, this is not about what
you do for God, it's about what he's done for his people. And
then he convicts of judgment because the prince of this world,
the devil, is cast down. And what that means is the devil
who was the instrumental cause of bringing condemnation into
the world is put down because Christ is the instrumental cause
of bringing justification and salvation into the world. So that God's people who are
in Christ cannot be charged with their sin. Our sins were charged
to Christ and He put them away. He purged them away. He paid
the debt in full. Now that's what the Holy Spirit
does. So basically, to walk in the Spirit and walk after the
Spirit has to do mainly with walking by God-given faith in
and by the Lord Jesus Christ, looking unto Him, resting in
Him, As Hebrews 12 says, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher
of our faith. That's what walking in and after
the Spirit is. But there's more to it than that.
There's other things. Walking in the Spirit has to
do with walking in the Word of God. And that's a huge matter. My life, my thoughts, my attitudes,
my conduct is to be guided by God's word, not by the opinions
of men, not by the majority. You see, this is a problem with
false churches today. People in the majority today,
politically, economically, religiously, they have opinions that go against
the word of God and these false churches and false Christians
bow to it. because it's easier to go with
the flow. But no, we're to walk after the
Spirit. Now, let's go back to the scriptures here and see what
it says. Now, he says in verse 16 of Galatians
5, this I say then, walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill
the lust of the flesh. Verse 17, for the flesh lusteth
against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And these
are contrary, the one to the other, so that you cannot do
the things that you would. Now, what is the flesh here?
And it's really important if we're going to understand the
Bible. to have an understanding of this term flesh and how it's
used within its different context and different meanings of it.
Well, obviously, when you hear the word flesh, you can be talking
about just simply the human body, the physical makeup, matter of
human beings. That's the flesh. We are flesh
and blood. The way of all flesh, we hear
that talked about, that's death. And so, somebody might, you know,
we talk about the hands, the eyes, the ears, the legs, all
that, even the human brain. And the flesh refers to that.
Now, the flesh, there's nothing sinful in and of itself about
the human body. But the problem is, is this.
Within our human psyche, our minds, our human bodies, there
is a sin power and principle. Sinful human nature. And therefore
the flesh then sometimes in the Bible, a lot of times, is used
to describe sinfulness. But now that doesn't mean that
my hands are necessarily sinful. Now I can use my hands for sinful
purposes. I can use my hands to open the
Bible and use my eyes to read, or I can use my hands to do something
sinful. That's not because the hand itself
is sinful, it's because of the flesh within. Paul spoke of that
in Romans 7. He said, I know that in me that
is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. And what he's talking
about there is the power of sin, unrighteousness, sinful principles,
sinful thoughts, sinful motives, sinful desires, which can lead
to sinful actions. And of course, we know that the
scripture tells us that all sin deserves death. And that just
because you don't put a sinful thought into sinful action doesn't
make it not sin. Christ said that. He said, you've
heard that it's said by them of old to commit murder, to kill
is sinful. Yes, it is. But to even think
it is sinful. He said, you've heard it said
by them of old, to lust or to commit adultery is sinful. It
is, the act of adultery is sinful. But to think it, lust, is sinful. The Ten Commandments tells us,
thou shalt not covet. Covetousness is not a sin of
action, it's a sin of thought. And so what we're talking about
in the flesh, sometimes it just simply means the human body which
in and of itself is not sinful, and the proof of that is Christ
himself. Jesus Christ had a sinless human body. He was made of a
woman, the scripture says. He was made of the seed of David
according to the flesh. You see that? But his flesh,
he was sinless, sinlessly perfect. There was no sin in him. But
now every other human being, we all who fell in Adam and who
are born spiritually dead in trespasses and sins, our flesh
is sinful. Not because the hands and the
arms and the material, the matter is sinful, as some of the old
false religionists would say. You know, they go to passages
like where Christ said, if your eye offends you, pluck it out.
Let me tell you something, if you go blind tomorrow, you'll
still have sinful thoughts. You'll still have sinful images
in your mind. So that won't take care of the
problem. That's not what he was saying there, and I don't have
time to go into all that. But here's the point. The flesh
here, when he speaks of this, now let's look at it again. He
says, verse 16, this I say then, walk in the Spirit, that is,
walk according to how the Holy Spirit guides you. and motivate
you. And he says, and you shall not
fulfill the lust of the flesh. Now that's the problem. And a
lot of times the reason that the flesh is equated with sin
is because it's through this human body that sin expresses
itself. The Bible speaks of the lust
of the eyes. What you see causes you to lust,
and that lust is in you to begin with. And so we see the flesh
here is talking about sin. He says, you shall not fulfill
the lust of the flesh, verse 17, for the flesh lusteth against
the spirit. Whatever the spirit motivates
and guides us to do, We have sin within us, the powers of
sin, strong powers, principles within us that goes against what
the Spirit guides us and motivates us to do. And that's what he
says here. The Spirit, he says, for the
flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh,
and these are contrary. That means they're not in union,
they're not happy together. Contrary the one to the other,
so that you cannot do the things that you would. Now you have
things you want to do. One old preacher said this about
that. He said, we have things that we want to do as we're motivated
and guided and led and empowered by the Spirit. We want to serve
God. We want to obey Him. We want to love God and our brethren. And we want to do it perfectly.
but we cannot do it perfectly. We can try to do it, and we should
try to do it, but we can't do it perfectly. That's the problem,
see. Why? Because the flesh lusts
against the Spirit. The flesh keeps us from loving
God and loving our neighbor, obeying God and serving Him perfectly. Now that's why our righteousness
before God is in Christ, who did serve His Father, love His
people perfectly. See, He's our righteousness.
My righteousness is not within me, it's in Christ. Now I have
the Holy Spirit in me, and He's righteous, and I have a new spirit
that He gave me, but I'm hindered by the flesh. The flesh still
contaminates and still comes against my very best efforts
to love God and to love my neighbor and to serve God perfectly. Keeps
me from doing what I want to do. But now we have fleshly desires
too. We want to serve self. We're
selfish people. That's the flesh. And so we want
to do things that would promote self over and above others. But,
and sometimes we do that. Sometimes we fall headlong into
it. But what keeps us from going
the full swing of the flesh so as to depart from Christ and
to deny God totally? Stops the wolf. Well, the Spirit's
there. And He goes against the flesh. So you see, now look over at
Romans chapter eight. And I'll get into this one a
little more next week, but just look at verse eight. Or not verse
eight, chapter eight and verse one in Romans eight. The apostle
writes here, he says, there is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation. You cannot be
condemned if you're in Christ. Think about that. Do I deserve
to be condemned? Well, based on my works, even
my best works? Yes, I do. Right now, I deserve
to be condemned. The Bible says it this way, for
example, in Psalm 130, verse 3. If God were to judge any of
us Me, you, whoever, the best of
us, the worst of us, and everybody in between, if God were to judge
me based upon my best efforts to serve Him, what would I find? I'd find that they all fall short
of the perfection of righteousness that can only be found in Christ
Jesus, based upon the merits of His obedience unto death as
my surety, my substitute, my redeemer. And therefore, my hope
is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
And I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus'
name. Now, so there's no condemnation. And back over there in our text
in Galatians 5, when it says there in verse 18, But if you
be led of the Spirit, you're not under the law. What that
means is, it doesn't mean that you're without law or without
principles or without guiding principles. It means you're not
condemned. You see, the law condemns the
best works of the best of sinners because the law requires the
perfection of righteousness. The Bible says over in the book
of Romans chapter 10 and verse 4 that Christ is the end of the
law, the fulfillment of the law, the perfection of the law for
righteousness to everyone that believe. So back over here in
Romans 8, 1, there is therefore now no condemnation to them who
are in Christ. I have his righteousness imputed
to me. I have his blood to wash away my sins. Now who is it that
can claim this justification, this blessing, no condemnation.
Look at it again. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit. Now, the question is, do I walk
after the Spirit, or do I walk after the flesh? To walk after
the Spirit doesn't mean that we no longer sin. I'm only a
sinner saved by grace, but it means to walk looking to Christ. We'll pick up with this next
week. I hope you'll join us next week for another message from
God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia. 317-07. Contact us by
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today and may the Lord be with you.