01 Introduction to the Fruit of the Spirit: Understanding Galatians

Krisan Marotta: Welcome back to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today we're starting a new series on the fruit of the spirit. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below this podcast, and you can also find those notes on wednesdayintheword.com slash fruit-spirit-intro. Glad to have you along. In this series, we're going to take a deep dive into a list Paul gives, which he calls the fruit of the spirit. This list is found in Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 and 23. In each podcast in the series, I want to tackle one of the items on the list. We're going to talk about what I understand Paul to be saying that fruit is all about. Now I have a 15-episode podcast series on the book of Galatians, which I invite you to listen to first. I'll put a link to that in the lecture notes, but it's not required. Today I'm going to assume you haven't listened to that series on Galatians, and you're not otherwise familiar with the book of Galatians. So I'm going to give you an overview of the book to give you some idea of where this list appears in the context of Paul's letter. And then next week we'll start tackling the list itself. If you've already listened to my series on Galatians, you can probably skip this podcast and just join us next week. Here's my quick overview of the book of Galatians. The Apostle Paul wrote this letter. I won't take time here to explain Paul's history or who he was. You can find that information in my introduction to Galatians podcast. I also have many text resources on my website about the Apostle Paul if you want to just quickly look at those. So the Apostle Paul wrote this letter to the churches of Galatia. These are churches in what's now modern Turkey. Paul founded these churches during his first missionary journey. When Paul entered a new city, he went first to the synagogue and taught them the gospel there. Usually some of the Jews responded, but most did not, and after a couple of weeks the Jews typically drove him out of the synagogue. Then he would stay in the city and preach to the Gentiles, who typically responded in larger numbers. He would typically stay as long as he could in each city. Usually he was driven out by an angry mob. On his first missionary journey, he founded the churches in the region of Galatia. These are the churches he's writing this letter to. He went as far as a city called Lystra. At Lystra, the crowds turned against Paul and stoned him and dragged him out of the city thinking he was dead. Probably as a result of those injuries, Paul turned around and headed toward home. He backtracked the way he came, revisiting the Christian communities he had just founded before returning to his home base in Antioch in Syria. When he reached Antioch, Paul reported on his journey and he stayed there for a long time. During this stay, three crisis events occurred. One is Jews from Jerusalem arrived, teaching that Gentile believers must keep the law in order to be saved. And we call this group the Judaizers. The second is Paul rebuked Peter for no longer eating with Gentiles, and you find that in his letter to the Galatians. And the third event was Paul received troubling news from the recently formed churches of Galatia that they had also been troubled by the Judaizers, and he wrote this letter of Galatians in response. In Jerusalem, the Christian church was being persecuted. Many believing Jews fled this persecution, and some of them ended up in Antioch. Others went into the Galatian territories. Some of these believing Jews started a dispute in the communities they arrived at over whether Gentile believers need to live like Jews. Word got back to Paul that many Gentiles among the churches he has founded were being confused by this teaching, and that prompts him to write the letter to the Galatians. I think he wrote this letter before the Council of Jerusalem, but probably in the same year as the Council, which would mean he wrote it around 49 A.D. So who were the Judaizers? The Judaizers were Jewish believers. They claimed to believe in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, but they had a very different perspective on what that meant. They taught that while believing in Jesus was necessary, it wasn't enough. They thought Paul got the gospel wrong and they were trying to set people straight. So the Judaizers embraced Jesus as the Messiah, but they didn't believe that Jesus was fully and completely the means to salvation. They thought no Gentile could be saved just by believing in Jesus alone. That's not possible. They thought Gentiles must also learn to live like Jews, be circumcised, and keep the law. The Judaizers taught the Galatians that to be fully Christian, they must keep the law. So they probably said something like this. Hey, you know, it's great that Paul taught you about Jesus and all. We're Jews from Jerusalem and we believe in Jesus too, but Paul left something out. We're not sure why he did this. It's hard to win converts and build churches. Maybe he just didn't want to scare you off. So he forgot to mention this part. But you really need to be circumcised and keep the law and live like Jews. Most Gentiles don't want to join a church that says you have to become Jewish, and that's probably why Paul neglected to tell you that. But hey, the fact is God gave this law to Israel, his chosen people. If you want to be acceptable to God, if you want to please God, you have to keep the law. That's the way it's always been. Paul was wrong to tell you that it's enough to believe in Jesus. That's a great start, but it's not enough. You need to join us in being obedient to the law that God gave Moses. So the Judaizers believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, is the Jewish Messiah, but they thought believing him was not enough. You had to also keep the law. So they came to Galatia teaching the Gentiles to keep the law. This letter is addressed to those churches who've heard this message of the Judaizers. Some of the people in the church have been swayed by this teaching and some have not. There seems to be a battle going on within the churches over who's keeping the law and who isn't, and Paul is writing to straighten this all out. So in Galatians, Paul argues that the Judaizers are wrong. Belief in Jesus is enough to save both Gentiles and Jews. In the first two chapters of Galatians, Paul defends his authority as an apostle. He argues that he is one of a select group of people who were chosen by God to speak for and about Jesus Christ. He says he received this calling by an encounter with the resurrected Lord and that he learned the gospel directly from Jesus. He didn't make it up, he didn't earn this calling. He was minding his own business when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and commissioned him to be one of his apostles. Because he learned his gospel directly from Jesus, you can have complete confidence that he is right. He also argues that even though he learned the gospel independently from the other apostles, when he had the chance to compare notes with them, they agreed with him. They added nothing to his gospel and they didn't take anything away. Paul and the other apostles teach the exact same gospel, and therefore you can trust it. So he is one of the select few to whom Jesus revealed the gospel. The gospel he preaches is true, and it is the authentic gospel of Jesus Christ. Chapters three and four form the main body of the letter. In these chapters, Paul makes a series of five arguments for the fact that everyone who is saved is saved by faith alone. So all five arguments make the point that everyone who receives eternal life will do so because they have faith in Jesus the Messiah. No one will receive eternal life because they kept the law, and it is only those who have faith in Jesus that will receive eternal life. Then in the final two chapters, which is where we're going to find this list of the fruit of the Spirit, Paul gives a series of exhortations concerning how they are to live out the gospel. The first is freedom from the law is not an excuse to pursue a lifestyle of sin. Then he exhorts them to be humble and love others. He exhorts them to invest in the truth. And finally, he exhorts them to pursue doing what is good. Now, Paul's argument unfolds in two parts. We human beings have two big problems that the gospel solves. First, we are guilty before God, and one day we will face Him in judgment. The results are not going to be pretty. When judgment comes, we will be found guilty, and the penalty for our guilt is death. The second big problem we have is the reason we're guilty. We are guilty because by nature we are sinners. Not only did we break God's laws, we have a built-in tendency toward evil. That's just who we are. We are broken and selfish. We are trapped in sin, and sin destroys life. We can't solve either of these problems by ourselves. We can do nothing to change the fact that we're guilty, and we can do nothing to change the fact that we are sinful creatures. The gospel is incredibly good news because it solves both of those problems. Jesus solves the problem of our guilt by dying in our place on the cross. And Jesus solves the problem of our sinfulness, our corruption, by reconciling us with God so that God can pour out his spirit on us and free us from sin. Now, if those concepts are new to you, I have a series on my website called What is the Gospel, which goes into that in a lot more detail. And I invite you to listen to it. In Galatians 5 and 6, then the first part of Paul's argument against the Judaizers is that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ solves these two big problems. The way we overcome our guilt is through the cross, not through law-keeping. The cross offers us true forgiveness in spite of the fact that we are rebels against God. And the cross alone solves the problem of God's wrath and puts us back in God's favor. The law does not do that. The law was never meant to atone for our sins or remove our guilt. Paul argues that God put us under the law as a kind of protective custody, like a child is under the rule of his governess. The law teaches us right from wrong. It shows us we have a problem with sin, but it can't solve the problem. Instead, the law is like a thermometer. A thermometer can tell you that you have a fever and that you're sick, but it does not solve the problem. It can't make you well. The cross of Christ, on the other hand, is like the medicine that makes us well. Jesus paid the price for our sin. Jesus took the punishment we deserve on the cross such that God can forgive us on judgment day. That solves the problem of our guilt. The second part of the solution solves the problem of our corruption. The forgiveness that Christ brings on the cross is the doorway to our restoration. We have this second problem. Not only do we need forgiveness for our guilt, we need God to make us holy, clean, and morally perfect. We need God to save us from our own sinful selves. How do we overcome the problem of ourselves? We can't change ourselves by ourselves. No amount of law-keeping is going to change who we are on the inside. Trying to keep the law shows us how far short we are of being the kind of morally perfect, beautiful, good people that the law describes, but it does nothing to make us better. So we need help, but the only one who can help is God, who is justifiably mad at us because we're guilty until the cross. By paying the price for our guilt, Jesus' death solves the problem of God's wrath. And that makes it possible for God to free us from our own sinful corruption. Because the problem of our guilt is now solved by Jesus' death on the cross, we are reconciled to God. God can now give us his Holy Spirit to change us from the inside out. Not only does the Spirit teach us right from wrong and what is true and what is wise, the Spirit makes us the kind of people who want to choose what is good and right and wise. This concept is hugely important in the New Testament. The cross of Christ itself contains the solutions to our two biggest problems. God has reconciled us to Himself through the cross in order that He might then bless us with life and goodness and holiness. So where do the Judaizers go wrong? Paul argues that they have distorted both parts of the gospel message. The idea that we must keep the law in order to find forgiveness and life is such a perversion that it is another gospel. They argue it's not enough to believe in the cross to gain forgiveness, and they say we must also keep the law to be acceptable to God. And Paul says that is such a serious perversion of the gospel that they should be accursed for preaching it. This is not a minor dispute between theological experts. This is an entirely different gospel. And the major part of Galatians addresses this issue. Why is it such a serious error to think that we can be acceptable by keeping the law? And Paul spends most of his time in the letter on that issue. The second issue he addresses is how we gain freedom from our sin. How do we find life? How do we find blessing? What changes us to make us holy, morally good, beautiful people? And again, Paul argues those blessings do not come from keeping the law. That is the role of the Holy Spirit. We will become different people because the Spirit is at work in us, not because we keep the law properly. The Judaizers think God has graciously given us the set of rules to follow. And as we follow those rules, we will find God's life and blessing. But Paul argues the solution to our corruption is the incredible gift of the Holy Spirit, not the gift of the law. Paul's opponents say, We know your gospel's wrong, Paul, because freedom from the law will lead to evil. And Paul faces that charge a lot. The charge is if you tell people all they have to do is believe, they don't have to keep the law, there's no punishment, then what are they gonna do when they're free from the law? They're gonna run rampant into evil. So which of these promotes order and goodness? Telling people to keep the law? Here are the rules, you have to keep them, or telling people God forgives you no matter what? Well, we Judaizers think the one that's gonna promote order and goodness is telling people they have to keep the law. Isn't the message that says keep the rules, you're in trouble, the one that promotes good and right behavior and transformation? And Paul responds back, well, maybe of unredeemed humanity, but the cross of Christ does something new. The cross of Christ makes it possible for God to forgive us, and because he forgives us and we are now reconciled to him, he gives us his spirit. And Paul argues true moral transformation results only from justification through faith in Christ. Only the spirit can cause that true moral transformation. Only the spirit can teach us what is right, what is wrong, and how to live wisely. And we only receive the spirit because of the cross. So the cross is the doorway to forgiveness, which allows God to give us his spirit, which leads to true, lasting moral transformation. The spirit changes us from the inside out, freeing us from our sin and selfishness, and making us the kind of people who want to pursue holiness, truth, and wisdom. So Paul says, look, my gospel does not lead to the pursuit of sin, it leads to true moral transformation because that's what the spirit is doing inside believers. The gospel does not say, here's a free pass, go sin as much as you want. The gospel says God has forgiven you in order that he might restore you, and he is restoring you through the work of the Spirit. The Spirit is making you the kind of person who no longer wants to sin. As the Spirit works in you to make you that kind of person, you find you no longer love sin, you don't want to pursue it, and you grieve when you fall into it. That's why the gospel is such good news. It solves both the problem of our guilt and the problem of our sinfulness. Now, the section on the fruit of the Spirit is in this part where Paul is arguing against the idea that freedom from the law promotes sin. But Paul has led up to this argument throughout his letter. For instance, in Galatians 2.20, he says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. I think what he's saying there is, I have agreed that all sin deserves God's wrath, and that the appropriate judgment and penalty for sin is death on the cross. I have accepted that Christ died on the cross in my place, and therefore I no longer try to please God by keeping the law. Now I trust that Christ produces life in me, that Christ will change me from the inside out. Having been justified by his death, I count on the fact that he will give me his spirit to make me righteous by his life. Any law keeping or obedience or acts of righteousness I do now is a result of having faith in the Son of God, who loved me so much that he paid the penalty for my sins by dying on the cross. Now, what he doesn't say in 220, but he's going to say later in the book, is that this all works, this all happens because of the gift of the Holy Spirit. But in 314 he says, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. Paul sees the promise of the Spirit as the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham that a blessing would come to all the nations through him. Now, what blessing are we talking about? Here in this context, we're not talking about money or land. We're talking about the blessing of the Spirit of God at work in the lives of people. That's the blessing God has been promising all along, and now we know He pours it out because of the cross of Christ. Paul argues moral transformation comes about by the work of the Holy Spirit. And who is it that has the Spirit working in them? Those who are under the grace of God. Who's under the grace of God? Those who have been accepted by the mercy of God offered through the death of Jesus on the cross. True moral transformation comes about in the lives of those who have found forgiveness through faith in Jesus. Now that's the positive part of his answer. There's also a negative part. The Judaizers claim that the law will promote this moral transformation by giving us rules to follow. And Paul says, Well, yeah, let's look around and see how this law-keeping thing is working out. What do we see in those under the law? We see strife and envy and jealousy and rivalries and divisions and anger and people fighting over who is keeping the law properly and who isn't. We see human evil running round. Riot in self-righteousness. That's not moral transformation. So the positive part of Paul's answer is true moral transformation comes to those who have been accepted by God through the cross of Christ. The negative part is your claim that legalism and law-keeping produces transformation is false. It only produces a fake or a false moral transformation. The fruit of the flesh, that is, the fruit, the results of people trying to keep the law with their own resources apart from the work of God, is all manner of evil and factions and dispute. But the fruit of those in whom the Spirit of God is at work is true moral transformation. And this is where we find the list of the fruit of the Spirit. It's in this section where Paul explains how real moral transformation comes about. He gives us both the negative list, the results of legalism, the results of following the law and trying to please God left to ourselves. And then he gives us the positive list of the kinds of things the Spirit of God produces in us. Now let me quickly walk you through the immediate context of the list of the fruit of the Spirit so that we have it as we look in this list. I'm going to start in Galatians 5.13. 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. Let me remind you what he means by flesh. The word flesh literally means meat, but Paul tends to use it one of three ways. Sometimes he means the literal human body. For example, in Romans 2.28, he speaks of physical circumcision in the flesh. There he's talking about the physical mark on the physical body. So sometimes he means just the human body. Another way he uses this word flesh is to mean from a human point of view. So for example, you see the phrase according to the flesh. And in Romans, he says Jesus is a descendant of David according to the flesh, or from a human standpoint, he's a descendant of David. But most often, Paul uses this word flesh in a moral or ethical sense, and I think that's the meaning we see here in Galatians. Most often when Paul speaks of the flesh, he means everything we are apart from God, unredeemed humanity. The flesh is the moral condition of fallen people apart from any intervention or action of God. So it's the natural state of all humanity. Flesh is the entire fallen human being, everything we are, body, soul, spirit, mind, apart from God. To walk by the flesh, as Paul uses it, means to pursue life based on my own resources, my own self-effort, to pursue holiness or justification through self-reliance, legalism without grace, without divine intervention. And that will always fail. So legalism, being under the law, is to pursue God through self-reliance apart from grace. By contrast, the person who walks by the Spirit realizes there's no divine spark inside to dredge up. There are no resources of holiness inside. We are sinful creatures through and through, and therefore we need to look outside ourselves and place our trust in God because we don't have what it takes to be holy. So we are seeking God, counting on his spirit to change us. Paul's first exhortation then is don't use freedom from the law as an excuse to pursue evil. Don't let it be an excuse to pursue what your natural unredeemed humanity wants to choose. Paul argues that his gospel gives you freedom from the law in the sense that you are not required to keep the Old Testament law. But there is a deeper freedom. It is the freedom of those who have been accepted by God, even though we're moral failures. We can honestly see our sin and know that Christ has solved that problem and we are free of guilt. But freedom in Christ is not the kind of freedom that says, okay, you aren't going to face the penalties of the law, so go sin as much as you want. Just because I don't face the threats of the law anymore, I don't have any excuse to indulge in evil. Now there are two ways to understand why Paul says this is true, and it's important to land on the right one. The Judaizers are not taking the position. Great, I'm free so I can go sin as much as I want. Paul does face an argument from some of his other critics, and they try to discredit his gospel by saying it leads to sin, and Paul defends himself, and he makes statements like this one in Galatians in those defenses. But the Judaizers present a different problem. The Judaizers have said that Paul's gospel is not complete. Remove the law and freedom from law-keeping leads to sin. But more than that, you have to be under the law to be pleasing to God. The only way to bring goodness into your life and to receive the blessings of God is to keep the law. So you're not free from the law. It's part of the deal. Jesus has secured your forgiveness, but he has not made you righteous. To make you righteous, you have to keep the law. And Paul is arguing, no, it doesn't work like that. The law does not bring that kind of moral transformation, and it was never intended to. Only the Spirit of God at work in you brings that about. So here Paul says, Don't use your freedom as an excuse for pursuing sin. Instead, serve one another through love. That's what I should do instead. Look at Galatians 5, 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. Now, if you could truly love your neighbor as yourself and applied that in every situation you found yourself in, you could go a long way toward fulfilling the requirements of the law. In any given situation, if I ask myself, if the tables were turned, how would I want to be treated? Doing that is probably the right thing to do. I don't love my neighbor because I have to, because I'm under the law and I don't want the consequence of the law. I love my neighbor because it's the right thing to do. God created me to be the kind of creature who loves generously and sacrificially like He does. So Paul's making a contrast in attitude. I could take my freedom from the law as an opportunity to be a selfish jerk and live my life putting myself first in every situation, indulging my sinful, selfish nature. And that would be wrong. That's not the kind of person God wants me to be, and I would not be honoring God. And that is not what the Spirit is producing in me. Or I could take my freedom from the law and seek to treat my neighbor as I would want to be treated, because now I know the value of goodness and holiness. Then in 5, 15, and 16, 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. If you bite and devour one another is this wonderful picture of our sinful natures. The image he uses is of animals snapping and biting at each other. What's the result of that process? We hurt and destroy each other. In the Galatians' zeal to be right about law-keeping, they are treating each other badly. They are fighting over who keeps the law properly and who doesn't. Now, before the coming of the Messiah, the Jews thought that if you lived under the Old Testament law, that would keep you from indulging in selfish behavior. The covenant spelled out, you need to do this and this and this, but you can't do that and that and that. So it put a curb or guardrail on your natural selfish inclinations. And Paul's saying there's something else that's going to curb your natural selfish inclinations, and that's the spirit. Walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of your flesh. Now, when we see a phrase like walk by the spirit, we're inclined to start thinking that we need to channel the spirit in some way. We need to use the spirit, say the way Luke Skywalker used the force. We just have to figure out how and learn the secret of tapping into that inner force or power. And I would argue that is not how it works. It is not a kind of mystical experience. I have a series of talks called Who is the Holy Spirit, where I go into this in more detail, but let me just briefly say Jesus says this in explaining to Nicodemus that he must be born again, and I find it very helpful in understanding how the spirit works. This is John three, 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. Now think about your experience with the wind. You sit outside and there's no sound or movement. Everything is still and quiet, and all of a sudden you hear a rushing sound and all the tree branches begin to sway and dance. 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 it. 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. We don't know when the next gust of wind is coming. We don't know where it's coming from or why it comes, we can't analyze it, quantify it, or control the wind. But we experience the changes it makes and we see the results. You know the wind is there because you experience the effects of it. You can see the branches moving, you can feel it on your face, you can feel your hair moving. And I think that's what's essential to his analogy. The wind is invisible to us, it's out of our control, but we experience it effects, and that's how we know it's there. Now, this analogy between the wind and the spirit is very clever because in Greek, the word for wind and the word for spirit are the same word. The spirit of God is at work in a person like the wind. You can't control the activity of the spirit. The Holy Spirit will do what he wishes to do. You can't see the spirit. The Holy Spirit, by his very nature, is invisible, but you can see the changes he brings about. As you observe the life of a person who is born of the spirit, you can see those metaphorical tree branches moving in a new direction. That is, you can see the effects of the spiritual rebirth through the changes in the person's life. Now, our job is to be faithful, to trust and believe and repent 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 fail to pray. He can help us whether we pray or not. He's like the wind that blows when and where he wants to to bring about the plans and purposes of God. To walk by the Spirit is simply to live my life trusting that God is in control. I am counting on God and His Spirit, not my own resources. I'm trusting in the blood of Christ and not my own self-effort. It's not a technique I learned, it's a fundamental heart attitude or worldview. Okay, going on, Galatians 5, 17 and 18. 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 Paul explains the natural inclination of our sinful selves and the direction the Spirit is taking us are opposites. They are opposed to each other. If the Spirit is truly at work in you, changing you, replacing your sinful, hard heart with a heart that loves God, then your life will look different. You won't continue to pursue the selfishness and the sinfulness and all the things he's about to list. When you do fall into those things, you'll regret it. You'll repent eventually. Because the Spirit, like the wind blowing through your life, is teaching you and instructing you, making you the kind of person who wants to pursue the things of God. You're not pursuing God because of the threat of the law. You're not pursuing God because you fear the punishment of the law. You're pursuing God because the Spirit is now teaching you and making you the kind of person who wants to do that. The Spirit gives us a whole new vision of what kind of person we can be. This vision shows us who we were meant to be and who we can be under the Spirit's guidance. We can be clean and worthy and loving and all the things he's about to list. But that list doesn't come naturally. It comes from the Spirit. 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 were following our own sinful selves. All right, let's read these lists. Galatians 5, 19 and 21. Now the works of the flesh are evident sexual immorality, impurity, 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. Sadly, that's not an exhaustive list, Paul adds, and things like these, if we sat down and thought about it, we could probably add a lot of things to the list. At its root, I think each of these items on the list comes from putting ourselves at the center of the universe, either making our needs more important than our neighbors, or making what we want more important than what God wants. Now I'm not going to go into each of the things on this list. In terms of the context here, I think what we really need to understand is the last half of the verse. I warn you as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Paul says this list is a deal breaker in some sense. 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 Paul has been making throughout this letter. The question on the table is: if I am free from the law, won't that give me a license to pursue all the sin I want? And Paul has been arguing that being free from keeping the law is not an excuse to sin because now we have a different motivation to avoid sin. We have the teaching and guidance of the Spirit who is giving us a heart that loves God. In this list, he's giving us examples of the kind of thing that the Spirit teaches us to leave behind and to flee from. Why are those behaviors on the list? Because they make us guilty before God. These are the kinds of behaviors we would gleefully pursue apart from the work of the Spirit of God in our lives. And if we are pursuing these kinds of behaviors, we are guilty before a holy God and we will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Now he is not saying one strike and you're out. He's not saying if you ever once got angry or jealous, you're out of the kingdom. And he's not saying that these things put you beyond the mercy of God. What he is saying is these are the kinds of behaviors that define our sinful, selfish selves. You want to know what kinds of things you would choose normally left to yourself? This is it. The items on this list are symptoms of the total depravity of unredeemed humanity. If this is the trend of your life, wake up and smell the coffee, you need to repent. Now all of us are guilty of the things on this list. What should I do when I realize I'm guilty? I should repent, throw myself on the mercy of God, and accept the blood of Jesus as payment for my sins. These behaviors do not put you beyond the reach of God's mercy, but they ought to make you seriously evaluate the direction you're heading. So stop, turn around, and repent. And in the context, Paul's saying, you want to know what I see happening in your churches in Galatian? You want to see the results of your illegalism? I see fighting. I see self-centeredness that's leading to strife and factions. It's obvious in your life. You legalists are people who are acting on your sinful natures. It's all self-interest, self-righteousness, and it's leading to these kinds of selfish behaviors. You're not living like people in whom the Spirit of God is at work. You're living like people who are intent on their own self-centered view of life. And let me warn you, only those who abandon that kind of self-centeredness will enter the kingdom of God. Now he gives us the opposite list. This is Galatians 5, 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. So he's saying, by contrast to this list I just gave you, if I'm a person who has saving faith, and therefore I am a person in whom the Spirit of God is at work, what kinds of things will I see? What kinds of changes will I see when I repent and begin listening to the teaching of the Spirit? And he gives us this wonderful list: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The point he's making in context is this person is entirely different than the person described above. These two lists are polar opposites. These two people are heading in entirely different directions. For our purposes now, in the context, 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 here 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 righteousness than you can achieve by striving outwardly to keep the Old Testament law. We can find laws that tell us how to treat our neighbors. We can find laws that teach us what justice requires, and so forth, but following those laws is not going to make us joyful, peaceful, patient, or self-controlled. Following those laws on the outside does nothing to change who we are on the inside. The law cannot change us. The law can teach us who we are, but it can't change us. Trying to follow the law reveals to me that I have a problem, but it won't make me the kind of person described on the list. Only the Spirit of God can do that. And then he says, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. I think what he's saying is, when you decided to become a disciple of Jesus, you metaphorically crucified your sinful selves and all the things your sinful self desired. Part of repentance is crying out to God, I don't want to be this kind of person anymore. I agree with you that I am sinful and worthy of condemnation. I agree with you, God, that my choices are wrong and I am guilty. I am not the person I want to be. Instead, I want to be holy and worthy and good like you. I recognize I can never fix that problem by myself. I recognize you don't owe me anything. I'm asking for your mercy and your grace because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Please, Lord, let it cover me. I realize Jesus died the death I deserve. Please put my sinful self metaphorically to death and give me a new life, a new kind of life that chooses to love you and my neighbor. So to be crucified with Christ is a metaphor for repenting and making that kind of about face. And thanks be to God, He forgives us and gives us His Spirit. And the wonderful, amazing result is this new vision of humanity, this deeper level of holiness and goodness, the things found on this list, that will be ours. 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 have abandoned that lifestyle and they are now seeking the things of God. What keeps you on the straight and narrow? Not the law, faith in Jesus keeps you on the straight and narrow. When we come to faith, we abandon the desires of our sinful selves and we seek the fruit of the Spirit. That's a crucial part of what it means to come to faith. And if you didn't do that, then you may not really believe or belong to Jesus. Now, before you panic and think, oh no, this list doesn't describe me, wait and listen to the series. We're going to spend a whole series on what these things are and why they're on the list. I want to explore the question: how did Paul know these things should be on the list? When Paul talks about love or peace or joy, what does he mean? What kind of ideas does he associate with that idea? And that's going to require us to spend a lot of time elsewhere in Scripture. So in the series coming up, we're not going to be looking very much at Galatians at all, but we are going to be looking at many other passages in both the Old and the New Testament to figure out what Paul was talking about and why these things on the list are fruits of the Spirit. Now let me just finish this section. Galatians 5, 25 and 26. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. This is an important part of his argument. The work of the Spirit, as we're going to see as we go through this series, is not instantaneous. It's not that we come to faith in Jesus and the Spirit zaps all these qualities into us. The work of the Spirit is a process that unfolds and works itself out over my lifetime, over a lifetime of choices and struggles and trials and tribulations. Legalism, trying to keep the law, offers a kind of fake moral transformation, which ultimately leads to these things on the list of the works of the flesh, divisions, rivalries, jealousy, envy, and so forth. True moral transformation is the result of the Spirit of God working in our lives. And what we'll see is things like love, joy, peace, gentleness, and so forth. If we see ourselves consistently choosing other things, we should be warned. Because these are the kinds of fruits that God is producing in the lives of believers, and we should be able to really see them in ourselves and others. Yet at the same time, each of them represents a goal or a challenge to us. It represents a challenge in the question of are these the things I really want? When life throws me a trial or a tribulation, am I going to respond in accordance with the things I say I want, or am I going to respond in a way that indulges my self-centeredness? What am I really interested in? So I think this list is both a promise and a challenge. It's a promise of where God is taking us and the kind of people He is making us into. And it's a challenge because it makes us ask the question, are these the things I want? Do I want to be this kind of person? Am I really seeking the things of God or am I just fooling myself? And we're going to talk a lot about that as we go through that list. Again, we're going to be asking the question, what did Paul mean by these concepts? How did he know these were fruits of the Spirit? And why are they on the list? And I hope you're as excited about this series as I am. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but how we figure it out. If you haven't visited my website, please stop by. There are no ads, no spam, no requests for money. Instead, my website contains a wealth of Bible study materials designed to help you improve your skills and understanding. If you want to thank me or if you've been blessed by this podcast, please join the mailing list, subscribe to the podcast, but most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can find more of his music on heartfeltmusic.org. All of these episodes are available on my website, wednesdayintheword.com. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.