Spirit and Flesh

Big Idea

Tension: How do believers defeat sin?

Resolution: BY walking by the Spirit and thus not gratifying the desires of the flesh.

Exegetical Idea: Believers defeat sin by walking by the Spirit and thus not gratifying the desires of the flesh.

Theological Idea: Believers defeat sin by walking by the Spirit by faith (who conforms usto Christ) and thus we will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Homiletical/Big Idea: I can defeat sin by walking in the Spirit through faith.

Introduction

I like to take my dog for a walk along the lake not far from my house. And there is this spot at the lake that must have a lot of worms or something, because it almost always has dozens and dozens of geese and ducks and sometimes some herons. And what I like to do, it’s probably illegal, is I like to sprint down to the water with my dog and chase off the birds with my dog. And he jumps and splashes in the water, and he gets all excited, then he comes back to me, being very proud of himself. And the birds are quacking and they can’t wait for us to leave so they can have their spot back.

Now, here is what I know to be true as a pastor. Many people fight sin that way. We see a dark spot in our life so we run in barking with a lot of Bravado. We make these commitments that we will never ever act that way again. We go to camps, or we read a book or we post stuff on Facebook about how we will never ever go back. And then as soon as we’re not looking, sin begins to creep back into our lives, slowly but surely. But luckily for us, God provided a better way.

In fact, and this is the most important thing I’m going to say, I can defeat sin by walking in the Spirit through faith. I can defeat, have victory over, win against sin by walking in the Spirit, by following the Spirit, by trusting the Spirit, through faith. I can defeat sin by walking in the spirit through faith.

Now, Paul comes to this point in Galatians, and he has just given this stunning call to the gospel. He has been saying that we are not justified by anything that we do, but only by what Christ has done in his cross and resurrection. Only by trusting in God’s good work in our lives are we able to receive both an external status of righteousness, and an internal walk of righteousness. And this is all grace. But the question is, “Wait a minute, if that is how I receive Christ’s righteousness, both externally as justification and internally as sanctification, how do I walk accordingly? How do I live out of that inner work in my heart?” Well Paul here couches the Christian life as a life of war. And he’s going to tell us how to win the battle, and then he’s going to give us a path to defeat, and a path to victory.

Flesh and Spirit fight for my soul.

Look in vs. 16. Paul says that if we walk by the Spirit we will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Now if you look at that little word not, this is the strongest possible way that Paul can say that it’s not even a possibility. It is the Greek words, μη γενοιτο, which means, absolutely not, certainly not, not in a million years. They don’t mix. They’re totally opposed to each other. They are at war with one another, one will win and the other will wail in defeat. Because we have the desires of both, whatever we do we will feel some turmoil about. As we grow in one, the desires of the other will fade. (vs 17)

But here is the thing, according to vs. 17, What Paul is saying here is that we have the desires of both flesh and Spirit in us. He says, no matter what, one will keep you from doing what you want to do. We are driven by both. Our desires for flesh and our desires for Spirit drive us to do different things. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you do sin or if you obey the Spirit, you will always feel a little torn in this life if you are a Christian. Because there will always be a bit of a disjunction between our desires and our actions. If we obey the Spirit, the desires of the flesh will flare up. If we obey the flesh, the Spirit will riot. Now, as we will see, the more we grow in one, the more the desires of the other will fade. So as believers, our goal is to grow in the Spirit and see the desires of the flesh fade more and more.

Then the other way is for some people to think about it so much that they get overwhelmed in the fight and so discouraged. They feel like nobody can really relate to them and that they’re all alone. And many people stop coming to church because they think that they must not get it, because everyone around them is just perfect.

So what both of these people need to know is that this is normal. If you believe in Jesus, there is a very real conflict in your soul, but it is not abnormal. It is normal to be at war with sin in your soul. It is normal to feel a deep conflict, to have your soul feel like it is constantly a storm system of sin. It’s normal to lose sometimes. Don’t get discouraged. It is a lifelong condition, it’s called living as a Christian in a fallen world. As a Christian this is our lifelong pursuit: fighting this battle. It is normal to lose sometimes, but if you are in Christ, you will lose less and less and win more and more. You are on the winning side. Now, key to winning any war is to understanding the enemy’s strategy. So what does our enemy seek to do?

The Enemy: Selfish desire stamps out restraint.The Enemy: Selfish desire seeks to throw off all restraint.Works of the flesh are “evident.” There is a common thread underneath them all. That selfish desire always increases in our lives. Now as we go through this, I should say this. This isn’t an opportunity to show that you’re better than someone you know, or better than those who aren’t followers of Christ. Scripture isn’t talking to them, Scripture is talking to us. People who engage in these things are to be loved not hated. We should try to woo them in with the warmth of the gospel. But this is an opportunity for you to look at those things which seem like pesky little weeds in your life and to say, “If I don’t check my heart, this could explode and I will never get rid of them.” Now what we see in verses 19-21 is that sinful desires always lead to sinful actions. We have, I think, 5 groups of sin in this list. The more that sinful desires grow in our lives, the more they increase and grow. They run a scorched earth campaign, no surrender. They are not gracious invaders, they are those hordes of barbarians that enter the city and slaughter every soul. This is what sinful desires will do if you allow them to go unrestrained in your life.“sexual deviance:” sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality These first three words show us the progression of sexual deviance. The first word means any sexual activity, including including lust in your heart, outside of marriage. That increases to “impurity.” Impurity could be summed up to describe a state of moral corruption. It is someone who cannot take sexual thoughts off his mind, who is always lusting after someone who walks by. But lust doesn’t stop there. It increases into “sensuality.” This word, “sensuality” means a lack of self-constraint. It means that these people descend deeper and deeper into the well of sexual depravity. There is nothing they won’t try, nothing they won’t engage in. Those things which should churn their stomach, those things which should never characterize them, are instead those things which propel them.“false worship:” idolatry, sorcery The next group is religious perversion. Religious perversion always starts with idolatry. It always starts with putting something before God. But what it leads to is “sorcery.” It leads people to sacrifice their children and their wives before the gods of the lands. And just because you don’t have the altar of Baal in your house doesn’t mean you don’t give into this. Put your job before your God and see how long it takes you to abandon your family, to sacrifice your values, to let go of everything you’ve ever loved.“Hatred towards others:” enmity, strife, jealousy The next group is hatred towards others. Your sinful desire is always looking for enemies among men. Someone to put down, someone to compare yourself to. When you allow yourself to engage in that, you begin to look at things they stand up for and take a different stand than them. You become a contrarian. And when you do that, you begin to be jealous of everything they have. You begin to desire everything that they own for yourself. Their job, their wife, their kids, their education. You will make yourself sick when you look for enemies.“Distance from one another:” “fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions” The next group is “distance from one another.” It starts by fits of anger. What this means is that you allow yourself to be controlled by your anger. You let your anger control you and your attitudes. And what this leads to is rivalries with other people. Now this word for “rivalries” is used to describe politicians. You become like a politician, always defensive, always jockeying with others for status. When you let anger run in your soul, you cut yourself off from those around you. When you see this thread of anger in your life, of politicking with those around you, you give into dissensions. You start avoiding people you used to like. You stop talking to them, when they talk to you, you are cold. And it is only a matter of time before full out divisions break out. You put yourself in a faction and you start gathering allies that you are going to lead out of the relationship. It starts with a small fit of anger and it ends with two people who can’t talk with one another.“The life of selfish passion” envy, drunkenness, orgies The last three words describe some of the strongest fleshly desires. It starts out with envy. Now this word for envy I think would probably be better understood as fickle desires. That you see something and you want it, so you go and get it. You don’t think about this, you see something so you must have it. This leads to drunkenness. This isn’t talking about someone who goes out and has a drink every now and then, this is someone who goes out to the bar with the intention of getting drunk. Why is this? Because he can’t control his desires. He wants alcohol, so he just goes out and seeks it at any cost. And what this leads to is orgies. It is unrestrained sexual fulfillment.And here we have come full circle. All these things increase each other. And they’re all triggered by tiny little desires, tiny little desires, looking for opportunities to grow. Did you know that most people have pneumonia living in their respiratory systems always, it’s just waiting for opportunity. In the same way, you have these desires lurking in you, simply waiting for an opportunity. And when they find it, they explode. Our warning: Those who do things like this show they do not have the faith which justifies. Now here is the warning for us. Paul says that I warn you that those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, wait a minute. WE have just spent this whole book saying that faith alone will justify, are we changing our tone? Well no. So pastorally, I want to say that we all have struggles. So if you have given into one of these five fleshly desires and seen it grow like a weed in the garden of your heart, you need to know that your pastor is not innocent. This is not saying that we don’t stumble. But what it is saying is this, if you make a habit of doing these things, and you don’t fight them at all, then you don’t have the faith that justifies alone. In other words, if you don’t go to war with the flesh, then you are complicit with them. In any war, we lose battles, but what is important is that we put up a fight and that as time goes on, the flesh loses more and more in our lives. But if you see these desires in your heart, and you don’t put up a fight, if you give into them, then you don’t have the faith that justifies.Vis: I think a great illustration of this is this figure from J.R.R. Tolkien’s world named Gollum. Gollum is, if you don’t know, a picture of sin’s effect. Gollum was once a normal creature named Smeagol, like any other. But one day, he sees his friend holding the mighty ring of power and he begins to get jealous. “I want that.” He says to himself. So he tries to persuade his friend to give it to him, but his friend won’t. But Smeagol’s desire is strong, so Smeagol reaches out his hand and murders his friend. He grabs what he wants, and he becomes incapable of letting go. And Smeagol who was a normal creature becomes Gollum because of his greed. He becomes a filthy, dirty creature. He murders and betrays everyone around him. He becomes divided from his family, no one trusts him, and no one likes him. If you don’t know, Gollum is eventually torn from the ring of power that he cherished so deeply. And so Gollum goes out and searches for it. Well Gollum’s story ends with him biting the ring finger off of the person who was wearing it on the edge of a volcano. And he holds it up and is dancing with it, so excited that at last, he has gotten the ring back. But in his celebration, he trips and falls into the fires of the volcano. His selfish desire destroyed him.The Enemy: Selfish desire stamps out restraint.In a similar way, if you let your own selfish desires go unimpeded, there is no end that you will not go to. There is not a single person who cannot end up on the six o’clock news tonight. That little thought of lust, that you think, “Well that’s no big deal, nobody knows.” That little thread of anger, that you think, “It’s okay, everyone gets angry at times.” That little guilty pleasure that you engage in, “Thinking, everyone has their idols.” That hatred you allow to well up, that unrestrained desire in your soul it will destroy you. Your flesh’s desire is for you to throw off restraint in your life. It plants the seeds of its desires in very subtle areas, dark corners of your soul. Something on a TV show that you watch, a book that you read, a relationship that you have. It will plant itself when you’re not paying attention.So let me explain it this way. My dog is not allowed to be on our furniture. He knows that. It’s a no-no. He’s a very intelligent dog, so he is able to get that. But he likes to get on the furniture because he wants to be like that. So here’s how he goes about it. He starts by, when we’re sitting on the couch, putting his head on our knee and look at us with the saddest face that you ever did see. And then he’ll put one paw on one of our knees. Then he’ll put both paws up and prop himself up. Then he’ll jump up and immediately drop all his weight into the bottom. Sin works the same way. It puts little desires in your heart or your soul, then next thing you know, you are doing things you never imagined. This is the strategy of your enemy, the flesh. So what is the path to victory? How can we defeat this? The Path to Victory: By faith in Christ, the Spirit crucifies and enlivens me.The Victory: By walking by faith in Christ, the Spirit starves the flesh and produces the fruit.Fruit of the Spirit: The fruit of the Spirit is Christlikeness. So first, Paul describes what victory looks like. This is what he means by “fruit of the Spirit.” Look in verse 22. I want to say this about the fruit of the Spirit. All this fruit should be our default mode. This is how we generally live our lives. If I could put it this way, it is the sign of victory. If we see these things in our lives that are growing, then we see that we are winning the battle. If we see these things in our life we know that we are growing in Christ. And I want to say this, look at that word in verse 22, it is immensely important. That word is “is.” What that tells us is that these things are all connected with one another. You can’t grow in love and not joy. You can’t grow in joy and not peace. You can’t grow in one of these and not all the others. This is the fruit, singular of the Spirit.Love: those who have the fruit of the Spirit have love in our hearts. We love God and we love people. We see others around us and we like them. We like God. You know you have the unworldly love of Christ in your heart when you love the unlovely.Joy: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit have joy. You rejoice in the things of God. You are like Jesus in the temple, enjoying discussing the things of the Lord. You enjoy being around people. Now this isn’t saying that you are always joyful, but that you generally have a joyful disposition.Peace: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit have peace. You feel at peace. You don’t feel guilty all the time. You aren’t anxious. You aren’t worried that God is going to smite you or that others will hate you. You just live peacefully.Patience: Those how have the fruit of the Sprit have patience. You know Christ is patient because he puts up with all our nonsense, with all his disciples. When you see yourself growing in patience, you are growing in Christ.Kindness: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit are kind. You are just nice to people. You aren’t always competing with others. You celebrate other people. You don’t always talk about yourself in conversation. You are kind to other people, you care about their feelings. You care about what you say to them.Goodness: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit are good. They love those things which are good, and hate those things which are evil. They live beautiful lives. They seek to be good people.Faithfulness: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit are faithful. They don’t give up easily. They are committed. They buy-in.Gentleness: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit are gentle. You only say harsh things as a last resort. You are very careful not to hurt each other’s feelings. This doesn’t mean you’re not honest about how you feel, but it does mean that you try to be as gentle as possible with how you communicate that.Self-Control: And lastly, those who have the fruit of the Spirit have self-control. You aren’t controlled by your desires. You can hold them up in the air and consider them, ‘are they from God’ or ‘are they from me’? If I could sum all of these things up in one word, I would say, “They are Christlikeness. You love like Christ, you rejoice like Christ, you are peaceful like Christ, you are patient like Christ, you are kind like Christ, you are good like Christ, you are faithful like Christ, you are gentle like Christ, you are self-controlled like Christ. You know you have the Holy Spirit in your life when you begin to look like Jesus.The desires of the flesh have no power over these things (vs. 24) Now what’s important to know is that if you are of Christ, if you belong to Christ, if you are in him, you have Christ living in you. You are united to him, you have gone with him up on the cross and you live with him out of the empty grave. This is important because it tells us that we have crucified the flesh with its passions and desire. In other words, just as the grave has no hold on Christ, your sinful passions and desires have no hold on you. You do not have to give into them, you are free of them. The Holy Spirit defeats the desires of my soul by crucifying them. When we remember that, when we hold up our desires, we see them and they lose their power. By Him, you live.If the Spirit made us live, let us walk by the Spirit. Look in verse 23, Paul says this, “So, if we live by the Spirit, then let us keep in step with him.” And you know you are keeping in step with the Spirit when you see sin decrease, but the harvest of the Spirit increase. So here is the million dollar question, how do you walk in step with the Spirit? Well, we spent a whole Sunday talking about that a few months ago, we live by the Spirit by faith. Remember, that faith, not the law, is able to receive the Holy Spirit. So when we live by faith in Christ, then we are living by the Spirit. When we lift up our minds to look at Jesus, the Spirit changes us more into his image Christ. We begin to walk in victory.Vis: So I think that something that can teach us a lot about this truth is baptism. Our path to victory looks like baptism. Let me explain. In baptism, I go under the water. Baptism teaches us how we’re united with Christ in his death and resurrection. In baptism we experience a kind of death. We go into the water. Everything is cold. We can’t see right. We are separated from those around us. Our sense don’t function as well. It is dark. This is death in Christ. This is what we have done with our sinful desires. But then we come up out of the water. We experience light. We feel fresh. We are reinvigorated. We hear better. We see better. This is life in the Spirit. Baptism was given to teach us about this truth, that we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection. Our old self, our sinful desires, was killed, and we have emerged alive.The Path to Victory: By faith in Christ, the Spirit crucifies and enlivens me.So we’ve just been handed a blueprint for where the Holy Spirit leads us, and simply he wants us to form our lives around the crucifixion and resurrection. The Holy Spirit wants us to confess ours sins in conformity with the cross, and he wants us to believe in Christ in conformity with the resurrection. He leads us first to confess our sinful desires. He wants us to drag our sinful desires out into the light. He wants us to hold them up in the light. And when we do that, we realize that they have no power over us. When we hold them up in the light, they whither. When we identify those things and we confess them the Spirit says to us, “remember that thing? It’s gone now.” But the longer that you hold onto it, the more its allowed to progress. So we confess our sinful desires as soon as we can. And what’s helpful for that is to have something or someone you can confess to. It helps to reinforce it. So I think everyone should have someone they can confess to, whether it’s friends or whether it’s a small group at church. One thing that is really helpful for me is I have a number of prayer books that often times will give me the words of confession if I can’t explain it myself. Secondly, he wants us to believe in Christ. So instead of working really hard to not sin, instead of having this list of things I need to stop doing or start doing, I need to gaze at Christ. I need to look at him, to behold him. To trust him. To ask him to give me the life in that area that I’m falling behind. And if you don’t know your Bible, this gets really difficult. Because you don’t know what Christ would look like in any one situation. But when you know what Christ looks like through his Word, you can begin to see how Christ is strong where you are weak. And you can say, “Okay, Christ, I know that you live in me, will you just work that in me so that I look like you.”So let me give you an example from my own life. One thing that the Lord frequently shows me that is lacking about my own heart, is that I can be very prideful. And it comes up frequently. So when I see that in my heart, I confess that. If it comes up in small group, I confess it there. My friends know that I struggle with that. When the Holy Spirit brings it to mind, when someone says something about it to me, I have the opportunity to confess that. Then I can look at Christ, and think of Philippians 2:6 which says that Christ did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. And I can say, “Okay, Lord, please work that in me, would you make me to be humble like you.” Now does this mean I’ll never feel prideful? No. I think God allows the fight to go on to increase our sense of dependency. But each time I trust Christ rather than indulge pride, my pride loses a little more of its grip.

So, let me just make this little application. If you feel like it is a struggle sometimes to follow God, you are not alone. If you feel like it is difficult to open your Bible or go to church sometimes, you are not alone. Everyone who has become a Christian is in this battle together. And we all need to learn how to fight this battle together.

So we’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve said that I can defeat sin by walking in the Spirit through faith. I can defeat sin, I can have victory, I can conquer, sin by walking in, by following, by obeying the Spirit through faith. I can defeat sin by walking in the Spirit through faith. There is this battle going on between the flesh and the Spirit for my soul. Selfish desire seeks to stamp out restraint in my being. But by faith in Christ, the Spirit stamps out sin to produce fruit. I can defeat sin by walking in the Spirit through faith.

Conclusion: So as we close today, let me just ask, what sinful desire is the Holy Spirit bringing to your mind? Is there something that you have been trying to kill for a long time? Maybe its this desire in your heart that you’re afraid that if you bring it up that you’ll be judged? Maybe its part of your life that you’ve been hiding for years and years and you just don’t know how you could ever see victory? There is victory in the cross friend. Confess and believe. Let’s pray. We are driven by both. Our desires for flesh and our desires for Spirit drive us to do different things. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you do sin or if you obey the Spirit, you will always feel a little torn in this life if you are a Christian. Because there will always be a bit of a disjunction between our desires and our actions. If we obey the Spirit, the desires of the flesh will flare up. If we obey the flesh, the Spirit will riot. Now, as we will see, the more we grow in one, the more the desires of the other will fade. So as believers, our goal is to grow in the Spirit and see the desires of the flesh fade more and more.

Then Paul says this, it seems like it is a little haphazardly thrown in, but it’s not. He says this in vs. 18, “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” Those who are in the Spirit are not under the law. Now why does he say this? I think he most likely calling to mind all his other language that he’s used for being under the law in this book. And throughout the book of Galatians this phrase, “under the law” is used as an antithesis for faith. Further, according to 3:14, we receive the promised spirit through faith. In other words, Paul is subtly reminding Christians that they are the people of faith. If I could say it like this, we have a secret weapon: faith. The winner will get my soul (vs. 21)

Now, this is not a private battle. Look in verse 21 where it says, “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” That’s why Paul says in the last verse, “Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.” When you grow in the Spirit, those around you grow in the Spirit. But when you walk by the flesh, those around you walk by the flesh. In other words, this war that you need to fight can either help or harm your brothers next to you. At stake isn’t just your own soul, but those around you. How this battle works in your life will shape how you live your life, how you act with those at work, how you treat those at church, how you live before God. How you act during this battle will determine the outcome of your life and the lives of those you care about most. So, how does this battle end in defeat or victory?

Then the other way is for some people to think about it so much that they get overwhelmed in the fight and so discouraged. They feel like nobody can really relate to them and that they’re all alone. And many people stop coming to church because they think that they must not get it, because everyone around them is just perfect.

So what both of these people need to know is that this is normal. If you believe in Jesus, there is a very real conflict in your soul, but it is not abnormal. It is normal to be at war with sin in your soul. It is normal to feel a deep conflict, to have your soul feel like it is constantly a storm system of sin. It’s normal to lose sometimes. Don’t get discouraged. It is a lifelong condition, it’s called living as a Christian in a fallen world. As a Christian this is our lifelong pursuit: fighting this battle. It is normal to lose sometimes, but if you are in Christ, you will lose less and less and win more and more. You are on the winning side. Now, key to winning any war is to understanding the enemy’s strategy. So what does our enemy seek to do?

Selfish desire will stamp out restraint.

Now, underneath all these different vices, there is a common thread: selfish desire always increases in our lives. Now what we see in verses 19-21 is that sinful desires always lead to sinful actions. We have, I think, 5 groups of sin in this list. The more that sinful desires grow in our lives, the more they increase and grow. They run a scorched earth campaign, no surrender. They are not gracious invaders, they are those hordes of barbarians that enter the city and slaughter every soul. This is what sinful desires will do if you allow them to go unrestrained in your life.

These first three words (sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality) show us the progression of sexual deviance. The first word means any sexual activity, including including lust in your heart, outside of marriage. That increases to “impurity.” Impurity could be summed up to describe a state of moral corruption. It is someone who cannot take sexual thoughts off his mind. But lust doesn’t stop there. It increases into “sensuality.” This word, “sensuality” means a lack of self-constraint. It means that these people descend deeper and deeper into the well of sexual depravity. There is nothing they won’t try, nothing they won’t engage in. Those things which should churn their stomach, those things which should never characterize them, are instead those things which propel them.

These first three words (sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality) show us the progression of sexual deviance. The first word means any sexual activity, including including lust in your heart, outside of marriage. That increases to “impurity.” Impurity could be summed up to describe a state of moral corruption. It is someone who cannot take sexual thoughts off his mind, who is always lusting after someone who walks by. But lust doesn’t stop there. It increases into “sensuality.” This word, “sensuality” means a lack of self-constraint. It means that these people descend deeper and deeper into the well of sexual depravity. There is nothing they won’t try, nothing they won’t engage in. Those things which should churn their stomach, those things which should never characterize them, are instead those things which propel them.

“sexual deviance:” sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality These first three words (sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality) show us the progression of sexual deviance. The first word means any sexual activity, including including lust in your heart, outside of marriage. That increases to “impurity.” Impurity could be summed up to describe a state of moral corruption. It is someone who cannot take sexual thoughts off his mind, who is always lusting after someone who walks by. But lust doesn’t stop there. It increases into “sensuality.” This word, “sensuality” means a lack of self-constraint. It means that these people descend deeper and deeper into the well of sexual depravity. There is nothing they won’t try, nothing they won’t engage in. Those things which should churn their stomach, those things which should never characterize them, are instead those things which propel them.

The next group (idolatry, sorcery) is religious perversion. Religious perversion always starts with idolatry. It starts with putting something before Godand leads to is “sorcery.” It leads people to sacrifice their children and their wives before the gods of the lands.

“false worship:” idolatry, sorcery The next group is religious perversion. Religious perversion always starts with idolatry. It always starts with putting something before God. But what it leads to is “sorcery.” It leads people to sacrifice their children and their wives before the gods of the lands. And just because you don’t have the altar of Baal in your house doesn’t mean you don’t give into this. Put your job before your God and see how long it takes you to abandon your family, to sacrifice your values, to let go of everything you’ve ever loved.“Hatred towards others:” enmity, strife, jealousy

“Hatred towards others:” enmity, strife, jealousy The next group (enmity, strife, jealousy) is hatred towards others. Your sinful desire is always looking for enemies among men. Someone to put down, someone to compare yourself to. When you allow yourself to engage in that, you begin to look at things they stand up for and take a different stand than them. You become a contrarian. And when you do that, you begin to be jealous of everything they have. You begin to desire everything that they own for yourself. Their job, their wife, their kids, their education. You will make yourself sick when you look for enemies.

The next group (enmity, strife, jealousy) is hatred towards others. Your sinful desire is always looking for enemies among men. Someone to put down, someone to compare yourself to. When you allow yourself to engage in that, you begin to look at things they stand up for and take a different stand than them. You become a contrarian. And when you do that, you begin to be jealous of everything they have.

The next group (enmity, strife, jealousy) is hatred towards others. Your sinful desire is always looking for enemies among men. Someone to put down, someone to compare yourself to. When you allow yourself to engage in that, you begin to look at things they stand up for and take a different stand than them. You become a contrarian. And when you do that, you begin to be jealous of everything they have. You begin to desire everything that they own for yourself. Their job, their wife, their kids, their education. You will make yourself sick when you look for enemies.

The next group (fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions) is “distance from one another.” It starts by fits of anger. What this means is that you allow yourself to be controlled by your anger. And what this leads to is rivalries with other people. Now this word for “rivalries” is used to describe politicians. You become like a politician, always defensive, always jockeying with others for status. When you let anger run in your soul, you cut yourself off from those around you. When you see this thread of anger in your life, of politicking with those around you, you give into dissensions. You start avoiding people you used to like. You stop talking to them, when they talk to you, you are cold. And it is only a matter of time before full out divisions break out. You put yourself in a faction and you start gathering allies that you are going to lead out of the relationship. It starts with a small fit of anger and it ends with two people who can’t talk with one another.

The last three words (envy, drunkeness, orgies) describe some of the strongest fleshly desires. It starts out with envy. Now this word for envy I think would probably be better understood as fickle desires or impulsivity. You don’t think about this, you see something so you must have it. This leads to drunkenness. Why is this? Because he can’t control his desires. He wants alcohol, so he just goes out and seeks it at any cost. And what this leads to is orgies. It is unrestrained sexual fulfillment.

“Distance from one another:” “fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions” The next group (fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisionsZ) is “distance from one another.” It starts by fits of anger. What this means is that you allow yourself to be controlled by your anger. You let your anger control you and your attitudes. And what this leads to is rivalries with other people. Now this word for “rivalries” is used to describe politicians. You become like a politician, always defensive, always jockeying with others for status. When you let anger run in your soul, you cut yourself off from those around you. When you see this thread of anger in your life, of politicking with those around you, you give into dissensions. You start avoiding people you used to like. You stop talking to them, when they talk to you, you are cold. And it is only a matter of time before full out divisions break out. You put yourself in a faction and you start gathering allies that you are going to lead out of the relationship. It starts with a small fit of anger and it ends with two people who can’t talk with one another.

And here we have come full circle, in that the first group reproduces itself. All these things increase each other. And they’re all triggered by tiny little desires, tiny little desires, looking for opportunities to grow. Did you know that most people have pneumonia living in their respiratory systems always, it’s just waiting for opportunity. In the same way, you have these desires lurking in you, simply waiting for an opportunity. And when they find it, they explode. Our warning: Those who do things like this show they do not have the faith which justifies.

Now here is the warning for us. Paul says that I warn you that those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, wait a minute. WE have just spent this whole book saying that faith alone will justify, are we changing our tone? Well no. So pastorally, I want to say that we all have struggles. So if you have given into one of these five fleshly desires and seen it grow like a weed in the garden of your heart, you need to know that your pastor is not innocent. This is not saying that we don’t stumble. But what it is saying is this, if you make a habit of doing these things, and you don’t fight them at all, then you don’t have the faith that justifies alone. In other words, if you don’t go to war with the flesh, then you are complicit with them. In any war, we lose battles, but what is important is that we put up a fight and that as time goes on, the flesh loses more and more in our lives. But if you see these desires in your heart, and you don’t put up a fight, if you give into them, then you don’t have the faith that justifies. There is a difference between a garden with a few weeds, and a patch of earth that never has been tamed. It is not that these things will steal your salvation from you, it is that if you see them growing in your life unrestrained, you are probably never saved in the first place.

“The life of selfish passion” envy, drunkenness, orgies The last three words describe some of the strongest fleshly desires. It starts out with envy. Now this word for envy I think would probably be better understood as fickle desires. That you see something and you want it, so you go and get it. You don’t think about this, you see something so you must have it. This leads to drunkenness. This isn’t talking about someone who goes out and has a drink every now and then, this is someone who goes out to the bar with the intention of getting drunk. Why is this? Because he can’t control his desires. He wants alcohol, so he just goes out and seeks it at any cost. And what this leads to is orgies. It is unrestrained sexual fulfillment.And here we have come full circle. All these things increase each other. And they’re all triggered by tiny little desires, tiny little desires, looking for opportunities to grow. Did you know that most people have pneumonia living in their respiratory systems always, it’s just waiting for opportunity. In the same way, you have these desires lurking in you, simply waiting for an opportunity. And when they find it, they explode. Our warning: Those who do things like this show they do not have the faith which justifies. Now here is the warning for us. Paul says that I warn you that those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, wait a minute. WE have just spent this whole book saying that faith alone will justify, are we changing our tone? Well no. So pastorally, I want to say that we all have struggles. So if you have given into one of these five fleshly desires and seen it grow like a weed in the garden of your heart, you need to know that your pastor is not innocent. This is not saying that we don’t stumble. But what it is saying is this, if you make a habit of doing these things, and you don’t fight them at all, then you don’t have the faith that justifies alone. In other words, if you don’t go to war with the flesh, then you are complicit with them. In any war, we lose battles, but what is important is that we put up a fight and that as time goes on, the flesh loses more and more in our lives. But if you see these desires in your heart, and you don’t put up a fight, if you give into them, then you don’t have the faith that justifies.Vis: I think a great illustration of this is this figure from J.R.R. Tolkien’s world named Gollum. Gollum is, if you don’t know, a picture of sin’s effect. Gollum was once a normal creature named Smeagol, like any other. But one day, he sees his friend holding the mighty ring of power and he begins to get jealous. “I want that.” He says to himself. So he tries to persuade his friend to give it to him, but his friend won’t. But Smeagol’s desire is strong, so Smeagol reaches out his hand and murders his friend. He grabs what he wants, and he becomes incapable of letting go. And Smeagol who was a normal creature becomes Gollum because of his greed. He becomes a filthy, dirty creature. He murders and betrays everyone around him. He becomes divided from his family, no one trusts him, and no one likes him. If you don’t know, Gollum is eventually torn from the ring of power that he cherished so deeply. And so Gollum goes out and searches for it. Well Gollum’s story ends with him biting the ring finger off of the person who was wearing it on the edge of a volcano. And he holds it up and is dancing with it, so excited that at last, he has gotten the ring back. But in his celebration, he trips and falls into the fires of the volcano. His selfish desire destroyed him.The Enemy: Selfish desire stamps out restraint.In a similar way, if you let your own selfish desires go unimpeded, there is no end that you will not go to. There is not a single person who cannot end up on the six o’clock news tonight. That little thought of lust, that you think, “Well that’s no big deal, nobody knows.” That little thread of anger, that you think, “It’s okay, everyone gets angry at times.” That little guilty pleasure that you engage in, “Thinking, everyone has their idols.” That hatred you allow to well up, that unrestrained desire in your soul it will destroy you. Your flesh’s desire is for you to throw off restraint in your life. It plants the seeds of its desires in very subtle areas, dark corners of your soul. Something on a TV show that you watch, a book that you read, a relationship that you have. It will plant itself when you’re not paying attention.So let me explain it this way. My dog is not allowed to be on our furniture. He knows that. It’s a no-no. He’s a very intelligent dog, so he is able to get that. But he likes to get on the furniture because he wants to be like that. So here’s how he goes about it. He starts by, when we’re sitting on the couch, putting his head on our knee and look at us with the saddest face that you ever did see. And then he’ll put one paw on one of our knees. Then he’ll put both paws up and prop himself up. Then he’ll jump up and immediately drop all his weight into the bottom. Sin works the same way. It puts little desires in your heart or your soul, then next thing you know, you are doing things you never imagined. This is the strategy of your enemy, the flesh. So what is the path to victory? How can we defeat this? The Path to Victory: By faith in Christ, the Spirit crucifies and enlivens me.The Victory: By walking by faith in Christ, the Spirit starves the flesh and produces the fruit.Fruit of the Spirit: The fruit of the Spirit is Christlikeness. So first, Paul describes what victory looks like. This is what he means by “fruit of the Spirit.” Look in verse 22. I want to say this about the fruit of the Spirit. All this fruit should be our default mode. This is how we generally live our lives. If I could put it this way, it is the sign of victory. If we see these things in our lives that are growing, then we see that we are winning the battle. If we see these things in our life we know that we are growing in Christ. And I want to say this, look at that word in verse 22, it is immensely important. That word is “is.” What that tells us is that these things are all connected with one another. You can’t grow in love and not joy. You can’t grow in joy and not peace. You can’t grow in one of these and not all the others. This is the fruit, singular of the Spirit.Love: those who have the fruit of the Spirit have love in our hearts. We love God and we love people. We see others around us and we like them. We like God. You know you have the unworldly love of Christ in your heart when you love the unlovely.Joy: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit have joy. You rejoice in the things of God. You are like Jesus in the temple, enjoying discussing the things of the Lord. You enjoy being around people. Now this isn’t saying that you are always joyful, but that you generally have a joyful disposition.Peace: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit have peace. You feel at peace. You don’t feel guilty all the time. You aren’t anxious. You aren’t worried that God is going to smite you or that others will hate you. You just live peacefully.Patience: Those how have the fruit of the Sprit have patience. You know Christ is patient because he puts up with all our nonsense, with all his disciples. When you see yourself growing in patience, you are growing in Christ.Kindness: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit are kind. You are just nice to people. You aren’t always competing with others. You celebrate other people. You don’t always talk about yourself in conversation. You are kind to other people, you care about their feelings. You care about what you say to them.Goodness: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit are good. They love those things which are good, and hate those things which are evil. They live beautiful lives. They seek to be good people.Faithfulness: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit are faithful. They don’t give up easily. They are committed. They buy-in.Gentleness: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit are gentle. You only say harsh things as a last resort. You are very careful not to hurt each other’s feelings. This doesn’t mean you’re not honest about how you feel, but it does mean that you try to be as gentle as possible with how you communicate that.Self-Control: And lastly, those who have the fruit of the Spirit have self-control. You aren’t controlled by your desires. You can hold them up in the air and consider them, ‘are they from God’ or ‘are they from me’? If I could sum all of these things up in one word, I would say, “They are Christlikeness. You love like Christ, you rejoice like Christ, you are peaceful like Christ, you are patient like Christ, you are kind like Christ, you are good like Christ, you are faithful like Christ, you are gentle like Christ, you are self-controlled like Christ. You know you have the Holy Spirit in your life when you begin to look like Jesus.The desires of the flesh have no power over these things (vs. 24) Now what’s important to know is that if you are of Christ, if you belong to Christ, if you are in him, you have Christ living in you. You are united to him, you have gone with him up on the cross and you live with him out of the empty grave. This is important because it tells us that we have crucified the flesh with its passions and desire. In other words, just as the grave has no hold on Christ, your sinful passions and desires have no hold on you. You do not have to give into them, you are free of them. The Holy Spirit defeats the desires of my soul by crucifying them. When we remember that, when we hold up our desires, we see them and they lose their power. By Him, you live.If the Spirit made us live, let us walk by the Spirit. Look in verse 23, Paul says this, “So, if we live by the Spirit, then let us keep in step with him.” And you know you are keeping in step with the Spirit when you see sin decrease, but the harvest of the Spirit increase. So here is the million dollar question, how do you walk in step with the Spirit? Well, we spent a whole Sunday talking about that a few months ago, we live by the Spirit by faith. Remember, that faith, not the law, is able to receive the Holy Spirit. So when we live by faith in Christ, then we are living by the Spirit. When we lift up our minds to look at Jesus, the Spirit changes us more into his image Christ. We begin to walk in victory.Vis: So I think that something that can teach us a lot about this truth is baptism. Our path to victory looks like baptism. Let me explain. In baptism, I go under the water. Baptism teaches us how we’re united with Christ in his death and resurrection. In baptism we experience a kind of death. We go into the water. Everything is cold. We can’t see right. We are separated from those around us. Our sense don’t function as well. It is dark. This is death in Christ. This is what we have done with our sinful desires. But then we come up out of the water. We experience light. We feel fresh. We are reinvigorated. We hear better. We see better. This is life in the Spirit. Baptism was given to teach us about this truth, that we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection. Our old self, our sinful desires, was killed, and we have emerged alive.The Path to Victory: By faith in Christ, the Spirit crucifies and enlivens me.So we’ve just been handed a blueprint for where the Holy Spirit leads us, and simply he wants us to form our lives around the crucifixion and resurrection. The Holy Spirit wants us to confess ours sins in conformity with the cross, and he wants us to believe in Christ in conformity with the resurrection. He leads us first to confess our sinful desires. He wants us to drag our sinful desires out into the light. He wants us to hold them up in the light. And when we do that, we realize that they have no power over us. When we hold them up in the light, they whither. When we identify those things and we confess them the Spirit says to us, “remember that thing? It’s gone now.” But the longer that you hold onto it, the more its allowed to progress. So we confess our sinful desires as soon as we can. And what’s helpful for that is to have something or someone you can confess to. It helps to reinforce it. So I think everyone should have someone they can confess to, whether it’s friends or whether it’s a small group at church. One thing that is really helpful for me is I have a number of prayer books that often times will give me the words of confession if I can’t explain it myself. Secondly, he wants us to believe in Christ. So instead of working really hard to not sin, instead of having this list of things I need to stop doing or start doing, I need to gaze at Christ. I need to look at him, to behold him. To trust him. To ask him to give me the life in that area that I’m falling behind. And if you don’t know your Bible, this gets really difficult. Because you don’t know what Christ would look like in any one situation. But when you know what Christ looks like through his Word, you can begin to see how Christ is strong where you are weak. And you can say, “Okay, Christ, I know that you live in me, will you just work that in me so that I look like you.”So let me give you an example from my own life. One thing that the Lord frequently shows me that is lacking about my own heart, is that I can be very prideful. And it comes up frequently. So when I see that in my heart, I confess that. If it comes up in small group, I confess it there. My friends know that I struggle with that. When the Holy Spirit brings it to mind, when someone says something about it to me, I have the opportunity to confess that. Then I can look at Christ, and think of Philippians 2:6 which says that Christ did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. And I can say, “Okay, Lord, please work that in me, would you make me to be humble like you.” Now does this mean I’ll never feel prideful? No. I think God allows the fight to go on to increase our sense of dependency. But each time I trust Christ rather than indulge pride, my pride loses a little more of its grip.

Let me explain it this way. When we first got our dog, he was not allowed to be on our furniture. He knew that. It’s a no-no. But he likes to get on the furniture because he wants to be like that. So here’s how he goes about it. He starts by, when we’re sitting on the couch, putting his head on our knee and look at us with the saddest face that you ever did see. And then he’ll put one paw on one of our knees. Then he’ll put both paws up and prop himself up. Then he’ll jump up and immediately drop all his weight into the bottom. Sin works the same way. It puts little desires in your heart or your soul, then next thing you know, you are doing things you never imagined. This is the strategy of your enemy, the flesh.

So what is the path to victory? How can we defeat this?

The Path to Victory: By faith in Christ, the Spirit crucifies and enlivens me.The Victory: By walking by faith in Christ, the Spirit starves the flesh and produces the fruit.Fruit of the Spirit: The fruit of the Spirit is Christlikeness. So first, Paul describes what victory looks like. This is what he means by “fruit of the Spirit.” Look in verse 22. I want to say this about the fruit of the Spirit. All this fruit should be our default mode. This is how we generally live our lives. If I could put it this way, it is the sign of victory. If we see these things in our lives that are growing, then we see that we are winning the battle. If we see these things in our life we know that we are growing in Christ. And I want to say this, look at that word in verse 22, it is immensely important. That word is “is.” What that tells us is that these things are all connected with one another. You can’t grow in love and not joy. You can’t grow in joy and not peace. You can’t grow in one of these and not all the others. This is the fruit, singular of the Spirit.

Love: those who have the fruit of the Spirit have love in our hearts. We love God and we love people. We see others around us and we like them. We like God. You know you have the unworldly love of Christ in your heart when you love the unlovely

Joy: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit have joy. You rejoice in the things of God. You are like Jesus in the temple, enjoying discussing the things of the Lord. You enjoy being around people. Now this isn’t saying that you are always joyful, but that you generally have a joyful disposition.

Peace: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit have peace. You feel at peace. You don’t feel guilty all the time. You aren’t anxious. You aren’t worried that God is going to smite you or that others will hate you. You just live peacefully.

Patience: Those how have the fruit of the Sprit have patience. You know Christ is patient because he puts up with all our nonsense, with all his disciples. When you see yourself growing in patience, you are growing in Christ.

Kindness: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit are kind. You are just nice to people. You aren’t always competing with others. You celebrate other people. You don’t always talk about yourself in conversation. You are kind to other people, you care about their feelings. You care about what you say to them.

Goodness: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit are good. They love those things which are good, and hate those things which are evil. They live beautiful lives. They seek to be good people.

Faithfulness: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit are faithful. They don’t give up easily. They are committed. They buy-in.

Gentleness: Those who have the fruit of the Spirit are gentle. You only say harsh things as a last resort. You are very careful not to hurt each other’s feelings. This doesn’t mean you’re not honest about how you feel, but it does mean that you try to be as gentle as possible with how you communicate that.

Self-Control: And lastly, those who have the fruit of the Spirit have self-control. You aren’t controlled by your desires. You can hold them up in the air and consider them, ‘are they from God’ or ‘are they from me’?

If I could sum all of these things up in one word, I would say, “They are Christlikeness. You love like Christ, you rejoice like Christ, you are peaceful like Christ, you are patient like Christ, you are kind like Christ, you are good like Christ, you are faithful like Christ, you are gentle like Christ, you are self-controlled like Christ. You know you have the Holy Spirit in your life when you begin to look like Jesus.The desires of the flesh have no power over these things (vs. 24)

Now what’s important to know is that if you are of Christ, if you belong to Christ, if you are in him, you have Christ living in you. You are united to him, you have gone with him up on the cross and you live with him out of the empty grave. This is important because it tells us that we have crucified the flesh with its passions and desire. In other words, just as the grave has no hold on Christ, your sinful passions and desires have no hold on you. You do not have to give into them, you are free of them. The Holy Spirit defeats the desires of my soul by crucifying them. When we remember that, when we hold up our desires, we see them and they lose their power. By Him, you live.If the Spirit made us live, let us walk by the Spirit.

Look in verse 23, Paul says this, “So, if we live by the Spirit, then let us keep in step with him.” And you know you are keeping in step with the Spirit when you see sin decrease, but the harvest of the Spirit increase. So here is the million dollar question, how do you walk in step with the Spirit? Well, we spent a whole Sunday talking about that a few months ago, we live by the Spirit by faith. Remember, that faith, not the law, is able to receive the Holy Spirit. So when we live by faith in Christ, then we are living by the Spirit. When we lift up our minds to look at Jesus, the Spirit changes us more into his image Christ. We begin to walk in victory.

Vis: So I think that something that can teach us a lot about this truth is baptism. Our path to victory looks like baptism. Let me explain. In baptism, I go under the water. Baptism teaches us how we’re united with Christ in his death and resurrection. In baptism we experience a kind of death. We go into the water. Everything is cold. We can’t see right. We are separated from those around us. Our sense don’t function as well. It is dark. This is death in Christ. This is what we have done with our sinful desires. But then we come up out of the water. We experience light. We feel fresh. We are reinvigorated. We hear better. We see better. This is life in the Spirit. Baptism was given to teach us about this truth, that we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection. Our old self, our sinful desires, was killed, and we have emerged alive.The Path to Victory: By faith in Christ, the Spirit crucifies and enlivens me.So we’ve just been handed a blueprint for where the Holy Spirit leads us, and simply he wants us to form our lives around the crucifixion and resurrection. The Holy Spirit wants us to confess ours sins in conformity with the cross, and he wants us to believe in Christ in conformity with the resurrection. He leads us first to confess our sinful desires. He wants us to drag our sinful desires out into the light. He wants us to hold them up in the light. And when we do that, we realize that they have no power over us. When we hold them up in the light, they whither. When we identify those things and we confess them the Spirit says to us, “remember that thing? It’s gone now.” But the longer that you hold onto it, the more its allowed to progress. So we confess our sinful desires as soon as we can. And what’s helpful for that is to have something or someone you can confess to. It helps to reinforce it. So I think everyone should have someone they can confess to, whether it’s friends or whether it’s a small group at church. One thing that is really helpful for me is I have a number of prayer books that often times will give me the words of confession if I can’t explain it myself. Secondly, he wants us to believe in Christ. So instead of working really hard to not sin, instead of having this list of things I need to stop doing or start doing, I need to gaze at Christ. I need to look at him, to behold him. To trust him. To ask him to give me the life in that area that I’m falling behind. And if you don’t know your Bible, this gets really difficult. Because you don’t know what Christ would look like in any one situation. But when you know what Christ looks like through his Word, you can begin to see how Christ is strong where you are weak. And you can say, “Okay, Christ, I know that you live in me, will you just work that in me so that I look like you.”So let me give you an example from my own life. One thing that the Lord frequently shows me that is lacking about my own heart, is that I can be very prideful. And it comes up frequently. So when I see that in my heart, I confess that. If it comes up in small group, I confess it there. My friends know that I struggle with that. When the Holy Spirit brings it to mind, when someone says something about it to me, I have the opportunity to confess that. Then I can look at Christ, and think of Philippians 2:6 which says that Christ did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. And I can say, “Okay, Lord, please work that in me, would you make me to be humble like you.” Now does this mean I’ll never feel prideful? No. I think God allows the fight to go on to increase our sense of dependency. But each time I trust Christ rather than indulge pride, my pride loses a little more of its grip.

So we’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve said that I can defeat sin by walking in the Spirit through faith. I can defeat sin, I can have victory, I can conquer, sin by walking in, by following, by obeying the Spirit through faith. I can defeat sin by walking in the Spirit through faith. There is this battle going on between the flesh and the Spirit for my soul. Selfish desire seeks to stamp out restraint in my being. But by faith in Christ, the Spirit stamps out sin to produce fruit. I can defeat sin by walking in the Spirit through faith.

Conclusion: So as we close today, let me just ask, what sinful desire is the Holy Spirit bringing to your mind? Is there something that you have been trying to kill for a long time? Maybe its this desire in your heart that you’re afraid that if you bring it up that you’ll be judged? Maybe its part of your life that you’ve been hiding for years and years and you just don’t know how you could ever see victory? There is victory in the cross friend. Confess and believe. Let’s pray.