Here's my edited transcript of the sermon...
The Fruit of the Spirit
The Right Rev Bishop Michael Stead
For many Christians there is a nagging sense that they would like to be more spiritual whatever that means. But what exactly does it look like when a person is spiritual?
The spirit
- opens blind eyes to the truth of the scriptures to enable repentance and faith.
- gives new birth to enable us when we were sorry
- unites us to Christ and makes us members of his body when we believe in Jesus .
- is the personal presence of Jesus our comforter.
- enables our prayers,
- empowers us with gifts to serve and to build one another up
- produces fruit in our lives.
The work of the spirit to produce the fruit of the spirit.
Every Christian, if they are a Christian, already has the Holy Spirit.
When a person becomes a Christian, God puts his spirit in us to make us alive to him and responsive to him. However that foundational work of the spirit does not automatically or immediately mean that we live in perfect obedience to God. There is still an old me on the inside and nature that wants to go its own way, to do its own thing which is indifferent to and sometimes opposed to what God wants for my life.
The Bible calls that inner me, the flesh and today's passage from Galatians 5 shows how we are to resolve that inner tension between the old me, the flesh, and the work of the spirit. It tells us that true freedom is only going to be found when we keep in step with the spirit.
The apostle Paul has quite a bit to say about freedom in the book of Galatians. Paul wrote the letter because the Galatian’s were in danger of abandoning their Christian freedom by turning the Christian faith into a set of rules and regulations. They were being told that they had to keep the rules of the old testament in order to be saved.
Following rules and regulations, following the law, is not the thing that brings you into a relationship with God.
Earlier in the book Paul, in particularly in chapters 2 and three, Paul makes it very clear that no one is made right by observing the law.
The only way that we can be justified, that we can come into a right relationship with God, is by faith in Jesus.
Jesus came to free us from the slavery of trying to win God's approval through the law. That's a point that Paul has been making through the book. Chapter 4 verses three and five - "We were in slavery, under the basic principles of this world, but God sent his son, born under the law, to redeem those under the law."
But if we make the mistake of turning Christianity into a list of rules and regulations, we are in danger of putting ourselves back into this slavery under the law. Paul sums up the whole argument of the book to this point in chapter 5 verse one. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
Don't go back to the law. Don't make Christianity about rules and regulations.
However, if Paul had stopped the letter there is a very real danger that the Galatians and us also might end up going too far in the opposite direction. If all we hear Paul saying is Jesus has released us from the slavery of obeying the law, we might wrongly think that means that we are free to do whatever we want. That no law means no restraint. Nothing to tell us what to do and what not to do and that brings us to our passage today from Galatians 5 verses 13 to 26. In this last section of Galatians 5 Paul explains what it really means to be truly free and that true freedom only comes when we live by the spirit.
The first couple of verses explained the principle and the remainder of the chapter explains how to put it into practise. The principle is in verses 13 and 14.
“You were called to be free but do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh rather serve one another humbly in love for the entire law is filled up in keeping this one command. Love your neighbour as yourself."
The description of freedom in these verses is the opposite to how most people understand freedom. Notice that it says that we are freed to serve, that we are freed in order to love, that we are freed in order to fulfil the law by loving our neighbour.
The keywords are freed to. Many people think of freedom only in terms of being freed from. Freedom from rules, freedom from external constraint. This is the popular contemporary view of what freedom is.
But if that's all freedom is, it is actually unworkable.
A world with only that kind of freedom would be absolute anarchy. Just imagine if everybody did whatever they wanted to at traffic lights. Imagine what human relationships will be like if the governing principle was ‘I am absolutely free to do whatever suits me’. It would just be entrenched selfishness.
We might think that absolute freedom would be great but in reality, it would be a nightmare. Doing whatever I want is not true freedom because it actually leads us back into a slavery to the old me. To the flesh inside. as Paul says in verse 13.
“Do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh."
God has not made you free so that you could obey your own sinful desires because they will only entice and entrap you.
If you want a picture of this, imagine in your mind a heroin addict who says I am free to take drugs whenever I want. That's not freedom, that's captivity.
The only way to find true freedom is to choose to walk by the spirit. Verses 16 to 17.
“So I say walk by the spirit and you will not satisfy the desires of the flesh for the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh."
They are in conflict with each other so that you are not to do whatever you want. In these verses, Paul describes the inner conflict that is the reality for the Christian life. Being a Christian does not mean that we are freed from temptation. Earlier we prayed the Lord's prayer that Jesus taught us to pray. “Lead us not into temptation.” Because that's the daily experience of Christians which is why we pray that prayer daily.
What Paul describes in verse 17 is my ongoing experience as a Christian. My old nature desires what is contrary to the spirit. The desire to do what is right is there but it battles against the desire to give into my own self-serving desires. The way for us to resolve this tension is to choose to walk by the spirit. This is a metaphor that Paul has picked up from the Old Testament, particularly from our Old Testament passage from Ezekiel 36. The last verse verse 27 literally reads
“And I will put my spirit in you and you will walk in my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”
That is the natural outworking of God putting his spirit in his people. That's what it will happen when God does this new thing that's being promised in Ezekiel. This new covenant, this new work of the spirit. The thing that you will see is that God's people will finally be able to keep his laws.
Walking in the spirit then does not mean being carried along in some of some trance like state.
Walking in the spirit means nothing more and nothing less than choosing to keep God's decrees and laws, because the spirit enables us to do it.
Walking in the new covenant doesn't mean that we've been freed from obedience to God. Rather we've been freed for obedience. Freed to obey.
The spirit changes our heart so that we can now do that which we could never do by nature.
That is to obey God from the heart. And walking in the spirit means choosing to do that day by day, hour by hour. And whether we do this, whether we keep in step with the spirit will be reflected in our actions.
In the verses that follow Paul contrasts two ways that that might show out. He contrasts the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. The acts of the flesh sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions and envy drunkenness and the like. This is not an exhaustive list but it provides some examples of what happens when we let our sinful nature, our flesh, shape our actions. It leads to
- corrupted sexual desires,
- sexual immorality and debauchery.
- corrupted relationships with God,
- idolatry and witchcraft.
- corrupted relationships with others, hatred, jealousy, rage.
- self-destructive behaviour, drunkenness and the like.
It's what happens when we let itself be the centre of our desires. The desires of the flesh.
God hasn't freed us in order that we can behave like this. Rather he set us free so that we no longer have to live in a world of of such brokenness.
It seems that the church at Galatia was exhibiting some of the works of the flesh. Paul refers in verse 15 to the fact that they are ‘biting and devouring each other’ and in verse 26 to ‘becoming conceited provoking and envy each other’.
It is perhaps for this reason that Paul issues the really strong warning that comes in verse 18. That those who live like this will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Even though Paul is writing to a Christian congregation, he is saying...
...that if there is no real change in your behaviour, if all you manifest are these works of the flesh, that demonstrates that God's spirit is not at work in you.
You are not the kind of people that Ezekiel described in Ezekiel 36 where God has put his spirit in you and you will walk in in certain ways If you are a Christian, a key work of the spirit in your life is to change you to live and act more like Jesus.
What is the key work of the spirit in the life of the believer?
To transform you so that you live like Jesus, rather than the works of the flesh.
What people should see in your life, the fruit of the spirit. Paul tells us in verses 22 and 23 that the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
In contrast to the works of the flesh, these are the fruit of the spirit. A fruit being an outward manifestation of an inner life. An apple tree has the fruit of apples on it because they are alive. Dead trees don't produce fruit. Likewise the ninefold fruit here are an outworking of our relationship with God. An outworking of the inner work of the spirit.
To put it another way, the closer our relationship with God, the deeper that relationship and the more this fruit will be manifest in our lives.
If you want to manifest the fruit of love, it's not a matter of just willing up that love from within to love others more. Rather..
...the more that you are captivated by God's undeserved and unlimited love for you, the more secure you are in that love, the more that love will overflow into loving the undeserving and the unlovely around you.
Similarly the path to finding peace is not about sitting quietly in a corner and meditating on peaceful thoughts or peaceful images of creation.
The path to peace is knowing yourself to be at peace with God and enabling the spirit to allow you to be an agent of peace with others.
My point is that each of the 9 dimensions of the fruit of the spirit is a manifestation of an underlying relationship with God. And notice that it is not the nine fruits, plural, but fruit singular. That is every Christian who is walking by the spirit should be exhibiting all nine in increasing measure.
As I finish this morning, what I'd like to do is to read slowly through that list. We don't have time to dwell on them in in in turn, but as I if I read each of these words I want you to… pause after each one just reflect on your own life and see whether you can see, perhaps whether others can see, that part of the fruit of the spirit in in your Christian life
We don't have time to dwell on them in in in turn, but I if I read each of these words I want you to reflect on your own life
Joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Perhaps the Holy Spirit is prompting your heart right now about some aspect of his fruit that's missing from your life. You might like to take the opportunity to pray that God will enrich you with his Holy Spirit, particularly in that regard to help you to be more loving, more joyful, more forbearing. Always reminding us that...
...as Christians, our sinful nature has in fact been put to death. It has been crucified with Christ on the cross that the passions and the desires of that old nature no longer have control over us. They are no longer our master.
The tragedy however is that all too often we put ourselves back into slavery over those things that are no longer our master. The spirit of God has given you life says Paul. So that we can walk in that we can keep in step with the spirit.
Galatians 5 is contrasting three ways to live. Two wrong, one right.
We must not go on living as those bound under a slavery to law to the law. A law that we cannot obey… that is powerless to save us. So that's the first way. Don't go back into turning Christianity into rules and regulations.
But equally, at the opposite extreme, we must not live as though we can disregard God's laws, as though Christ has freed us to live a life of self indulgence. As Paul says that's not true freedom either. In fact that's just living in a different kind of slavery. Slavery not to the law but a slavery to the flesh.
For the Christian, we neither live in slavery to the law nor to our old natures. We've been given true freedom in Christ.
That is freedom to serve our God, freedom to love one another, freedom to obey the law from the heart. True freedom only comes when we walk in the spirit whom god has placed in our hearts and as we walk in that freedom it will be manifest in the fruit of love, joy.
Here's a closing prayer, asking for God's help to live in his spirit...
Heavenly father we thank you for the new covenant by which you have put your spirit in our hearts that we might do from the heart that which we could never do before. That is to love and serve you in joyful obedience. Father we thank you for this and we pray that you would help us by your spirit to walk in your laws and keep
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