Walk In The Spirit

Christian Freedom Is Not Self-Indulgence

Well, thank you. Good to see you all. For those of you who don't know me, I'm from Fremont, California, Grace Baptist Church. I serve there along with Michael Phillips, our co-pastor. If you would, turn to Galatians 5, and I'll read verses 13 to 25.

Galatians 5, 13 to 25. For brethren, you have been called unto liberty. Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word. Even in this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed one of another. This I say, then, walk in the spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.

And these are contrary, the one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would. But if you be led of the spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these.

Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envies, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like, of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against such there is no law. And they that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and lust.

If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another. Amen. Let's just pray. Our Father, we thank you again for your word.

We thank you for the privilege of coming into your house. We pray that you would bless your word and glorify yourself, in Jesus' name, amen. All right. Well, as we look at our passage this morning, I'd like to look at someone who will probably make us all feel better about ourselves, and I say that tongue in cheek.

It's always good, isn't it, to look at someone who's worse than we are. And I'm referring to, if you look through history, the Roman Empire had different emperors, and some were extremely wicked, some were average, and so on.

But one that was especially wicked was Caligula. He, you know, you can't get worse than this guy. At age 28, he ruled the Roman Empire for four years. He did whatever he wanted. He would take other men's wives against their will.

If you were the husband, if you said anything, he'd have you killed. He committed incest, he murdered his father, his cousin, and even his own grandmother. And he didn't respond well to any sort of criticism.

If you came to him trying to offer him advice because of the foolishness that he was committing, he'd have you killed. He opened a brothel in the palace, and just before he was assassinated by his own Roman guard, he was planning on making a horse a senator.

With Caligula, there was a complete absence of self-restraint. No matter how cruel and disgusting and insane his impulses, he was a man who did exactly what he pleased. Now, many people today characterize freedom in a similar way.

Maybe not to this extreme, but the nature is still there. The capacity to do what you want. To live for myself, to do as I please. This is the motto of the culture around us. With no restrictions from the outside.

And it's the opposite of our verses this morning in Galatians. You know, over the years, my wife and I have attended different marriage seminars. The last one I went to was some years ago, and there was a young man there, and he said, you know what the problem is with marriage?

And I said, well, yeah, tell me. I guess that's why I'm here. And he said, it's about me. It's the me syndrome. It's the me theme. Me, me, me, me, me. And however way he meant that, that kind of stuck with me.

He's right. That's the struggle for all believers. And I battle this myself every day. The me syndrome. But Paul tells us in Galatians that true freedom is not the license to do as we please, but the liberty to serve.

Freedom is not the absence of all constraints, but submission to the right constraints. And that's why Galatians is so important for us. Paul's telling the Galatians what Christian freedom really means.

He writes, you were called to be free, but don't use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Don't be a Caligula. The flesh is my sinful nature. It's what I'm up against as a Christian. It's what separates me from God before I'm saved.

It's my natural state. It's my desire to go my own way until God decides otherwise. Well, what we learn from the book of Galatians is this. A Christian is not someone who decides to turn over a new leaf, or he develops a new philosophy of life, or even develops an interest in going to church.

That can be part of it. In fact, it's not something that he really does. At its foundation, a Christian is someone who has the growing realization of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. God opens your eyes.

You are a recipient, aren't you? The Lord makes us alive to him. He's awakened us to see our natural state, and that we're found wanting. That we also see that in the death and resurrection of Jesus God has completely accepted me in Christ, and that there's nothing we can do to make him love us more, and there's nothing we can do to make him love us less.

It's all been done in the death of Jesus. And this is the wonderful freedom that Paul points us to. He says, I'm free from having to justify myself before God, because Christ has done that. I'm free from having to justify myself before you and you before me.

But there's only one problem, and it's in Galatians. And you hear the argument from people who come close to the gospel. They get a grip on it. They understand it, but they don't embrace it. And the argument goes like this, and I'll give you an example.

Let's say a 12-year-old young man is told that he's been accepted to Stanford University. It doesn't matter what he does with his high school education. It doesn't matter what grades he gets. It doesn't matter how good he is or bad he is.

If a 12-year-old begins to think, hey, I'm going to Stanford. When I turn 18, I've got a free ticket. He's not, the argument is he's not gonna be motivated to work. They're gonna be addicted to computer games or parties or whatever 12-year-old kids do these days.

And the argument is you'll ruin them, and that's how that thinking goes. So you say you're a Christian, and because you're in Christ, and that you'll go to heaven, so it doesn't matter how you live. A lot of them think that way.

I go, no, that's not what grace is about. But that was a problem for some of the new Christians in Galatia, one of them at least. They had put their faith in Jesus. The transformation had begun, but they were having problems and troubles.

If you look at verses 15 and 26, they were backbiting and gossiping and struggling with jealousy and arrogance, things you find in every Christian group today. So a group of teachers came into town, and they used something similar to the Stanford argument.

And they said, look, the way to go if you want to get really serious about God's law and come under God's law, that's what they've said. You come under God's law. And they said there's only two ways to live.

You're either a pagan living for yourself and gratifying the desires of your flesh, or you're under the law, and you're trying to obey God on your terms. And the apostle Paul says no to both of these.

He says, no, actually, there's a third way, the only way. It's not the way of self-gratification, and it's not the way of moral reformation, but it is the way of keeping in step with the Spirit. And the key verse in our text is verse 25.

It says, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit, or keep in step with the Spirit. If the Spirit has come into your hearts and made you alive to God, says Paul, you'll begin to be transformed from the inside.

True spiritual transformation doesn't come from the outside or things we do, from obeying laws or anything else external. It comes from keeping in step with the Spirit. And this passage is one of the clearest and most practical sections in all the Bible about Christian life.

And so there are two things for us to consider. The first is this. It shows what this transformation looks like. What does keeping in step with the Spirit look like? And then secondly, how does it happen?

Love That Serves the Church

So first of all, what does it look like? Paul tells us in verse 13, and I'm gonna paraphrase it. He says, for you are called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love, become slaves to one another.

Serve one another. So the whole law is fulfilled in the word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is a fruit of the Spirit. It's one thing to say that Christ has set me free, and I'm completely accepted and loved by God.

It's an entirely different thing to live out that freedom. Until now, Paul has been demonstrating what it means for me to be free. And now he starts to talk about how I should use my freedom in Christ.

And this is what it looks like. God has made us free so that you and I will serve one another. You replace that me syndrome, well, the Holy Spirit does that. Faith in Jesus doesn't just bring us into connection with God, it brings us into a particular relationship with God's people.

That's why we meet every Sunday during the week. If you don't walk in love with God's people, you can't say you're walking in love with God. If God is not the love of your life, you're gonna have a really difficult time loving your neighbor as yourself.

They're so connected, you can't separate them. Because ultimately, you're gonna love yourself supremely. That's your default pattern. And the reason we'll be able to love others is because the Lord is our first love.

He's put this in me. Love in its truest form only comes from God, because God is love. That's what 1 John 4, 7, 8 tells us. It says, beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God. And everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. God is the author and perfecter of love. That's why that verse somewhere else where it says, the one who says, I love God, but I hate my neighbor, is deceiving himself.

So when we love ourselves primarily instead of God, love becomes distorted, diseased. Because we'll be loving in a way that's right before our own eyes, and we're already messed up and tainted with sin.

Walking in love in the spirit is the primary way we express the gospel of freedom and forgiveness. It's serving other people in love. This is the mark of freedom. You couldn't do that before. Matter of fact, you didn't wanna do that before, before you were a Christian.

It was all about you. I'm gonna use this guy to get what I want. I'm gonna use him over there to get what I want. Maybe it didn't come out like that, but that was our mindset. But it's serving other people in love.

This is the mark of freedom. It's the mark of the reality that the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in our hearts, that we use our lives, that we make decisions, very practical, day-to-day decisions as to what will serve other people.

It's not gonna be in some big event or some big moment. It's in those, it's in the small, quiet, daily death of small inconveniences, I call them. The seemingly unnoticed, insignificant things is how we show our love to one another.

That's how you show that the Lord is your Lord in your life. You're being the fragrance of Christ. And Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 3 .12, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another, just as I do to you.

And this is the opposite of what comes naturally for us. That's what Paul's point is in verses 16 and 17. He says, I say then, walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh.

And these are contrary to one another so that you do not do the things that you wish. In the King James Version, it says, the flesh lusteth against the Spirit. And that's a great translation, except whenever we say lust or use the word desire, we tend to associate it with sex, and that's not what that is here.

Every time Paul uses the word flesh, he's speaking about our human nature. And here is what the Bible says about us, that our human nature is hostile to God. It is so defiantly hostile to God that the apostle says in Romans 8, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

It doesn't submit to God's law, nor can it. Our human nature is acting true to form when we are self-seeking, disobedient, and defiant towards God. That's your natural state because of sin. Every part of my human nature is touched with this.

There's no part of my nature that escapes that effect. And Jesus tells us in Mark 7, from within, out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, fornication, murder, adultery. All these things come from within, says Jesus.

We tend to have an optimistic, superficial view of ourselves. It's kind of our go-to. I'm not so bad. I'm not, you know, I don't do what these other guys do. We want to think of ourselves as basically okay.

Maybe you won't go as far as saying, well, I'm innocent, but just saying, yeah, I'm not so bad. But God says you're hostile to him. We tend to think of ourselves more favorably than we should. And the proof of the hostility between our nature and God is that when the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts, when we place our faith in Jesus, and God takes residence by his spirit, your life becomes a struggle now.

Remember, Paul is speaking to Christians in Galatia. Before you first became a Christian and followed Jesus, you never struggled with temptation. You just gave into it. We were all caligulus. But when the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts, he brings with him heavenly affections from God.

And then you begin to desire the things above. And they come into direct conflict with the flesh, my own sinful nature, because my nature lusts against the spirit. And Paul gives us a list in verse 19, 19, 20, 21.

It's a long list. He gives, and then he gives a warning. Just as I also told you in time past that those who practice such things ongoingly will not inherit the kingdom of God. It's one thing that we fall into sin.

But if we continue in a pattern over and every day, over and it's really a denial of what the Bible says, there's a problem. And in that list Paul gives, I think he covers just about all of us. It's a large list if you look at it.

The first couple items have to do with sexuality. Some of them have to do with substance abuse. And then there's selfishness and jealousy and anger. And the point is this. If you're led by the spirit, you're not under the law.

The law can't do anything to transform these inner issues. It can only happen by the leading of the spirit. And this phrase being led by the spirit in verse 18 is one of the most abused phrases in the Bible.

People use it today, it's more emotional. You know, God told me this or he's leading me in this direction. You know, it's like you have an internet connection from God for every circumstance. And we don't.

There are secret things of God that belong to him that we don't know. But people use it that way. And when I do this, I say I was led by the spirit on this. But this phrase has nothing to do with guidance and everything to do with godliness.

Being led by the spirit is not having a hotline to heaven. You have that through his word. But it's God's spirit in our hearts resisting our nature. Because the works of the human heart are all self-centered.

Because sin is self-love at its core. So you see, my nature, my flesh whispers to me all the time. And it says, hey, you're free. You're free to do anything you want in a twisted way. And that sounds great.

He goes, don't put yourself out for others. And think very carefully about what's in this for yourself before you do that. And the flesh says, indulge me. I'll be happy. You'll be happy. It's a win-win.

And we need to hear this because we really are so devious and slippery in our sinful nature. The sinful nature wants control, and that's the issue. Who's in control? If I remain in control, I may not be covetous or selfish, but I may be filled with pride.

Or I may not appear proud, but I'm gonna harbor all sorts of resentments, envies, jealousies. But if we keep in step with the spirit, we're not controlled by our sinful natures. We're not controlled by external things.

We submit ourselves to the Lord. And we're able to do that now. We couldn't do that before. But we're controlled by the spirit. And that's why religion is so powerless to help us. It can't change my heart.

All the law-keeping in the world can't change my self-centeredness. I can't beat it up. I can't make it go away. I can't change my heart. Only God's spirit can do that. So when you wanna serve God on your own terms, you're not keeping in step with the spirit, but you're just expressing your sinful nature.

You're giving your sinful nature expression. Or when you make decisions based on your own convenience, or when you expect the church or other Christians to accommodate your wishes, you're giving expression to that sinful nature.

And this is what it looks like, the real sign of transformation by the spirit is seeking others, serving others in love. Using the freedom that you and I have in Christ, not to get what we want, but to do what we know will help others.

This is what the Lord has for us. The unfortunate thing is that many people think about belonging to a church a little bit like belonging to a community center. You pay the dues, you expect to get the services, and you expect them to accommodate your wishes.

You use their services, but you're not really gonna get deeply involved and engage with people there. You're not going to put yourself out for the community center. And when Paul says, let us keep in step with the spirit, that's not in the singular, it's a plural command.

You can't do it in the singular. We can only do this with one another. In the Greek, it literally means keep in row together. There's no such thing as a private Christian. The only way we can do this is by holding onto each other, serving one another in Christ.

That's how we keep in step with the spirit. And that's basically what it looks like. That's what the transformation does. It changes us from within. And secondly, how does it work? How does it work practically?

The Fruit of the Spirit Comes from Abiding in Christ

And if you look down at verses 22 and 23, it says, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control, against such there is no law. Paul calls these fruit of the spirit.

They're not the result of years of determined moral effort on your part, hard work. You know, I've worked so hard to be joyful. I mean, and you should in a sense. I mean, we want to be joyful. They come from God.

They come into the center of the heart. And they're entirely, these are supernatural things. If you want to see what the works of the flesh look like, just be yourself. Do what comes naturally. Christian growth and transformation is fruit.

It's organic. It's like what happens on a tree. In John's gospel, Jesus tells his disciples while they were in the upper room, he says, I am the vine, you are the branches. You see, the way that we bear fruit is by holding onto him.

You're not trying to muster this up in yourself. You hang on to Christ. And he lives his life through us. And these nine fruit that Paul mentions here, they all belong together. Love, joy, peace. Love is basically opening up ourselves to each other and treating that person with a love of Jesus Christ.

Not because of what it will bring you, but because of the value of that person to Jesus. It's choosing to do what will be spiritually beneficial for that person or that group. It's not about you. You know, what am I gonna get out of this today?

That's why I come to church. I wanna see who will talk to me, who will befriend me. The pastor better give a good message because I wanna be fed. You got it a little wrong there. You want those things, but you know, you're here to serve each other, encourage each other.

You're choosing to do what will be spiritually beneficial for each other. Joy is taking pleasure in God. You know, God is a joyful God. You know, and he wants us to be joyful. And just knowing that God has loved me in Christ and knowing that there's nothing that can separate me from him.

Peace is simply knowing that God is wise and sovereign and he's in control of every circumstance of my life from little to big. And then there's patience. Patience comes from knowing that everything that happens to me, both good and bad, comes to me from the hand of God who loves me.

And that waiting is a very important tool in God's hands to make me like him, to make me like Jesus. These are fruit of the spirit. And sometimes it feels like nothing's happening. The slowness of growth and grace is not always visible to us.

You can see it in other people, but you don't see it in yourself sometimes, a lot of times. You're going, have I really grown? Am I still the same Christian I was 20 years ago? I feel the same, you know?

Yet the fruit is given to me by the spirit to keep me dependent on God. They have nothing to do with my abilities or my gifts or my IQ or my success. God sows the seed of the word in our hearts and it takes root and it bears fruit.

If you live by the spirit, this change is inevitable. It will happen. You will become less, perhaps, self-focused in a way, maybe less touchy about things, maybe less self-protective. You're gonna be, hopefully, more self-controlled as you age in the Lord, more focused, more willing to be engaged with other people and serve others.

It will happen. You will bear fruit. That's the way of transformation. Some of us here have been Christians for a very long time. And, you know, I don't know if you wanna do this. Maybe you wanna ask someone you know really well, you know, hey, Jerry, do you think I've changed in the last 20 years?

I, sometimes I wonder. And be prepared for what you hear, I guess. Because you don't see the change. You know, you can see some growth, but it's more other people see it in you. But, you know, we're not to focus on ourselves.

I mean, I, you know, are you actually less abrasive than you used to be? That's the thing, when you're married, that's a good illustration. You know, when I was a young man, I basically was Conan the Barbarian.

I was, you know, my wife will submit to me, which I believe, you know, a wife learned to submit to, that's not the husband's role. You're gonna do this. I mean, it doesn't work that way. But as you get older in the Lord, and you know, you deal with your spouse in love, not in, with self or, you know, those are changes husbands or wives see over time in Christ.

Are you forgiving? Do you hold on to resentments a long time? Are you kind of letting them go now as you get older in the Lord? Are you increasing in peace? Going back to what Jesus said in John's book, chapter 15, he that abideth in me, and I in him bringeth forth much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.

It's by remembering that we're his branch and we're hanging on to him. We're engrafted to him. Now you can't pick and choose between the fruit. The fruit in Greek is singular. It's one thing with nine parts.

So if you say, well, you know, I can do half of these things and the other half I'll kind of slide on. Well, you're not doing it. Because if you fall behind in one, you fall behind in all of them. And that is why the apostle finishes in our text.

He says, those who are Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit. It's a daily battle. You know, the Bible tells us to crucify the flesh.

And if I was to be very truthful with you, if I look at my own heart, I find a lot of the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit seems to be like tiny little embryos or buds. And so what the apostle does at the end of the passage, he takes us back to the cross of Christ.

And he says, God accepts you, not because of any legal standing, but through the death of Jesus. And what that means is this, that everything I do is covered by the righteousness of Jesus. God takes pleasure in any movement in this direction to serve his people.

It doesn't matter how awkward I am, how inadequate I may feel, or how dumb or smart I feel. It really, every time we take a step to keeping in step with the spirit, it delights God because his death covers me.

And the best example I can give you, especially for you parents who have children, if your young children learn to play a musical instrument, we had our kids in Christian school, but I remember when they started learning to play, you know, the clarinet or whatever, the trumpet, and you go to their first musical performance, and it's an orchestra, at least that's what they call it.

But it makes all these clangy and, you know, screeching sounds, you couldn't even tell what they were playing. But like every parent there, you're happy to see your kids play. I enjoyed them playing their noisy instrument.

And I think that's how God looks at us every time we take, every step we take to strengthen and build his church, no matter how weak and feeble it is, that God delights in us. And when Jesus was in the upper room and he gathered his disciples, he said this to them.

This was one of his last phrases. He said, this is my commandment to you. Love one another as I have loved you. And that's what he's given us to do as Christians. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. So if we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Amen. Well, let's pray. Our Father, we thank you, Lord, for your word to us. We thank you what a patient God you are that you forbear with us, even when we sin against you. But yet, Lord, you're a faithful and just God to forgive us when we confess those sins and repent of them.

Help us to be more like Christ each day that we would crucify the flesh, that we would walk in the Spirit. You have given us that freedom to do so, whereas before we could not. But now, Lord, we can be like you and love our neighbor as ourself, something we couldn't do before.

We were incapable, nor did we want to do that. But Lord, we live by your Spirit. We only have what we have because of you, that you brought us from the dead and you made us alive in Christ. We thank you, Lord.

I pray for this church, that it would be a lighthouse to those around in this neighborhood. We thank you for the body here, for the pastors, and that you would bless this place, Lord. So we ask these things in Christ's name, amen.