The Fruit of the Spirit - Part 1

If you do have a Bible, turn to Galatians 5, and we're going to be reading Galatians 5, 16 through 26.

Please continue to stand for the reading of God's Word. In the evenings, we're going to be starting a series on the fruit of the

Spirit, and our general plan will be to spend this week going through different methods of sanctification that relate to this passage.

Next week, we're going to preview some of the works of the flesh, and then in the weeks that will, it may not be next week, but next time we revisit this sermon series, we will be talking about the works of the flesh.

And then after that, I suppose we're going to be dealing with the fruit of the Spirit, one fruit, one slice of the fruit at a time.

So we'll have a series of messages on each one of them, but for today, as I said, we're going to be reading

Galatians 5, 16 through 26. So here's Galatians 5, 16. But I say, walk by the

Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the

Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the

Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

You may be seated. Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you for the privilege it is to come to your words that you've given to us, which are life to us.

I pray that you bless our time here today and help us to learn great things from your Word. Help us to know how best to apply these things to our life and help us to use these truths as a means of glorifying you and helping both ourself and others.

We thank you for what you do. In your Son's name I pray. Amen. And when you think about the subject of sanctification in general, you have to realize that sanctification is a topic that there really is no unified perspective of in the

Christian world. And what I mean is that in the Christian world, we may know something about this great doctrine, particularly if we are in churches that are more doctrinally minded.

I would say that most of the churches I've been in for most of my life really haven't taught about sanctification at all.

And that may be a $12 word or something along those lines that I was never taught.

I was never taught what that meant. I knew something about justification, but that was about it.

I would say in most of the teaching that I got throughout my life, we really didn't talk about this topic really at all.

And I think in the Reformed world, we're used to using this word, and it may be a word that's more familiar with most of you here today.

I would assume that it would be, but yet at the same time, I'm not sure that our impulse is related to the means of sanctification are always so unified.

So it could be that when we seek to answer the question, how do we pursue sanctification as Christians, we engage in very different practices from individual to individual that may reflect more popular understandings of what this word means.

And so we would do well to think about what we're talking about today here. And I do want to do a study on the fruit of the

Spirit. And so as we're thinking about our study on the fruit of the Spirit, I do want to say a few words about different models of sanctification so that we can talk about what it means to walk by the

Spirit. As I said, if we're to think about various models of sanctification that people might embrace,

I'm not presenting these models as if they're all equally valuable or they're all biblical and you just kind of pick the way you want in order to figure out how you're going to pursue sanctification.

I'm just seeking to say that when we're talking about the topic of sanctification in general, there are many different ways that people go about trying to approach this topic, and you might find that people are approaching it in different ways.

Now as it relates to the topic of sanctification, there are three categories of sanctification that you should be aware of, that you should think about.

So these three topics are as follows. There's what's called positional sanctification.

When you're talking about positional sanctification, you're talking about the reality of a believer who after they're justified, they're declared to be a saint.

So positional sanctification is that declaration that a believer is a saint. So that is in contrast the

Roman Catholic doctrine of sanctification in that way where sainthood is something that is achieved at some point in your life after a life filled with good works.

In contrast to that, what the Bible actually teaches is that every single believer is declared to be holy, set apart to God, a saint by virtue of being adopted into his family, by virtue of being justified and declared righteous.

So all believers are positionally sanctified, meaning they're devoted to God's service.

They're uniquely devoted to that task. The most common view of sanctification which you probably think about when you think about this word is what's called progressive sanctification.

And progressive sanctification is the process whereby God is conforming a believer into his image over the course of their life.

So progressive sanctification is never going to be completed in this life. We're confident that God has began a good work in us if we are in Christ and he's going to be faithful to complete that work.

So progressive sanctification is the process of God conforming you slowly to the image of his son over the course of your life.

You're never going to finish being sanctified in this life. Contrary to the charismatic claims, to the contrary, in this life you'll never be completely sanctified.

You'll never achieve some point of sanctification in this journey where you cease from sin, where you achieve perfection in this life, that's just not the way it works.

So you have what's called positional sanctification, you have progressive sanctification, and finally there's what the

Bible would describe as final sanctification. We know that when we see God we'll be made like him and everyone who has that hope in themselves purifies themselves as he is pure, meaning there is coming a day, an hour where you're never going to struggle with sin anymore and that's either when you die or when

Christ returns and you see him, okay? So there's those three categories. For the purpose of our study we're going to be talking about the middle category which is progressive sanctification, which is the category

I'm sure that most of us are familiar with. Now as I said, there's different models of this that we should think about.

There's different ways that people approach this. To put one of these approaches in the common vernacular, we might describe a approach to sanctification that's purely passive, okay?

A purely passive approach to sanctification in the phrase, let go, let God. So if you've been around church culture to any length of time you might hear people describe sanctification that way, it's let go, let

God, it's a passive approach to sanctification. I often like to describe this as the Carrie Underwood approach to sanctification,

Jesus take the will, you know, if you know anything about that song, my reference may be lost on you but many of us think about sanctification in that way where sanctification is just completely passive.

It's just getting yourself out of the way, it's just trying to get to this point where you're totally surrendered to God and the way that you grow in the

Christian life is just kind of get out of the way and let God take control and don't put any work or effort forth, you don't make any practical steps or changes, you just basically just let

God take over. There's a charismatic wrinkle on this with their second blessing theology that you may be aware of.

So many people in the charismatic movement, they have a second blessing view of sanctification where they're trying to achieve this state to where they may be saved but then they're awaiting this second blessing where they're really transformed at that point and so as I've counseled people in the charismatic movement, they're often describing that state as achieving the state of total surrender.

They conceive of sanctification as praying for God just to presumably get them to this place where they reach this state of total surrender that presumably the rest of their life is just going to be coasting, you know, just letting

God totally take control of their life and presumably control their every action.

So there's a charismatic wrinkle on that but that's just one way to describe a view of sanctification that you may fall prey to.

You may not word it quite like that but you may think of sanctification in that way and you may be praying for sanctification in that way.

You may be praying for it in a purely passive way. So for example, I mean, say you struggle with lust.

If you embrace this let go, let God model of sanctification, then the bulk of your prayers might be centered on something like,

Lord, just take the lust away. Just take the lust away, right? So you may not, if that's what you're saying,

I'm not trying to say that there's nothing good in praying that kind of prayer, I'm just trying to suggest that if that's the scope of what your prayers are, there's more to pursuing sanctification than just asking

God to take away all the bad desires and hoping he will, right? So there's more to it than that but I think a lot of times when we're trying to pursue biblical change, we adopt a very passive kind of posture where we're asking

God just to take certain sins away from us and begging him to do that and as I said,

I mean, there's nothing wrong with that but that would be a distortion of the kind of sanctification that you should be pursuing in general, meaning that's not the whole answer.

So to the extent to which you think the whole answer to pursuing sanctification is just passively asking

God to take all the bad temptations away, then there's a little bit more to it than that.

Now perhaps the opposite error and this is an error that you'll see in popular media forms particularly in a kind of Christianity that is largely

Arminian in its orientation and popular, like Christianity and its popular expressions,

I mean, I hear, we were watching a TV show recently from maybe 10 years ago and this is the kind of thing that you will find on TV shows but there's a perspective of sanctification that essentially is the opposite of let go, let

God, that God helps those who help themselves form of sanctification and certainly, if you think about that as a reaction to let go, let

God, there's some truth to that too, isn't there? Meaning, like, if you're the kind of person who is praying for a job and you refuse to put resumes out in order to get that job, you could take the passive approach which is just God, you know, fix my situation,

I'm not going to make any effort or you can react to that by saying, well hey, if you want a job, you may want to go put out resumes, right?

If you want a spouse, you may want to show yourself to be friendly, to put yourself in the path of people who are looking for a spouse, right?

So the opposite of that is just to say God helps those who help themselves and as I said, I mean, that hints at some kind of truth to it as well but it's obviously not the whole story and that's a pretty distorted view of sanctification in general, meaning there's a couple things that are wrong with that, like the idea that God helps those who help themselves.

One, when you think about that phrase, God helps those who help themselves, you may think about that in such a way that the total means that God uses to help an individual is by actually not doing anything at all but by watching them, by encouraging them to take control of their situation and fix it themselves.

So that would be one way to read that expression, which would basically say, God's not going to do anything for your situation, he's not going to do anything for your problem, it's all up to you, you bear the weight of it all and there's nothing more unbiblical than that.

So God has prepared good works that we should walk in before the foundation of the world, he's not just left it up to us to figure out how to pursue his purposes.

If we make any progress in sanctification at all, it's because he's at work within us to will and to do according to his good pleasure, so he's not completely passive in that.

But a second way you may read that is in more of a distorted way, where you think, well

God will only help you after you put forth a little bit of effort. So meaning you put a little bit of effort out there and then he's going to boost you along, right?

So sanctification for you, some of this is your autonomous work, and God's just going to add to your autonomous work and give you a little bit more momentum and help you along in that kind of way, but both of these things are very man -centered, both of these ways of viewing sanctification are very man -centered, they're not

God -centered at all, and they don't acknowledge God's sovereignty in the process of sanctification. So the let go, let

God is total God's sovereignty, no human responsibility, God helps those who help themselves on the other side, that's total man's responsibility with very little

God sovereignty and all that, both of these are distortions of the biblical doctrine of sanctification.

But then a third means that we'll look at before we get to our passage is what I call the means of grace is kind of a magic pill approach to sanctification, and that's a mouthful.

I don't expect you to know what I mean by that when I say that, but many people view sanctification in sort of an abstract way, meaning if you just read your

Bible during your quiet time, if you just pray in your quiet time, if you just go to church, if you just have your family devotions, then you're going to be sanctified indirectly in the process, if that makes sense.

So just follow all the religious checkmark boxes, and in a disconnected way you're going to find that you passively are growing in God's image in a way that's somewhat disconnected from those other things, if that makes sense what

I'm saying. Now this is the closest to the truth because there is a sense in which sanctification really is like that.

If you were just to read your Bible every day and pray every day and go to church every time the doors are open, if you were to have family worship every night, if you were to do these things, one of the things you're going to find is you do those things over the course of a decade, you're going to be unrecognizable in the process.

Certainly there's a lot of ways in which God is going to use the regular ordinary means of grace,

Bible study, prayer, family devotion, Lord's Supper, all of that. He's going to use that to conform you into his image, but at the same time there are some very direct statements in the scripture that talk about work and effort related to specific objectives.

So this is a passage that talks in this kind of language. So Galatians 5 .16 says, but I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

This is, there's more to this phrase walk by the spirit than simply just check all your religious boxes and then you're going to find that you're passively growing in conformity to the knowledge of the truth.

While at the same time there's certainly a lot of truth in those things as well. So you shouldn't understand me to be minimizing the importance of those things,

I'm not minimizing the importance of those things at all. In fact, if you neglect those things and you're not growing as you should be, you should understand that if you're neglecting all the things that God has commanded you to do, it's not shocking or remarkable that you're not growing as you might expect to grow, but I'm just simply here to say that there's more to sanctification in a biblical sense than just a passive process of growing when you put in all the right random inputs, if that makes sense.

So what does our passage here today say about this topic? Well, as we've read,

Galatians 5 .16 starts out this way, it says, but I say, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

So notice in the passage, if you think about the passage as a whole, there is this admonition that Christians are given to walk by the spirit, and if Christians are walking by the spirit, they're not going to carry out the desires of the flesh, and notice, you're told to walk by the spirit and that's going to protect you from carrying out the desires of the flesh, and then what you're told is there's this battleground in your heart between the desires of the flesh and the desires of the spirit, and the flesh is actively fighting against the desires of the spirit in order to try to keep you from doing the things that you want to do, and the result, if you follow these desires of the flesh, is going to be that you're going to perform the works of the flesh that are listed to great effect.

So the text says in verse 19, the works of the flesh are evidence, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalry, dissensions and divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

So the point here is to say that there are two competing sets of desires in your heart. There's the desires of the flesh that are going to produce these works of the flesh, and then there's the desires of the spirit which are waging war against these desires of the flesh that are going to produce the fruit of the spirit.

So verse 22, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control against such things.

There is no law. So when we think about what it means, like what is a biblical view of sanctification from this passage, it's going to center around this idea of walking by the spirit.

So we ought to ask ourselves the question, well what does it mean to walk by the spirit?

What does that mean? Now if you've grown up around the

Charismatic Church, you might have a similar response to this phrase that I have.

So me, when I grew up in a Southern Baptist Christian world that was largely influenced by Charismatic theology, when

I saw the phrase walk by the spirit growing up, I really didn't even know what to make of that.

I didn't know what to make of that. So when I hear that phrase, I was taught to think about it as being a very mystical kind of phrase.

It's kind of a very mystical, what it means to walk by the spirit is the spirit is going to whisper in my ear, give me impressions about what kind of decisions

I want to make. So in the Charismatic world, what it means to walk by the spirit is basically to try to listen to that still small voice in your heart that is going to give you subjective, personally determined guidance in every situation that you find yourself in.

So if you've been around this kind of world, this kind of Christian world for any length of time, then what you are trained to do is you're trained to, as you read the

Bible, the Bible is going to tell you a few things, but if you really want to know how to please

God in this kind of framework, what you should be looking to is not the scriptures, you should be looking to the spirit to personally tell you apart from the scripture what

God wants for you to do. So there's a famous analogy at that point of Beth Moore basically going to the airport seeing a homeless guy and God telling her in a personal, private way that he doesn't want her to evangelize this guy, but he wants her to go brush her hair.

Well in the Charismatic world, that's the kind of thing that you would expect. If you want to know what God's will is for your life, you're not going to just look at the

Bible and do what it says, right? So for this is the will of God, your sanctification that you abstain from sexual immorality and everything give thanks for this is the will of God.

You're not looking to the Bible necessarily to tell you God's will in any comprehensive way, what you're doing is you're looking to your subjective thoughts and feelings and impressions that the spirit is supposed to kind of tell you the real stuff that's directly for you in that way.

And so what it means to walk by the spirit in that kind of framework is basically to be trying to pay attention to your intuitions, your hunches, and figure out what the spirit is saying directly to you.

And then presumably if you do that, then you're going to be sanctified. So that's kind of how I was trained to think about what it means to walk by the spirit is basically listen to my gut, listen to my heart, because the

Holy Spirit would be telling me personally what I need to be doing, what decisions I would be making in those ways.

And then if you listen to Christians for any length of time, you'll realize that when they have a decision to make, they're often going to word it in this kind of language.

So they're going to say, I feel led to do X. When a person says, I feel led to do

X, what they're doing is they're appealing to direct divine revelation that was given specifically to them as a decision making mechanism to tell them what to do.

Sometimes we may say this language in a bit of a sloppy way to where a person might say something like that and they may mean, well, the

Bible says to do A, B, and C, therefore I feel led to do that.

But for the most part, this is an appeal to mysticism that's happening when people are using that kind of language.

But as I said, what does it mean to walk by the spirit? It's not this charismatic thing that's incomprehensible, it's not this subjective, private, personal kind of revelation that God is giving directly to us.

To walk by the spirit is much simpler than that. And as you read through the passages, I hope you realize how simple this actually is because it's something that's very simple.

To walk by the spirit is to submit oneself to the desires that the spirit is producing in them.

To respond in obedience to those desires instead of the desires of the flesh, okay?

So let's read through the passage again with that in mind. So I'm saying, what does it mean to walk by the spirit?

It means to submit oneself to the desires that the spirit is producing in them, to respond in obedience to those desires instead of the desires of the flesh.

So Colossians 5, 16, I say, but I say, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

So notice there's a battleground between different desires, desires of the flesh, desires of the spirit. But if you are led by the spirit, you're not under the law.

And so then you see the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, envy, drunkenness, orgies, things like these, right?

So sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fists of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, things like these.

What are the desires of the spirit? What are they fighting? That list, right?

The spirit in you is desiring that you fight that list, right? What is the fruit of the spirit?

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

What is the desires of the spirit? It's not meant to be an incomprehensible riddle.

It's not meant to be endlessly subjective, brothers and sisters. What are the desires of the spirit? The spirit is desiring to produce in you love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control.

That's the exact opposite of the list of the desires of the flesh. The flesh is trying to produce in you the works of the flesh.

The spirit is trying to produce in you the fruit of the spirit. So what does it mean to walk by the spirit?

What does it mean to walk by the spirit? To identify those desires of the flesh, to fight those desires of the flesh, and to submit yourself in obedience to the desires of the spirit, which is love, joy, peace, long -suffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self -control.

So this isn't really meant to be something that's entirely incomprehensible. Here's Calvin.

If we would obey the spirit, notice what he says, if we would obey the spirit, we must labor and fight and apply our utmost energy, and we must begin with self -denial.

That's what he says about this passage. We must labor and fight and apply our utmost energy, and we must begin with self -denial.

So notice how that's very different than the let -go, let -God kind of thing, and it's also very different than the

God -helps -those -who -help -themself kind of thing. So you must labor and fight and apply your utmost energy and begin with self -denial.

This is very different than kind of an asceticism to where you're just self -denial for the sake of self -denial.

So there's no value in just taking your stuff and throwing it in the trash in order to pursue self -denial.

That's not what the passage is talking about either. So you're not just going to be more holy by reducing your number of things that you have and taking your stuff and giving away to others.

The kind of self -denial it's talking about is your flesh is going to be trying to produce this list of the works of the flesh in your heart.

What does self -denial look like? Self -denial looks like rejecting that list. Do you see how that's different than just self -denial for the sake of self -denial?

You're not becoming more Christian just by denying yourself any earthly pleasure that you might have. The point here is just to say that your self, your natural self, is going to be drawn to that list of things that we talked about.

Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalry, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like this.

Your flesh is going to naturally gravitate towards sin. So practicing biblical self -denial is going to be to resist these desires of the flesh that are in your heart.

So here's the point. The fruit of the Spirit is produced by walking in the

Spirit, and this is not simply a passive process that just happens.

It's not simply a process that is happening indirectly as a result of doing the right things.

This is, as Calvin says, this is a labor, it's a specific labor and fight that we must apply our utmost energy to.

So as we've seen, the fruit of the Spirit is produced by walking in the

Spirit. Secondly, what you'll see is that there are these desires that are waging war in your heart, okay?

So this is verse 17. For the desires of the flesh are against the

Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do.

In your heart, there is a battleground for your desires. If you've been a

Christian for any length of time, what you'll realize is that there are two sets of desires that you have within your heart that are constantly warring against each other.

If you're a Christian, you'll realize that there is this battle you have against these insane, crazy lusts that Calvin again says, carnal men have no battle with depraved lust, no proper desire to attain to the righteousness of God.

If you're a Christian, you have this war going on within your heart to where you have two sets of desires that are at work.

You have desires that the Spirit is producing in you to obey the Lord, to honor

Him with your life, to submit yourself to His purposes. But then you have the flesh, in the language of this passage, or the old man in the language of other passages, which are fighting against the desires of the

Spirit, and the text says they're fighting against the desires of the Spirit to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

You know that whenever you sin, you have a desire problem. Sin is not simply a behavior problem.

Sin is a desire problem. There is a desire that is producing that kind of sin, and that desire needs to go.

The desires of the flesh are desires that need to be mortified. The desires of the

Spirit are desires that need to be vivified, to put that in the opposite way.

There is this battleground going on in your heart, and the issue is, if you want to know what desire is strongest, the simplest way to determine what desire is strongest is simply to observe and see what you do.

Whatever you do in any given moment is going to tell you what the strongest desire actually is.

So if you give in to voyeurism on the internet, that's because your desire for voyeurism was stronger than your desire to honor the

Lord in that moment. You have two sets of desires. The strongest one is going to win. You always know which one is strongest based on which one you do.

That's the point. In the Christian, there is going to be this conflict that is going on, where we are going to, at times, give in to the desires of the flesh, because God doesn't instantaneously, when

He saves us, deliver us from all of these old desires. When you gossip, you may know that gossip is wrong.

You may know that it's wrong. You may feel dirty afterwards. You may wish that you had the courage to stop in the middle of it.

You may go and ask God forgiveness, which you should afterwards, for engaging in that kind of gossip.

The issue is that a Christian is going to feel some kind of conviction related to that topic in general, but there's two sets of desires.

If you want to get over the sin of gossip, for instance, you're going to have to identify what is the desire that is producing this sin.

You know what? It may be plenty of different desires that are producing that sin. I don't know what that desire might be for the individual person, but it could be any number of sinful desires.

For example, when you gossip, what is the desire that's producing it?

Maybe it's a desire to be well -liked by someone. Maybe there's a people -pleasing kind of desire.

If someone is gossiping to you, instead of saying, no,

I don't want to hear it, you may be too afraid to do that because you love the praise of men more than you love the praise of God in that moment.

It could be a people -pleasing kind of desire in that moment that is keeping you from saying no, from stopping that, from redirecting that in a helpful way.

It could also be a desire to be thought well of. There is something in us that feels good to exalt ourself and tear other people down.

So there could be a prideful desire to be thought to be more important than other people in that kind of moment.

There could be a desire to punish that other person for doing something wrong to you.

So when you're gossiping about them, it could be that you're bitter. There could be some bitterness in there that is producing that desire to try to tear them down.

It could be envy, right? There could be an envy in your heart that is looking at this person and being covetous of what they have and you want to bring them down a peg.

Those are just four examples of desires that could be at work producing these works of the flesh in that kind of moment.

So what I'm trying to say is that when you think about sanctification, part of the way that we should be thinking about sanctification is we should be thinking about identifying those sinful desires that are producing those sinful behaviors, and in the language of Calvin, applying our utmost effort and energy to fight those sinful desires.

So much of our efforts in the realm of sanctification just centers upon trying to change one behavior for another, behavior modification, where we should be thinking there are desires that are producing these behaviors.

What are those desires? As I said, if a man gives in to voyeurism, what is the desire that's producing for that?

It could be a desire for physical gratification. It could be a desire for companionship that is producing that.

In that moment, every one of our desires are not bad, but then they can become corrupted in certain ways.

It could be a desire for companionship. It could be a desire for just straight -up physical gratification.

It could be a means that a person is sinfully using to feel some sort of relational connection.

It could be any number of things, and I'm not trying to, if you hear me right now, to be trying to make these things understandable, then you're misunderstanding the point of what

I'm trying to do. I'm trying to say that you ought to, if you want to make progress and change in these areas, learn to identify the desires of the flesh that are waging war against the spirit.

In any given sin you give yourself over to, there may be multiple desires that are out of control that are leading to the bad behavior.

So here's the point. The heart is the battleground of the desires, and the spirit is the expected victor here.

So the text says, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

That's not to say that the flesh is going to ultimately keep the

Christian from obeying God. It's simply stating the intention of these desires of the flesh.

These desires of the flesh, of your flesh, even if you're a Christian, are waging war against these desires of the spirit in order to try to keep you from obeying

God. But as you read through the passage, one of the things you'll realize is that ultimately the spirit is going to win.

We are confident that God has started a good work in us, and if you read in chapter 5, verse 24, you see those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with his passions and desires.

So when you're thinking about how to pursue sanctification today, you are thinking about something which involves identifying these desires of the flesh, going to war against these desires of the flesh, applying your utmost energy to fighting these desires of the flesh.

And we know that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they're not of the flesh. There's no physical solution to fighting these battles, but we're going to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

We're going to repent of these sinful desires, we're going to ask God to cleanse us of these sinful desires, we're going to ask

God to help us to hate these sinful desires that are producing these sinful behaviors, and we're going to make no provision for the flesh that we may obey its lust.

So there's a whole doctrine of sanctification that undergirds this process of going to war against these desires, but we should be confident that for the

Christian there will be victory in overcoming these things. We're not just going to be bound by the same set of sinful desires for the rest of our life, experiencing no victory whatsoever.

So as I said, you think about what we're talking about here today, the fruit of the

Spirit is going to be produced by walking in the Spirit. The desires of the flesh are waging war against the desires for the

Spirit, but the fruit of the Spirit, the presence of this fruit itself will demonstrate the freedom that we have in Christ.

Notice what it says in verse 18, but if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Now again, this isn't a passage on charismatic decision making. To be led by the

Spirit is not to be listening to personal guidance from the Holy Spirit who's going to tell you what choices to make in life.

Here's the car that the Holy Spirit wants you to buy, here's the wife that the Holy Spirit wants you to marry.

This is the job that the Holy Spirit wants you to take, that's not really the way any of this is meant to work.

God has given you freedom to make certain choices within particular constraints. What does it mean to be led by the

Spirit? It's not that you're just going to have access to your own personal magic eight ball where God will tell you the right decision to make in every single situation.

To be led by the Spirit, this is a present tense verb, and so it seems reasonable to take this in the present active sense.

To be led by the Spirit is to be continually influenced by and directed by the

Spirit. What does that mean? In the language of this passage, what that means is the Spirit is producing the desires of the

Spirit in you, the Spirit is going to be producing these character traits in you that are identifiable, that are going to war against the desires of the flesh, and it's your job to basically fight those works of the flesh, identify those works of the flesh, identify those desires of the flesh, and ask forgiveness for those desires and make no provision for those desires.

What it means to be led by the Spirit is to acknowledge the goal that the Spirit is working within you, which is to produce these fruit of the

Spirit. So notice what Calvin says here again, walking, walk according to the

Spirit, you will then be free from the dominion of the law, which will act only in the capacity of a kind advisor and will no longer lay a restraint upon your consciences.

In other words, what does it mean to say that if we are led by the Spirit, you're not under the law? It means that you're no longer under the condemnation of the law if you are being led by the

Spirit. The point here is just to say that you, as a Christian, not you're going to ignore everything that the law has to say, you're going to reject the moral law of God, that's not the point.

The point here is to say that if you're led by the Spirit, you're not going to experience

God's expectations of you as a harsh taskmaster that serves only to condemn you as this unattainable thing that you can't possibly obey.

You're not going to experience the law in that kind of way. The law will act only in the capacity of a kind advisor and will no longer lay a restraint upon your consciousness.

You won't experience God's expectations as serving only to condemn you, but you'll see them as a kind advisor.

When you look at this list of the works of the flesh, you're not just going to be looking at that list of things just in its capacity to condemn you, you're going to see

God's rules and expectations for you as a kind advisor meant to point you to how to glorify

God with your life. So the fruit of the Spirit demonstrates the freedom that you have in Christ.

If you're led by the Spirit, you're not under the law's condemnation. Brothers and sisters,

God has done a great work for us. He's delivered us from the domain of sin and the realm of darkness.

He has set us free from sin's condemnation. And if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

God has given us, if you are in Christ, everything that you need for life and godliness, and He has promised that no temptation has overtaken you, but what is common to man.

He's faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond your ability, but with that temptation will provide a way of escape that you may bear it.

God's given you everything you need for life and godliness. In His word, He's given you every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

If He's justified you, He's adopted you into His family. He's given you everything that you need to honor

Him. He's put His Spirit within you, and His Spirit is actively conforming you to the image of His Son.

His Spirit began a good work in you, and He's going to be faithful to complete that work. And His Spirit is producing this fruit in your life.

That's what God has done for you today. What it means to walk in the

Spirit is to submit yourself to the desires of the Spirit. The Spirit is trying to produce in you.

That's what it means, and we know that we have no hope of doing that apart from God being at work within us to will and to do according to His good pleasure.

Far from sanctification being a process which is just solely a passive thing where we play no part in, or it being our entire responsibility and God plays no part in, sanctification is a dependent work that God is doing.

Sanctification is a work that God has started, it's a work founded on His resources, it's a dependent work where we are walking in obedience to Him, and the only way that we're going to walk in that obedience is if He's began the good work and He's enabling us to walk in those good works which

He's prepared before the foundation of the world that we should walk in. This really isn't meant to be a confusing thing, it's not meant to be mystical, it's not really meant to be something that's completely unintelligible.

The Christian life really isn't meant to be this very complicated thing, you're meant to look at lists like this of the works of the flesh and lists of the fruit of the

Spirit and see all the areas in which the Spirit is producing in you these qualities and these character traits, and you know as a

Christian that there is this battleground going on and the only hope of victory we have is in trusting in what

Jesus has done for us on the cross. Amen? Let's pray.

Lord, we do thank you for the work that you've started, we know that you will be faithful to finish that work. Pray that you help us to understand better the battleground that is going on within our desires so that we can be more intentional in our prayers and have better insight into the battle that we're facing,

Lord. We know that you haven't left us into the dark as to the work that you are performing.

We know that we need your help in order to fight the good fight of faith,

Lord. We know that you're there and that you've spoken and that you will help us and we ask you for that help.