Galatians 5.13-26: Walking in the Spirit of God
This sermon was preached on April 14th, 2024.
13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
When I say the word “Spirit” what comes to mind? It could be any number of things. We can say ‘spirit’ and mean ghost. We can say ‘spirit’ and mean alcohol. We can say ‘spirit’ and mean a general attitude or energy we're bringing to the table “that's the spirit!”
But what does Scripture mean when it says “Spirit?” 1st and foremost, “Spirit” means Holy Spirit, the life-giving presence of God. The Holy Spirit isn’t just an energy, like God’s super power. The Holy Spirit is God. So when Scripture speaks in Spirit this way, think of it as capital S Spirit.
So to read things like “walk in the Spirit” or “living by the Spirit” is living in a way that is from and to God. A way of life that finds its source in him and finds its goal in him. Which is good news for us. God is life—life unbounded and spilling over, without measure. Which means that God is calling us into a life lived tapping into a source of nourishment that cannot run dry.
And to find him as our goal is to not limit our live’s purposes to what we can create or see. Humanity has a longing at its core that stretches beyond what we can create. To put it in the terms that Scripture does: God has placed eternity in the hearts of mankind—a desire that cannot be fulfilled by the limited and finite things of this world. And to find God as that ultimate goal and ultimate good—that’s what God is calling us to. Life in the Spirit.
That’s what we’re talking about this morning. What this passage in Galatians leads us into understanding: living a life fueled by God. Drawing on who He is and what he’s done, and finding ourselves shaped in who we are and what we are called to do.
The Community of the Spirit: (13-15)
The context of our freedom and living fueled by God is designed to be in the context of community. Because living the kind of life God has for us as individuals only happens in relationship with other people. In the church, that's other people who are also created in the image and likeness of God with dignity and worth just like you, images of God who are being redeemed from the ways that sin has marred and misshapen us.
So the Spirit-led life turns us toward others—turned toward others to see when we cheer for one another in victories. When we’re there for one another in sickness. When we help to clean up and encourage after failure. When we challenge each other to remain grounded in the gospel.
But this is not a turning toward others to see them as enemies or people to be used for our own purposes, or people we’re in competition with. The message that the false teachers had brought was one that had led the believers to turn on each other. It had created a scale that everyone was putting each other (and themselves on). And this had been disastrous. When Paul tries to describe it in v15, he talks about it in terms like an animal. They had begun to “bite and devour.” A loss of the gospel as the center had become a loss of their humanity.
The point is being made here: “you think you’re becoming more religious and more devout’ but the proof is in how all of your new religiosity leads you to treat others. Does it make you more harsh?” It’s a question for all of us when we’re pursuing anything, really. What fruit are springing from the water we’re sinking our roots into? Is it fruit that turns us toward others in love?
That’s what it means to live in the community of the Spirit: to be turned toward others in love, seeing everything else as tools and instruments to lead us in loving others. Our calling is to submit everything to the love of God in Christ. To serve one another humbly in love. Theology has consequences, and misconceptions about God and the Gospel will inevitably show themselves later down the road—usually first and foremost in how we treat others.
Which means that the reverse is also true. One of the primary ways we can know that we are living lives drawing on God as our nourishment—this life in the Spirit—is how we think of and treat others.
Walking in the Spirit: (16-18)
Paul is saying: build your life on what God has done in Jesus. God has given you his life giving presence so that you can call upon him as father, know yourselves as his children, and move forward in that. Don’t keep coming back to the front door, refusing to walk into the house. Stop wondering if God really loves you. By faith in Jesus, that’s all settled.
That’s why he uses the image of walking in the Spirit. We are meant to move past the stage of wondering if we have God’s love. We don’t have to become anything for him to love us, we don't have to keep operating as if it’s an if. Walk in that. Live as if it’s true, because it is.
Do you know how they used to train elephants in the circus? They’d get them when they were babies and tie a heavy chain to their leg, with the other in staked in the ground. The baby elephant would try and try to get free, eventually giving in.
From then on, the chain could be replaced by a rope. And the elephant, the largest, most powerful land animal in the world, could be guided with a tiny little rope that the elephant could easily snap. Why? Because the elephant remembered the chain. It remembered the pain. Tied to its leg was just a rope. But the elephant couldn’t imagine the power within it because it could only remember the chain. So it walked in bondage.
In Christ, we are free! The power of sin over us now is a string, not a chain. Break free. Draw on the power that is our in Christ, and walk.
Walking in the Spirit will require us to know what the opposite thing is: what v16 calls gratifying the desires of the flesh. When he says “flesh” here, the Apostle Paul is speaking about human nature marred by sin. He isn’t saying “flesh” in the sense of “body”—like the body is bad but the soul is good. He’s saying that to “walk in the flesh” is to live as if the gospel isn’t true. To live dominated by the things that Jesus died to save us from.
Jesus has saved us according to the love of God for us, and invites us to find that love as our source of nourishment. To stay planted in that. To sink our roots deeply, like a tree planting by streams of water. That’s what Psalm1 was about—staying planted ‘on the law of God’ in the OT was to not just do a bunch of stuff that God had told his people to do, but to stay planted in God. To believe what he says is true, to look to him for forgiveness, transformation and hope.
The Fruit of the Spirit: (19-26)
The question isn’t if we are going to be like trees bearing fruit, it’s where we are going to sink our roots, what kind of fruit we’re going to bear.
You’re going to speak and act. You’re going to desire and make decisions. But what is all that coming from? Is it driven by selfishness? Is it driven by shame or insecurity? Or is it driven by the reality of God’s love for you? He’s intention to not leave you lost, but to find you and save you? Is it rooted in you being his delighted-in child?
One of the ways we can know what they’re driven by is what they produce. I touched on that earlier, and Paul fleshes it out more here in v19, when he talks about the ‘acts of flesh.’ If these are the fruit that we are seeing, then we can be sure they are being driven and nourished by something other than Jesus.
As Paul says, they are ‘obvious.’ Notice a few things about this list—you can break the things listed up into three categories.
Treating others or ourselves as things. Sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery. Drunkenness and orgies. This is using others for our own pleasure, and debasing ourselves as things. This isn’t God saying “if it feels good, it’s sin.” It’s God saying “a life that pursues these things as ultimate is one that is not springing from the Spirit of God.
Ways of living that treat God like a thing to be manipulated. Idolatry and witchcraft. What are idolatry and witchcraft? Trying to use God or the things of creation to contain and manipulate that power.
Being turned toward others in opposition. Hatred, discord. Jealousy. Fits of rage. Selfish ambition. Dissensions and factions. Envy.
These are the kinds of things that evidence hearts that are focused and centered on anything other then the gospel, which is what Paul means when he says that “those that live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Being turned toward others in opposition, treating God like a thing, treating others like things—these will not last. They lead to destruction and God will not allow them to continue unaddressed. It’s not the way of life God has for us, and they will be judged and found wanting.
But in the same way, a life founded and fueled on the Spirit of God—focused on the Gospel—bears fruit, and leads to the things that matter and will last. “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
We can know when we are living out of the reality about who we are in Jesus when we see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, goodness, and self-control. It’s the evidence of the things that are springing from us being rooted in what the gospel says about us.
The fascinating thing about living by The Spirit of God is that it is a calling to live out something that has happened outside of ourselves. We belong to Jesus by faith, and so we have already been crucified to the flesh with its passion and desires. Thus our calling is not to make something happen, it's to live out of what is ours. A calling not to look within for our nourishment and strength, but to look to God.
I saw a video recently of a bear named Ina from Romania. Ina had been kept in a tiny cage in a zoo for 20 years before being rescued and relocated to a reserve.
The video I saw was from about 7 years after her release into freedom and she was walking in a small circle, around and around. A circle the size of the cage she spent her first 20 years in. Apparently, when Ina was stressed, this is what she would do. Nothing was holding her in, but despite being surrounded by open forest, she was still stuck in that cage. The bars weren’t there, but they might as well have been.
God is opening wide open spaces for us to live in. The freedom to live and feel and explore and love. And when we’re stressed, we will be tempted to put ourselves right back in the cage, at least in our hearts. But don’t! That’s walking in what Jesus has freed us from.
Walk in the freedom of his love. Walk in the Spirit and watch what God brings to life.