Character Produced by the Spirit, Part 2

Transcript

GR 2110
02/4/2018
Character Produced by the Spirit Part 2
Galatians 5:22-26
Gil Rugh

We are at the end of chapter 5 of the book of Galatians in your Bibles. Paul is encouraging the Galatians, the churches there that he established on his first missionary journey have sunk into some chaos, conflict. False teachers have infiltrated. Divisions have occurred. He had to warn them in verse 14, verse 15: “If you bite and devour one another take care you are not consumed by one another;” the self-destructing inner conflict that could go on.

The solution to all of this “But I say” (verse 16) “walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.” The flesh as we talked about, what we are apart from that work of grace in our lives called the “old nature,” the “old man.” He hasn’t been removed or annihilated but his power and authority have been broken in us who have trusted Christ. We have been made new. We have the Spirit of God indwelling us to enable and empower us to live for Him. But we still have the potential to manifest the old ways and that is Paul’s concern. Invoking the Mosaic Law is not a solution. You say “well if we had the law and here is what is required,” that is not the answer.

Verse 18 said “If you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.” This is a new way of life, new provision superior in every way and we have noted better than when Christ walked the earth. We sometimes think, wouldn’t it have been wonderful to have walked the earth with Him. It would have been but remember Jesus told His disciples it would be better for them, it would be that He leave and send the Spirit to indwell them. So we live richly blessed and enabled by God to live for Him.

Let me just read these verses since we have taken some time and broken it up a little bit to draw the contrast. Verse 19: “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident” (they are manifest) “which are immorality, impurities, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissentions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, things like these of which I forewarn you just as I have forewarned you those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” They are not truly believers. That doesn’t mean a believer can never indulge in any of these things. We will talk more about that when we come into chapter 6. They do but if it becomes a practice of a life it raises questions about the reality of the salvation.

Verse 22 in contrast, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit let us walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful challenging one another, envying one another.” In other words there is a conflict and a battle and we don’t want to slip back to the old ways. Things that are characteristic of a person who doesn’t have the Spirit of God to enable him to empower them, have not been set free. You know when God saved us He put us into the body of Christ. “By one Spirit we have all been baptized into one body, the body of Christ.”

The local church, each local church is a manifestation of that body of Christ in that place and being put into the body with other redeemed people who have not yet been perfected becomes a challenge and then you add to that the work of the devil to infiltrate among believers with those of his children who mascarade as angels of light who are there to stir up trouble. We have potential here for difficulty and conflict and that is what Paul has been dealing with and we have seen his frustration. Paul said “You know, sometimes I feel like” (if I can paraphrase) “I might have labored in vain there. I thought you truly trusted Christ and were growing in Him and now with everything going on between the false doctrine that is infiltrating and the unbiblical behavior makes me wonder” and yet on the other side he is confident and this is the struggle that goes on.

So we have been talking about the fruit of the Spirit. What is the manifestation of the Spirit’s control in our lives that we are walking by the Spirit? Remember Peter wrote “we have become partakers of the divine nature.” We have come back to Galatians chapter 2, verse 20 on occasion. “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me.” Not just the Holy Spirit but Christ and so it is His life, the new life we have in Him. “The life which I now live in the flesh” (this physical body) “I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

I am a new person and that doesn’t mean a believer never sins but there is to be new life manifest and in a growing way and our relationship together helps. We have noted so many of these things involve our relationship with one another. It is easy to talk about in very spiritual tones about our relationship with the Lord and how close we walk with Him and how dear our relationship with Him is and all of that should be true but you know it is not true if it is not true in our relationship with one another. We are His family, His children and our relationship with Him is manifest in our relationship with one another.

So the fruit of the Spirit, what the Spirit is producing in our lives. We have looked through the first of these, love, joy, peace, patience. You can see these are things we manifest to one another, the love, the joy that He is producing within spreads to others. Peace – we are to be maintaining the peace the Spirit has brought to us in our relationship with God and our relationship with one another because love is unselfish, patience and that is put to the test by having to, how do I say it, put up with one another.

You know you don’t need patience when everything is going well and the people are treating you so good and doing everything for you and everything is the way you think it ought to be. Well, when do I need patience, this long tempered word? It is the opposite we have noted we have looked at this, short-tempered. One commentator put it this way, “It is the ability to put up with other people even when that is not an easy thing to do.” They don’t do what I would like. They don’t treat me the way I expect to be treated. They haven’t been as thoughtful; they haven’t been as “fill in the blank.” They have even done something that has hurt and then we go and we look and we find as we have this characteristic of God in Christ. They are patient, they are long suffering.

Paul said that “God in mercy saved him so that Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience.” I Timothy 1:16. God has perfect patience. I want to manifest that, the life that I have in Christ having been partaker of divine nature. What is it like if I lose patience? I am bent out of shape. I am upset with fellow believers. How much patience does God have with me? How much patience did He have as Paul expresses about this own testimony before Paul came to know Him and then even after coming to know Him?

We are still growing. This is what keeps us from becoming frustrated with other people, other believers, losing our cool as we would say it, wanting to retaliate, frustrated with them, unhappy with them.

Turn over a few pages to Colossians chapter 1, Colossians chapter 1 and verse 11. In Paul’s prayer he says in verse 9: “We have not ceased to pray for you that you would be filled with the knowledge of His will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. To please Him in all respects bearing fruit in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God. Strengthened with all power according to His glorious might.” There is where the enablement comes from. “Strengthened with all power according to His glorious might.” This is the enabling provision of God for us. “For the attaining of all steadfastness and patience.” Then joyously giving thanks to the Father. We are heirs with the saints as he says in verse 12 in life. We are to live like that and so He gives us the strength and the power to proceed, to be patient with one another. It takes His power, “strengthened with all power according to His glorious might for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience.” It helps me to measure, how am I doing in my growth? Well, how do we put up with one another? That means there are going to be rough edges.

You know I am an expert in what other people do wrong. But as we talked in our previous study the only one I can really deal with is me. So God will give me the strength to grow in patience.

Alright come back to Galatians. Let me just read you one other writer who said, “Patience is the quality of putting up with others even when one is severely tried.” We move on.

Kindness in Galatians 5:22. This is a word frequently used of God in His gracious attitude and the way He deals with sinners in a number of passages. This isn’t being sentimental. This is the kindness of God. Patience and kindness often listed together, that attitude of thoughtfulness, caring. You say about someone, “They are so kind. They treated me with such kindness, thoughtfulness, concern, care. These are how we relate to one another.

You know remember love that we started out these fruits is focused on the other person. These are qualities that are dealing with what would be good for them. How can I help them?

Come over to Ephesians, just after Galatians, a few pages to chapter 4 and again you will see the mixture and the contrast. It is the same thing Paul has done in Galatians. It keeps coming up and coming up. In Ephesians chapter 4, verse 30: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed with the day of redemption.” We believe He came and took up residence within us and He is God’s seal and guarantee that we will ultimately experience the completeness of our redemption. “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ has forgiven you.” You see the kind of context this operates in, the kind of setting where kindness is shown. That is contrary to bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, all kinds of evil but be kind to one another. That means tenderhearted, forgiving. Love overlooks a multitude of sins. I don’t get absorbed with the wrongs that may have been done to me. They may have been truly offenses or wrongs, inconsiderate. That is not to excuse that but that is what someone else does. I can only control what I do. So I am concerned to be kind.

Now everybody can manifest these kinds of kindness when somebody is falling over themselves just to make you the center of everything and doing whatever they can for you. “These qualities get developed under pressure and you see it here. The contrast in situations where verse 31, the natural reaction might be bitterness and all of that. We show kindness. The fact that he puts it in the context of forgiving indicates the same thing. We are to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving. You see in the context as we are fellowshipping and working together and you think if everybody in the body is doing this there won’t be any problems or conflicts. I begin to think of how you ought to be kind toward me. How you ought to be tenderhearted toward me. How you ought to be patient toward me and I put all these things on you but I can’t do anything about that. What I can do is to concentrate on being kind even if you are not being kind and vice versa; so here, the work of the Spirit.

We think we have excuses because of what other people are doing or not doing that put us in a position where it is hard to put up with that. That is why we need what? The might and power of God’s enablement is needed to demonstrate with the right kind of spirit and attitude and conduct in those situations. Even the world responds when somebody is treating them right. We demonstrate uniqueness. We manifest God’s character. And you will note the standard, the end of verse 32 while you are here, “Just as God in Christ has forgiven you.” The standard gets no higher than that.

I want you to function just like I function in dealing with you. Oh, whoa. I don’t know about that. That is what God enables us to do. That is the beauty of it. It is His might, His power. The problem is often I don’t want to and these, not just this one but generally these things. The only time I fail is when I don’t want to. I don’t want God to empower me to function like that. I am upset. I don’t want to just go on like it is nothing. It is a big deal to me. You know we get to a point where somehow we think we are entitled. You know it is not my fault. It’s your fault. If you would function like you should I wouldn’t be so upset. Oh really? So the standard. Remember we are partakers of the divine nature. We have the life of Christ in us. Christ lives in me. So how did God function dealing with me in kindness, tenderheartedness, overlook my rebellion, my everything? So we function that way.

Come back to I Corinthians 13. This is the love chapter as you are aware. We talked about these sins get intertwined together, the unbeliever doesn’t just sin by one thing. He may have one big sin he gets noted for but you know life is characterized by all kinds of sin. The fruit of the Spirit are intertwined in I Corinthians chapter 13, verse 4: “Love is patient. Love is kind,” and then “Not jealous.” You see some of the contrary things. If I am functioning in kindness I am not going to be jealous. I am glad for you as a believer. I am glad you get more preeminence than me. I am glad you are doing better. I am glad they honor you when perhaps I would be worthy of as much or more honor. This is not an issue because love is kind. It is patient. It is not jealous. It doesn’t brag. It’s not arrogant. These things mixed together. I can’t say “Well the Spirit is producing His love in me but I am not treating you with kindness.” Well then I am not showing love to you so you see things begin to break apart and unravel.

Isn’t it terrible that Paul had to warn the Galatian church about being careful that they don’t bite and devour one another? This is supposed to be believing congregations and you are going at one another and it grows if you are not careful and pretty soon you are biting and devouring one another. It is like two animals fighting to the death. That really manifests the grace and character of God in a life. So kindness.

Come back to Galatians 5. Goodness. Let me read you what someone said about this. “It conveys the idea of benevolence, generosity toward someone else. Going the second mile when such magniminy is not required” and then and the example, “well they did it out of the goodness of their heart” which meant what? They didn’t have to do that. It wasn’t required. They did it out of the goodness of their heart. They were talking here what the Spirit produces within us. He produced goodness so that we do things out of the goodness of our heart. We go that extra mile. We are pleased to make that sacrifice for someone else. So one writer said, “It’s really the opposite of envy.” You know if you envy someone you are not looking to do things for the goodness of your heart so it ought to characterize us.

We can think of believers they manifest these qualities and we say, “Wow, they are always doing something so thoughtful. They’ve gone beyond. They didn’t have to do that.” We have all experienced that. They just did that out of the goodness of their heart. There is no good reason in that sense. You can tell they thought of me. They were concerned to just encourage me and uplift me. No envy there. They are happy to move me forward.

Faithfulness, the basic word here, ‘faith.’ And then true genuine faith manifests itself in faithfulness. It’s out of our relationship with Christ we demonstrate character. God is faithful. He can’t deny Himself even when we are unfaithful, He is faithful. We ought to be characterized by faithfulness.

We have been put in a body and you know what? The functioning of the body as it should when it is healthy depends on every part fulfilling its responsibility. If one part breaks down the body begins to not function as we would say “to full capacity,” with what we would call “good health.”

So faithfulness is necessary. We need to depend on one another, trust one another and know we can rely on one another. God hasn’t saved us and put us off in isolation. It is just God and me. No, He put me in a body and says I grow in each part of the body is making its proper contribution that is necessary for my growth. I can’t grow in isolation. I need you. We need each other. So it requires faithfulness. We have to trust one another. We have to be dependable. Think of all that goes on in our local body and we depend on one another and people carry out their responsibility, fulfill the role that God has given them in a body.

One person put it this way. He was using the Greek words, “Faith is the quality of being faithful” to translate it for you “which describes a man on whose faithful service we can rely. On whose loyalty we may depend, whose word we can unreservedly accept.” He describes that person in who “there is unswerving and inflexible fidelity of Christ and the other dependability of God.” Just like I can trust God and He will never fail. We ought to be able to trust one another. There is no “I am out of here.” We are in this together. We depend on one another and we want to be used of God in one another’s lives. It may not seem significant. We are not in competition with one another. Well, why don’t I get that position? Why don’t I get to do this? It doesn’t matter. Lord use me in the way that I will be most effective for You. For Paul he had to say, “When I am weakest because in weakness God’s power is manifest in me.” So sometimes the struggle we are going through we say “Well this may be my opportunity to demonstrate faithfulness even though this is not what I would have chosen for myself. I am happy to have God make the choices for me. And I will grow in learning to accept that and be faithful in that.”

Back up to I Corinthians 4. We could go from one letter to churches to another for many of these but just as examples in I Corinthians 4, verse 1: “Now let a man regard us in this manner as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. In this case, moreover it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy,” faithful and Paul says human evaluation of me is not of great concern. That doesn’t mean that I accept things in my life that shouldn’t be there so he said in verse 4, “I am not conscious of anything but ultimately it is God’s evaluation of me that matters.” But as Paul said, he was a steward. That is what we are. We are servants and slaves in the house of the master and I am responsible to be faithful to Him and that involves being faithful to you in my service. I mean this wasn’t just Paul entrusted with the mysteries of God, the revelation of God to go over here in a corner and enjoy learning more about what God revealed to him. This was a responsibility and involvement with other believers. It is required of a steward. We have all been entrusted with the stewardship of God’s grace called a gift. He started out in chapter 1 with that. He will elaborate on it in chapter 12 and 13 and 14. He puts the love chapter in the middle of that because our gifts are exercised in love but the Spirit has gifted each one according to His will so that we function in the body effectively. We ought to be trustworthy. We ought to be able to rely upon one another.

Come back to Galatians and again you realize we can’t say, “Oh, just my relationship with the Lord, ultimately it is His evaluation” but I want to be faithful with what He has entrusted with me, to fulfill His will.

Gentleness, this is a word that has a breadth of meaning. It is hard to define it just with one or two words. For example, I went to a Greek lexicon or dictionary and they say it means gentleness, humility, courtesy, considerateness, meekness. So you get the flavor of the word as we might say, gentleness, humility, courtesy, considerateness, meekness. One writer said, “It is important for the Christian to see that the self-assertiveness that is so much part of 20th century life should not be valued highly, that idea on me. And you know it becomes more evident with the passing of time and we want to raise our children from little up to realize how important they are and not to bruise their little egos and to push them forward. Then we wonder what happens as they grow up to be adults and they are totally selfish and absorbed with themselves. It is not a Christian quality.

We want to be careful because the world says you have to train your children to be self-assertive and it is often pressured for we want to particularly train our girls to be self-assertive. That is not a Biblical quality. That doesn’t mean, you know, this is not the idea of being wimpish, being the doormat in the negative way of that. One writer says “the word conveys that which is the opposite of an arrogant and self-assertive spirit.” There is nothing in it of weakness, timidity. Numbers 12:3 says, “Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth,” yet God appointed him to be the leader of a whole nation of millions. Jesus Christ Himself in Matthew 11:29 said He was gentle. There is our word and humble in heart. He was in no way weak, timid but there was that gentleness. Some define it as strength under control. It is joined with patience that we talked about here of the fruit of the Spirit in several passages, Ephesians 4:2, Colossians 3:12 and Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:5 “Blessed are the gentle.” This is our word here for “they shall inherit the earth.” To be a quality of ours.

Paul told Titus (why don’t you turn there instead of me reading it. I always like for you to see it.) Titus chapter 3, verse 2. Verse 1 and even here in the context with the unbeliever, verse 2: “We are to malign no one; to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration.” And that is our word there, showing every consideration so you see gentle, showing every consideration so there is this variation in the word. You can’t translate it with one word in every place. It would be awkward to translate it here, gentle, showing gentleness for all men but consideration. They are thoughtful, considerate, courteous people and that should be true in all of our relationships even with the unbelievers who can be so difficult. That is what Paul is telling Titus here to teach them. Why, verse 3: “We also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved.” Believers have been set free now to manifest how did Christ handle Himself with that character? In His earthly ministry and even in going to the cross, He was gentle, humble.

We have a hard time with other believers. We grow under pressure. Trials are the opportunity to grow. That is why we can “count it all joy when we fall into various kinds of trials.” It is an opportunity for us to grow. Sometimes I have to say, “Lord, You know how hard it is for me to handle this in a way that is honoring to You but I must do that. I want to draw on Your strength to do it.” It begins in my mind because you know once things get ahold of my mind and my thinking it will soon drive my conduct. I have to get it out of my mind. I don’t want it to settle in there. I don’t want it to get ahold of me. So this thoughtful consideration, a gentleness.

Here is what another commentator wrote: “As an ethical grace in the believer’s life, gentleness may be described as a humble and pliable submission to God’s will which reflects itself in humility, patience, forbearance toward others.” It is always there. We are just going to get along fine so if you all show this, I won’t have any trouble with you and that is the way we tend to think. The problem is, these people are doing this. You know it really is liberating when you think it is God’s enabling power in me that enables me to manifest His character regardless of what is going on. That doesn’t excuse even other believers in the body that may not be functioning properly but I can’t change things. I keep praying that God will change them and really what I ought to be praying is “God I want to draw on Your grace, Your enabling power to manifest Your character and grow more in that character in this situation. Lord I want Your best for them and if they are not functioning as You would have them function, they can’t be very pleased and enjoying their relationship with You so help me to be a help to them.” That is different.

You know we get caught up, “Lord change them. Lord break them down. Lord make them different. It ought to be, “Lord thank You for the grace that enables me to be what You want me to be and to grow in that grace.” Come back to Galatians 5. You get an idea of how great God’s grace is in the work of His salvation.

The next one, self-control. Now this is not self-control in the world’s sense of self. I do it on my own but this is with the enabling power of the Holy Spirit who indwells me. I am to walk by the Spirit. That is a responsibility that I have. The Spirit doesn’t fail. I am not to grieve the Spirit with disobedience and resistance to His will. I am to submit to the control of the Spirit, so self-control. This is the enabling power of the Spirit for me to function as God would have me function. I don’t have to submit to the flesh. I don’t have to submit to the devil. I have been set free. I don’t have to submit to the allurements of the world. Sometimes I do. That means I wanted to. There is always something. It is just like when you know maybe somebody has done something and you lost your temper with them. It felt good at the time to blow off the steam and tell them what you really thought. Then afterwards you feel terrible. I wish I hadn’t said that. There was a momentary pleasure in it to get it out but you realize it wasn’t the right thing to do and I am embarrassed I did it.

Self-control, exercising restraint. Paul uses this if you want to go back to I Corinthians 9, the reason these keep turning up. I Corinthians 9 and he is in the context here, verse 24: “Do you not know those who run in a race all run. Only one receives the prize. Run in such a way you may win. Everyone who competes in the game exercises self-control,” discipline.

Undisciplined believers are not developing and growing. You are here tonight to be in the Word. It takes discipline. Get ready. Get out of the house. Again there are other things I feel like doing and you know getting up in the morning, doing this, taking this responsibility and it takes discipline. “Everyone who competes in the game exercises self-control in all things.” Athletes have to do it or they will never do anything. You think oh boy, I would have loved to be good at this sport. I don’t want to practice. I don’t want to get in shape. You can’t do it. “They do it to receive a perishable wreath, we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way as not without aim. I box in such a way as not beating the air. I discipline my body and make it my slave.” In other words I don’t decide on whether my body doesn’t feel like doing it. I decide what would be good and right for me as a believer. What does God tell me? Now I am going to get about doing it.

If I am going to do my Christian life and some people do that because they think, well if the Lord wants me to do it He will motivate me. Well the motivation is He tells me. I am to be diligent in the study of His Word and know how to handle it accurately so “I am a workman that does not need to be ashamed.” That means you are going to have to make time and put yourself in the kind of situations where you will learn the Word, be taught the Word. The reason we go through the Word like we do – it’s not just something for me to learn and make a sermon out of. It is something all of us have to know so we can be workmen that aren’t ashamed and handling accurately the Word of truth. I mean this is God’s Word. It is precious to us. It is the nourishment for our souls. “As newborn babes we are to have that longing passion for the unadulterated milk of the Word that we might grow with respect to our salvation.” It takes discipline. If we don’t have that, we won’t grow. We are not letting the Spirit work in our lives. He provides the enablement for us to do it, self-control.

Come back to Galatians 5. Paul wraps this up by saying at the end of verse 23, “Against such things there is no law.” Remember the Mosaic Law was an issue here. Well you need the law for salvation. Of course we saw in chapter 3 if you are already saved you need it for your sanctification. Would you begin by the Spirit and now grow by the law? No. And you realize what God is saying He wants produced in your life is His character and there is no law against that. It’s not like you are breaking God’s law. The Mosaic Law revealed for Israel would God require it of those who were walking in faith in Him and the manifestation of that.

Well here God wants His character produced in us. We are not violating any law here. This is what ought to be produced. This ought to be seen in a life. This is the freedom. So we talk about freedom it doesn’t mean freedom is license as he talked about earlier in the chapter, verse 13: “You were called to freedom brethren only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh but through love serve one another.” These things are a manifestation of love where we serve one another. We are pushing others to the fore. Looking for ways that they can benefit more, that they can grow more. We are happy when they are being blessed just like our children. You know you never find parents or grandparents that don’t want to brag on their kids or their grandkids. They just work it in. Oh yes, “We were just talking to our grandson and he is doing this and my granddaughter she did that.” We are proud. We are glad. We are glad that they are doing better than we did. They are getting honors we didn’t get. That is the way we are in God’s family. I am glad you know. This is exciting to see you are involved this way. I am just so thrilled for you and I just thank the Lord that He is using you in the way He is. This is what we are doing. This is how God is working.

We are patient with one another. We are doing what we can. We see weakness. We are not there in a negative way. We are there to help them along. We will get to that when we get into chapter 6. “There is no law against these things.” So to summarize it, “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” This is crucial. We are back to chapter 2, verse 20 which we read earlier where “I have been crucified with Christ.” This is why we don’t try to reform the unbeliever. This is what the power of the Gospel is. “I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” When you are crucified with Christ we have been back to Romans 6 in previous studies where “we die with Him, we are buried with Him, we are raised with Him to newness of life.”

What a catastrophe that the old life is manifesting itself and all these kinds of works of the flesh. And what a double catastrophe when believers are justifying themselves for this kind of conduct. There is no excuse for it. There is nothing that you would do that would excuse my sinning. That is liberating. I can’t control what you do but having been crucified with Christ, we have crucified the flesh. Romans 6 says “The old man has been crucified” (the flesh) “with its passions and desires.” We say “Well they haven’t all gone away.” No, but their authority and power to control me has been broken. The word used in Romans 6 katargeo, the power has been broken. The flesh, the old man, the old nature, it hasn’t been removed yet or it wouldn’t be an issue for us but it has been crucified so now I am no longer obligated to it. I am no longer under its control so as talked about repeatedly, I never have to sin. I never have to yield to the flesh and that is humbling because when we do we realize I did it because I wanted to not because God’s power wasn’t sufficient.

The enablement of the Spirit wasn’t adequate so I realize no matter what the situation, Lord, in this I can draw upon Your strength to be and do what You would have me do. I can manifest Your character. This is just a better opportunity in this situation where it might be expected from the human perspective that I respond this way, but I don’t. I have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Their hold over me is broken. That is what it means to be “crucified with Christ and yet I live but the life that I live in this physical body is the life of Christ lived in me,” the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. “If we live by the Spirit” and some of you have studied Greek. First class condition it assumes what it is saying. “If we live by the Spirit” (and we do) “let us walk by the Spirit.” It is the Spirit of God and His work that identified us with Christ in His death and in His burial and in His resurrection. Let’s live that new life by the Spirit. The same powerful Spirit that brought us new life in Christ when we trusted in Him now is to enable us to walk by the Spirit.

So back to verse 16: “Walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.” That doesn’t mean there aren’t allurements along the way but I don’t have to give in. That is not me. That is not where I want to walk. That is not how I want to live. That’s not what I want to be. Oh, but yes, what they did to you there is no excuse for that. I can’t control what they did to me but I, by the grace of God, can control how I respond to what they did to me, right? I don’t like that. I don’t agree with that. So what? I want to create my own perfect world. God put us into the body to grow. “If we live by the Spirit let us walk by the Spirit.” Then he says what? “Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.” You see the potential is still there but there is no excuse for it being manifested, yielding to the flesh but he wouldn’t have to say, “Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another” if that couldn’t happen. We are put into a body together.

If I concentrate on being everything God says I should be, drawing upon His power to do that, tolerating no excuses for myself and everybody else did it, we would be functioning in perfect harmony but we don’t. I don’t, you don’t and that is part of the struggle and that is why as we interact with one another, we are going to hit those clash points. We are going to hit those difficulties, those frustrations.

We try to train our kids, “You have to learn to deal with that the way you should.” You know it’s not good if they get sent home from school or you get a call from school and your 4th grader punched somebody in the nose and you say, “Why would you do that?” “Well he did something I didn’t like.” “Oh, okay. That’s okay then. He shouldn’t have done something you didn’t like.” No, you say, “That’s not acceptable.” But somehow in the church it becomes acceptable.

That is why he is saying, “Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. If we truly live by the Spirit let’s all walk by the Spirit.” That word ‘walk’ there is a little different word than the walk sometimes used. It means to be in order, to be in line. Sometimes we use just the general word ‘walk’ for step after step but this one that is why you have it, “Follow the Spirit.” Keep in step with the Spirit. This is the way some people translate it. “Keep in line, maintain your position.” You are walking by the Spirit and you are the one you can control if you are a believer. And if you have life from the Spirit then you have His enabling power within you. That is true for everyone who is in the Spirit. We step back and say, “It’s really not that complicated.” That doesn’t mean it’s easy but it is not complicated. It just comes down, “Gil, do what God says.” “But Lord, You know how many times this has happened. You know how frustrated I am with it.” “Gil, I didn’t ask you. Do what I said.” And you know, I grow when I do that. We all do. I say “Thank You Lord for Your grace” and I come to appreciate and it is exciting.

You know it is a little bit like a kid. I watch them on these different scooters that they have and how they scoot around and then you know they put training wheels on the bike. Do they still do training wheels? At any rate they take the training wheels off and that is the way we are, sort of growing and you know there is that inner joy that comes with, you know when you have had a difficulty and you work through it by the grace of God in the way you should and you look back and say, “Thank You Lord that I could experience Your sufficiency and Your grace. Thank You for giving me the grace to handle that in the way that was pleasing to You.” And that is how we grow and that is how God has put us together. We can thank Him that He is our sufficiency and He is our enablement.

Let’s pray together. Thank You Lord for Your Word. Our salvation is awesome and complete. Lord You haven’t partially saved us. You haven’t made partial provision for us. We haven’t entered into all that You have provided for us in Christ but Lord, You have given us everything necessary for a life of godliness. You have brought us together as a family of believers and we want to grow together, mature together, to be used by You in one another’s lives, to be used by You to bring glory to Yourself as we serve together and then as we walk before a watching world. Use us in the in the week before us wherever we are, whatever we are doing. May we be drawing upon the might and strength You provide to shine brightly as those You have redeemed we pray in Christ’s name amen.