13 What it Means to Walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:13-24)

Krisan Marotta: Good morning and welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. We're going to be studying Galatians chapter 5, verses 13 through 24 today. This is the 13th talk in our series on the book of Galatians. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below this podcast, or you can find them by going directly to Wednesdayintheword.com slash Galatians 1 3. Thanks so much for listening. Welcome back to Galatians. We're getting down toward the end of the book. Just a few more sections to go. As always, let's remember where we are in this letter. Paul wrote this letter to churches in Galatia, which he founded on his first missionary journey. And these churches are in danger of losing their way. Some in Galatia have come to believe that faith in Jesus Christ is not enough to be saved. They have been influenced by the teaching of the Judaizers and believe they must also keep the law. And Paul is writing to correct that view. In the first two chapters, he defended his authority as a minister of the gospel and argued that his gospel is completely trustworthy. In chapters three and four, Paul made a series of five arguments for the fact that we are justified by faith alone. All five arguments make the point that no one will receive eternal life because they kept the law. Only those who have faith in Jesus will receive eternal life. And then in chapter five, and into the end of the letter, he begins his final exhortations. We looked at the opening last week where he urged his readers to stand firm in the gospel, to enjoy the freedom of the gospel and not return to the slavery of the law. From here on out, from 513 forward, he begins a series of four exhortations. We're going to look at the first one today, where he exhorts them not to use their freedom as an excuse to indulge in sin. The second one is in 525-6.5, where he exhorts them to humility and loving others. Then in chapter 6, verses 6 through 8, he exhorts them to invest in the truth. And then finally in 6, 9 through 10, he exhorts them to pursue doing what is good. And then he has some closing thoughts from 11 to 18. And you don't have to write any of that down. It's all in the lecture notes if you want to go back and find it. We're going to look at the first exhortation this week. I expect that Paul is making this first exhortation at this point in the letter because it refutes one of the charges that's been leveled against him. There are two ways to refute an accusation or an objection to the gospel. One is to make an argument against the accusation, which is what we've seen Paul do. He just made five arguments for justification by faith. The other way to refute a charge or an accusation against you is to do the very thing you're accused of not doing. The Judaizers accuse Paul of not teaching people to pursue goodness. They claim Paul is giving them a license to sin because they don't have to keep the law. So Paul gives an exhortation to pursue goodness and not to use your freedom as an excuse to sin. I think it's another way of making himself clear. He's explaining, here's how you ought to live. You want to know what the implication of my gospel is? Well, this is the implication of my gospel. My gospel does not encourage sin. My gospel encourages the pursuit of goodness. The Judaizers are probably saying something like, Well, of course the Gentiles must keep the law. If Gentiles don't have to keep the law, what are they going to do? They're going to go right back to their pagan ways and pursue all kinds of debauchery. We know God doesn't want that. He wants everyone to keep the law. Paul just left that part out. You Gentiles are not free from the law, you must keep it. It's the only thing that keeps you safe. It keeps you from pursuing a lifestyle of hedonism and debauchery. Feeling that obligation to keep the law will keep you safe and you'll be pleasing to God. In the section we're about to look at, Paul counters that thinking directly. He says, basically, the law is not the only thing that keeps you from evil. It's not even the best thing. You don't need the Mosaic covenant to tell you not to pursue sin because as a child of God, having faith in Jesus, you've got something better. You've got the Spirit of God now. There is a voice in your life teaching you not to pursue evil, but that voice is not the law, it's the Spirit of God. Yes, you're free from the old covenant in the sense that you're not obligated to keep it to gain your justification, but you're not free from the work of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is what you really need to keep you from pursuing a lifestyle of sin. As he argued in the earlier chapters, before the Messiah came, the old covenant, the law, functioned like a drill sergeant or a guardian keeping us on the right path. But with the coming of the Messiah, that changed. And he used the analogy when a child grows up and becomes an adult, he no longer needs a governess or a guardian. Likewise, because God has revealed more of his plan through Christ and we have faith in him, we have metaphorically grown up and no longer need to be under the law. The Messiah made it possible for God to give us something much better than the threat of the law. The Messiah made it possible for God to give us his spirit, and his spirit teaches us to love the things of God. The Spirit teaches us how our Master Jesus wants us to live. So we are free from the law, and in a real sense we are being freed from sin through the work of the Holy Spirit. If you're pursuing evil and using your freedom from the law to sin, then it calls into question whether you're saved at all. Because if you're pursuing sin as a lifestyle without repentance, then you don't have the Spirit. That's his argument in a nutshell. Let me read the whole passage and then we'll go back and walk through it. This is Galatians five verses thirteen through twenty four. For you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such things there is no law, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. First, let's define some of these terms. The biggest one is flesh. What does Paul mean by flesh in this context? The Greek word translated flesh literally means meat. Paul tends to use this word one of three ways. Sometimes he means the literal human body. So for instance, in Romans 2.28, he speaks of physical circumcision in the flesh, meaning the mark on the physical body. Sometimes he uses this phrase to mean according to the flesh, according to a human point of view. For example, in Romans 1.3, he says Jesus is a descendant of David according to the flesh. So from a human standpoint, from a physical line, he is a descendant of David. But most often, Paul uses this word in a moral or an ethical sense, and I think that's what's going on here in Galatians. Most often when Paul speaks of works of the flesh or walking by the flesh, he means everything we are apart from God. So the flesh is the moral condition of fallen humanity, apart from any work of God. You could think of it as unredeemed humanity, the natural state of all of us before God intervenes and acts. So flesh is the entire fallen human being. Everything we are, body, soul, spirit, mind, apart from God. And what do we know about the flesh? It is sinful through and through. It is rebellious to God. It will choose selfishness and evil every chance it gets. When my husband and I were teaching Sunday school and we had to explain this concept to second graders, we would tell them that we all have broken choosers. So the thing inside us that makes us choose ice cream over broccoli, or sports over piano lessons, or piano lessons over homework, that thing is broken. It also makes us choose wrong over right and selfishness over love. We can't just decide from now on we're gonna choose what's right because our chooser is broken. How can a broken chooser fix itself? It can't choose to fix itself because it's broken. We need God to fix it. And to extend the metaphor, you could say our flesh is us with our broken choosers. To walk by the flesh is to live by the dictates of my broken chooser. To walk by the flesh is to live my life according to my own selfish will and my own selfish dictates. Everything my broken chooser tells me that it wants. Now it's possible to fool ourselves into thinking we are pursuing holiness, but we're pursuing holiness through our self-reliance, through our broken choosers. For example, a Pharisee who walked in the flesh may have had impeccable credentials, may have had a perfect religious pedigree, but he was pursuing God through self-reliance. He was trusting in his own efforts to gain God's favor. He thought that holiness was somewhere inside him. He only needed to keep the law the right way to dredge it out. That is, in a sense, pursuing the things of God by the flesh or seeking to walk by the spirit by the flesh, if you follow me there. So the flesh is everything we are apart from God. It is unredeemed humanity. It is us living according to our own dictates and our own resources and our own self-reliance. By contrast, the person who walks by the Spirit realizes there's no holiness inside to dredge up. We know our choosers are broken, and therefore we need to look outside ourselves to become holy. We need to look outside ourselves to learn what is right and wrong, and we place our trust in God. We know we don't have what it takes to be holy, and we trust that God will give us what it takes to be holy because of the blood of Jesus Christ and through the work of his spirit. Alright, so that's the flesh and the spirit. By spirit, I just think he means the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God at work in us. And by flesh, he means unredeemed humanity, everything we are, apart from the Spirit, apart from any action of God. Okay, so Paul's going to make his first exhortation in verse 513, and then he's going to explain it. So let's walk through the passage. For you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. Paul's first exhortation is don't use freedom from the law as an excuse to pursue evil. Don't let not being obligated to keep the law be an excuse to pursue what your broken chooser wants to choose. In this context, I think the freedom he's talking about is freedom from the Mosaic covenant, not being obligated to keep the law. Having come to faith in Christ, we are free from the restrictions of the old covenant and keeping the law, but don't use that freedom as an opportunity to pursue what your broken chooser wants to pursue. Because I don't have to meet the demands of the Mosaic law, that doesn't give me an excuse to do whatever my sinful self wants to do. Just because I won't be found guilty by the law anymore, I don't have any excuse to indulge in evil. Now, Paul doesn't make this point here, but in similar context, for instance, in Romans, he argues that part of the gift of saving faith is wanting to be holy. One of the core components of saving faith is longing to be free from my sin and longing to be holy and morally good as God is. If I use not being under the law as an excuse to gleefully pursue sin, that suggests that I still love sin and my chooser is still broken. And that calls into question whether or not I have faith at all. But once I have saving faith, God fixes my chooser, and at some level, my chooser now wants to choose what's good and right. Now, of course, we're not perfect yet, we don't choose perfectly yet, but now when we fail to choose right, we repent because at some level we know our choice was wrong and we want to be free from sin. Here Paul says, Don't use your freedom as an excuse for pursuing sin. Instead, serve one another through love. Let's read 13 and 14, for you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I think he's saying that if we could truly love our neighbors and applied that in every situation, we would go a long way toward fulfilling the requirements of the law. And we talked about that concept a lot in the series on the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew's gospel. Coming to faith involves this monumental worldview shift where I realize I am not the center of the universe, and my needs do not take precedence over everyone else's. God is the center of the universe, and all of us human beings are equal before Him. I am no better than anyone else and no worse than anyone else. When I look at my neighbor, there's a profound sense in which it's like I'm looking in a mirror. My neighbor is someone just like me, someone who is equally made in God's image, but we also have the same problem with sin. We need the same solution to that problem. If we both have faith, we have the same Lord, we have the same Savior, and the same Spirit, there's one solution for both of us. And my needs are no more important than my neighbor's. We are equal before God. In any given situation, I can go a long way toward figuring out what the right thing to do is by asking myself, if the situation was reversed, how would I want to be treated and then do that? So I don't love my neighbor because I have to, because I'm under obligation by the law. I love my neighbor because it's the right thing to do. And God has changed my chooser such that I want to do the right thing. God is making me into the kind of creature who loves generously and sacrificially like He does. Now, Paul's contrasting two different responses to being free from guilt under the law. So one is I could take my freedom from the law as an opportunity to be a selfish jerk, and I could live my life indulging my selfish nature and putting myself first in every situation. That would be wrong. That's not the kind of person God wants me to be, and I would not be honoring God. That's the kind of choices I make with a broken chooser. Or I could enjoy my freedom and express it by loving my neighbors and treating them as I would want to be treated. Those are the kinds of choices I would make or at least want to make when God fixes my broken chooser. I am free to love others because I am secure in the fact that God is taking care of me. I am free to love others because I no longer see myself as more important. I'm free to be forgiving and patient because I know how much I've been forgiven. I have security and the hope of the gospel. I know that God is at work in my life, and I don't have to put myself first in an effort to take care of myself. I'm free to love others and let go of putting myself first because I long to be exactly that kind of person, and I trust that God is making me that kind of person through the Spirit. And God has already promised to give his children an inheritance in the kingdom of God. That's better than anything I might desire right now. So why treat my neighbor badly when I've got this incredible inheritance coming? Galatians five, fifteen and sixteen, but if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another, but I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Paul uses this image of animals snapping and biting at each other. Biting and devouring one another is a very descriptive picture of our sinful natures. Instead of loving and nurturing each other, we bite and devour each other. Instead of treating each other as we would want to be treated, we cut each other to pieces. I think Paul is speaking to their specific situation. Their insistence on law keeping has led to a kind of competition where they bite and devour each other over, probably over who's keeping the law properly and who isn't. Instead of loving and encouraging each other, they rebuke and belittle each other over their lack of law keeping. Now left to ourselves, we are all inclined to exalt ourselves at the expense of others. It is our nature to trample others so that we can get ahead, to grab and take for what we want without regard for who else might get hurt in the process. And how might we describe that process? What's the result of that process? We're biting and devouring each other. In our zeal to keep the law properly, we could end up treating each other very badly. Before the coming of the Messiah, the Jews thought if you walked by the rules of the old covenant, you would not walk by the flesh or your broken chooser. So that is living under the rules of the law would keep you from indulging in selfish behavior. The covenant spelled out for you, do this and this and this, but don't do those other things. And that puts a guardrail on your natural selfish inclinations. But Paul is saying the law promotes strife because you're all competing for who's the best law keeper, and you're judging each other over who isn't keeping the law properly. But there is something that curbs your natural inclination toward evil, and that is the work of the Holy Spirit. Walk by the Spirit, and you won't gratify the desires of your selfish nature. In other words, the law can't fix your broken chooser. No amount of law keeping is going to change what your chooser wants to choose, but the Spirit of God can change you. As the Spirit begins his fixing process and his sanctifying work, you will stop choosing the desires of the flesh. Now we see this phrase walk by the Spirit, and we're inclined to Start thinking we need to channel the spirit in some way. We start thinking we use the spirit the way, say, Luke Skywalker used the force in Star Wars. We just need to figure out how and learn the secret of tapping into that power. And I would argue that is not how it works. Walking by the Spirit is not a mystical experience like using the force in Star Wars. Instead, I would argue it works more like the wind. In explaining this concept to Nicodemus, Jesus said we must be born again, and then he compared the spirit to the wind. This is John chapter three, verses seven and eight. Do not marvel that I said to you you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. Think about your experience with the wind. You sit outside, there's no sound or movement, everything is very still and quiet, and all of a sudden you hear a rushing sound and all the tree branches start swaying and dancing. You can't see the wind, but you can see the branches swaying. You can't see what's making the sound, but you can hear the leaves rustling, and you can feel the wind on your skin, but you can't see what's making the branches move, you can't control it, you can't stop it, and you can't make it go where you want it to go. You don't know when the next gust of wind is coming, you don't know where it's coming from or why it comes. You can't analyze or quantify or control the wind. But you can experience the changes the wind makes and you can see the results. You know the wind is there because you experience its effects. You see the branches moving, you feel it on your face, you hear it, and you feel it in your hair. I think what's essential to Jesus' analogy between the spirit and the wind is that it is this invisible force we can't control. The wind is invisible to us, it's out of our control, but we recognize its effects and we know it's there. And the spirit works the same way. Now, this is a really clever analogy because in both Greek and Hebrew, the word for wind and the word for spirit are the same word. The spirit of God at work in a person is like the wind. We can't control the activity of the spirit. The Holy Spirit will do what God tells him to do. We can't see the spirit. The spirit, by his very nature, is invisible to us. But we can see the results of what he's doing. As we observe the life of a person born of the spirit, we can see the metaphorical branches moving and watch the leaves swaying. In other words, we can see the effects of the spiritual rebirth through the changes in the person's life. I think that's worth stopping and thinking about because in American culture today, we are enamored with this idea that we can make anything happen if only we learn the right steps. So we have this attitude, just teach me the technique and I can do anything. Give me a paint by number and I can be the next Rembrandt. That's our mentality. Just tell me, teach me, and I will get it done. Tell me the five steps for how to walk by the Spirit and ah, watch me walk, I'll be great. I think our American Christian culture is full of that attitude today, and I imagine it was prevalent among the Pharisees like Nicodemus too. Just explain to me exactly what the law means and watch me keep it. But if I understand what Jesus is saying, Christianity is not done by technique. We don't bring it about, we don't cause it, it's the work of the Spirit of God. We have broken choosers, and no technique is going to fix them. Only the Spirit of God can fix our broken choosers, and he does that based on God's plan and God's timing. If I explain the gospel to my neighbor and she shrugs it off, it's not a given that I did something wrong. If I hold a Bible study and only two people come, that's not a sign of failure. If I have a prodigal child, it doesn't necessarily mean I've failed. The Spirit blows where he wills and works in his way and his time. His plan may be that that prodigal stays a prodigal for years before returning. Or his plan may be that the prodigal returns tomorrow. God's plan may be that you teach one person or that you teach thousands. Our job is to be faithful, to do what God has called us to do, and leave the results to God and his spirit. We don't control the spirit, we can't manipulate him into transforming us. His hands are not tied if we don't pray the right prayer. He's like the wind that blows when and where God wants it to blow. He will bring about the changes he wants in order to implement the plans and purposes of God. So to walk by the Spirit is simply to live my life trusting that God is in control, to go about my day trusting in the blood of Christ and not in my own self-effort. It's not a technique I learn, it's a fundamental heart attitude and worldview shift. Then seventeen and eighteen, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. The natural inclination of our broken choosers and the direction of the spirit are opposites. That's what he's saying here. They're opposed to each other. If the spirit is truly at work in you, changing you and replacing your broken chooser with a chooser that chooses to love God and holiness, then your life is going to look different. You won't continue to pursue selfishness and all the things he's about to list. And if you do fall into those things, you'll regret it and you'll repent, because the spirit, like the wind blowing through your life, is teaching you and instructing you and making you the kind of person who wants to pursue the things of God. Now you're not pursuing good because the threat of guilt under the law is hanging over your head. You're pursuing good because the spirit is now at work in your life, teaching you and making you the kind of person who wants to do good. That's one of the biggest problems with modern American culture. Modern culture not only claims that you are free to indulge whatever whim or desire you have, modern culture encourages you to go out and do what comes naturally. We're told be who you are with no apologies. If you want to change your identity, change your identity. It's okay, just ignore reality, truth, and cold hard facts. But if I understand the scripture right, scripture says you really don't want to do what comes naturally. Following our natural inclinations is what got us into all this trouble in the first place. The last thing we believers want to be is our natural sinful selves. The Spirit gives us a whole new vision of what it means to live a good and godly fulfilled life. That vision shows us who we were meant to be and who we can be under the Spirit's guidance. We can be clean, worthy, loving, and morally beautiful, all the things Paul is about to list. But that list doesn't come to us naturally. It comes from the Spirit working on us. What comes naturally is the first list. If we seek to follow God, we'll go 180 degrees opposite of where we would go if we follow our broken choosers. The teachings of the Spirit and the desires of the flesh or our broken choosers are polar opposites. So if we're taking the work of the Spirit of God seriously, we are not free to do whatever we want. We don't have a license to sin. The Spirit is teaching us to flee from sin, and we are running 180 degrees in the opposite direction. So if we are led by the Spirit, we resist the pull of our broken choosers for an entirely different reason than law keeping. Our motivation is not to avoid getting caught breaking the rules and thereby be cursed. Our motivation comes from an entirely new worldview. The Spirit has cleansed us of rebellion to God and turned our deepest desires to the things of God. So now we want to do that which honors God and pleases him because we love him. And now we get to the lists. This is 519 through 21. Now the works of the flesh are evident sexual immorality, impurities, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now sadly, that is not an exhaustive list. That's why Paul adds, and things like these. If we sat down and thought about it, we could probably add a whole lot more to the list. We do see things like drunkenness and sorcery on the list, but the vast majority of what Paul picks are relational. They're things like divisions, factions, jealousies, rivalries, infighting. I think he's giving us a clue as to what's going on in the Galatian churches. The teaching of the Judaizers has not produced unity and harmony, it has produced factions and divisions. He's saying it's obvious where the flesh is at work, this is what it looks like. Look around you at your own churches. What do you see? You see enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, rivalries, dissensions, division, and envy. And that's a result of your legalism, of your law keeping. Now it would be instructive to go through each of these items on the list and think through why they're evil, what's the dynamic that makes them so attractive to our flesh, and what makes them abhorrent to God. And we could spend a whole series on it. But I'm not going to do that. I would suggest that Paul has already given us a clue as to what we'd learn from that kind of study by telling us in 514 the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. At its root, I think each of these things on the list comes from putting ourselves at the center of the universe. This is the kind of thing that results when we make our needs more important than our neighbors, or when we make our wants more important than what God wants. Now I'm not going to take time to do that. In terms of the context here, I think what we really need to understand is the last half of 521. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. There is some sense in which the list above that we just read are deal breakers. If those things characterize your life, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now again, we want to keep this in the context of the argument he has been making. The question on the table is, if I'm free from the law, does that give me a license to pursue sin? And Paul's been arguing that being free from the law is not an excuse to sin. Once God gives us his spirit, we have a different motivation to avoid sin. We have the teaching and guidance of the Spirit who is fixing our broken choosers and making us into people who love God. In this list, he gives examples of the kind of things the Spirit teaches us to leave behind, to flee from. Why are these behaviors on the list? Because they make us guilty before God. These are the kinds of behaviors we would gleefully pursue left to our own resources. If we pursue those kinds of behaviors, we are guilty before a holy God and we will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Now he's not saying one strike and you're out. He is not saying that the things on this list put you beyond the mercy of God. What he is saying is these are the kinds of behaviors that define a person who is ruled by selfishness, who is ruled by their broken choosers. You want to know what kinds of things your broken chooser chooses? This is it. These are the kinds of things, these are the symptoms of the total depravity of a broken chooser. And if this is the trend of your life, he's saying, wake up and smell the coffee because you need to repent. Now, all of us are guilty of most everything on this list. What should I do when I realize I'm guilty? Repent. Throw myself on the mercy of God and accept the blood of Jesus as payment for my sins. Those behaviors do not put us beyond the mercy of God, but they ought to make us seriously evaluate what direction we're heading. And I think Paul's advice would be stop, turn around, and repent. So he's warning the Galatians look, you want to know what I see in you since you've gone back to law keeping? I see infighting, I see self-centeredness that leads to strife and factions. It's obvious the direction of your lives. You are people who are acting on your broken choosers. You're acting out of self-interest, self-righteousness, and all of that leads to these kinds of selfish behaviors. You are not living like people in whom the Spirit of God is at work. You are living like people who are intent on their own self-centered view of life. And let me warn you, only those who abandon that self-centeredness will enter the kingdom of God. You need to repent. So those are the results of following your broken chooser. On the other hand, here's the fruit of the Spirit. This is 22 through 24. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. What's he saying here? I think his point is if I'm a person who has saving faith, if I'm a person in whom the Spirit of God is at work, what will be the result? What kinds of changes will I see when I repent and begin listening to the teaching of the Spirit? And he gives us this list love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Now that's a pretty great list. And again, we could spend time on each one of these words and ask, why is this a mark of the spirit? And Lord willing, I plan to do that in my next series. I plan to finish Galatians and then come back with another series where we just go through this list. For now, we can see the overall point he's making in the context is a person controlled by the Spirit is entirely different than a person without the Spirit. These lists are polar opposite. These two people are heading in entirely different directions. So for now, for our purposes, I want to focus on what he says next. Against such things there is no law, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Against such things there is no law. What does he mean by that? I think the idea is with regard to such things there is no law. No law can produce this kind of fruit. This list is a much deeper level of holiness than the Old Testament law could bring about. Sure, we can find laws that tell us how to treat our neighbors, we can find laws that tell us what justice requires and what mercy looks like and so forth, but those laws and following those laws won't make us joyful, peaceful, patient, or self-controlled. Following the laws on the outside does nothing to change who we are on the inside because the law cannot change us. The law is more like a thermometer. A thermometer can tell me that I'm sick. It can tell me I have a problem, but it can't make me well. Similarly, the law teaches us who we are. It can tell us we have a problem with sin, but it can't change us. Trying to follow the law reveals to me that I have this problem, but it won't produce in me, it won't make me the kind of person described on the list. Only the Spirit of God can do that. And then he concludes, and those who belong to Christ, Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. So what's he saying here? When you decided to follow Jesus, when you decided to become a disciple of Jesus, you metaphorically crucified your broken chooser and all the things it desired. Part of repentance is crying out to God, I don't want to be that kind of person anymore. I agree with you that I am sinful and worthy of condemnation. I agree with you that my choices are wrong and that I am guilty. I am not the person I want to be. Instead, I want to be holy, worthy, and good, like you, Father. I recognize I can never fix the problem of myself by myself. I recognize you aren't obligated to give me anything or fix me. I'm asking for your mercy and grace because of the blood of Jesus Christ. So I realize Jesus died the death I deserve, and I ask that God metaphorically put my broken chooser to death and give me a new chooser, one that chooses to love him and my neighbor. So to be crucified with Christ is a metaphor for repenting and making that about face. And thanks be to God, he does forgive us when we ask, he gives us his spirit, and the wonderful, amazing result is this new vision of humanity, this deeper level of righteousness and holiness, and it will be ours by the work of the Spirit. So of course, those who belong to Jesus will not use their freedom as an excuse to sin. They have metaphorically crucified those desires. They've metaphorically put those desires to death and abandoned that kind of lifestyle. So what keeps believers on the straight and narrow? It's not the threat of being guilty under the law, it's faith in Jesus. And because we have faith, God gives us his spirit who can actually change us. And Paul's warning: if you don't experience that kind of lifestyle change, then perhaps you don't really believe and you don't belong to Jesus and you need to take a hard look at yourself. So to summarize, we are free from the moral requirements of the law in the sense that even though we are rightly condemned by the law, God will forgive us because of the cross of Christ. We are free from the condemnation of not being morally good. Does that mean we pursue a lifestyle of sin? No, because part of the gift of saving faith is hating our sin, longing for holiness, and wanting to be like God. So we are freed from the obligation to prove our worth to God through trying to be good or keep the law, because we can't do that anyway, we're not worthy. But thanks be to God, he doesn't leave us in that state. Once we repent and ask for his forgiveness, he gives us his spirit. And his spirit is working to make us the kind of people who love the moral requirements of the law and long to be the kind of person who can keep them. The promise we have is that one day we will be those kind of people. That's exactly who we'll be. When Paul talks about the hope of the glory of God, this is what he means. One day we will be clean, worthy, and gloriously morally perfect like God. So my freedom from condemnation under the law leads to a true fulfillment of the law. I'm never free in the sense that I can say it's okay that I didn't love my neighbor. That's never right. But I am free from guilt because God has forgiven me because of the cross of Jesus Christ, and He's promised, in His timing and according to His plans and purposes, to make me the kind of person who does love my neighbor. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please rate or review us on your favorite podcast app. The more people who do that, the easier it is for others to find the podcast. But more importantly, take a moment and tell a friend what you learned. And if you can, tell them where you learned it. You can hear all the episodes in this series on my website, Wednesdayintheword.com. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can find his music and enjoy his CDs on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krissan Morata, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.