So we are going to be in Galatians chapter five and I
would like to read from verse 16. Galatians chapter five and
verse 16. This I say then, the Apostle
Paul is speaking to the Galatian believers, this I say then, walk
in the spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
For the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against
the flesh. And these are contrary the one
to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now
the works of the flesh are manifest. which are these, adultery, fornication,
uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred,
variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like. of the which I tell you before,
as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such
things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit
of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness,
faith, meekness, temperance. Against such there is no law. and they that are Christ's have
crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live
in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit. Let us not be
desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another. Amen. The apostle has been emphasising
love and he calls the Galatian believers to Christian service. So he's making a contrast between
the works of the law, which demands certain obedience, certain conduct,
and Christian service, which is motivated by love. Christian service, which is founded
upon love and fuelled by spiritual life and a desire to honour the
Lord Jesus Christ. Love to our neighbour, he calls
it. Especially love towards our brothers
and sisters in the faith. Exercising care and concern and
support for one another. And that is a better expression
of obedience to God than all the demands and all the rigours
of the law could ever muster. And this leads the apostle to
expand in the verses that we've read on the two natures found
in every regenerate sinner. There is the nature of flesh
with which every person is born into the world, and this nature
suffers from the effects of the fall and is the Adam nature that
is opposed to God and which strives always to indulge and satisfy
the lusts of the flesh. It's called elsewhere our carnal
nature or the carnal man or the old man. So that is one of the
two natures that we find in every regenerate sinner and it comes
to us by nature as we come into this world. And then there is
a new nature. This is the effect of regeneration
in the soul of one of the Lord's people. There is the new nature
or the spiritual nature with which regenerate men and women
are born again by the quickening work of God the Holy Spirit. And this nature is divinely created,
and like everything created by God, it is perfect, it is holy,
and it is without sin. It is a new creation. and it strives to honour God. It hungers and thirsts after
righteousness and it holds Christ's example as the pattern that it
seeks always to emulate and to follow. And the new creation
desires to be conformed to the Lord Jesus Christ, to be conformed
to the image of Christ. Indeed, it is predestinated to
be conformed to the image of Christ. It is our spiritual nature,
or it is the new man. Peter calls it the hidden man
of the heart in that which is not corruptible. So we have these
two natures, and this is what the apostle is referring to here. The old man of flesh is the motivating
source of all evil, though that is not to say that every form
of wickedness is present in every case to its fullest degree. We're
not saying that. We're not saying that every individual
is as wicked as they could possibly be with every sin. but it is
nevertheless the motivating source of all evil in the human being. And then there is the new man
of the spirit. in the motivating source. It is the motivating source of
all good by which the indwelling righteousness and goodness of
God is manifested in a believer's life. These two natures coexisting. In our opening verse, verse 16
of the passage that we read together, the apostle calls the Galatians
to walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of
the flesh. And here we see the apostle.
The apostle's setting up a confrontation here, or an opposition. It's
an opposition that he sets up between the old nature, the flesh
nature, and the new nature, the spirit nature, in which these
two natures are antagonists whose opposition results in an ongoing
conflict in every believer. So that Paul tells us, the flesh
lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary the one
to the other. So this is like an opposition,
a confrontation, a battle if you like, and it helps to explain
the internal struggle that all believers feel. There's a battle
going on in our hearts, in our souls. Our flesh, the natural
man, the old man, the Adam nature, wants to run to evil while our
spirit wishes to honour God. Furthermore, the flesh prevents
the spirit from doing the good that it, the spirit, wants to
do. And the spirit prevents the flesh
from having full reign to do what it wants to do. And Paul
elsewhere makes this point. He says, you cannot do the things
that ye would. Or he says it here. You cannot
do the things that ye would. That's just the nature of this
battle. This engagement is taking place
and we cannot do the things that we would. But can I show you
something which I think is very interesting? That little phrase
cuts both ways. It cuts both ways. That is, neither
the nature Neither nature can do the things that it would.
The evil nature is prevented. The evil nature is hobbled by
the holy nature and the holy nature is thwarted by the nature
of flesh. And actually I think that this
is an important point. It's something that pastorally
we should all remember. As believers, we often feel unworthy. We often feel deserving of no
benefits, no blessings. and undeserving people, even
ashamed because of our residual sinful nature and the sin that
persists in our lives. And we question ourselves. We
question ourselves. We say, if I were a believer,
if I were a true believer, would I do these things? Would I think
these things? Would I say these things? Would
I feel like this inside me? this gloom, this darkness, this
oppression that so often seems to invade my life. Let us not ignore the other side
of that as well. We should not ignore the victories
gained by the Spirit over the flesh. Our reaction, these questions
are often asked in the context of what we feel are victories
of the flesh over the spirit. But there are also victories
that the spirit gains over the flesh. If you think that your
new man is having a hard time, just think what the old man is
going through. And this is a conflict that affects
every believer's life. It creates a battlefield upon
which two evenly matched foes contend the one with the other.
There's a back and a forth as one nature gains a bit of ground
and then the other. The old man is weakening. The old man will not win. But all that means is that in
the meantime, he has to be more devious, more resourceful, so
as to better camouflage his attacks to catch us unawares with ambushes
in places that we don't expect. The language of the battlefield
is the language of our soul. And this imagery is employed
by Solomon himself, speaking of the Shulamite in Song of Solomon. A Shulamite is a daughter of
Zion. And we've been learning from
Isaiah that Zion is a picture of the church. So what he's talking
about here is a church member. What he's talking about here
is the church of Jesus Christ. And he says of the church of
Jesus Christ, that there is a company of two armies. In her dwells
the company of two armies. And this warfare is the experience
of the Lord's people. And Paul says elsewhere, expressing
his own personal testimony, the good that I would, I do not,
but the evil that I would not, that I do. Just lay hold on that,
will you? Because I know, looking around
here, we're some of the aged members of the Church of Jesus
Christ. But it doesn't matter how old
we get in this Christian walk. The reality is the good that
I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do.
That's the battle that goes on. That's the old man and the new
man. But the new man will win. and the old man will be defeated. And Paul encourages the Galatians
to walk in the Spirit and be led by the Spirit. And that shows
again, I think, that he's preaching, he's writing to the Galatians
with an assumption that they are alive in Christ. They possess
spiritual life because one cannot walk in the spirit unless one
is alive. One cannot be led by the spirit
unless there is spiritual life. So he's speaking to believers.
However, the other interesting meaning, context in that little
phrase is that he is showing us that we need to be led because
we can't walk by ourselves. We can't maintain a holy supremacy
against this enemy, this old man, this old nature by our own
strength. Our natural flesh has strong
allies. It is the ally of the world.
It has the ally of the devil with all the temptations that
it brings. And as believers, we need to
walk in the way of truth. We need to walk in the light
of the gospel. We need to walk under the guidance
of the spirit of Jesus Christ. We need to walk hearing the gospel
preached, hearing the word of God, and dwelling, meditating
upon these things. Saints, spiritual men and women,
learn to do this. Learn to walk by the Spirit.
Learn to be led by the Spirit by viewing the Lord Jesus Christ
by faith and following His pattern, hearing and applying the gospel
of grace, learning Christ, and following the teachings of the
apostles. and the fruit that is produced
under this spiritual leading, the fruit that's produced by
the gospel, the gospel's example to us, isn't prompted by the
law of Moses. The law of Moses isn't featuring
in this at all. If Paul had been trying to teach
these people to be obedient according to the law of Moses, he had plenty
of opportunity to do it in a passage like this. But that's not what
he's doing. This fruit is inspired by the obedience of Christ. The Judaizers were imposing the
wrong rule and the wrong standard. They were trying to lay a yoke
that was designed for the wickedness of the old natural man upon the
shoulders of new spiritual men and women. men and women who
had already slipped out from under Moses' yoke and put on
Christ's yoke, finding it a light and easy yoke to bear. Which
is why the Apostle Paul couldn't understand why the Galatians
were being so foolish as to go back under the yoke of Moses'
law. Let me make a quick point about
the words that the apostle uses here, because I think it helps
to give some honour to the Lord, to whom it is due, which should
always be a desire that we have. Paul describes the work of the
flesh and the fruit of the spirit. See those two words being used
there, work and fruit. The work of the flesh and the
fruit of the spirit. The work of the flesh is its
output. And it's listed here. The apostle
lists it as a catalogue of offenses that are produced because of
the lust of fallen nature. But the output that is produced
by the spirit is not called the work of the spirit, but the fruit
of the spirit. So he changes the language there,
he changes his vocabulary. He calls it the fruit of the
spirit because that reveals its source to be the grace of God. The true origin of spiritual
fruit is the divine act of regeneration in a believer's soul. So understanding
this, we can be regretful for our works while being simultaneously
grateful for our fruit. Regretful for our works, grateful
for our fruit. Good works are not works of our
spirit, but the fruit of the spirit of Christ in a believer's
life. And the works of the flesh are
listed here in these verses. They're said to be manifestations. Manifestations, a manifestation
is something that appears. What is it a manifestation of?
Manifestations of our sinful nature. And what are listed is,
I'm gonna say them all again, right? Because the apostle has
listed them here. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness,
lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations,
that's bad temper, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings,
murders, drunkenness, revelings, and he says, just in case I haven't
picked up anything, and such like. What a list that is. It's almost as if the apostle
had swallowed a thesaurus in putting that list together. And
what that does is it shows us the broadness of sin. The apostle was in good company.
He says that God, or he kind of implies there a reference
to Genesis chapter six and verse five, God saw the wickedness
of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of
the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. So from
the beginning of the word of God right through to the apostolic
letters, there is a recognition of the imaginations of the thoughts
of the heart of man only evil continually. There is no end
to the sinful imagination of man's heart, no end to what can
be invented to try to satisfy the lust of our fallen nature. But let us remember, let us be
aware, the pleasure of sin lasts only for a season and the wages
of sin is death. We need forgiveness and if we
have forgiveness, then we have the spirit of life and we are
in a new creation. And that is what Paul goes on
to speak again about. He says, the fruit of the spirit
which he lists, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness,
faith, meekness, and temperance. These qualities, they cannot
be legislated for. You can't command somebody to
love you. You can't command someone to
have joy. You can't command them to have
peace, or patience, or faith. or meekness, they are above the
law. The law can't legislate for love
or joy or gentleness. These are fruits of an internal
disposition arising from the presence of grace in our lives. We love Christ because he first
loved us. Lord Jesus was asked, what is
the greatest commandment? And he said, thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with
all thy strength, with all thy might. That's the greatest commandment. And we love him because he first
loved us. And here I think, in conclusion,
is the enduring lesson from this passage. And it's this little
phrase, that they are Christ's. They that are Christ's. We shall have the victory over
the works of the flesh because we are Christ's. We shall have
the fruit of the spirit Because we are Christ's. We are God's
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. We bring
a fallen sinful nature. And because we are Christ's,
because we are His possession, because we were given to Him,
because we are the children that the Father gave to the Son, that
He might redeem us from our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God the Holy Spirit works fruit
in the renewed lives of the people of God for the glory of God. The Galatians were Christ's people. then let them live as such as
the Lord enables. We are Christ's people, we are
his possession, then let us live as such as he enables. We are Christ's, we are redeemed,
we are justified, and soon we will be glorified. We have no
lasting pleasure in sin. But if we walk in the light as
he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And the blood
of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin. Amen. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us.