Sunday Sermon: Walk By the Spirit (Galatians 5:16-26)

Sunday Sermon on Walking by the Spirit in Galatians

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book.

On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the book of Galatians.

Here's Pastor Gabe.

The Gospel of Justification by Faith Alone in Galatians

The Apostle Paul writing to the churches in Galatia. 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 evidence, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, 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 its 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. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, as we come to Your text today, we ask that Your Spirit would teach us and guide us. That we would be convicted in our flesh so that we might walk by the Spirit.

That we would not gratify the desires of our flesh, but we would desire to please God. And may we come to understand what it is that You have asked of us according to Your Word. Not thinking of ourselves as, well, I can worship God the way that I want, or I can love people the way the world says that love is supposed to look like.

We define our terms according to Your Word. We keep in step with Your Word. We walk according to Your Word. For it is the Spirit that gave us Your Word. And it is the Spirit that helps us to understand it.

So may we walk by the Spirit and live lives that are pleasing unto our Lord who saves us. It's in Jesus' name we pray, and all God's people said, Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. Over the course of this letter to the churches in 1st Century Galatia, the argument being made by the Apostle Paul, his appeal to these churches, is that they come to understand the true gospel.

We are justified by faith in Christ alone. I saw a quote this morning from Martin Lloyd-Jones that if a preacher cannot stand in the presence of the pulpit and give a defense for justification by faith alone, then he has no business standing in the pulpit.

And in the churches in Galatia, there was someone that had come in preaching a gospel different than the one that we had received, justification by faith alone. Jesus Christ has died for our sins, and He has conquered death by rising from the grave.

Whoever believes in Him is forgiven by faith alone. Jesus is enough. The work of Christ is sufficient. And if someone comes to you preaching Christ plus something else equals salvation, they are preaching a different gospel.

For the Galatians, they had been seized by the Judaizers into believing that we are justified by faith plus works. The work of Christ was not enough, they thought. And I need to keep these other works in order to be saved.

This of course was not the message that Paul and his missionary brethren had first preached to the Galatians when they came to them. He said in chapter 1 verse 6, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another gospel because there is no other.

Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. This new gospel was as good as no gospel at all. In fact, Paul said in verses 8 and 9 that to believe such a false gospel would lead not to life but a curse, the worst curse.

And that is the judgment of God. As we considered last week, Paul said, I wish that those who unsettle you would go the whole way and cut themselves off from the body of Christ instead of dividing it with their false teaching.

Sound doctrine always unites. Bad doctrine always divides. As we read last week in verses 13 through 15, for you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. And now in context, look at verse 16, but I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

To walk in something is a Hebrew figure of speech for how one lives their life. So another way that we could understand this, Galatians 5 .16, is live by the Spirit. We see multiple comparisons to walking in the faith throughout the New Testament.

Ephesians 2 .10, for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Colossians 2 .6, therefore, as you received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in Him.

1 Thessalonians 4 .1, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. 1 John 1 .7, but if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.

In the first half of Galatians 5, which we looked at last week, we read about how we are set free in Christ. We are free from the bonds of sin and death. We are released from the burden of the law. Therefore, we should not submit ourselves again to a yoke of slavery.

We should not use our freedom as a license to sin. Consider verse 13 again, for you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity of the flesh, but through love, serve one another.

If we are selflessly serving one another, we are not selfishly trying to appease the passions of our flesh. You have been cleansed of your sins, not so you can go get dirty again, lest you be living for yourself.

You've been washed so that you might live unto God, to love sacrificially as God has loved you. It is a very common pattern, particularly among professing American Christians, to live life one way on Sunday and then live a completely different way of life through the rest of the week.

When I was in high school, we used to make fun of—me and my friends, we would make fun of our Catholic friends and even some of our teachers who were Catholic. They would live like the devil during the week, and then they would go to Mass on the weekend to be pardoned by the priest.

It would be several years later before I realized I was living my life that exact same way. It's not just a Catholic thing. It's just I had no priest and I had fewer smells and bells by which I conducted my sin or thought that I could just ask for forgiveness and then go and live in sinfulness again, knowing, hey, I've been washed, now I can go get dirty again.

The Bible calls this hypocrisy. Calling yourself a follower of Jesus but living like you're a follower of Satan? Saying you're a citizen of the kingdom of God but behaving like you are perishing with the rest of this fallen world?

If that's the way that you live, then you haven't been saved from your sins. You're still dying to do them. If there's no difference with the way you live your life and the way your unbelieving friends live, examine yourself to see that you are truly in the faith.

Some people will excuse their sinful living, whether it's their own sins or it could be the sins of a loved one that they just don't want to believe is heading to hell if they continue on the course that they're on.

They will say that this sin is an opportunity for God to show more grace. They might quote Romans 5 .20, which says where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Or Romans 6 .14, which says you are not under the law, you are under grace.

But neither of these passages is permission for you to sin. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. This means that you were once dead in your sins and your trespasses, but by the grace of God, you have been made alive together with Christ.

You are not under the law, but under grace means that you will not be judged by the law you've previously broken, but you will live under the grace of God, which we have in Christ Jesus. Romans 6 .1 -4 says, what shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?

We were buried, therefore, with Him by baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Verses 15 -18 say, what then?

Are we to sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? By no means. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

Notice some key words there. We've become obedient from the heart. We are to walk in newness of life. Obedience leads to righteousness. We come back again to this understanding of what it means to walk by the Spirit, and walking by the Spirit means obedience.

Obedience to what? What are we supposed to obey? The law of God. But wait! Didn't we just read that we are not under the law, but under grace? Well, that doesn't mean that the law no longer applies to us.

Quite the contrary, it means the law has been applied to us. Here's what I mean by that. In Jeremiah 31, beginning in verse 31, God talks of a new covenant. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people, and I will cleanse them from their sin.

These words exactly are repeated again in Hebrews 8, verses 8 through 12, showing that they have been fulfilled in the people of God, His church, through the Lord Jesus Christ. Revelation 21 .3 says,.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. This people, God will put His law within and write on their hearts, is us.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit that God has put in the heart of every single Christian, and this is walking by the Spirit, walking according to the commandments of God. In his commentary on Galatians, Ronald Fung, professor of biblical studies at China Graduate School of Theology, said the following,.

The guidance of the Spirit can be experienced as a reality in the life of a believer, a sign that Jeremiah's prophetic word about the new covenant has been fulfilled. In Old Testament times, the Israelites knew God's law as an external code, but in the New Testament dispensation, the law of God is set in His people's understanding and written on their hearts.

God's will is now an inward principle, the result of the leading of the Spirit within the believer. Consider also these words from the Lord in Ezekiel 36, starting in verse 25, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses.

From all your idols I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a soft heart, and I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and be careful to obey My rules.

Same thing that was said in Jeremiah under the promise of a new covenant. I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and be careful to obey My rules. The law of God has been written on our hearts through the Spirit of God that is within us.

In this way, the law has been applied to us. It has not been abolished. That should be very clear, considering that we just read in Galatians 5 .14, the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

That is a commandment, is it not? Do you believe that you are to love your neighbor? Then you believe the law of God still applies. Now let me make this emphatically clear once again. Salvation is not by the law.

Honor your father and your mother will not save you. You shall not murder will not save you. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal, bear false witness, or covet. These things will not save you.

You are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. We read in Galatians 3 .10 that everyone who relies on works of the law is under a curse. And then verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

So do not think that I am talking out of both sides of my head, saying in one instance that you are justified by faith and in another instance that you are justified by the law. Romans 3 .20 says, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

It is through the hearing of the law that you became aware that you had sinned against God. But now having called upon the name of Christ and received His forgiveness, He has written His commandments upon your heart, and your love for Him, your love for God, is expressed in your obedience.

As Jesus said in John 14 .15 and verse 21, If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me. Those who love God will keep His commandments, not because they save you, but because He saved you.

Romans 8 .3 -4, God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

In Matthew 5 .17, Jesus said, Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Romans 13 .8 -10 says, Love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Jesus came to fulfill the law. And now, as His follower with the Holy Spirit of God in your heart, you fulfill the law when you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Matthew 22 .40, on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. In his book, How Does God's Law Apply to Me? R .C. Sproul wrote the following,. Has anything changed about God that we would disregard His directives?

Is His word still law? Is He still as sovereign as He was in the Old Testament? Is the God of Israel and of the New Testament Church a commandment-giving God? His word is law. And His law is His word.

Because His law expresses His will. And that will, that law, is sweeter than honey. Psalm 119 .103. Note that Dr. Sproul said, His law expresses His will. When it comes to obeying the directive to love God, love people, right?

We are not free to interpret that as love God in whatever way you are comfortable worshiping, and love people in the way the culture says love is supposed to look like. We are to love God the way He says He is to be worshiped, and we are to love others the way Jesus said for us to love.

In keeping the word of God, we walk by the Spirit. But Galatians 5 .16 says more than just walk by the Spirit. It says, 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 thing that you want to do.

Now, we will flesh this out, pun, a little bit more when we contrast the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit, coming up a little bit later on in this chapter. But the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, the desires of the flesh and walking by the Spirit, these are opposite sides of a divided highway.

You cannot be on one side headed in one direction and then be in the other lane headed in the other direction at the same time. If you walk by the Spirit, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Your orientation must be in the direction of God. If you are facing God, the world is behind you. If you are facing the world, you are turning your back on God. I read to you earlier from Romans 8, 3 -4.

Let me pick up that passage again in verse 5. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile toward God. It does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Note that there are those who are in the flesh who cannot submit to what? They cannot submit to God's law. Continuing in verse 9. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.

If, in fact, the Spirit of God dwells in you. I said earlier, examine yourself to see that you are in the faith. Paul says a very similar thing here in Romans 8. Going on, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.

But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

Now, as I've said many times before in reading that particular passage, that is a verse that just tends to floor me. Imagine that. The same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is the exact same power that you have within you.

This power has strengthened you. It has raised you up. It has brought your dead spirit to life. You have been raised from death to life by the Holy Spirit of God. If that is the power that you have dwelling within you, don't you think that you have the power to resist the temptation of your flesh?

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that everyone here should be living in perfection. And if you aren't perfect, then you're not a Christian. That's not what I'm saying. But don't hear me saying, Christians still sin as an excuse to then go out and sin.

Jesus said, Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. And God has said in both the Old and the New Testaments, Be holy as I am holy. What this means is that you should be growing in holiness. You are progressing in holiness.

You are not falling back into sin or old sin patterns. You are growing in newness of life. Now, though the Scripture does use the word growing to describe our progress toward holiness, we might hear that word and tend to take a very passive approach to our spiritual maturity, thinking that it will just happen as naturally as the grass grows.

Right? Growing. It's like your body is growing, so I'm growing in my faith. Some of you, your body might be shrinking now. I don't know. I know that would certainly be the case for me to get into this kind of attitude, very easily and complacently sit back and think that spiritual growth is just going to happen.

My friends, as a husband and a father, sometimes I think, Well, my wife will just grow in holiness. My kids are just growing in holiness. You know why? Because I'm a pastor and we go to church. So then just naturally that growth is going to happen.

And we tend to all kind of think that way, that just because I call myself a Christian, I do my Bible study, I do my prayer, then I'm going to grow. I'm going to grow in sanctification. But, my friends, resisting temptation, growing in righteousness, being a pillar and a buttress of the truth, taking every thought captive and making it obey Christ, breaking down strongholds and everything that is raised up against the knowledge of God, fleeing from Satan and drawing near to God, this is spiritual warfare.

It's less compared to watering your lawn and more compared to taking up arms. You know the instruction to put on the full armor of God, right? What does the Scripture say? Ephesians 6, starting in verse 10,.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Kim Riddlebarger of Fuller Theological Seminary says the following,. The sinful nature is not eradicated at the moment of regeneration, but the sinful nature is cut off from its source of life. It will slowly but surely wither and die.

But though a defeated foe, it will nevertheless fight a determined guerrilla war until we die or until Christ comes back, whichever comes first. So these sinful passions are warring within us. And my brothers and sisters in the Lord, we must fight back.

We are fighting a spiritual war daily. And this battle, this battle, as we wage it, as we fight it, as we go through it day by day, guess what? This is walking in the Spirit. Consider it your marching orders.

This isn't like a brisk walk through Flint Hills National Wildlife Refuge. It is a front line battle. While an unbeliever is comfortable with their sin, Christians regularly struggle with indwelling sin.

But do not be discouraged or intimidated by this image of spiritual war. For we have been promised in Scripture that the battle belongs to the Lord. Victory is not in your ability to resist temptation or be holy.

Victory is in Jesus. We are reminded in 1 Corinthians 15, death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

If we are abounding in the work of the Lord, we are walking by the Spirit. We are not gratifying the desires of the flesh. Returning once again to Galatians 5 .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 one another, to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. Now what does this mean, to keep you from doing the things that you want to do? If you're going after the desires of your flesh, you might want to do what is pleasing to God.

You might say that you love God, and you want to do all that is according to His will, but you won't do it. Your desire is to satisfy your fleshly appetites, not to take up your cross and follow Christ.

You would rather have sexual immorality than do the work to be pure. You would rather have divisions with other people rather than do the work of reconciliation, right? You would rather be angry at one another than do the work of loving each other.

You would rather be intoxicated rather than doing the work of being filled with the Holy Spirit. You would rather have the idols that you've raised up and worship those things rather than doing the work of worshiping Christ and obeying Him.

So you might want to please God, but your heart wants what your flesh wants if you're going after the things of the flesh rather than walking by the Spirit, and it keeps you from doing the things that you want to do.

As Jesus told His disciples, the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Now let's turn it around the other way. If you're walking by the Spirit and doing the things of God, you won't do what your flesh wants you to do, right?

In fact, the very idea of it disgusts you. Sin is gross to the believer that truly desires holiness. You don't even like to think about it. You don't even want it in your brain. Some people love the memories of past sins.

They might remember something sinful that they did and savor it like sucking on a Tic Tac in their brain. But the person who walks by the Spirit, they want to think of their sin as God thinks of their sin.

It makes them sick. It's disgusting. They want it gone. They don't want it to have any place in their mind, in their body, or anywhere. So instead of sexual immorality, which is any sexual pleasure outside the marriage covenant, by the way, instead of desiring that, you want to submit your body unto the Lord as a living sacrifice.

Romans 12 .1. You hate the idea of holding a grudge against anyone, especially a brother or sister in the Lord. Instead, you desire to be reconciled. And whatever that takes, that we might love one another and grow with each other and encourage one another.

You desire to be reconciled. You're not easily angered, but you're self-controlled. You are patient in affliction. You do not keep a record of wrongs, but you forgive each other. You are faithful to the Lord because you know He has been far more faithful to you.

Whatever the flesh wants, you don't do it because the Spirit of God compels you toward Christ. Galatians 5 .18. If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. And in case you haven't picked up on it, what I've been going through here in explaining the difference between the desires of the flesh and walking by the Spirit, I've taken the liberty of contrasting the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit.

And Paul goes on here to say, now the works of the flesh are evident. That means we who have the Spirit of God know what the works of the flesh are. If you're in the Spirit, then anything that would be contrary to being in the Spirit is going to be a work of the flesh because these two are opposed to one another.

If the law of God has been written on your heart and your desire is to please your Savior, you will hate the very garment that is stained by sin and you will want nothing to do with these works. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.

I warn you, Paul says, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. This is not just a matter of saying, hey, don't do gross things. These works of the flesh are condemnable.

A person who lives their life in such a way will be destroyed in judgment and not like all of them. Well, I do one or two of them, but I'm not doing all of them. No. If you walk in any of these, then you are not walking by the Spirit.

Notice that the first one, two, three, possibly four works all have to do with sexual immorality as well as the last one on this list before Paul says, and things like these, meaning that there are more sins that could go on this list, but the list is still quantifiable.

Sexual sins are the surest manifestation of someone who is selfishly gratifying the desires of the flesh. Consider that the month of June is designated pride month. Everyone understands why, right? So it was on June 26 of 2015 that the U .S. Supreme Court declared in a 5 -4 decision that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed for same-sex couples.

And because of that victory of the LGBTQ lobby, therefore June is pride month. It's very interesting that in their perversity, the LGBTQ RSTUV movement was so willing to confess how truly prideful they are.

Pride month. But let us not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. Look down on one group of people and say, well, I'm not like them because sexual sin can happen to anybody. Sexual sins are nothing but prideful self-seeking with no regard to anyone but the appeasement of the flesh.

In 1 Corinthians 6, 18 -19, here is what we read. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?

You are not your own. You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. As for these other works of the flesh that we have on this particular list, idolatry is, of course, desiring anything above God.

In Colossians 3, 5, Paul says covetousness is idolatry. Sorcery would not only include witchcraft, fortune-telling, or communicating with the dead. It would also include taking drugs that alter the mind.

The Greek word here for sorcery is pharmakia, and it's from this word that we get the word pharmacy. It's a reference to mind-altering drugs, and this is what people would do in the first century when it came to witchcraft.

They would not only be doing their spells and incantations and fortune-telling and whatnot, but they would be taking drugs that would alter the mind, believing that the mind was going into some other dimension or sense in which they could look into the future and see events that are going to take place.

The reality was they discovered acid 2 ,000 years ago. They just didn't realize it. So that's what's being stated there when we see sorcery as a work of the flesh. Now consider these others. Enmity, which is hatred, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness.

They all seem pretty self-explanatory. You know what those are, right? Now I've taken the liberty of going with the New American Standard translation of Galatians 521 and inserting the word carousing in place of the word that the ESV uses.

Those of you who have the ESV Bible, you know which word I'm talking about. I've done that for the sake of young ears in the congregation. So we contrast the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit.

Now notice that it's fruit of the Spirit not fruits of the Spirit, right? We have nine things listed here, but it's described as a singular fruit. You don't get to pick and choose which of these that you want to be good at.

Oh, I think I'll have a little bit of love today. I think I can be good at joy today. It seems like a pretty nice weather day. My house is not underwater, so I can try some joy. I like those things. I think I'll leave patience to somebody else.

Self-control isn't really my thing. Okay, you can't do that. These are not gifts of the Spirit. Don't confuse them with gifts of the Spirit. This is the fruit of the Spirit. The person who is walking in the Spirit, also known as a Christian, must exhibit all of the fruit of the Spirit, not just some of them.

But the fruit of the Spirit is... Those of you who come to Awana and you sing this song, all of you could quote this, okay? But let's go through this word by word. The fruit of the Spirit is love. And I love that.

I love that, by the way. So when we come to the next one, say it all together. That was great. I wasn't planning on that, but I love the way it sounded. We are to love the way that God defines love. Sacrificial love.