Liberty vs. Bondage Continued
Galatians 5:1-12 continues Paul's instruction to the Galatians on the nature of the life in Christ which they have accepted and how it is far better than the life they previously had under the law or under a false religion for that matter. Liberty is something that people of that era yearned for. That is still true 2,000 or so years later. And just like today, once you experience liberty, we would, like Paul, that no one would want to go back under bondage again.
Evidently the Christians of Galatia also were having problems with the Jewish converts to Christianity saying that every male needed to be circumcised in order to be saved. Paul replies that if you are accepting part of the law as being necessary for salvation, then you are required to also do the entire law. The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem would make the actual following of the law impossible, and it has been impossible for all the centuries since.
When you accept Christ as Savior, your circumcised or uncircumcised state is of no consequence. This is true of all of the strictures of the law. At that point, some of the food laws were probably still useful for health reasons, and certainly laws about intermarriage with near relatives were still relevant. The things not to do under the law, addressed later, weren't things you should start doing. Heavens no. But the means of atoning for sin had changed, and there was no longer any reason to associate yourself with the Jewish people, signified by circumcision for the males in order to be saved. Things did change with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Paul asked who was leading them astray. He had started them on the race that they needed to run, and he had felt they were running that race well. Somehow, they had allowed false doctrines to creep in. Faith in Jesus Christ is all that matters (Ephesians 2:8). Paul was certain it didn't come via the Holy Spirit nor did it come by his teaching nor any of the others who had preached Jesus Christ to them. He warns that even minor changes to doctrine can affect the entire fundamental balance of the church.
Paul expresses faith that the person who is preaching the false doctrines to them and trying to get them to go back under the bondage of the law would ultimately be unsuccessful, and the church elders would judge and correct that individual or individuals and set doctrine straight once again.
Paul ends this portion by pointing out all of the persecution he had suffered at the hands of the Jewish people over the course of his post Damascus road experience. If he had supported the law along with grace, they would have had no cause to hurt him. If there was nothing turning people away from the law, as the cross does, then he would have been safe. That was not his life. He closes this section hoping that those who were trying to alter his teaching would be cut off.
I'm not sure what Paul thinks looking down at the church today. I'm hopeful that the words that I write and publish aren't words causing Paul to get up on his soapbox in heaven and ask God to cut me off. But everyone who tries to teach or witness runs the risk of saying something wrong or having something that they have said taken the wrong way. If there's a way for Satan to twist our words into something that will hurt Christianity, you can be sure he will do so.
Pray for all of the church preaching elders in whatever name your particular denomination addresses them by. They all need your help to know what and how to speak God's message. Likewise, pray for everyone you know and yourselves as you witness to have the hearts of the people you contact already prepared to hear the gospel. Finally, to the greatest extent possible, try to not add to the burdens of those who are being saved. As the church in Jerusalem said to those preaching to the non-Jews, it is enough that they abstain from meats offered to idols, blood, strangled things, and from fornication (Acts 15:20,29; 1 Thessalonians 4:3, 5:22; 1 Peter 2:11)
There is value in the KISS principle - keep it simple stupid (or sailor if you want to get back to its roots)! I need to work on that as well.
Call to Liberty
Galatians 5:13-16 provides bridge between the struggle with those who would place people under the law, and the conclusion of the chapter dealing with what to avoid and what to seek in order to live a good Christian life that is pleasing to God.
Paul starts by declaring again that we are called to a life of freedom or liberty in Christ. He warns, though, that this doesn't mean that we are to use that liberty as an occasion to commit sin. We are instead to serve one another in love. He repeats Christ's comment that all of the law is summed up in loving your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31).
And remember that in the sermon on the mount, Christ put teeth into the love part of the text (Matthew 5:38-47). It's also useful to read Christ's commentary on who a neighbor really was (Luke 10:25-37). One thing was certain. As the churches of Galatia had members who were quarreling with each other, or as he says biting and devouring each other, they had certainly missed the love thy neighbor boat. Paul's warning for that group of people stands true today as well. If we spend our times fighting with other Christians over matters of doctrine or practice or worship, we end up destroying not only each other, but the entire work of Christ.
We need to try, whenever possible, to deal with such disputes in private, and pray humbly for direction as to which are true issues that might cause someone to fail to be saved by believing in an altered reality, and what is just a minor difference of opinion on scripture. Even some of the differences that I would like to see changed in all denominations, such as every believer being filled to overflowing and continually refilled with the Holy Spirit isn't something that will keep someone out of heaven. It may make it easier to stay out of trouble as noted in the next section, but it isn't a requirement. And neither would singing a few hymns along with all the worship songs. We will always have differences, but few are actually important enough to fight and devour one another over.
Consider the thief who died on the cross next to Jesus wasn't baptized in water. He wasn't baptized in the Holy Spirit as that didn't happen for the church in general until Acts 2. He never partook of communion. Yet Jesus said that that man would be in paradise where Jesus would meet him. All it takes is accepting Christ as Savior and having faith in that one sacrifice for you to be saved. The Bible doesn't really say what the final state of the other thief was. Yes, he mocked at first. But perhaps the salvation of the first and the darkness and the earthquake was enough to scare him straight as well. It certainly made the tough Roman guards who were present believe Christ was the son of God (Matthew 27:54). It will be interesting to see one day.
Paul finishes this section with a lead in to the next stating one fact. If you walk in the Holy Spirit, you won't be fulfilling the lusts of the flesh. They are diametrically opposed. The Holy Spirit will never lead you into doing something that is against the will of God for your (or anyone's) life. If you are feeling prompted to do something that the Bible declares to be wrong, you can be sure that it is the enemy's temptation and that it doesn't come from God above.
Works of the Flesh
The last two parts of the chapter are used many times in Christian literature. First, in Galatians 5:17-21, Paul discusses what it is like to not listen to the Holy Spirit in your walk. He paints your walk as a battle between what he calls the "old man" in other writings and the "flesh" here with the Spirit. The battle is going on in every person in the world, even those who have not accepted Christ as Savior.
The Spirit is actively working for as long as possible in every individual to choose Christ and live a life that is pleasing to God. It is possible to so sear the connection with the Spirit that the Spirit will stop striving with you to do the right thing. Once this happens, it's up to you to come back and ask forgiveness. The Spirit will stop trying to direct your path. But know that He is working in both sinner and saved to try to direct their course towards a closer walk with God.
The nature of the flesh and the Spirit are contrary. One leads to destruction and one leads to life. And the flesh is continually trying to get you to not do the things that you should do.
Paul goes on to list some of the works of the flesh. Most of these are straightforward and well understood by the modern reader. But there are a few terms that the KJV uses that might need some explanation. Adultery included unlawful sexual relations between people, married or unmarried. Fornication comes from the Greek porneia, the same phrasing that is now translated pornography. Uncleanness extended to other perversions of sex between people, including the LGBTQ+ crowd. Lasciviousness included anything that tended to lead to lewd emotions. Witchcraft would include any forms of sorcery or dealing with evil spirits including incantations, enchantments, spells, and drugs and potions used therein. Variance was dissensions and discord. Emulations would be trying to outdo each other, along with envy, strife, and jealousy. Sedition was stirring up strife in home, church, government, or any other place. Revellng included any wild feasts or parties or carousing.
All of these things were to be avoided. If you didn't see your pet sin listed there, pay attention to the last item on the list "and such like". That covers a wide amount of text that Paul didn't actually write down. Paul reminds them that people who do these things are not going to inherit the kingdom of God. God hasn't changed His mind since Paul wrote all of his New Testament letters. His standards are the same, yesterday, today, and forever. We are all called to live differently from the world.
Fruit of the Spirit
Having laid out examples of what we should avoid doing as Christians, Paul uses Galatians 5:22-26 to point the way to how we should be living. He declares the fruit of the Spirit to be love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, and says that those attributes don't have any law against them.
As has been noted many times, the fruit of the Spirit is singular and manifest in many different aspects. You may not be 100% perfect in any of these areas. But if the Spirit is living in you, you should be becoming more perfect in all of them. If God didn't believe that with the Holy Spirit's help you could be perfect, the He wouldn't have commanded you to be (Matthew 5:48; Luke 6:40; John 17:23; James 1:4). I don't believe that you can have the Spirit in you and be great in a couple of these elements of fruit, but have 0 bars when it comes to others. They all grow together. You and I may have quite a way to go till we reach a solid 5 bars everywhere like Christ had. But the signal strength of each mentioned character attribute should increase equally as we move closer to the source, God.
There are many people who have seen or heard about Christians at their worst and don't want to have anything to do with Christianity. Not everything they have heard is true or was reported correctly, and not everything they have seen was interpreted correctly. If a Christian is later found innocent of whatever the news reported in the first place, that never makes the news. But the sad fact is that enough is true and is reported correctly that Christianity has an image problem.
The problem isn't unique to Christianity. We're all just human and we will make mistakes. I wish it were not so. But all we can do is ask for forgiveness when we're at fault, or sometimes even if we don't think we're at fault, and move forward. It's up to the party that feels injured to accept our apology or not, and there isn't anything we can do about that.
But what we can do is try to always do better the next day, the next hour, the next minute if we do slip. We need to seek the continual topping off of the tank with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works on each of our hearts to try to get us to come closer to God and to correct when we fail. That's true for both Christian and non-Christian. But the Holy Spirit also wants to use each of our lives to make Christianity better and show God's love to the world.
There are two main ways that He can do that through Christians. The first are through the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:7-11). These are the attention grabbing things that are designed both to make it possible to witness to anyone (tongues and interpretation), to know when Satan is at work (discerning of spirits), and to change the present reality outside of the scope of what is possible in the physical realm (divine wisdom, knowledge, and prophecy, healing and miracles) all of which require faith, another gift. These are critical today in trying to break through the extreme lack of belief that there is a God at all that this generation faces. We all need to seek to be used by God through the gifts of the Spirit. Just remember that it is God doing the work and not us.
But beyond the attention grabbing gifts is the fruit of the Spirit. I feel like it is just as important in a general sense as the gifts are in an attention grabbing sense. The fruit of the Spirit is seen in how Christians interact with each other and with the non-Christian world. Consider the surprise of Herod and Pilate in how Christ reacted to them when Christ was about to be crucified. That's the fruit of the Spirit at work and it made an impression. Everything in Christ's teaching requires the fruit of the Spirit. Turning the other cheek isn't natural. But it can get someone's attention just as well as a miracle. And the best thing of all is that the fruit of the Spirit doesn't depend on God wanting to do something in a particular situation and time like the gifts of the Spirit do. It's something the Spirit can help each of us to always show.
Living in the Spirit isn't just something that we can say we do. It has to be something that we walk out every day of our lives. Satan will throw everything he can in our way to try to block or scramble the connection between us and God. But it is up to us to crucify the flesh and all of its lusts so that the barriers are broken down. We must do our part to walk in the Spirit at all times.
Walking in the Spirit is more than just living out this list of character attributes though. Everyone who is full of the Spirit will be seeking the glory of God and Christ and will be giving glory to them and the Holy Spirit for all that is going right for God. We aren't to do work for God for our own glory and we aren't to envy what God is doing through other people.
Finally, the fruit of the Spirit is something that every Spirit filled believer can aspire to model. The gifts of the Spirit are linked to the Spirit's work. Jesus had such a successful ministry because what He did was to give glory to God and not Himself, and He did what He saw the Father doing (John 5:36, 9:3-4, 14:10-12). When you are completely in tune with the Holy Spirit like that, you can have a dynamic ministry because everything you pray for God wants to do.
Where believers get into trouble today is they pray for things to happen that God isn't behind. The reasons for this can be varied. Perhaps God's work would lift the person praying into pride and sin. Perhaps God knows that He won't the glory. Or perhaps God knows that fixing the problem being prayed for would open up the individual to something worse ahead.
The point is, it is possible to be as in tune with God as Jesus was. Jesus was a man on earth after all. But our basic sin nature that Jesus didn't have makes it more difficult. If your old man isn't crucified yet, you probably won't be used in great ways by God. But regardless of whether or not you exercise the gifts like Jesus or some people in the church history did, you can still excel in modeling the best of the fruit of the Spirit, and that can be just as important.
Those words are still just as true today as they were then. With the internet, we have the capability to view what many other Christians are doing. But just like in John 21 where Jesus was telling Peter to feed His sheep, Jesus doesn't want us focused on what others have done or how we have failed in the past. He wants us to get on with what He has for each of us to do. Do it without envy and vanity and without trying to start fights.