"Walking in Freedom, pt.1 (Galatians 5:13-25)", Will DuVal | 10/26/25
Galatians 5:13-25 | 10/26/25 | Will DuVal
Despite being one of the most beloved films of all time, the 1994 classic The Shawshank Redemption is at times difficult to watch. And perhaps hardest of all the scenes to watch, is the release from Shawshank prison and subsequent suicide of a sweet old inmate named Brooks. Brooks had served 50 years in Shawshank before being paroled. Just before he’s released, Brooks threatens to kill a fellow inmate, saying, “It’s the only way they’d let me stay.” Later in the yard, Morgan Freeman explains, “He’s institutionalized. The man’s been in here 50 years… this is all he knows… These walls are funny: first you hate ‘em. Then you get USED to ‘em. Enough time passes, you get so you DEPEND on ‘em. That’s institutionalized.”
And according to the apostle PAUL as we’ve seen all throughout the book of Galatians now, “institutionalized” is sadly a PERFECT description of what happens to so many Christians over time in the life of faith. To THIS point in his letter, Paul’s been addressing the danger of being institutionalized by LEGALISM, the LAW, RELIGION. These “false brothers”, the Judaizers, had infiltrated the churches in Galatia that Paul had planted, and they were preaching a different, FALSE gospel; the Bible says “it is by GRACE we are saved through FAITH” alone IN CHRIST ALONE - he is wholly sufficient for the task; Jesus plus NOTHING - that’s the gospel. But the Judaizers were preaching Jesus plus the LAW, of Moses; why? Because they’d been “institutionalized”, BY the Law. Paul says, “For YEARS - MILLENNIA!; 1,500 years, to be nearly exact - God’s people lived in BONDAGE under the Law. Back in ch3 he wrote, “Before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned… the law was our guardian [our PRISON guard] until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian” (vv23-25).
In other words, trying to justify - or “bring yourself into right relationship with a HOLY God” - attempting to DO that by means of the LAW, -by following enough of the “Thou shalt”s and avoiding enough of the “Thou shalt NOT”s - Paul says “You will NEVER get to God that way; NEVER measure up. And to even TRY to really amounts to SLAVERY, imprisonment, BONDAGE under the Law”. But Paul reminded us of the GOOD news of the GOSPEL last week in ch5: “For freedom Christ has set us free!” (v1). You no longer HAVE to try and EARN God’s favor through works of the LAW, through CIRCUMCISION, cuz now ‘in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything’!” Paul says, “Christ has set us FREE from legalism; ‘do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’!”
“Brooks- you’re a FREE MAN! After 50 years of bondage, you can finally now go FREE.” “BUT,” Paul will now exhort us in the second half of ch5, “make sure you are WALKING in that freedom that Christ purchased for you.” See, you can BE free but still LIVE like a prisoner, if you’ve been institutionalized.
And this morning, Paul shifts his focus now from the danger of institutionalization under the LAW, to the threat now of being institutionalized by our SIN. Austin noted last Sunday: these are the TWIN temptations we’ve got to watch out for as believers: LEGALISM on the one hand, yes, but LICENTIOUSNESS on the other. Dictionary.com defines “licentiousness” as “a throwing off of restraint; wanton disregard or transgression of laws, rules, or moral norms.” It’s related to the word “LICENSE”, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as ‘disregard for law or propriety; abuse of freedom’.” See, we’re still talking about FREEDOM again this morning; last week the sermon title was “Freedom: USE it or LOSE it”, but this MORNING Paul’s gonna warn us: “it’s not JUST about “using” our Christian freedom; it’s about HOW we use it”. Specifically, Paul will say, “you were called to freedom, [yes]. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh”. Don’t use your LIBERTY as a LICENSE for LAWLESSNESS. Commentator Phillip Ryken notes, “Whereas legalism demands responsibility without freedom, license grants freedom without responsibility.” (Ryken, 217) Got that? The dangers of BOTH - Parents: if you govern the house with legalism - all responsibility ZERO freedom; your kid’s 18 and he still needs your permission to use the bathroom - how’s that kid gonna turn out? Either as a ROBOT or a REBEL. Either way, it’s a lose-lose. But on the OTHER hand, if you parent by giving nothing but LICENSE - “free-range kids”, with NO boundaries - how they gonna turn out? They’re either gonna learn to parent themselves, and grow to CRAVE the boundaries that you never gave them, and ironically THEY’LL turn out to be legalists… or they’ll wind up DEAD. MY 3-year old son, Bo, with no boundaries? I give him less than 2 minutes, to find a way to KILL himself.
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And actually Paul’s gonna say this morning, “You might not REALIZE it, but that’s exactly what your SIN is doing to you SPIRITUALLY, when you give it license to run free, unchecked in your life: sin will KILL you, spiritually.”
So Paul wants to keep us out of BOTH ditches this morning - we renounce LEGALISM, but we ALSO reject LICENTIOUSNESS; we will not use our Christian liberty as a license for lawlessness.
Which brings up the CENTRAL driving question Paul’s gonna answer for us here: “Then what ARE we freed to do?” He’s already told us: “Christ DIDN’T free you so you could return again to a yoke of slavery to the LAW”, and he’ll add in v13 here, “and DON’T use your freedom as an excuse to indulge the FLESH,” your SINFUL desires; RATHER… WHAT? How SHOULD we, positively, use our newfound freedom in Christ?
Paul’s gonna answer in FOUR ways here.
(SCRIPTURE:) Let’s read it together now; Would you STAND with me as you’re able… Galatians 5:13-25 [Bibles… Info Bar…]:
“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. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 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. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 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. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.”
This is the word of God… Seated…
What does it mean, what does it LOOK like, practically now - Paul gave us lots of THEOLOGY for 4 ½ chapters; now he’s gonna finally APPLY it for us - how are we to WALK OUT our freedom in Christ, in everyday life?
4 Ways; 4 practical exhortations now.
But real quick, but SO important, before we even dive in and unpack ‘em: we need to remember - I’d be remiss not to remind you - that ALL of Paul’s injunctions he’s going to commend to us here, are but the RESPONSES of a heart that has FIRST received God’s GRACE, his free, unearned GIFT of salvation in Christ. We’re picking up the letter this morning in ch5, but we can’t forget that Paul’s spent 4 ½ chapters PRIOR to this now, making sure we understand the GOSPEL: that it is NOT by our works that we are forgiven and freed, but by faith in Christ’s finished work on our behalf. So any good works produced by US are not the REASON for our salvation; they are the RESULT of it. The RESPONSE. It may just seem like semantics, but this is EVERYTHING to Paul, and to orthodox Christianity:
The Judaizers preached Jesus + Works ⇒ Salvation
The BIBLE preaches Jesus + NOTHING ⇒ Salvation + FRUIT
Notice that: elsewhere Paul does call them “works”; he says in Ephesians 2, “we are saved not BY works, but by grace through faith… and yet we’re saved FOR works” - we’ve been spiritually born again, “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared… that we should walk in them.”
But this morning, so as to avoid ALL confusion, Paul doesn’t even call the RESULT, the RESPONSE here, the OUT-cropping of our saving faith “WORKS”; instead, he calls it “FRUIT”. What’s the difference?
Well, YOU can produce “works” on your own, without hardly ANY help from God. But can you make FRUIT? What IS fruit? It is the natural product - that’s why we call it PRODUCE - it’s the product of a healthy tree. Jesus employed the same metaphor in John 15 when he told us “I am the VINE; YOU’re just the BRANCHES; so if you abide in me, and I in you, [you will] bear much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (v5).
Fruit is always a product; remember high school chemistry? Where you had reactants, on the LEFT hand side of the equation, that you mixed together in a chemical reaction to produce… PRODUCTS, on the RIGHT hand side of the equation - fruit is a PRODUCT, of abiding in CHRIST, and having HIM abiding in YOU, his SPIRIT. That’s where we’re headed.
But I mention that right up FRONT, because SOME of you, recovering legalists, are gonna be tempted this morning to try and turn the FRUIT of the Spirit into just another WORK of YOU. And I can see some of you already warming your PENS up to take copious NOTES, “Alright, GIVE it to me, Pastor: ‘8 Steps to JOY’... ‘The 10 Practices of PATIENCE’”, and if you’re not CAREFUL, you’re gonna miss the entire POINT this morning. You can no more produce SPIRITUAL fruit than you can LITERAL fruit; you might as well try and grow a BANANA out your belly button! Only the Spirit of GOD can produce the FRUIT of godliness in your life.
So, now, IF, as Paul told us back in v1, we have been freed BY Christ... and we’ve been freed FROM our BONDAGE to the LAW, v3… The question we now turn to is: “What, then, are we freed FOR… freed TO DO now?”
And Paul offers us FOUR answers:
First, (#1-) In Christ, we are free to SERVE IN LOVE. (vv13-15)
Paul OPENS with what we’re NOT free to do, namely, to SIN - “you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom [to serve] the flesh”.
Paul says, “Look, we’ve been freed FROM sin, not TO sin!”
If you ask, “Well why bother avoiding SIN, if Christ has already forgiven us?” then you kinda prove you haven’t really been forgiven at ALL, you don’t understand at ALL what Jesus came and DIED for - to FREE you from. It’s like asking, “Now that I’ve got an ANTIDOTE, what’s to stop me from drinking this POISON ALL the time?” Listen: Jesus died so you wouldn’t HAVE to drink it anymore! It’s not GOOD for you… I’m SICK right now; if there was a MEDICINE out there that could TREAT the common cold (which, how is there NOT, by the way; I mean, we’ve created artificial intelligence that can perform BRAIN surgery, but we’ve come up with NOTHING to fight the most pervasive disease on the planet; and don’t even TRY to tell me DAY-quil or MUCINEX - they’re all worthless; but here’s my point): even if we HAD a remedy, who’s gonna argue, “Well what’s to stop me NOW from trying to catch a cold ALL the time?” Why would ya WANT to?!
Paul says the same thing about SIN here, and over in Romans 6 as well; he asks rhetorically, “Now that we’ve been FORGIVEN, do we just go on SINNING so that GRACE may ABOUND? NO WAY! “How can we who died to sin go on now still living in it?” Paul says, “our old self was crucified with [Christ] in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” (Rom 6:1-6)
We’re free FROM sin… FOR what? V13b now:
SERVICE; to “SERVE one another through LOVE”.
Now let’s just PAUSE before we even discuss this “serving in love”, to note that Paul offers us this admonition before he’s even said a WORD about the fruit of the Spirit yet. I point that out NOT to advise you to TRY serving others in love APART from the Holy Spirit; I don’t recommend it. In fact, to the extent that God IS love, and 1 John 4:8 tells us he IS, then for your serving to be TRULY loving, it MUST be done not so much by YOU as by God’s SPIRIT at work THROUGH you (and interestingly, the GREEK for v13 here reads, “serve one another through THE love”, with a definite article; I believe Paul’s talking about the love of GOD at work THROUGH you).
But my point in pointing OUT that we haven’t even been introduced to the fruit of the Spirit yet is simply to say: we don’t have to FEEL loving… and joyful… we’re not supposed to WAIT until we EXPERIENCE perfect peace… or patience… before we SERVE one another in LOVE. “Go ahead and SERVE,” Paul says, “and let your HEART catch up with your HANDS.”
You say, “WAIT a minute; Paul says to serve through LOVE; that’s HEART, right?” How did JESUS define love? “Greater love has NO one than THIS: that he…” what? Feel all warm and fuzzy about his neighbor? No, “that he LAY DOWN HIS LIFE” for another. And that’s exactly what Jesus did for US, on the CROSS. He didn’t just DEFINE love for us; he EXEMPLIFIED it; he perfectly EMBODIED it. Love is ACTION. It is SERVING. 1 John 4:10 - “this is love: …that God” - what? “Caught FEELINGS” for us? No- that he “sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”; to DIE for us. It’s ACTION. And we are called to SERVE one another through THAT love, HIS love.
Why? Because v14: “the whole law is fulfilled in this one word”: love.
Now, two QUESTIONS you oughta ask at this point:
First of all, “the whole LAW?! Paul, I thought you just spent 4 ½ chapters convincing us that we no longer NEED the law?! We’re no longer UNDER the law! What GIVES?” There are TWO ways of making sense of what Paul’s DOING here: ONE is simply to see him as appealing here to the Galatians on their OWN terms; he’s saying, “You’re RIGHT; we AREN’T under the law anymore… but just for the sake of argument, since y’all have become so OBSESSED with the law; don’t you REALIZE that the way to fulfill ALL of it isn’t through circumcision or festival observance or special kosher diets, but through LOVE! Weren’t you LISTENING when JESUS summed up all the law and prophets with this one command: LOVE?!”
But there’s a SECOND way to understand Paul’s rationale here, and that’s to recognize that what Paul has said the law was USELESS for, specifically, was JUSTIFYING us - bringing us into RIGHT RELATIONSHIP with GOD; the law can’t DO it; as a matter of fact all the law CAN do on THAT front, is show us just how NOT right with God we really ARE, by convicting us of our SIN. But Paul DOESN’T say the law is useless ALTOGETHER, as in, serves NO purpose. Remember what he said in 1 Timothy 1:8- “Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully”. What does THAT mean? It means you use it NOT for justification (not to try and EARN your good standing with God), but for SANCTIFICATION - for pursuing godliness in every aspect of your life now. The law shows us how to DO that. And specifically, Christ’s SUMMARY of the law: “You wanna fulfill ALL the law? Simple: just obey this one command: LOVE”. It’s not EASY, but it is SIMPLE (those are two VERY different things, aren’t they?).
But that leads us to the SECOND question you oughta be asking here of v14: “Wait a minute, I thought when that lawyer ASKED Jesus the question in Matthew 22 about the ‘greatest commandment’, that Jesus answered with TWO commandments. And the one PAUL mentions here isn’t even the GREATEST of the two! Jesus listed “loving GOD” as #1, and loving OTHERS as SECOND. Is Paul at odds with JESUS here?
Let me answer by asking you THIS: What do you think the best way, the single most important MEDIUM available to you, for showing your love for God - what is it? Attending CHURCH on Sunday? Singing your HEART out in praise and worship? Diligently studying his WORD, the Bible? Passionately pouring your heart out to God in PRAYER? These are all WONDERFUL, indispensable expressions of our love for God.
But there’s only ONE thing that God wants from us SO much that he put it right there in the same sentence, the same BREATH as “Love ME, God”; Jesus said, the SECOND commandment is really just LIKE it: “love OTHERS”. A few chapters LATER in Matthew, Jesus actually says, “To the extent that you DO love and serve others, ESPECIALLY those in greatest NEED - ‘as you did it for one of the least of these… you did it for me’”. You love me BY loving OTHERS.
There’s only ONE commandment that Jesus LEFT us with, just before he went to the cross; he said, “Little children, I’m only WITH you for a little while longer…. [But] A new commandment I give to you: that you” WHAT? John 13:34- “love one another”.
There’s only ONE commandment that according to 1 John 4:20, is so inextricably LINKED with our love for God, that to CLAIM you love God WITHOUT it instantly proves that you’re a LIAR: “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother… cannot[a] love God.”
Why? Because God loves his children SO much, that you can’t actually love HIM without loving THEM. Tell me you love ME, you just can’t stand Ellery, Elijah and Bo, and I’ll tell YOU where you can STICK your “love”. I love my kids too much; it’s IMPOSSIBLE to love me without loving them. And I’m not HALF the father that GOD is!
You can sing your HEART out here on SUNDAY, but if you are harboring hidden resentments against a brother or sister in the next section over, your worship is WORTHLESS.
You can read the Bible cover to COVER this week, and FILL the margins with impassioned notes, but if you don’t live it OUT, if you see a brother or sister in need and merely respond, “I’ll PRAY for you”, without actually GIVING them the clothes they need, the FOOD they need, according to the very same BIBLE you are so earnestly devoted to, your faith is DEAD. Your so-called “LOVE” for God is LIFE-less.
You can claim to believe the gospel, that Christ died and rose to save us from sin and bring us back to God, but if you don’t love your lost FAMILY members, and NEIGHBORS, and CO-WORKERS, and FRIENDS enough to SHARE that gospel with them, and invite THEM into a love relationship with their heavenly Father by acknowledging Jesus as THEIR Lord and Savior, then not only have you failed to love THEM, I think you have to seriously question whether or not you really love GOD at all. “If you LOVE me you will” - what? “KEEP my commandments” (Jn 14:15). ““Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” (Mk 16:15); that’s a COMMAND.
And if we love HIM, we’ll love THEM. And love one ANOTHER; “By this,” Jesus said, “ALL people will know that you are my disciples,” that you BELONG to me, and that you love ME - “if you have love for one another”” (Jn 13:35).
On the OTHER hand, Paul says now in v15: “if you bite and devour each another, you’re gonna consume - RAVAGE, DESTROY - one another”. Ryken notes (218-19): “The words here suggest that [the Galatians] were acting like a pack of wild animals. Their behavior was beastly… When they traded liberty for license, it turned out to be a license to kill.”
Love builds up (1 Cor 8:1); enmity tears down.
“But,” Paul pleads with them now in v16, “you don’t HAVE to act like beasts anymore”, BECAUSE…
#2- In Christ, we are now FREE to WALK BY THE SPIRIT. (vv16-18, 25)
“walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Few things to point out here:
First of all, it’s a statement of FACT. Not a hypothetical possibility, “walk by the Spirit and you MIGHT NOT… you’ll have a good CHANCE not to gratify…”; NO, you WILL not give in to the LUSTS of the flesh.
Second, notice the ORDER here; J.D. Greear (“Freed to Be Alive” sermon) points out that Paul does NOT say “ ‘Escape the lusts of the flesh and then you’ll be filled with the Spirit.’ That’s how most of us see it: If I avoid these sins, I’ll stay filled with the Spirit. But Paul says that walking in the Spirit comes first. That’s because without the Spirit, you’ll never be able to say “no” to the lusts of the flesh.”
THIRD, this word FOR “desires” or “LUSTS” in vv16 & 17, in Greek is epithumia. It literally means to “OVER-desire”. And Tim Keller points out that whereas we typically think of SIN-ful desire as a normal-sized longing for a bad thing, the BIBLE most often depicts it is as excessive desire for a GOOD thing. Think about it, and to DO so, let’s actually take a glance down at Paul’s LIST in vv19-21:
*“sexual immorality, sensuality” - what IS that? Is the desire for SEX BAD? No way! It’s GODLY; it came from HIM! God WIRED that desire into us! But porneia, aselgia - that’s when the desire goes HAYWIRE, out of CONTROL.
*“enmity” - is ANGER bad? Not always; GOD gets angry all the TIME in the Bible; He even encourages us in Ephesians 4:26 to “Be angry [just] do not sin”; and that’s what ENMITY and STRIFE are: OVER-anger; UNCHECKED anger; “anger gone WILD”.
*How about “jealousy”, “rivalries” - is COMPETITION bad? Paul himself says elsewhere, “Life is a RACE, and only ONE runner gets the GOLD; I’m running to WIN this thing!” (1 Cor 9:24-27) But “jealousy” and “rivalries” stem, once again, from that OVER-desire, to “win at ALL COSTS”.
*”DRUNKENNESS” - is ALCOHOL bad? God MADE it, Psalm 104:15, to “gladden the heart of man”. So “DRINK your wine with a MERRY heart”, Ecclesiastes 9:7 encourages us. But methe here, once again, is that OVER-desire for a good thing; the CRAVING, the NEED.
So ask yourself this morning: what do I crave? What do I OVER- desire? The thing WITHOUT which I can’t even imagine being happy, content? It need not be a BAD thing; Keller points out: the BEST things make for the best IDOLS - sex, money, work, family, booze, football, CHURCH… what is it for YOU, your epithumia, your “lust of the FLESH”?
Once you’ve IDENTIFIED it, your next step is to realize that the best way to COMBAT it - the ONLY way! - is to walk by the SPIRIT. You can’t just REMOVE that desire; you’ve got to REPLACE it… what Thomas Chalmers called “The EXPULSIVE Power of a NEW Affection”; the best way to beat a really strong desire is with an even STRONGER one. That’s what the Holy SPIRIT does when He comes into our life; He gives us new AFFECTIONS, a new LOVE, namely, a love for CHRIST! That’s what - or WHO, we should say - the Spirit desires, in v17: “the desires of the flesh are against the desires of the Spirit”. The two are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE; “opposed to each other”, Paul says. 1 John 2:15 - you can either love worldly things, or you can love GOD… but you can’t love BOTH.
So how do we CHOOSE? Brother, sister: we must WALK by the Spirit. What does that MEAN? How do we DO it?
Paul gives us some hints here. First of all, v18, it means “you are LED” by the Spirit. When the Holy Spirit comes into your life, he becomes your “G.P.S.” - God’s Positioning System. That’s why Paul can say in 18B - “you are not UNDER the law” anymore; remember the law was a MAP, to point us in the right direction - away from sin and toward godliness. But a map’s only as good as your ability to READ and FOLLOW it. It has absolutely no power to actually STEER the SHIP. Now, I know the GPS on our phones TODAY don’t EITHER per se (YET… although I suspect in the next few years they WILL start syncing up with newer cars, and you’ll be able to just press a button and Siri will drive FOR you), but even today, there’s a WORLD of difference between an old-school, static, paper fold-out map, and a DYNAMIC, “barking out directions in real time”, always “RECALCULATING for the quickest possible route” based on traffic GPS, that beautiful little blue arrow that shows me EXACTLY where I am in the world - we went down to “middle of nowhere” northern Arkansas last weekend for the kids fall break - and I say, “Middle of Nowhere”, because I truly STILL have CLOSE to no idea, no BEARINGS for where exactly we WERE - I don’t think you can even GET “off the grid” anymore, but we were CLOSE; it was 2 lane roads for MOST of the drive - and I turned to Polly at one point and said, “Can you IMAGINE trying to navigate down here with the old paper maps?” The way DOWN we drove MOST of it in the DARK!
That’s the difference between the LAW and the SPIRIT; the law can convict you of sin (“I’ve got no idea where we are, but I know one thing: we’re LOST!”; a map can show you THAT much), but it has no power to LEAD you, DYNAMICALLY to the right path. The Holy Spirit DOES. And He lives WITHIN us. If we’ll LISTEN.
And OBEY. v25: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. ”
Phillip Ryken comments (239): “In this verse, as he so often does, the apostle Paul follows an indicative with an imperative; he tells us to become what we already are.” → He says, “If you’re in CHRIST, then you DO “live by the Spirit”; you were formerly “DEAD in the sins and trespasses in which you once walked… But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us… has made us alive together with Christ”; BY MEANS OF His indwelling Holy SPIRIT; the Spirit is the animating person and POWER that brings new spiritual LIFE to the heart of the believer. SO, Paul exhorts us here: “WALK in it”! “Become who you ARE”; WALK in the life and power now AVAILABLE to you by virtue of the Holy SPIRIT who is at work WITHIN you!
Ryken continues on, “The Greek term for ‘keeping in step’ (in v25; stoichomen) comes from the military. It means to stay in formation… The Holy Spirit is God’s drill sergeant. It is his job to keep us in line. As he barks out the cadence, we keep our place in the formation, running in step with his commands.” [** “Turn Left”…. “Wrong Left…”; “Make a U-Turn…”; “Not an ILLEGAL U-Turn…”** → THAT’s the Holy Spirit; leading and guiding us. But even MORE than that: to the extent that we do in fact occasionally - and not JUST occasionally; but INCREASINGLY over time; the life of the believer ought to be marked by gradual, yes, but NOTICEABLE change, improvement, SANCTIFICATION over time. By God’s grace, and through the transformative power of his SPIRIT (he doesn’t just “bark the orders”; he gives us the strength and wisdom to OBEY them! And to the extent we DO…) we ought not to be the people we were a YEAR ago…. Or THREE years ago… or CERTAINLY TEN years ago.
We’ll get to both of Paul’s lists here - the vices and the virtues - NEXT week, but Paul includes a similar vice list in his first letter to the Corinthians: “neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,[c] 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (6:9-11) - he says the same thing HERE: “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God”, heaven.
But in the 1 Corinthians passage, he then reassures us with the GOOD news of the GOSPEL: “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” The Holy Spirit APPLIES the “washing”, “sanctifying”, “justifying” work of CHRIST on the cross to each of our hearts PERSONALLY, when we trust in Christ by faith, and He comes to live within us. Such that we are no LONGER “idolaters” and “adulterers” and “drunkards” - you may slip UP. But that sin no longer DEFINES you; it no longer ENSLAVES you. You don’t “make a practice, a HABIT of it”. At the moment of your justification, Christ freed you from the PENALTY of that sin, and every moment SINCE then of your SANCTIFICATION, His Spirit has been gradually over time freeing you of the POWER of that sin, the GRIP it holds over your life. What was an “OVER-desire”, is now being brought under - SURRENDERED to - the “desires” and power of the Spirit. And he’s CHANGING you. That doesn’t mean PER-fection; but it does mean DI-rection; you are “trending in the right direction”, spiritually, toward HOLINESS.
But I want to end this morning by simply reminding you of that word of caution I STARTED with: NONE of this is YOUR doing. Paul doesn’t say, “You wanna fulfill the law, please God, avoid the flesh…” - you better get your spiritual BUTTS in gear! “Work, work, work” - NO.
As Keller puts it: “there’s a spiritual discipline that runs DEEPER than simply trying harder” (“Galatians 5 sermon”). What is it?
DYING. Dying to self, the OLD self, with its sinful nature and “desires of the flesh”, so you can live unto the Spirit, live unto CHRIST instead. “ I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. ” (Gal 2:20) His Spirit.
Does He live in YOU? Unless he does, you’ve got NO shot of overcoming your sin, and living the life for which you were in fact CREATED: life with GOD.
But all that can change today: turn from your sin, trust in Jesus, and be saved and SANCTIFIED, filled with His Spirit… so you can walk BY the Spirit, and become who you already are.
Let’s pray.