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Galatians 5:1-12
Paul's doctrine of grace is dangerous!" cried the Judaizers. "It replaces Law with license. Why, if we do away with our rules and abandon our high standards, the churches will fall apart."
First-century Judaizers are not the only ones afraid to depend on God's grace. Legalists in our churches today warn that we dare not teach people about the liberty we have in Christ lest it result in religious anarchy. These people misunderstand Paul's teaching about grace, and it is to correct such misunderstanding that Paul wrote the final section of his letter (Gal. 5-6).
Paul turns now from argument to application, from the doctrinal to the practical. The Christian who lives by faith is not going to become a rebel. Quite the contrary, he is going to experience the inner discipline of God that is far better than the outer discipline of man-made rules. No man could become a rebel who depends on God's grace, yields to God's Spirit, lives for others, and seeks to glorify God. The legalist is the one who eventually rebels, because he is living in bondage, depending on the flesh, living for self, and seeking the praise of men and not the glory of God.
No, Paul's doctrine of Christian liberty through grace is not the dangerous doctrine. It is legalism that is the dangerous doctrine, because legalism attempts to do the impossible: change the old nature and make it obey the Laws of God. Legalism succeeds for a short time, and then the flesh begins to rebel. The surrendered Christian who depends on the power of the Spirit is not denying the Law of God, or rebelling against it. Rather, that Law is being fulfilled in him through the Spirit (Rom. 8:1-4). It is easy to see the sequence of thought in these closing chapters:
The image of the yoke is not difficult to understand. It usually represents slavery, service, and control by someone else over your life; it may also represent willing service and submission to someone else. When God delivered Israel from Egyptian servitude, it was the breaking of a yoke (Lev. 26:13). The farmer uses the yoke to control and guide his oxen, because they would not willingly serve if they were free.
When the believers in Galatia trusted Christ, they lost the yoke of servitude to sin and put on the yoke of Christ (Matt. 11:28-30). The yoke of religion is hard, and the burdens heavy; Christ's yoke is "easy" and His burden is "light." That word easy in the Greek means "kind, gracious." The yoke of Christ frees us to fulfill His will, while the yoke of the Law enslaves us. The unsaved person wears a yoke of sin (Lam. 1:14); the religious legalist wears the yoke of bondage (Gal. 5:1); but the Christian who depends on God's grace wears the liberating yoke of Christ.
It is Christ who has made us free from the bondage of the Law. He freed us from the curse of the Law by dying for us on the tree (Gal. 3:13). The believer is no longer under Law; he is under grace (Rom. 6:14). This does not mean that we are outlaws and rebels. It simply means that we no longer need the external force of Law to keep us in God's will, because we have the internal lead-fag of the Holy Spirit of God (Rom. 8:1-4). Christ died to set us free, not to make us slaves. To go back to Law is to become entangled in a maze of "do's and don'ts" and to abandon spiritual adulthood for a "second childhood."
Sad to say, there are some people who feel very insecure with liberty. They would rather be under the tyranny of some leader than to make their own decisions freely. There are some believers who are frightened by the liberty they have in God's grace; so they seek out a fellowship that is legalistic and dictatorial, where they can let others make their decisions for them. This is comparable to an adult climbing back into the crib. The way of Christian liberty is the way of fulfillment in Christ. No wonder Paul issues that ultimatum: "Do not be entangled again in the yoke of bondage. Take your stand for liberty."
The Debtor—You Lose Your Wealth (Gal. 5:2-6) Paul uses three phrases to describe the losses the Christian incurs when he turns from grace to Law: "Christ shall profit you nothing" (Gal. 5:2); "a debtor to do the whole Law" (Gal. 5:3); "Christ is become of no effect unto you" (Gal. 5:4). This leads to the sad conclusion in Galatians 5:4: "Ye are fallen from grace." It is bad enough that legalism robs the believer of his liberty, but it also robs him of his spiritual wealth in Christ. The believer living under Law becomes a bankrupt slave.
God's Word teaches that when we were unsaved, we owed God a debt we could not pay. Jesus makes this clear in His Parable of the Two Debtors (Luke 7:36-50). Two men owed money to a creditor, the one owing ten times as much as the other. But neither was able to pay, so the creditor "graciously forgave them both" (literal translation). No matter how much morality a man may have, he still comes short of the glory of God. Even if his sin debt is one tenth that of others, he stands unable to pay, bankrupt at the judgment bar of God. God in His grace, because of the work of Christ on the cross, is able to forgive sinners, no matter how large their debt may be.
Thus when we trust Christ, we become spiritually rich. We now share in the riches of God's grace (Eph. 1:7), the riches of His glory (Eph. 1:18; Phil. 4:19), the riches of His wisdom (Rom. 11:33), and the "unsearchable riches of Christ" (Eph. 3:8). In Christ we have "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3), and we are "complete in Him"
(Col. 2:10). Once a person is "in Christ," he has all that he needs to live the kind of Christian life God wants him to live.
The Judaizers, however, want us to believe that we are "missing something," that we would be more "spiritual" if we practiced the Law with its demands and disciplines. But Paul makes it clear that the Law adds nothing--because nothing can be added! Instead, the Law comes in as a thief and robs the believer of the spiritual riches he has in Christ. It puts him back into bankruptcy, responsible for a debt he is unable to pay.
To live by grace means to depend on God's abundant supply of every need. To live by Law means to depend on my own strength—the flesh—and be left to get by without God's supply. Paul warns the Galatians that to submit to circumcision in these circumstances would rob them of all the benefits they have in Christ (though circumcision itself is an indifferent matter--Gal. 5:6; 6:15). Furthermore, to submit would put them under obligation to obey the whole Law.
It is at this point that legalists reveal their hypocrisy, for they fail to keep the whole Law. They look on the Old Testament Law the way a customer surveys the food in a cafeteria: they choose what they want and leave the rest. But this is not honest. To teach that a Christian today should, for example, keep the Sabbath but not the Passover, is to dismember God's Law. The same Lawgiver who gave the one commandment also gave the other (James 2:9-11). Earlier, Paul had quoted Moses to prove that the curse of the Law is on everyone who fails to keep all the Law (Gal. 3:10; see Deut. 27:26).
Imagine a motorist driving down a city street and deliberately driving through a red light. He is pulled over by a policeman who asks to see his driver's license. Immediately the driver begins to defend himself. "Officer, I know I ran that red light—but I have never robbed anybody. I've never committed adultery. I've never cheated on my income tax."
The policeman smiles as he writes out the ticket, because he knows that no amount of obedience can make up for one act of disobedience. It is one Law, and the same Law that protects the obedient man punishes the offender. To boast about keeping part of the Law while at the same time breaking another part is to confess that I am worthy of punishment.
Now we can better understand what Paul means by "fallen from grace" (Gal. 5:4). Certainly he is not suggesting that the Galatians had "lost their salvation," because throughout this letter he deals with them as believers. At least nine times he calls them brethren, and he also uses the pronoun we (Gal. 4:28, 31). This Paul would never do if his readers were lost. He boldly states, "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father'" (Gal. 4:6). If his readers were unsaved, Paul could never write those words.
No, to be "fallen from grace" does not mean to lose salvation. Rather, it means "fallen out of the sphere of God's grace." You cannot mix grace and Law. If you decide to live in the sphere of Law, then you cannot live in the sphere of grace. The believers in Galatia had been bewitched by the false teachers (Gal. 3:1) and thus were disobeying the truth. They had removed toward another gospel (Gal. 1:6-9), and had turned back to the elementary things of the old religion (Gal. 4:9). As a result, they had become entangled with the yoke of bondage, and this led to their present position: "fallen from grace." And the tragedy of this fall is that they had robbed themselves of all the good things Jesus Christ could do for them.
Paul next presents the life of the believer in the sphere of grace (Gal. 5:5-6). This enables us to contrast the two ways of life. When you live by grace, you depend on the power of the Spirit; but under Law, you must depend on yourself and your own efforts. Faith is not dead; faith works (see James 2:14-26). But the efforts of the flesh can never accomplish what faith can accomplish through the Spirit. And faith works through love--love for God and love for others. Unfortunately, flesh does not manufacture love; too often it produces selfishness and rivalry (see Gal. 5:15). No wonder Paul pictures the life of legalism as a fall!
When the believer walks by faith, depending on the Spirit of God, he lives in the sphere of God's grace; and all his needs are provided. He experiences the riches of God's grace. And, he always has something to look forward to (Gal. 5:5): one day Jesus shall return to make us like Himself in perfect righteousness. The Law gives no promise for perfect righteousness in the future. The Law prepared the way for the first coming of Christ (Gal. 3:23-4:7), but it cannot prepare the way for the second coming of Christ.
So, the believer who chooses legalism robs himself of spiritual liberty and spiritual wealth. He deliberately puts himself into bondage and bankruptcy.
The Runner—You Lose Your Direction (Gal. 5:7-12) Paul was fond of athletic illustrations and used them often in his letters. His readers were familiar with the Olympic games as well as other Greek athletic contests that always included foot races. It is important to note that Paul never uses the image of the race to tell people how to be saved. He is always talking to Christians about how to live the Christian life. A contestant in the Greek games had to be a citizen before he could compete. We become citizens of heaven through faith in Christ; then the Lord puts us on our course and we run to win the prize (see Phil. 3:12-21). We do not run to be saved; we run because we are already saved and want to fulfill God's will in our lives (Acts 20:24).
"You did run well." When Paul first came to them, they received him "as an angel of God" (Gal. 4:14). They accepted the Word, trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, and received the Holy Spirit. They had a deep joy that was evident to all, and were willing to make any sacrifice to accommodate Paul (Gal. 4:15). But now, Paul was their enemy. What had happened?
A literal translation of Galatians 5:7 gives us the answer: "You were running well. Who cut in on you so that you stopped obeying the truth?" In the races, each runner was to stay in his assigned lane, but some runners would cut in on their competitors to try to get them off course. This is what the Judaizers had done to the Galatian believers: they cut in on them and forced them to change direction and go on a "spiritual detour." It was not God who did this, because He had called them to run faithfully in the lane marked "Grace."
His explanation changes the figure of speech from athletics to cooking, for Paul introduces the idea of yeast (leaven). In the Old Testament, leaven is generally pictured as a symbol of evil. During Passover, for example, no yeast was allowed in the house (Ex. 12:15-19; 13:7). Worshipers were not permitted to mingle leaven with sacrifices (Ex. 34:25), though there were some exceptions to this rule. Jesus used leaven as a picture of sin when He warned against the "leaven of the Pharisees" (Matt. 16:6-12); and Paul used leaven as a symbol of sin in the church at Corinth (1 Cor. 5).
Yeast is really a good illustration of sin: it is small, but if left alone it grows and permeates the whole. The false doctrine of the Judaizers was introduced to the Galatian churches in a small way, but, before long, the "yeast" grew and eventually took over.
The spirit of legalism does not suddenly overpower a church. Like leaven, it is introduced secretly, it grows, and before long poisons the whole assembly. In most cases, the motives that encourage legalism are good ("We want to have a more spiritual church"), but the methods are not scriptural.
It is not wrong to have standards in a church, but we should never think that the standards will make anybody spiritual, or that the keeping of the standards is an evidence of spirituality. How easy it is for the yeast to grow. Before long, we become proud of our spirituality ("puffed up" is the way Paul puts it, 1 Cor. 5:2, and that is exactly what yeast does: it puffs up), and then critical of everybody else's lack of spirituality. This, of course, only feeds the flesh and grieves the Spirit, but we go on our way thinking we are glorifying God.
Every Christian has the responsibility to watch for the beginnings of legalism, that first bit of yeast that infects the fellowship and eventually grows into a serious problem. No wonder Paul is so vehement as he denounces the false teachers: "I am suffering persecution because I preach the Cross, but these false teachers are popular celebrities because they preach a religion that pampers the flesh and feeds the ego. Do they want to circumcise you? I wish that they themselves were cut off!" (Gal. 5:11-12, literal translation)
Since the death and resurrection of Christ, there is no spiritual value to circumcision; it is only a physical operation. Paul wished that the false teachers would operate on themselves—"castrate themselves"—so that they could not produce any more "children of slavery."
The believer who lives in the sphere of God's grace is free, rich, and running in the lane that leads to reward and fulfillment. The believer who abandons grace for Law is a slave, a pauper, and a runner on a detour. In short, he is a loser. And the only way to become a winner is to "purge out the leaven," the false doctrine that mixes Law and grace, and yield to the Spirit of God.
God's grace is sufficient for every demand of life. We are saved by grace (Eph. 2:8-10), and we serve by grace (1 Cor. 15:9-10).
Grace enables us to endure suffering (2 Cor. 12:9). It is grace that strengthens us (2 Tim. 2:1), so that we can be victorious soldiers. Our God is the God of all grace (1 Peter 5:10). We can come to the throne of grace and find grace to help in every need (Heb. 4:16). As we read the Bible, which is "the Word of His grace" (Acts 20:32), the Spirit of grace (Heb. 10:29) reveals to us how rich we are in Christ.
"And of His fullness have all we received, and grace for grace" (John 1:16).
How rich we are!
The Fifth Freedom Galatians 5:13-26
At the close of an important speech to Congress on January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt shared vision of the kind of world he wanted to see after the war was over. He envisioned four basic freedoms enjoyed by all people: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. To some degree, these freedoms have been achieved on a wider scale than in 1941, but our world still needs another freedom, a fifth freedom. Man needs to be free from himself and the tyranny of his sinful nature.
The legalists thought they had the answer to the problem in laws and threats, but Paul has explained that no amount of legislation can change man's basic sinful nature. It is not law on the outside, but love on the inside that makes the difference. We need another power within, and that power comes from the Holy Spirit of God.
There are at least fourteen references to the Holy Spirit in Galatians. When we believe on Christ, the Spirit comes to dwell within us (Gal. 3:2). We are "born after the Spirit" as was Isaac (Gal. 4:29). It is the Holy Spirit in the heart who gives assurance of salvation (Gal. 4:6); and it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to live for Christ and glorify Him. The Holy Spirit is not simply a "divine influence"; He is a divine Person, just as are the Father and the Son. What God the Father planned for you, and God the Son purchased for you on the cross, God the Spirit personalizes for you and applies to your life as you yield to Him. This paragraph is perhaps the most crucial in the entire closing section of Galatians; for in it Paul explains three ministries of the Holy Spirit that enable the believer to enjoy liberty in Christ.
The Spirit Enables Us to Fulfill the Law of Love (Gal. 5:13-15) We are prone to go to extremes. One believer interprets liberty as license and thinks he can do whatever he wants to do. Another believer, seeing this error, goes to an opposite extreme and imposes Law on everybody. Somewhere between license on the one hand and legalism on the other hand is true Christian liberty.
So, Paul begins by explaining our calling: we are called to liberty. The Christian is a free man. He is free from the guilt of sin because he has experienced God's forgiveness. He is free from the penalty of sin because Christ died for him on the cross. And he is, through the Spirit, free from the power of sin in his daily life. He is also free from the Law with its demands and threats. Christ bore the curse of the Law and ended its tyranny once and for all. We are "called unto liberty" because we are "called into the grace of Christ" (Gal. 1:6). Grace and liberty go together.
Having explained our calling, Paul then issues a caution: "Don't allow your liberty to degenerate into license!"
This, of course, is the fear of all people who do not understand the true meaning of the grace of God. "If you do away with rules and regulations," they say, "you will create chaos and anarchy."
Of course, that danger is real, not because God's grace fails, but because men fail of the grace of God (Heb. 12:15). If there is a "true grace of God" (1 Peter 5:12), then there is also a false grace of God; and there are false teachers who "change the grace of our God into a license for immorality" (Jude 4, NIV). So, Paul's caution is a valid one. Christian liberty is not a license to sin but an opportunity to serve.
This leads to a commandment: "By love serve one another" (Gal. 5:13). The key word, of course, is love. The formula looks something like this:
liberty + love = service to others
liberty - love = license (slavery to sin)
"I have an extra day off this week," Carl told his wife as he walked into the kitchen. "I think I'll use it to fix Donna's bike and then take Larry on that museum trip he's been talking about."
"Fixing a bike and visiting a museum hardly sound like exciting ways to spend a day off," his wife replied.
"It's exciting if you love your kids!"
The amazing thing about love is that it takes the place of all the laws God ever gave. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself solves every problem in human relations (see Rom. 13:8-14). If you love people (because you love Christ), you will not steal from them, lie about them, envy them, or try in any way to hurt them. Love in the heart is God's substitute for laws and threats.
When our children were small, we lived next to a busy highway, and the children knew they would be spanked if they went near the road. As they grew older, they discovered that obedience brought rewards. They learned to obey not only to escape pain but to gain pleasure. Today they live in different metropolitan areas and all of them drive. But we neither threaten nor bribe them in order to keep them safe. They have a built-in discipline of love that regulates their lives, and they would not deliberately hurt themselves, their parents, or other people. Love has replaced law.
On a much higher level, the Holy Spirit within gives us the love that we need (Rom. 5:5; Gal. 5:6, 22). Apparently the Galatian believers were lacking in this kind of love because they were "biting and devouring one another" and were in danger of destroying one another (Gal. 5:15). The picture here is of wild animals attacking each other. This in itself is proof that law cannot force people to get along with each other. No matter how many rules or standards a church may adopt, they are no guarantee of spirituality. Unless the Holy Spirit of God is permitted to fill hearts with His love, selfishness and competition will reign. Both extremes in the Galatian churches—the legalists and the libertines—were actually destroying the fellowship.
The Holy Spirit does not work in a vacuum. He uses the Word of God, prayer, worship, and the fellowship of believers to build us up in Christ. The believer who spends time daily in the Word and prayer, and who yields to the Spirit's working, is going to enjoy liberty and will help build up the church. Read 2 Corinthians 3 for Paul's explanation of the difference between a spiritual ministry of grace and a carnal ministry of Law.
The Spirit Enables Us to Overcome the Flesh (Gal. 5:16-21, 24)
The conflict (vv. 16-17). Just as Isaac and Ishmael were unable to get along, so the Spirit and the flesh (the old nature) are at war with each other. By "the flesh," of course, Paul does not mean "the body." The human body is not sinful; it is neutral. If the Holy Spirit controls the body, then we walk in the Spirit; but if the flesh controls the body, then we walk in the lusts (desires) of the flesh. The Spirit and the flesh have different appetites, and this is what creates the conflict.
These opposite appetites are illustrated in the Bible in different ways. For example, the sheep is a clean animal and avoids garbage, while the pig is an unclean animal and enjoys wallowing in filth (2 Peter 2:19-22). After the rain ceased and the ark settled, Noah released a raven which never came back (Gen. 8:6-7). The raven is a carrion-eating bird and found plenty to feed on. But when Noah released the dove (a clean bird), it came back (Gen. 8:8-12). The last time he released the dove and it did not return, he knew that it had found a clean place to settle down; therefore the waters had receded.
Our old nature is like the pig and the raven, always looking for something unclean on which to feed. Our new nature is like the sheep and the dove, yearning for that which is clean and holy. No wonder a struggle goes on within the life of the believer! The unsaved man knows nothing of this battle because he does not have the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9).
Note that the Christian cannot simply will to overcome the flesh: "These two are opposed to each other, so that you cannot do anything you please" (Gal. 5:17, wms). It is this very problem that Paul discusses in Romans: "I do not know what I am doing. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.... For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing" (Rom. 7:15, 19, NIV). Paul is not denying that there is victory. He is simply pointing out that we cannot win this victory in our own strength and by our own will.
The conquest (v. 18). The solution is not to pit our will against the flesh, but to surrender our will to the Holy Spirit. This verse literally means, "But if you are willingly led by the Spirit, then you are not under the Law." The Holy Spirit writes God's Law on our hearts (Heb. 10:14-17; see 2 Cor. 3) so that we desire to obey Him in love. "I delight to do Thy will, 0 my God: yea, Thy Law is within my heart" (Ps. 40:8). Being "led of the Spirit" and "walking in the Spirit" are the opposites of yielding to the desires of the flesh.
The crucifixion (vv. 19-21, 24). Paul now lists some of the ugly "works of the flesh." (You will find similar lists in Mark 7:20-23; Rom. 1:29-32; 1 Tim. 1:9-10; 2 Tim. 3:2-5.) The flesh is able to manufacture sin but it can never produce the righteousness of God. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer. 17:9). This list in Galatians can be divided into three major categories:
The sensual sins (vv. 19, 21b). Adultery is illicit sex between married people, while fornication generally refers to the same sin among unmarried people. Uncleanness means just that: a filthiness of heart and mind that makes the person defiled. The unclean person sees dirt in everything (see Titus 1:15). Lascivious-ness is close to our word debauchery. It speaks of a wanton appetite that knows no shame. It goes without saying that all of these sins were rampant in the Roman Empire. Drunkenness and revellings (orgies) need no explanation.
The superstitious sins (v. 20a). Idolatry, like the sins named above, is with us today. Idolatry is simply putting things ahead of God and people. We are to worship God, love people, and use things, but too often we use people, love self, and worship things, leaving God out of the picture completely. Jesus tells us that whatever we worship, we serve (Matt. 4:10). The Christian who devotes more of himself to his car, house, or boat than he does to serving Christ may be in danger of idolatry (Col. 3:5).
The word witchcraft is from the Greek word pharmakeia, which means "the use of drugs." Our English word pharmacy is derived from this word. Magicians in Paul's day often used drugs to bring about their evil effects. Of course, sorcery is forbidden in the Bible as are all activities of the occult (Deut. 18:9-22).
The social sins (vv. 20b-21a). Hatred means "enmity," the attitude of mind that defies and challenges others. This attitude leads to variance, which is strife, the outworking of enmity. Emulations means jealousies or rivalries. How tragic when Christians compete with one another and try to make one another look bad in the eyes of others. Wrath means outbursts of anger, and strife carries with it the idea of "self-seeking, selfish ambition," that creates divisions in the church.
Seditions and heresies are kindred terms. The first suggests division, and the second cliques caused by a party spirit. Divisions and factions would be a fair translation. These are the result of church leaders promoting themselves and insisting that the people follow them, not the Lord. (The word heresy in the Greek means "to make a choice.") Envyings suggests the carrying of grudges, the deep desire for what another has (see Prov. 14:30). Murders and drunkenness need no elucidation.
The person who practices these sins shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Paul is not talking about an act of sin, but a habit of sin. There is a false assurance of salvation that is not based on the Word of God. The fact that the believer is not under Law, but under grace, is no excuse for sin (Rom. 6:15). If anything, it is an encouragement to live in obedience to the Lord.
But how does the believer handle the old nature when it is capable of producing such horrible sins? The Law cannot change or control the old nature.
The old nature must be crucified (v. 24). Paul explains that the believer is identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection (Rom. 6). Christ not only died for me, but I died with Christ. Christ died for me to remove the penalty of my sin, but I died with Christ to break sin's power.
Paul has mentioned this already in Galatians (see 2:19-20), and he will mention it again (6:14). He does not tell us to crucify ourselves, because this is impossible. (Crucifixion is one death a man cannot inflict on himself.) He tells us that the flesh has already been crucified. It is our responsibility to believe this and act on it. (Paul calls this "reckoning" in Rom. 6; you have the same truth presented in Col. 3:5ff).
You and I are not debtors to the flesh, but to the Spirit (Rom. 8:12-14). We must accept what God says about the old nature and not try to make it something that it is not. We must not make "provision for the flesh" (Rom. 13:14) by feeding it the things that it enjoys. In the flesh dwells no good thing (Rom. 7:18), so we should put no confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3:3). The flesh is not subject to God's Law (Rom. 8:7) and it cannot please God (Rom. 8:8). Only through the Holy Spirit can we "put to death" the deeds that the flesh would do through our body (Rom. 8:13). The Holy Spirit is not only the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2; Gal. 5:25), but He is also the Spirit of death: He helps us to reckon ourselves dead to sin.
We have seen two ministries of the Spirit of God: He enables us to fulfill the Law, and He enables us to overcome the flesh. He has a third ministry as well.
The Spirit Enables Us to Produce Fruit (Gal. 5:22-23, 25-26) It is one thing to overcome the flesh and not do evil things, but quite something else to do good things. The legalist might be able to boast that he is not guilty of adultery or murder (but see Matt. 5:21-32), but can anyone see the beautiful graces of the Spirit in his life? Negative goodness is not enough in a life; there must be positive qualities as well.
The contrast between works sad fruit is important. A machine in a factory works, and turns out a product, but it could never manufacture fruit. Fruit must grow out of life, and, in the case of the believer, it is the life of the Spirit (Gal. 5:25). When you think of "works" you think of effort, labor, strain, and toil; when you think of "fruit" you think of beauty, quietness, the unfolding of life. The flesh produces "dead works" (Heb. 9:14), but the Spirit produces living fruit. And this fruit has in it the seed for still more fruit (Gen. 1:11). Love begets more love! Joy helps to produce more joy! Jesus is concerned that we produce "fruit... more fruit... much fruit" (John 15:2, 5), because this is the way we glorify Him. The old nature cannot produce fruit; only the new nature can do that.
The New Testament speaks of several different kinds of "fruit": people won to Christ (Rom. 1:13), holy living (Rom. 6:22), gifts brought to God (Rom. 15:26-28), good works (Col. 1:10), and praise (Heb. 13:15). The "fruit of the Spirit" listed in our passage has to do with character (Gal. 5:22-23). It is important that we distinguish the gift of the Spirit, which is salvation (Acts 2:38; 11:17), and the gifts of the Spirit, which have to do with service (1 Cor. 12), from the graces of the Spirit, which relate to Christian character. It is unfortunate that an overemphasis on gifts has led some Christians to neglect the graces of the Spirit. Building Christian character must take precedence over displaying special abilities.
The characteristics that God wants in our lives are seen in the ninefold fruit of the Spirit. Paul begins with love because all of the other fruit is really an outgrowth of love. Compare these eight qualities with the characteristics of love given to the Corinthians (see 1 Cor. 13:4-8). This word for love is agape, which means divine love. (The Greek word eras, meaning "sensual love," is never used in the New Testament.) This divine love is God's gift to us (Rom. 5:5), and we must cultivate it and pray that it will increase (Phil. 1:9).
When a person lives in the sphere of love, then he experiences joy--that inward peace and sufficiency that is not affected by outward circumstances. (A case in point is Paul's experience recorded in Phil. 4:10-20.) This "holy optimism" keeps him going in spite of difficulties. Love and joy together produce peace, "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding" (Phil. 4:7). These first three qualities express the Godward aspect of the Christian life.
The next three express the manward aspect of the Christian life: long-suffering (courageous endurance without quitting), gentleness (kindness), and goodness (love in action). The Christian who is long-suffering will not avenge himself or wish difficulties on those who oppose him. He will be kind and gentle, even with the most offensive, and will sow goodness where others sow evil. Human nature can never do this on its own; only the Holy Spirit can.
The final three qualities are selfward: faith (faithfulness, dependability); meekness (the right use of power and authority, power under control); and temperance (self-control). Meekness is not weakness. Jesus said, "I am meek and lowly in heart" (Matt. 11:29), and Moses was "very meek" (Num. 12:3); yet no one could accuse either of them of being weak. The meek Christian does not throw his weight around or assert himself. Just as wisdom is the right use of knowledge, so meekness is the right use of authority and power.
It is possible for the old nature to counterfeit some of the fruit of the Spirit, but the flesh can never produce the fruit of the Spirit. One difference is this: when the Spirit produces fruit, God gets the glory and the Christian is not conscious of his spirituality; but when the flesh is at work, the person is inwardly proud of himself and is pleased when others compliment him. The work of the Spirit is to make us more like Christ for His glory, not for the praise of men.
The cultivation of the fruit is important. Paul warns that there must be a right atmosphere before the fruit will grow (Gal. 5:25-26). Just as fruit cannot grow in every climate, so the fruit of the Spirit cannot grow in every individual's life or in every church.
Fruit grows in a climate blessed with an abundance of the Spirit and the Word. "Walk in the Spirit" (Gal. 5:25) means "keep in step with the Spirit"—not to run ahead and not to lag behind. This involves the Word, prayer, worship, praise, and fellowship with God's people. It also means "pulling out the weeds" so that the seed of the Word can take root and bear fruit. The Judaizers were anxious for praise and "vainglory," and this led to competition and division. Fruit can never grow in that kind of an atmosphere.
We must remember that this fruit is produced to be eaten, not to be admired and put on display. People around us are starving for love, joy, peace, and all the other graces of the Spirit. When they find them in our lives, they know that we have something they lack. We do not bear fruit for our own consumption; we bear fruit that others might be fed and helped, and that Christ might be glorified. The flesh may manufacture "results" that bring praise to us, but the flesh cannot bear fruit that brings glory to God. It takes patience, an atmosphere of the Spirit, walking in the light, the seed of the Word of God, and a sincere desire to honor Christ.
In short, the secret is the Holy Spirit. He alone can give us that "fifth freedom"—freedom from sin and self. He enables us to fulfill the law of love, to overcome the flesh, and to bear fruit.
Will you yield to Him and let Him work?
Galatians 5:1-12
Paul's doctrine of grace is dangerous!" cried the Judaizers. "It replaces Law with license. Why, if we do away with our rules and abandon our high standards, the churches will fall apart."
First-century Judaizers are not the only ones afraid to depend on God's grace. Legalists in our churches today warn that we dare not teach people about the liberty we have in Christ lest it result in religious anarchy. These people misunderstand Paul's teaching about grace, and it is to correct such misunderstanding that Paul wrote the final section of his letter (Gal. 5-6).
Paul turns now from argument to application, from the doctrinal to the practical. The Christian who lives by faith is not going to become a rebel. Quite the contrary, he is going to experience the inner discipline of God that is far better than the outer discipline of man-made rules. No man could become a rebel who depends on God's grace, yields to God's Spirit, lives for others, and seeks to glorify God. The legalist is the one who eventually rebels, because he is living in bondage, depending on the flesh, living for self, and seeking the praise of men and not the glory of God.
No, Paul's doctrine of Christian liberty through grace is not the dangerous doctrine. It is legalism that is the dangerous doctrine, because legalism attempts to do the impossible: change the old nature and make it obey the Laws of God. Legalism succeeds for a short time, and then the flesh begins to rebel. The surrendered Christian who depends on the power of the Spirit is not denying the Law of God, or rebelling against it. Rather, that Law is being fulfilled in him through the Spirit (Rom. 8:1-4). It is easy to see the sequence of thought in these closing chapters:
- I have been set free by Christ. I am no longer under bondage to the Law (Gal. 5:1-12).
- But I need something—Someone—to control my life from within. That Someone is the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:13-26).
- Through the Spirit's love, I have a desire to live for others, not for self (Gal. 6:1-10).
- This life of liberty is so wonderful, I want to live it to the glory of God; for He is the One making it possible (Gal. 6:11-18).
- If I obey these rules, I will become a more spiritual person. I am a great admirer of this religious leader, so I now submit myself to his system.
- I believe I have the strength to obey and improve myself. I do what I am told, and measure up to the standards set for me.
- I'm making progress. I don't do some of the things I used to do. Other people compliment me on my obedience and discipline. I can see that I am better than others in my fellowship. How wonderful to be so spiritual.
- If only others were like me! God is certainly fortunate that I am His. I have a desire to share this with others so they can be as I am. Our group is growing and we have a fine reputation. Too bad other groups are not as spiritual as we are.
The image of the yoke is not difficult to understand. It usually represents slavery, service, and control by someone else over your life; it may also represent willing service and submission to someone else. When God delivered Israel from Egyptian servitude, it was the breaking of a yoke (Lev. 26:13). The farmer uses the yoke to control and guide his oxen, because they would not willingly serve if they were free.
When the believers in Galatia trusted Christ, they lost the yoke of servitude to sin and put on the yoke of Christ (Matt. 11:28-30). The yoke of religion is hard, and the burdens heavy; Christ's yoke is "easy" and His burden is "light." That word easy in the Greek means "kind, gracious." The yoke of Christ frees us to fulfill His will, while the yoke of the Law enslaves us. The unsaved person wears a yoke of sin (Lam. 1:14); the religious legalist wears the yoke of bondage (Gal. 5:1); but the Christian who depends on God's grace wears the liberating yoke of Christ.
It is Christ who has made us free from the bondage of the Law. He freed us from the curse of the Law by dying for us on the tree (Gal. 3:13). The believer is no longer under Law; he is under grace (Rom. 6:14). This does not mean that we are outlaws and rebels. It simply means that we no longer need the external force of Law to keep us in God's will, because we have the internal lead-fag of the Holy Spirit of God (Rom. 8:1-4). Christ died to set us free, not to make us slaves. To go back to Law is to become entangled in a maze of "do's and don'ts" and to abandon spiritual adulthood for a "second childhood."
Sad to say, there are some people who feel very insecure with liberty. They would rather be under the tyranny of some leader than to make their own decisions freely. There are some believers who are frightened by the liberty they have in God's grace; so they seek out a fellowship that is legalistic and dictatorial, where they can let others make their decisions for them. This is comparable to an adult climbing back into the crib. The way of Christian liberty is the way of fulfillment in Christ. No wonder Paul issues that ultimatum: "Do not be entangled again in the yoke of bondage. Take your stand for liberty."
The Debtor—You Lose Your Wealth (Gal. 5:2-6) Paul uses three phrases to describe the losses the Christian incurs when he turns from grace to Law: "Christ shall profit you nothing" (Gal. 5:2); "a debtor to do the whole Law" (Gal. 5:3); "Christ is become of no effect unto you" (Gal. 5:4). This leads to the sad conclusion in Galatians 5:4: "Ye are fallen from grace." It is bad enough that legalism robs the believer of his liberty, but it also robs him of his spiritual wealth in Christ. The believer living under Law becomes a bankrupt slave.
God's Word teaches that when we were unsaved, we owed God a debt we could not pay. Jesus makes this clear in His Parable of the Two Debtors (Luke 7:36-50). Two men owed money to a creditor, the one owing ten times as much as the other. But neither was able to pay, so the creditor "graciously forgave them both" (literal translation). No matter how much morality a man may have, he still comes short of the glory of God. Even if his sin debt is one tenth that of others, he stands unable to pay, bankrupt at the judgment bar of God. God in His grace, because of the work of Christ on the cross, is able to forgive sinners, no matter how large their debt may be.
Thus when we trust Christ, we become spiritually rich. We now share in the riches of God's grace (Eph. 1:7), the riches of His glory (Eph. 1:18; Phil. 4:19), the riches of His wisdom (Rom. 11:33), and the "unsearchable riches of Christ" (Eph. 3:8). In Christ we have "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3), and we are "complete in Him"
(Col. 2:10). Once a person is "in Christ," he has all that he needs to live the kind of Christian life God wants him to live.
The Judaizers, however, want us to believe that we are "missing something," that we would be more "spiritual" if we practiced the Law with its demands and disciplines. But Paul makes it clear that the Law adds nothing--because nothing can be added! Instead, the Law comes in as a thief and robs the believer of the spiritual riches he has in Christ. It puts him back into bankruptcy, responsible for a debt he is unable to pay.
To live by grace means to depend on God's abundant supply of every need. To live by Law means to depend on my own strength—the flesh—and be left to get by without God's supply. Paul warns the Galatians that to submit to circumcision in these circumstances would rob them of all the benefits they have in Christ (though circumcision itself is an indifferent matter--Gal. 5:6; 6:15). Furthermore, to submit would put them under obligation to obey the whole Law.
It is at this point that legalists reveal their hypocrisy, for they fail to keep the whole Law. They look on the Old Testament Law the way a customer surveys the food in a cafeteria: they choose what they want and leave the rest. But this is not honest. To teach that a Christian today should, for example, keep the Sabbath but not the Passover, is to dismember God's Law. The same Lawgiver who gave the one commandment also gave the other (James 2:9-11). Earlier, Paul had quoted Moses to prove that the curse of the Law is on everyone who fails to keep all the Law (Gal. 3:10; see Deut. 27:26).
Imagine a motorist driving down a city street and deliberately driving through a red light. He is pulled over by a policeman who asks to see his driver's license. Immediately the driver begins to defend himself. "Officer, I know I ran that red light—but I have never robbed anybody. I've never committed adultery. I've never cheated on my income tax."
The policeman smiles as he writes out the ticket, because he knows that no amount of obedience can make up for one act of disobedience. It is one Law, and the same Law that protects the obedient man punishes the offender. To boast about keeping part of the Law while at the same time breaking another part is to confess that I am worthy of punishment.
Now we can better understand what Paul means by "fallen from grace" (Gal. 5:4). Certainly he is not suggesting that the Galatians had "lost their salvation," because throughout this letter he deals with them as believers. At least nine times he calls them brethren, and he also uses the pronoun we (Gal. 4:28, 31). This Paul would never do if his readers were lost. He boldly states, "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father'" (Gal. 4:6). If his readers were unsaved, Paul could never write those words.
No, to be "fallen from grace" does not mean to lose salvation. Rather, it means "fallen out of the sphere of God's grace." You cannot mix grace and Law. If you decide to live in the sphere of Law, then you cannot live in the sphere of grace. The believers in Galatia had been bewitched by the false teachers (Gal. 3:1) and thus were disobeying the truth. They had removed toward another gospel (Gal. 1:6-9), and had turned back to the elementary things of the old religion (Gal. 4:9). As a result, they had become entangled with the yoke of bondage, and this led to their present position: "fallen from grace." And the tragedy of this fall is that they had robbed themselves of all the good things Jesus Christ could do for them.
Paul next presents the life of the believer in the sphere of grace (Gal. 5:5-6). This enables us to contrast the two ways of life. When you live by grace, you depend on the power of the Spirit; but under Law, you must depend on yourself and your own efforts. Faith is not dead; faith works (see James 2:14-26). But the efforts of the flesh can never accomplish what faith can accomplish through the Spirit. And faith works through love--love for God and love for others. Unfortunately, flesh does not manufacture love; too often it produces selfishness and rivalry (see Gal. 5:15). No wonder Paul pictures the life of legalism as a fall!
When the believer walks by faith, depending on the Spirit of God, he lives in the sphere of God's grace; and all his needs are provided. He experiences the riches of God's grace. And, he always has something to look forward to (Gal. 5:5): one day Jesus shall return to make us like Himself in perfect righteousness. The Law gives no promise for perfect righteousness in the future. The Law prepared the way for the first coming of Christ (Gal. 3:23-4:7), but it cannot prepare the way for the second coming of Christ.
So, the believer who chooses legalism robs himself of spiritual liberty and spiritual wealth. He deliberately puts himself into bondage and bankruptcy.
The Runner—You Lose Your Direction (Gal. 5:7-12) Paul was fond of athletic illustrations and used them often in his letters. His readers were familiar with the Olympic games as well as other Greek athletic contests that always included foot races. It is important to note that Paul never uses the image of the race to tell people how to be saved. He is always talking to Christians about how to live the Christian life. A contestant in the Greek games had to be a citizen before he could compete. We become citizens of heaven through faith in Christ; then the Lord puts us on our course and we run to win the prize (see Phil. 3:12-21). We do not run to be saved; we run because we are already saved and want to fulfill God's will in our lives (Acts 20:24).
"You did run well." When Paul first came to them, they received him "as an angel of God" (Gal. 4:14). They accepted the Word, trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, and received the Holy Spirit. They had a deep joy that was evident to all, and were willing to make any sacrifice to accommodate Paul (Gal. 4:15). But now, Paul was their enemy. What had happened?
A literal translation of Galatians 5:7 gives us the answer: "You were running well. Who cut in on you so that you stopped obeying the truth?" In the races, each runner was to stay in his assigned lane, but some runners would cut in on their competitors to try to get them off course. This is what the Judaizers had done to the Galatian believers: they cut in on them and forced them to change direction and go on a "spiritual detour." It was not God who did this, because He had called them to run faithfully in the lane marked "Grace."
His explanation changes the figure of speech from athletics to cooking, for Paul introduces the idea of yeast (leaven). In the Old Testament, leaven is generally pictured as a symbol of evil. During Passover, for example, no yeast was allowed in the house (Ex. 12:15-19; 13:7). Worshipers were not permitted to mingle leaven with sacrifices (Ex. 34:25), though there were some exceptions to this rule. Jesus used leaven as a picture of sin when He warned against the "leaven of the Pharisees" (Matt. 16:6-12); and Paul used leaven as a symbol of sin in the church at Corinth (1 Cor. 5).
Yeast is really a good illustration of sin: it is small, but if left alone it grows and permeates the whole. The false doctrine of the Judaizers was introduced to the Galatian churches in a small way, but, before long, the "yeast" grew and eventually took over.
The spirit of legalism does not suddenly overpower a church. Like leaven, it is introduced secretly, it grows, and before long poisons the whole assembly. In most cases, the motives that encourage legalism are good ("We want to have a more spiritual church"), but the methods are not scriptural.
It is not wrong to have standards in a church, but we should never think that the standards will make anybody spiritual, or that the keeping of the standards is an evidence of spirituality. How easy it is for the yeast to grow. Before long, we become proud of our spirituality ("puffed up" is the way Paul puts it, 1 Cor. 5:2, and that is exactly what yeast does: it puffs up), and then critical of everybody else's lack of spirituality. This, of course, only feeds the flesh and grieves the Spirit, but we go on our way thinking we are glorifying God.
Every Christian has the responsibility to watch for the beginnings of legalism, that first bit of yeast that infects the fellowship and eventually grows into a serious problem. No wonder Paul is so vehement as he denounces the false teachers: "I am suffering persecution because I preach the Cross, but these false teachers are popular celebrities because they preach a religion that pampers the flesh and feeds the ego. Do they want to circumcise you? I wish that they themselves were cut off!" (Gal. 5:11-12, literal translation)
Since the death and resurrection of Christ, there is no spiritual value to circumcision; it is only a physical operation. Paul wished that the false teachers would operate on themselves—"castrate themselves"—so that they could not produce any more "children of slavery."
The believer who lives in the sphere of God's grace is free, rich, and running in the lane that leads to reward and fulfillment. The believer who abandons grace for Law is a slave, a pauper, and a runner on a detour. In short, he is a loser. And the only way to become a winner is to "purge out the leaven," the false doctrine that mixes Law and grace, and yield to the Spirit of God.
God's grace is sufficient for every demand of life. We are saved by grace (Eph. 2:8-10), and we serve by grace (1 Cor. 15:9-10).
Grace enables us to endure suffering (2 Cor. 12:9). It is grace that strengthens us (2 Tim. 2:1), so that we can be victorious soldiers. Our God is the God of all grace (1 Peter 5:10). We can come to the throne of grace and find grace to help in every need (Heb. 4:16). As we read the Bible, which is "the Word of His grace" (Acts 20:32), the Spirit of grace (Heb. 10:29) reveals to us how rich we are in Christ.
"And of His fullness have all we received, and grace for grace" (John 1:16).
How rich we are!
The Fifth Freedom Galatians 5:13-26
At the close of an important speech to Congress on January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt shared vision of the kind of world he wanted to see after the war was over. He envisioned four basic freedoms enjoyed by all people: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. To some degree, these freedoms have been achieved on a wider scale than in 1941, but our world still needs another freedom, a fifth freedom. Man needs to be free from himself and the tyranny of his sinful nature.
The legalists thought they had the answer to the problem in laws and threats, but Paul has explained that no amount of legislation can change man's basic sinful nature. It is not law on the outside, but love on the inside that makes the difference. We need another power within, and that power comes from the Holy Spirit of God.
There are at least fourteen references to the Holy Spirit in Galatians. When we believe on Christ, the Spirit comes to dwell within us (Gal. 3:2). We are "born after the Spirit" as was Isaac (Gal. 4:29). It is the Holy Spirit in the heart who gives assurance of salvation (Gal. 4:6); and it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to live for Christ and glorify Him. The Holy Spirit is not simply a "divine influence"; He is a divine Person, just as are the Father and the Son. What God the Father planned for you, and God the Son purchased for you on the cross, God the Spirit personalizes for you and applies to your life as you yield to Him. This paragraph is perhaps the most crucial in the entire closing section of Galatians; for in it Paul explains three ministries of the Holy Spirit that enable the believer to enjoy liberty in Christ.
The Spirit Enables Us to Fulfill the Law of Love (Gal. 5:13-15) We are prone to go to extremes. One believer interprets liberty as license and thinks he can do whatever he wants to do. Another believer, seeing this error, goes to an opposite extreme and imposes Law on everybody. Somewhere between license on the one hand and legalism on the other hand is true Christian liberty.
So, Paul begins by explaining our calling: we are called to liberty. The Christian is a free man. He is free from the guilt of sin because he has experienced God's forgiveness. He is free from the penalty of sin because Christ died for him on the cross. And he is, through the Spirit, free from the power of sin in his daily life. He is also free from the Law with its demands and threats. Christ bore the curse of the Law and ended its tyranny once and for all. We are "called unto liberty" because we are "called into the grace of Christ" (Gal. 1:6). Grace and liberty go together.
Having explained our calling, Paul then issues a caution: "Don't allow your liberty to degenerate into license!"
This, of course, is the fear of all people who do not understand the true meaning of the grace of God. "If you do away with rules and regulations," they say, "you will create chaos and anarchy."
Of course, that danger is real, not because God's grace fails, but because men fail of the grace of God (Heb. 12:15). If there is a "true grace of God" (1 Peter 5:12), then there is also a false grace of God; and there are false teachers who "change the grace of our God into a license for immorality" (Jude 4, NIV). So, Paul's caution is a valid one. Christian liberty is not a license to sin but an opportunity to serve.
This leads to a commandment: "By love serve one another" (Gal. 5:13). The key word, of course, is love. The formula looks something like this:
liberty + love = service to others
liberty - love = license (slavery to sin)
"I have an extra day off this week," Carl told his wife as he walked into the kitchen. "I think I'll use it to fix Donna's bike and then take Larry on that museum trip he's been talking about."
"Fixing a bike and visiting a museum hardly sound like exciting ways to spend a day off," his wife replied.
"It's exciting if you love your kids!"
The amazing thing about love is that it takes the place of all the laws God ever gave. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself solves every problem in human relations (see Rom. 13:8-14). If you love people (because you love Christ), you will not steal from them, lie about them, envy them, or try in any way to hurt them. Love in the heart is God's substitute for laws and threats.
When our children were small, we lived next to a busy highway, and the children knew they would be spanked if they went near the road. As they grew older, they discovered that obedience brought rewards. They learned to obey not only to escape pain but to gain pleasure. Today they live in different metropolitan areas and all of them drive. But we neither threaten nor bribe them in order to keep them safe. They have a built-in discipline of love that regulates their lives, and they would not deliberately hurt themselves, their parents, or other people. Love has replaced law.
On a much higher level, the Holy Spirit within gives us the love that we need (Rom. 5:5; Gal. 5:6, 22). Apparently the Galatian believers were lacking in this kind of love because they were "biting and devouring one another" and were in danger of destroying one another (Gal. 5:15). The picture here is of wild animals attacking each other. This in itself is proof that law cannot force people to get along with each other. No matter how many rules or standards a church may adopt, they are no guarantee of spirituality. Unless the Holy Spirit of God is permitted to fill hearts with His love, selfishness and competition will reign. Both extremes in the Galatian churches—the legalists and the libertines—were actually destroying the fellowship.
The Holy Spirit does not work in a vacuum. He uses the Word of God, prayer, worship, and the fellowship of believers to build us up in Christ. The believer who spends time daily in the Word and prayer, and who yields to the Spirit's working, is going to enjoy liberty and will help build up the church. Read 2 Corinthians 3 for Paul's explanation of the difference between a spiritual ministry of grace and a carnal ministry of Law.
The Spirit Enables Us to Overcome the Flesh (Gal. 5:16-21, 24)
The conflict (vv. 16-17). Just as Isaac and Ishmael were unable to get along, so the Spirit and the flesh (the old nature) are at war with each other. By "the flesh," of course, Paul does not mean "the body." The human body is not sinful; it is neutral. If the Holy Spirit controls the body, then we walk in the Spirit; but if the flesh controls the body, then we walk in the lusts (desires) of the flesh. The Spirit and the flesh have different appetites, and this is what creates the conflict.
These opposite appetites are illustrated in the Bible in different ways. For example, the sheep is a clean animal and avoids garbage, while the pig is an unclean animal and enjoys wallowing in filth (2 Peter 2:19-22). After the rain ceased and the ark settled, Noah released a raven which never came back (Gen. 8:6-7). The raven is a carrion-eating bird and found plenty to feed on. But when Noah released the dove (a clean bird), it came back (Gen. 8:8-12). The last time he released the dove and it did not return, he knew that it had found a clean place to settle down; therefore the waters had receded.
Our old nature is like the pig and the raven, always looking for something unclean on which to feed. Our new nature is like the sheep and the dove, yearning for that which is clean and holy. No wonder a struggle goes on within the life of the believer! The unsaved man knows nothing of this battle because he does not have the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9).
Note that the Christian cannot simply will to overcome the flesh: "These two are opposed to each other, so that you cannot do anything you please" (Gal. 5:17, wms). It is this very problem that Paul discusses in Romans: "I do not know what I am doing. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.... For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing" (Rom. 7:15, 19, NIV). Paul is not denying that there is victory. He is simply pointing out that we cannot win this victory in our own strength and by our own will.
The conquest (v. 18). The solution is not to pit our will against the flesh, but to surrender our will to the Holy Spirit. This verse literally means, "But if you are willingly led by the Spirit, then you are not under the Law." The Holy Spirit writes God's Law on our hearts (Heb. 10:14-17; see 2 Cor. 3) so that we desire to obey Him in love. "I delight to do Thy will, 0 my God: yea, Thy Law is within my heart" (Ps. 40:8). Being "led of the Spirit" and "walking in the Spirit" are the opposites of yielding to the desires of the flesh.
The crucifixion (vv. 19-21, 24). Paul now lists some of the ugly "works of the flesh." (You will find similar lists in Mark 7:20-23; Rom. 1:29-32; 1 Tim. 1:9-10; 2 Tim. 3:2-5.) The flesh is able to manufacture sin but it can never produce the righteousness of God. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer. 17:9). This list in Galatians can be divided into three major categories:
The sensual sins (vv. 19, 21b). Adultery is illicit sex between married people, while fornication generally refers to the same sin among unmarried people. Uncleanness means just that: a filthiness of heart and mind that makes the person defiled. The unclean person sees dirt in everything (see Titus 1:15). Lascivious-ness is close to our word debauchery. It speaks of a wanton appetite that knows no shame. It goes without saying that all of these sins were rampant in the Roman Empire. Drunkenness and revellings (orgies) need no explanation.
The superstitious sins (v. 20a). Idolatry, like the sins named above, is with us today. Idolatry is simply putting things ahead of God and people. We are to worship God, love people, and use things, but too often we use people, love self, and worship things, leaving God out of the picture completely. Jesus tells us that whatever we worship, we serve (Matt. 4:10). The Christian who devotes more of himself to his car, house, or boat than he does to serving Christ may be in danger of idolatry (Col. 3:5).
The word witchcraft is from the Greek word pharmakeia, which means "the use of drugs." Our English word pharmacy is derived from this word. Magicians in Paul's day often used drugs to bring about their evil effects. Of course, sorcery is forbidden in the Bible as are all activities of the occult (Deut. 18:9-22).
The social sins (vv. 20b-21a). Hatred means "enmity," the attitude of mind that defies and challenges others. This attitude leads to variance, which is strife, the outworking of enmity. Emulations means jealousies or rivalries. How tragic when Christians compete with one another and try to make one another look bad in the eyes of others. Wrath means outbursts of anger, and strife carries with it the idea of "self-seeking, selfish ambition," that creates divisions in the church.
Seditions and heresies are kindred terms. The first suggests division, and the second cliques caused by a party spirit. Divisions and factions would be a fair translation. These are the result of church leaders promoting themselves and insisting that the people follow them, not the Lord. (The word heresy in the Greek means "to make a choice.") Envyings suggests the carrying of grudges, the deep desire for what another has (see Prov. 14:30). Murders and drunkenness need no elucidation.
The person who practices these sins shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Paul is not talking about an act of sin, but a habit of sin. There is a false assurance of salvation that is not based on the Word of God. The fact that the believer is not under Law, but under grace, is no excuse for sin (Rom. 6:15). If anything, it is an encouragement to live in obedience to the Lord.
But how does the believer handle the old nature when it is capable of producing such horrible sins? The Law cannot change or control the old nature.
The old nature must be crucified (v. 24). Paul explains that the believer is identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection (Rom. 6). Christ not only died for me, but I died with Christ. Christ died for me to remove the penalty of my sin, but I died with Christ to break sin's power.
Paul has mentioned this already in Galatians (see 2:19-20), and he will mention it again (6:14). He does not tell us to crucify ourselves, because this is impossible. (Crucifixion is one death a man cannot inflict on himself.) He tells us that the flesh has already been crucified. It is our responsibility to believe this and act on it. (Paul calls this "reckoning" in Rom. 6; you have the same truth presented in Col. 3:5ff).
You and I are not debtors to the flesh, but to the Spirit (Rom. 8:12-14). We must accept what God says about the old nature and not try to make it something that it is not. We must not make "provision for the flesh" (Rom. 13:14) by feeding it the things that it enjoys. In the flesh dwells no good thing (Rom. 7:18), so we should put no confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3:3). The flesh is not subject to God's Law (Rom. 8:7) and it cannot please God (Rom. 8:8). Only through the Holy Spirit can we "put to death" the deeds that the flesh would do through our body (Rom. 8:13). The Holy Spirit is not only the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2; Gal. 5:25), but He is also the Spirit of death: He helps us to reckon ourselves dead to sin.
We have seen two ministries of the Spirit of God: He enables us to fulfill the Law, and He enables us to overcome the flesh. He has a third ministry as well.
The Spirit Enables Us to Produce Fruit (Gal. 5:22-23, 25-26) It is one thing to overcome the flesh and not do evil things, but quite something else to do good things. The legalist might be able to boast that he is not guilty of adultery or murder (but see Matt. 5:21-32), but can anyone see the beautiful graces of the Spirit in his life? Negative goodness is not enough in a life; there must be positive qualities as well.
The contrast between works sad fruit is important. A machine in a factory works, and turns out a product, but it could never manufacture fruit. Fruit must grow out of life, and, in the case of the believer, it is the life of the Spirit (Gal. 5:25). When you think of "works" you think of effort, labor, strain, and toil; when you think of "fruit" you think of beauty, quietness, the unfolding of life. The flesh produces "dead works" (Heb. 9:14), but the Spirit produces living fruit. And this fruit has in it the seed for still more fruit (Gen. 1:11). Love begets more love! Joy helps to produce more joy! Jesus is concerned that we produce "fruit... more fruit... much fruit" (John 15:2, 5), because this is the way we glorify Him. The old nature cannot produce fruit; only the new nature can do that.
The New Testament speaks of several different kinds of "fruit": people won to Christ (Rom. 1:13), holy living (Rom. 6:22), gifts brought to God (Rom. 15:26-28), good works (Col. 1:10), and praise (Heb. 13:15). The "fruit of the Spirit" listed in our passage has to do with character (Gal. 5:22-23). It is important that we distinguish the gift of the Spirit, which is salvation (Acts 2:38; 11:17), and the gifts of the Spirit, which have to do with service (1 Cor. 12), from the graces of the Spirit, which relate to Christian character. It is unfortunate that an overemphasis on gifts has led some Christians to neglect the graces of the Spirit. Building Christian character must take precedence over displaying special abilities.
The characteristics that God wants in our lives are seen in the ninefold fruit of the Spirit. Paul begins with love because all of the other fruit is really an outgrowth of love. Compare these eight qualities with the characteristics of love given to the Corinthians (see 1 Cor. 13:4-8). This word for love is agape, which means divine love. (The Greek word eras, meaning "sensual love," is never used in the New Testament.) This divine love is God's gift to us (Rom. 5:5), and we must cultivate it and pray that it will increase (Phil. 1:9).
When a person lives in the sphere of love, then he experiences joy--that inward peace and sufficiency that is not affected by outward circumstances. (A case in point is Paul's experience recorded in Phil. 4:10-20.) This "holy optimism" keeps him going in spite of difficulties. Love and joy together produce peace, "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding" (Phil. 4:7). These first three qualities express the Godward aspect of the Christian life.
The next three express the manward aspect of the Christian life: long-suffering (courageous endurance without quitting), gentleness (kindness), and goodness (love in action). The Christian who is long-suffering will not avenge himself or wish difficulties on those who oppose him. He will be kind and gentle, even with the most offensive, and will sow goodness where others sow evil. Human nature can never do this on its own; only the Holy Spirit can.
The final three qualities are selfward: faith (faithfulness, dependability); meekness (the right use of power and authority, power under control); and temperance (self-control). Meekness is not weakness. Jesus said, "I am meek and lowly in heart" (Matt. 11:29), and Moses was "very meek" (Num. 12:3); yet no one could accuse either of them of being weak. The meek Christian does not throw his weight around or assert himself. Just as wisdom is the right use of knowledge, so meekness is the right use of authority and power.
It is possible for the old nature to counterfeit some of the fruit of the Spirit, but the flesh can never produce the fruit of the Spirit. One difference is this: when the Spirit produces fruit, God gets the glory and the Christian is not conscious of his spirituality; but when the flesh is at work, the person is inwardly proud of himself and is pleased when others compliment him. The work of the Spirit is to make us more like Christ for His glory, not for the praise of men.
The cultivation of the fruit is important. Paul warns that there must be a right atmosphere before the fruit will grow (Gal. 5:25-26). Just as fruit cannot grow in every climate, so the fruit of the Spirit cannot grow in every individual's life or in every church.
Fruit grows in a climate blessed with an abundance of the Spirit and the Word. "Walk in the Spirit" (Gal. 5:25) means "keep in step with the Spirit"—not to run ahead and not to lag behind. This involves the Word, prayer, worship, praise, and fellowship with God's people. It also means "pulling out the weeds" so that the seed of the Word can take root and bear fruit. The Judaizers were anxious for praise and "vainglory," and this led to competition and division. Fruit can never grow in that kind of an atmosphere.
We must remember that this fruit is produced to be eaten, not to be admired and put on display. People around us are starving for love, joy, peace, and all the other graces of the Spirit. When they find them in our lives, they know that we have something they lack. We do not bear fruit for our own consumption; we bear fruit that others might be fed and helped, and that Christ might be glorified. The flesh may manufacture "results" that bring praise to us, but the flesh cannot bear fruit that brings glory to God. It takes patience, an atmosphere of the Spirit, walking in the light, the seed of the Word of God, and a sincere desire to honor Christ.
In short, the secret is the Holy Spirit. He alone can give us that "fifth freedom"—freedom from sin and self. He enables us to fulfill the law of love, to overcome the flesh, and to bear fruit.
Will you yield to Him and let Him work?