How to Live the Christian Life Apart from the Law

LETTER TO THE GALATIANS

How to Live the Christian Life Apart from the Law—
In the Power of the Spirit of Christ!
Part Two
(5:13-6:10)

INTRODUCTION

Throughout Galatians, Paul has been claiming that we are not only to be saved by faith but also to live the Christian life daily by faith. What kind of life is the life of faith? It is the life led by and lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. So how do I know whether or not I am truly living according to the Spirit or according to the flesh? How do I know if I am being spiritual or carnal? Just like we have thermometers which gauge the temperature outside, so we have spiritual thermometers which gauge a person’s spirituality.

"But," you might assert, "I thought that we were focusing now on what it means to be sons and daughters of God!" Precisely. We are. Living by faith and living in the power of the Holy Spirit, that is the Spirit of God's Son, is precisely what it means to be a son or daughter of God. According to Rom. 8:14, the sons of God are being led by whom?

INDICATORS OF SPIRITUALITY AND CARNALITY

Or True Characteristics of the Sons and Daughters of God (5:19-23)

Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are:
[the area of sex]
Immorality, Impurity, Sensuality
[the area of worship]
Idolatry, Sorcery
[the area of personal relationships]
Enmities, Strife, Jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, (21) envying, drunkenness, carousing,and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Indicators of Carnality

Paul first lists the deeds of the flesh. If these deeds characterize your life, then you are fleshly, you are carnal. These carnal deeds (which are actually even intensified by following the Law) are

Sex

Immorality
Impurity
Sensuality

These first three indicators focus on sex. God created sex for the purpose of reproducing the human race and also for developing intimacy between a husband and his life. Unfortunately today we see such a perversion of sex promoted by the U.S. entertainment industry. It is almost impossible to watch a movie or TV show without some kind of sensual scene depicted. That even applies to children’s shows. When my children were little, we insisted that they watch only G-rated shows on TV. The shows, though, were not the problem. The commercials during the shows became the problem. My kids would be playing in the floor in front of the TV ignoring what was on TV, when all of a sudden a sensual commercial would pop up on the TV. You could tell that there was really evil operating because it was like the kids automatically stopped what they were doing and started watching the commercial.

Today, 2 elements regarding sex are permeating American society today which God claims destroy society. First, there is the element of "freedom" regarding sexual practices. Bring up the idea of sexual abstinence and people begin to freak out. "The young people are going to engage in sex anyway; so let's give them CONDOMS! And if you don't give them condoms, you're going to kill them!!!" Well, in the continent of Africa which is being ravaged by AIDS, the country of Kenya is going against political correctness and promoting abstinence among its unmarried people. Well, guess which country in Africa is stopping to spread of AIDS? That's right, Kenya. Our attitude promoting sexual freedom is like a person dying of poison and giving them more poison.

Second, in today's society, there is not only acceptance of homosexuality; there is also a promotion of homosexuality. People claim that we have no right to keep gays from getting married. The funny thing is that this argument is based upon the idea that right and wrong truly exist; otherwise, you couldn't say we had no right to stop them from marrying. Well, if a standard of right and wrong exists, it must come from a perfect God from outside our universe. He has communicated to us that not only is gay marriage wrong but that homosexuality itself is wrong.

Worship

Idolatry
Sorcery

The second casualty of the fleshly life is worship. I am all for contemporary music in a worship service. The only problem with the contemporary church is that in many cases it is a mile wide and an inch deep. We are going to pay severely for this superficiality one day. The people in the churches are not going to be able to handle the great stresses Satan is trying to deliver to our churches. The shallow sermons we hear today will come back one day to haunt us.

It is interesting that before John describes the tribulation about to fall upon the 7 churches of the Roman province of Asia, he first points out their weaknesses and encourages them to buck up. Why? If there are cracks in their foundations, they are going to crumble when the stresses of the Domitian persecution hit them.

Jesus speaks of the 2 responses to His teachings. One man hears Christ’s words and obeys them. The other man hears Christ’s words and yet does not obey them. Jesus compares the first man to a house which is built upon solid rock and the second man to a house built upon the sand. The rains descend, the floods come, the winds beat against both houses. The first house withstands the onslaught because it is built upon the rock, Jesus’ words, whereas the second house collapses.

The truth is that we are one of these 2 houses and we are going to experience one of those 2 fates. Now we don’t get to choose whether or not we are building a house. We don’t get to choose whether or not the rains, winds, etc. will hit the house. All we get to choose is what foundation we build our house upon, Jesus’ words (the rock) or our own ideas (the sand). There is not a third option. The choice is ours. From that point on, everything is out of our control—the elements and the final destiny of the house we build.

What I find encouraging is that many of the contemporary church leaders are sensing the shallowness of their movement. Willow Creek Church has been a leader in the contemporary church movement. Recently it partnered with the Church Discipleship Ministry of The Navigators, one of the premier discipleship organizations in the world. The reason is that its pastor claimed that although the church had numerous participants who were actively engaged in the ministries of the church, they were not growing spiritually. As a result, genuine discipleship is being promoted in that church.

Personal Relations

Enmities
Strife
Jealousy
Outbursts of anger
Disputes
Dissensions
Factions
Envying
Drunkenness
Carousing
Other attitudes like the 15 mentioned above.

Have you ever noticed that some Christians who claim to be so righteous at times appear to be in the most amount of conflict. They have the attitude that they are right and everybody else is wrong. That right there should tell them something.

Unfortunately, I've seen ministers who had the mind-set that they were righteous and the rest of the staff, in fact the entire church with the exception of their little "prayer" group is in the wrong. They had the "gift of prophecy" in which they view everything in terms of black and white, black being those things which I disagree with and white being those things I agree with. They gather around them poor souls who will inform them constantly that they are "God's man!" Such ministers, such people are in for a tragic fall.

I have discovered that if I and someone else are in conflict, I have a 50% chance of being the one in the wrong. If I am in conflict with 2 other people, I have a 66 2/3% chance of being in the wrong. And so forth and so forth. When the WHOLE WORLD IS AGAINST ME, then it is most likely that I am the one who needs to change. You and I aren't Jesus.

Indicators of Spirituality

The second list Paul presents describes the spiritual man, the person following and being energized by the Spirit of Christ Himself. Paul says that the FRUIT (notice singular, not plural) of the Spirit (the life produced by the Spirit of Christ) IS (again singular, not plural)

Love (agape love, the sacrificial love of God seen in the death of Christ)
Joy [one of the primary attitudes in heaven (see Matt. 25:21, 23)]
Peace (the sense of well-being which comes about only after a person has come into a right relationship with God--the realization that one day everything WILL be OK)
Patience (God has put up with me for 57 years and counting; I think I can put up with you)
Kindness (not only doing the right thing but doing it in a kind and gracious way. Melanie in Gone With the Wind had the right idea)
Goodness (just plain good; avoids evil. My landlady in Austin was from Sweden; she and her husband had served as missionaries in the Belgian Congo during the 20's and 30's. She was so godly. I will never forget the time when I told her that I was reading The Screwtape Letters, Lewis' story of a senior devil advising a junior devil, one of the Christian classics in the last 100 years. When she heard me describing the book as being about devils, she said: "Put it away!" It was so sweet but also such an indicator of her goodness.)
Faithfulness (Can God just count on you? Can people count on you?)
Gentleness (the image of this powerful Jesus stooping down to bless the little children.)
Self-control (so what if you have temptations. The Spirit lives within you so that you can control yourself. "I couldn't help myself" is a lame excuse on the lips of the Christian.)

Notice several things about this list:

Paul claims that there is no Law against such behavior. No decent government official would ever make a law against such behavior. That is the reason the Law of Moses is unnecessary for the Christian. The Law of Moses was given for the case of lawbreakers: “law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless” (1 Tim. 1:9). The Spirit produces a life which Law is totally unconcerned about.
Paul using the singular form for the word “fruit” (Grk.: karpos, pron. KAR-pahs.) Moreover, he uses the singular verb form “is” (estin, estin, pron. EHS-ten) instead of the plural form of the verb. By this, Paul means that when the Spirit comes into a person’s life and produces His life in that person, a complete life is produced. You can’t be loving and yet impatient and think that you are spiritual. The Spirit produces love AND patience at the same time. You can’t have self-control and yet not be kind and think that you are a spiritual person. The Holy Spirit produces self-control and kindness in us at the same time. The reason is that the Spirit of Christ is producing the life of Christ within us ourselves. Christ is ALWAYS loving and kind, etc., not loving but unkind.

Now just check your life against these 2 lists and see which list best describes you. If the first list best describes you, then you are carnal, fleshy. If the second best describes you, then you are spiritual or are growing to be like Christ.

At this point, many sincere Christians freak out because they are not always loving, not always kind, etc. The real question is whether or not I am growing and maturing in these areas. Hopefully, I am doing better in these areas than I was 5 years ago. Hopefully, in 5 years I will be doing better in these areas then I am doing now. We will be perfect only when Christ returns. In the meantime I should be in process; I should be growing to be more and more like Christ.