As I read the ingredients label, you
tell me the product. Let’s see who can
guess it first. [Read the ingredients of
several products, see who can guess what it is.]
Now try this one: love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That’s a follower of Jesus, a disciple.
In Galatians 5:22-23, we read that
these attributes are the fruit produced when the Holy Spirit of God goes to
work in each of us. When we say the
things Jesus would say if he were in our place, and when we, in interactions
with other people, do the things he did, then our lives are Spirit-filled and
spirit-guided.
Put sugar, flour, eggs, and milk
together in the right quantities and out comes a cake. Put the Holy Spirit into a repentant,
receptive heart, and out comes love, joy, peace, patience, and the rest. We become kinder, more generous. We exercise self-control when the world
around us is falling apart. It is not so
much that we work at developing these qualities. We can put in that effort. But what actually happens when these
qualities are produced in our lives is God is in the process of effecting
constant change in us. We become
different people than we were without Christ in us. We become new creation. We become people who reflect God’s glory.
How does it happen? It begins with God’s love for us. God wants to be in relationship with each one
of us, and collectively with us as His Church.
What gets in the way? Sin.
Sin
is shorthand for all the ways we ignore God, hurt each other, hurt ourselves,
destroy the good world God created, and disobey His word. God takes sin seriously because it is
damaging to human life. God created us
in His image and wants us to thrive in relationships with each other, with
creation, and with Him. Whether we believe it or not, whether we see it or not,
sin disrupts and ultimately destroys all those relationships. When we live in unconfessed sin, we are cut
off from Him. When we die in unforgiven
sin, we are cut off eternally.
God doesn’t want that but also
doesn’t prevent it. If He did we would
be robots, automatons that don’t sin, but also don’t choose to love God and
follow Jesus. God gives us free will. We can choose faith or rejection of faith.
If
we choose to reject God, God honors our choice.
No one condemned to eternal separation is unloved by God. God is perfect love. God came as a human being, Jesus. He taught us how to live as brothers and
sisters to each other, as God’s beloved children. And then, because God knew we could not overcome
sin by our own will power, Jesus died on the cross. No matter how hard we work at it, we cannot
stop sinning. So Jesus paid the price
for our sins. That’s grace – us
receiving salvation from sin and death, salvation we did not earn. Jesus on the cross is God empathizing with us
and saving us from an eternity apart from his love.
Why is this salvation so
important? Plenty of times I have heard
people outside the church, outside of Christianity insist they don’t need
saving. What if our hearts are not
receptive when God prompts us? What if
we see our sin, see God’s holiness, but decide we don’t want to repent?
How will my life be if I spend my
hours watching TV, drinking beer and eating chips, Oreos, and ice cream? I like all those things. But if those are the ingredients of my life,
the result will be a fat, lonely, unhealthy existence.
On the other hand, if I get plenty
sleep and exercise, and eat a lot of salads and healthy proteins, and spend
more time with friends and less time with eyes fixed to a screen, I’ll have a
healthier, happier existence. This is not complicated.
And it is not complicated if we
think about it spiritually. Galatians
calls the life apart from God the life of the flesh. Galatians 5:16-17 states it flatly. “Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not
gratify the desires of the flesh.” We
have those desires in us, even as the Spirit is in us when we turn to
Jesus. Temptation also resides in us, but
we cannot be ruled by it. We cannot
organize our lives around our desires and what we think we need to satisfy
those desires. That too is a recipe – a
recipe for frustration and disappointment.
Verse 17 continues. “What the flesh desires is opposed to the
Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh.” This is because the Spirit gives glory to God
and leads us to give ourselves to loving others. Think of the flesh as your deepest cravings;
these are urges that if acted upon will feel good in the moment, but won’t help
anyone else and in the big picture won’t help you either. The flesh is hedonism; do whatever feels good
even if in doing it you hurt yourself in the long run. Are others injured by your cravings? It doesn’t matter. Satisfy those cravings anyway.
The works of the flesh are, says Galatians,
“fornication;” that’s sexual activity outside of marriage. The next two works of the flesh listed,
impurity and licentiousness also involve sexual sins. Paul identified marriage as the specific
context for healthy sexuality and any sexual activity outside that context was
flagrant defiance before God.
Idolatry
and sorcery, the next works of the flesh cited both involve human attempts to
control the spiritual realm. Idolatry is
the attempt to contain and control God. We
worship things and give them the loyalty we owe to God. In sorcery people revert to ridiculous
incantations in the mistaken notion that God or the devil could be controlled
by human wisdom.
After
sexual sins, sorcery and idolatry, the next set of ingredients listed in the
work of the flesh all relate to the breakdown of relationships: enmities,
strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness,
and carousing. Two weeks ago, we
examined Jesus’ second great commandment – to love our neighbors as we love
ourselves. All these works of the flesh
noted in Galatians 5 put us in conflict with the very neighbors God has
commanded us to love. Forgiveness is a
must. Often, when the sin of the flesh
involves you or me harming someone, the person we hurt is someone we know well,
maybe some we feel has hurt us. Our own
church family has experienced division like this. Perhaps in many of us anger lingers. The perfect love of God that has saved us
from our own sins also empowers us to forgive.
By relying on the Spirit, our anger is rooted out and love and
forgiveness take its place.
The
final word in this list of works of the flesh is “and things like these.” The list is not exhaustive. You may have experienced bitter
disappointment or unsavory temptation.
Maybe you have your own words to add to the works of the flesh listed in
Galatians 5:19-21. We don’t want these
to be what describes us and it need not be.
The
Holy Spirit effects change in us. We
can’t provoke salvation. Salvation is
God’s initiative. Jesus had to come and
die for us. We couldn’t make that
happen. God could and did. Because it has happened we can position
ourselves to receive what God has prepared.
We can be the mixing bowl in which God stirs up love, grace, and forgiveness
in preparation for making us newly alive in Him.
The
words I used at the outset in talking about the fruit of the spirit were
repentant and receptive.
The
one with a repentant heart looks into his own life and sees all these works of
the flesh for what they are: agents of his own destruction. We have to be painfully honest with
ourselves. The warning at the end of
verse 21 is the person committed to continuing in the works of the flesh will
not inherit the kingdom of God. He
can’t. The flesh is in direct contrast
with the Spirit. However, when that
person sees the evil in the flesh, is truly sorry, and turns away and turns to
God, he is met with forgiveness and help.
Those temptations lurk and some insidious force is always there to lure
us back to the sexual sin or the violence or the petty bickering with neighbors
or some other misfortune. But when we
turn to Christ, he helps.
The
turning – that’s repentance. Once we are
facing the Lord, we do so with receptive, responsive hearts. It does no good to reject sin and then turn
around and reject the Lord. When He says
to us, “My children, you are forgiven,” we need to believe it. He’s removed our sins. We don’t need to stay in them.
Instead,
we open ourselves to God and fully receive His Spirit. We don’t wrestle with God over who gets to
control our lives. Following Jesus means
we say to God, “You’re in charge God. I
am here and I am yours. You’re the
boss.” Galatians 5:24-25 puts it this
way. “Those who belong to Jesus have
crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit let us be guided by
the Spirit.” We can’t serve two
masters. Once we see the destructive
nature of human lust and once we turn away from that, we must then hand ourselves
over to the care and leadership of God, revealed in Jesus, and present in the
same Holy Spirit that dwells in each of us.
This
recipe begins in salvation – the moment we are born again - and like so many
good foods, it grows more flavorful the longer it cooks.
Our
part is to come to the table. Turn away
from sin and all that comes with it. We
then turn to God in full confession, full honesty about our fallen condition. We come with arms and heart wide open, ready
to receive the grace God has prepared for us.
Forgiven
and born again, we live our lives “guided by the Spirit” as verse 25 says. The persistent tension of temptation never
leaves, but we stay focused on Christ so that the Spirit will be unencumbered,
free to be about the work of our transformation. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control become what defines our
relationships.
Pause
as you ponder each example of the fruit of the Spirit. When you or I react to life situations in
ways that embody this fruit, we are choosing to yield to Jesus in the way we
live. When we act out in angry,
relationship-destroying ways, we are choosing the works of the flesh. Choose the Holy Spirit. Become God’s good work so that not only will
you feel the glorious transformation of becoming, new, others also will meet
God as God works through you. Then they
too will be the container in which God’s work is accomplished.
AMEN
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