Walking in the Spirit
Welcome to Gospel in Life. If you’re a Christian, you know that the journey to become more like Jesus is both a gradual process and an inevitable fact, just like the acorn growing up into an oak tree. Today, Tim Keller is teaching on the fruit of the spirit or what it looks like to grow to be more like Jesus.
Galatians 5 verses 16 through 25. So I say, live by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the spiritual nature of each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under law. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious. Sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self -control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying one another.
This ends the reading of God’s word. Now, to me, this is one of the most clear and important crucial passages in the Bible to understand the Christian life. You can’t understand the Christian life if you don’t understand this. We have here, we’ve been talking in the evening service about growth and grace, how to grow in supernatural character and maturity. And the last few weeks we’ve talked about the tools of growth. We’ve talked about the fact that you, we talked about tools of Christian growth. And the old, old -timers used to call this, and I still call this, the means of grace. The Bible study, prayer, fellowship with other believers, obedience and handling suffering, and learning from it, learning from suffering. See, Bible study, prayer, fellowship, obedience to the word, and handling suffering with faith and obedience. And we’ve been talking about growth and grace and how to grow in grace. But now finally, starting this week is an introduction. And over the next few weeks, we’re going to be looking at the fruit of the spirit.
It’s going to be a tremendous series of weeks because there is nothing more amazing than to dig into what the Bible actually says we can look like. In fact, what the Bible actually says is already in there. When we talk about love and joy and peace and patience, we’re not talking about how are we going to import and pull in these foreign objects into our hearts because we have so little love, so little joy, so little peace, so little patience, and so on. No. The Bible says, grow up into your salvation. Have you ever heard people talk about, or have you ever seen a young boy around 13 years old who’s, you know, 5 ‘6″, or something like that, but has got size 14 feet? Have you ever seen that? You know, the poor guy is walking around. He’s sort of a normal -sized, you know, looking 13 -year -old, and he’s not terribly huge, and he’s, you know, still maybe got, you know, his peach fuzz and his high voice and all that, but he’s got these huge feet. And you see him walking around like this, and you say, good night. What do people say? They say, he’ll grow into them. It means that he better grow into them. He’s going to be in the circus sideshow, you know. But he always does. Actually, sometimes it’s also true that people, you know, youngsters growing up sometimes show what size they’re really going to be by not just their feet, but their hands. Have you ever noticed that? They have these huge hands and feet, and you say he’ll grow into them. In other words, they’re already big. They’re already huge in potential. It’s there in their chromosomes. It’s there. It’s just going to come out, and they’ll grow into their feet, and they’ll grow into their hands.
What do you think Peter means when he says in 1 Peter 2, grow into your salvation? That means that the astonishing things that the Bible says… Should be true of a Christian in a sense are already true of a Christian Yeah, I’m always amazed when I can think when I consider that all the trees in the world could have possibly come Maybe they didn’t but could have come from a single acorn a single seed You know all the trees of a particular species I mean could come from a single one because in that acorn is not only the entire tree But then all the acorns on that tree and all the acorns on that tree and so on and so forth It’s all there that one acorn has the potential to populate not just the in the entire face of the earth But all the planets indefinitely forever infinite potential in an acorn. Do you know that? And there’s nothing that will come out of the acorn over the next three billion years. It wasn’t already in that one acorn. It’s all there in the same way You have already got in you the divine nature you’ve already got not just the potential but but in some very small seed form and yet Inevitably, you’ve got love and joy and peace and patience, it’s there. Now, that means instead of saying, aha, I’ll never get there, the answer is when are you going to grow up? Don’t just say, I’ll never get there, I’ll never get there. The answer is, and this is what’s actually the tragedy for those of us who just stay at ground zero for so long. It’s all in there. It’s almost like there’s a spiritual Joan Rivers in heaven saying, grow up. What’s wrong with you? See that you’ve got this in you and use the means of grace and grow up. Now, we’ve talked about how to grow and so on, but now for the next few weeks we’re going to talk about this incredible stuff that’s really in there.
What is the love that Christians have that potential to experience and to know? What is the joy? What is the patience? What is the peace? So we’re going to look at that in series, but today, tonight, we’re going to look at the structure of the whole passage.
We’re not going to come back to Galatians 5 every week. I’ll take a Bible passage on love and one on joy and so on, but right here, Galatians 5, you’ve got this remarkable overview. In fact, if you’ve got your modern translations, generally, verses 16 to 25, breaks into three parts, three paragraphs.
The first paragraph says, do not gratify the desires of the flesh or the sinful nature. Live by the spirit for the spirit and the flesh are at war with each other. If you’re led by the spirit, you’re not under law, so live and walk by the spirit.
Then it tells us in verses 19 to 21, the works of the flesh. That means if you’re living in the flesh, here’s the works of the flesh.
Then in verses 22 to 25, it says, if you’re living in the spirit, here are the fruit of the spirit.
So it’s real simple. It tells you that you can live in the flesh or live in the spirit. It shows you what is coming out from the flesh and it’s showing you what is coming out from the spirit. There it is. Two natures. couple words about this. Number one, first of all, and you can look at your hand out, this teaches us there’s two natures in every Christian, the flesh or the sinful nature and the spirit. Don’t forget that the word flesh, when Paul uses it, it’s sometimes it’s different in other places, but generally when Paul uses it, he’s not talking about the bod, not talking about it. It’s almost like the word bog.
Oh, excuse me, that’s just, I don’t know why I did that when I was using that word, but you can use the word bald to refer to physical baldness, or you can use it to mean a blunt or transparent statement, right? That was a bald statement, it means there’s nothing hidden about that. So you can take a word and use it not just univocally but equivocally. You can use it in two different ways, even though they have something in common, they’re also talking about two different things. When Paul uses the word flesh, he’s not talking about the physical, literally the physical. When he says, the flesh wars against the spirit, he’s not talking about the body wars against the soul. He is not saying that. Do you think so? And the way you can prove it is look at the works of the flesh. Look at the works of the sinful nature. You’ve got sexual immorality. Ah, that’s bodily, right? And maybe impurity and debauchery, and maybe drunkenness, which is, you know, a bodily thing and so on. But what about this? Idolatry, witchcraft. What about this? Jealousy, envy, selfishness. That’s got nothing to do with the body. That’s got to do with the attitude and the motives of the heart. And, which just goes to show you, Paul’s not talking about the body.
He’s talking about, when he says the flesh, he’s talking about the bent of the whole person, body, soul, and spirit, mind, will, and emotions, the inclination that the whole person still has toward a life of rebellion against God. You see, and listen carefully, there’s a sense in which, when you become a Christian, you don’t lose all the struggle, but rather your struggle takes place in a different way. You actually lose the old fight and you develop a new one. You must keep this in mind, before you were a Christian, there was a struggle in your life. You were fighting with God. You didn’t know you were fighting with God, but what you were doing was you were kicking against your true nature. All human beings were built to worship him and center their lives on him, and you centered your lives on lots of other things. And because you centered your lives on lots of other things, you experienced breakdown in your life. To live without God is like trying to pull a wagon without wheels. It kind of works, but it drags and it scrapes, and eventually it disintegrates. I mean, it works for a while, but eventually, slowly, as time goes on, you just find there’s less and less of a wagon there. You’re leaving it all over the place. And to live without God is the same way. You can move, you can move forward, but it’s not the way you were built. And so you’re working against your nature and you feel a fight.
When you become a Christian, there’s peace with God. And there’s a terrific amount of peace. And yet, the minute you become a Christian, into your life, into a heart that used to be completely united towards selfishness. You know, your entire heart was all against get away from God, get out from under his clammy hands so he can really swing, move out and live for yourself. And your entire heart was united in that direction. And now, into the heart comes this foreign object. You know, it’s sort of from another planet. It comes on in and what it is, it’s the principle of holiness. A yearning after God, a yearning for godliness. Love, joy, peace, patience, all in that seat and it comes on in and it sets up camp. And what ends up happening is you have now two parts to your body, to your heart, to your mind, to your will. You actually got two sides to you now. You’ve got a side that still tends to want to live for yourself and you’ve got a side that tends and now Desires to live for God and so there’s a new fight that shows up You’re not fighting with God anymore. Actually, you’re fighting with your old self.
That’s the reason why JC Ryle Bishop of Liverpool one of the great Anglican bishops of the 19th century Wrote a great book called holiness and one of the chapters in that book is called the fight Years later John White wrote a book called the fight It’s a one of the most well -known and one of the best books on the Christian life John White Wrote a book called the fight but years ago JC Ryle called a call had a chapter in there called the fight and in it He says a true Christian is known not only for his inner peace,
but also for his inner warfare It’s just a different warfare the fight has moved to another spot and the warfare is what does Paul call it? He says fight the what kind of fight? Good fight you see it’s different than the old the old fight was a bad fight The old fight was against God and you had to lose that the old the new fight is against your old self And you have to win it The old self the old fight was a fight that actually brought disintegration the more you fought The new fight is a fight that if you fight it,
right? You fight it with the means of grace Inevitably brings strength. It’s sort of like the difference between You know, there’s two ways for you to run yourself down One is to just run and run around run from subway car to you know, say all my word I’m on the wrong side of the platform and I got to catch the Express train you run down 72 flights of steps for some reason to get from the Express to local train you’re running around you’re late you run all around You come back and you’re exhausted, you know, that’s one kind of Exercise seems to wear you into the ground There’s the other kind where you go to you know to a gym or you go to someplace and you know You know you jog or you you exercise or you train and either a coach helps you or you know enough about yourself to Get yourself in shape and you’re done when you’re done with that kind of exercise and that’s That’s putting yourself through the places you feel better. Well, I mean, you know, you’re tired But it it strengthens you there’s a kind of exercise that strengthens you because it’s carefully crafted And there’s a kind that actually wears you into the ground the old fight against God wears you down the new fight the good fight Should be there and it builds you up, but But there are people who sit in the church and there’s no fight about their life at all No fight at all. You don’t see that warring and that conflict and maybe that’s true in your case You know, you’re just sort of limping through your Christian life You vaguely anxious vaguely unhappy all the time, but but there’s no fight and the reason there’s no fight is because for example So you want some fight you want some fight?
Promise tonight that every day for the next 30 days you will spend 30 minutes Praying and reading your Bible go ahead Okay, there’ll be a lot of fight you’re gonna find yourself so you go for two or three days and then You won’t do it for three or four days and say how comes I let that happen in my life is so out of, you know Just to try to say no matter what else changes in my life I am going to give God 30 minutes a day in which I simply pay attention to him You try that and you’ll see what a fight it is Everything in your body everything in your schedule everything in the world of flesh and the devil will come after you to do everything They can to dislodge you almost as if that must be important You know if you’re in a battle and you know You’re sitting here at this outpost and you say well I’m not important and you might suddenly find that three -quarters of the opposing army is attacking your position You start to say maybe there’s something important about this position If you are doing things right at all if you’re making an effort to grow if you start looking at your life the way I’m going to suggest and I’m going I give you here and in your sheet quite a bit of Fodder for this if you start to do an analysis of your life and you see that certain of the fruit of the spirit is not There at all.
You say I’m going to do something about that. There’s going to be a fight You see I would put it another way when During World War two there were some nations that stayed neutral But the minute a nation decided that to to not be neutral anymore, but to actually say I’m on this side immediately would get attacked By who the other side?
as soon as you decide to Say I’m on this side as soon as you decide to be to be complete and total in your allegiance for one side you immediately make An enemy there’s got to be a fight if there’s no fight in your life It’s because of a lack of real all -out allegiance to the master a lack of all -out allegiance to the master Expressed in your efforts to grow to pray to use the means of grace to begin to minister to speak to people about Jesus You want to fight on your hands go ahead just start to try to do what the Bible says Jesus says any person Any person who is ashamed of me before men I will be ashamed of them before the Father so that’s that’s a fairly strong Senate for you to speak up, identify yourself as a Christian, go start doing that and watch, you’ll have a fight on your hands. The flesh wars against the spirit, the spirit wars against the flesh. In any really dynamic Christian, there is a fight going on, first point.
Second point, now, by the way, don’t worry, I won’t spend as much time on every one, on every one of these, or you’ll be here forever. It doesn’t matter, it’s going to blow out. So, I think. This first part of the verse, the first part of the verses says, I say, live by the spirit, you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature, for the sinful nature desires against the spirit. Then it says, you are not led by the spirit, you are not under law. Look carefully at verse 16 and 18. In verse 16, the spirit is opposed to the sinful nature. In verse 18, the spirit is opposed to being under the law. Now. We suddenly have, I think, a very critical insight into what it means to live in the spirit versus living in the flesh. A lot of people struggle with this stuff about being in the flesh.
What the heck does that mean? What does that mean to say I’m living in the flesh? People worry about it a great deal. I think, right here, you’ve got something very, very clear. Now, unfortunately, I almost feel a need to, but I won’t, recapitulate teaching that I did earlier back in the fall. There is a big difference between living under the law. Whether you’re a Christian or not, if you’re a Christian, it’s possible to live tomorrow under the law or under grace. Remember we talked about this? Quick, very quick recap. The Bible teaches that every one of us is naturally given the work’s righteousness. Every human being has some standards. We got them from our parents, we got them from wherever. Standards that we’re trying to live up to so that we feel righteous. The word righteous in the Bible tends to mean acceptable. What makes you feel acceptable? When will you come to the place where you can accept yourself?
When do you get to the place where you feel like other people will accept you? Every one of us has got standards. Things that we feel like, if I get that, if I achieve that, then I will be acceptable. There’s a sense of feeling when you failed in certain areas, defiled. We talked about this before. Everybody has different idols in their life. Everybody has different standards. It’s now a well -known joke around the church of what my idols are, but I’m struck by them all the time how different my wife and I are. The fact is that my wife would like to get people out of her face when they’re on top of her and when they’re just bothering her. She will say, look, let me just tell you that you must stop this. This is terrible what you’re doing. She doesn’t mind if somebody’s offended. She’ll be kind about it. you know, gentle about it, she’ll be direct about it. If somebody gets upset and leaves, well, that’s a shame. But at least I’ve stopped them from doing this. And at least we’re no longer in this painful situation. I, on the other hand, my idolatry is approval. I don’t mind if somebody is bothering me and creating pain as long as they’re not unhappy with me. So we’re very, very, very different. And as a result, what makes me feel acceptable is when I’m pleasing everybody. And people want to psychoanalyze me and say, well, you’re the oldest child, and of course you’re like that. I don’t know where it came from. In a way, it doesn’t matter. It’s logical. Trouble is my wife’s an oldest child, too. And Kathy, on the other hand, really, that’s not the way in which she gets feeling acceptable. There’s other things that she says, if I had that, then I could really accept myself. We all like that. We all have our own standards of righteousness, and we’re bound by those things. We feel, if we’re not reaching them, then we’re not worth it. We’re not worth anything. If we’re getting them. then we feel great about ourselves. That’s being under the law. That’s living with a spirit of works righteousness. And what Bible is saying here, that it’s perfectly possible for you day in and day out to be living out of works righteousness or living out of consciously reminding yourself that you’re completely accepted by God and loved by Him because of what Jesus has done for you.
Now, that’s the reason why, if you take a look at the inventory from verse 19 to 21, you see, anybody who’s honest sees that there’s lots of the works of the flesh going on in your life. Now, who here doesn’t find that jealousy and envy and selfish ambition, at least, if not hatred, discord, orgies, and things like that, at least you see some of these works of the flesh in your life every week if you know yourself at all. But you also see some of the fruit of the spirit. You see some of it there. You see gentleness and so on. And you begin to realize that you, this is what we just were saying, a Christian is really like a double disk drive computer. Very much like it. You got an A drive and a B drive. You can operate out of works righteousness drive or you can operate out of grace and the freedom of who you are in Jesus Christ. And you can flip back and forth from those things during a day and find that one of them will always produce a certain side and one of them will produce another side. It’s the job of the Christian to constantly push yourself out of that one drive, out of the spirit drive.
And let me give you an example. D, how can a Christian walk in the spirit? Let me be as practical as I possibly can. I put them at the top, normal activity. And the first one I put is pleasing somebody. Suppose somebody has asked you to do something or you’re in a position to please somebody. Or another one would be just striving to do well on a project. On the left you’ve got the way that sinful nature can move you to do it. When you’re doing it, when you’re pushing yourself to do it, the question is why? Why? What is driving you to do it? When it works righteousness, when the flesh is driving you to do it, it’s because down deep you’re saying things like this to yourself. For example, the striving to do well on a project is the top little statement and the pleasing a person at the bottom. So, for example, you could be saying, I must do this because if I succeed, this is what Rocky said, remember, in Rocky I, if I can just go 15 rounds with him, I’ll know I’m not a bomb. And I love that quote and you’ve heard me use it at least three or four times because it’s so, it’s so quintessential. It’s something we’re saying to ourselves all the time. Here’s a guy that’s spent all his life trying to be a boxer and basically if he could just go 15 rounds with a champ, then he’d feel like he could look himself in the face, then he’d be acceptable, then he would be righteous. And please, if you know yourself, you realize that you’ve got things like that in your own life, right? Now, we talked about that, I said I wouldn’t recap but I had to to make sense out of this, okay? Those of you who were here and have heard that again and again and again, forgive me for that four minute recap but for those of you who haven’t, that’s the essence of the gospel. You can operate out of works righteousness right here. Do this because if you succeed, you’ll know you’re not a bomb. Or, look over on the other side, you can say, I want to do a great job but please the one who gave me my talents and I’m trying to enrich society, he put me on earth to do that, see? Or, let me go over on the other side, go down further. I can love this person because if this person loves me, then I’ll know that I’m finally worth something. I’ll invest myself in this person because if that person really loves me, then I’ll know I’ve made it. On the other hand, you can turn over and say, I want to do this because Jesus Christ has filled me up. He has loved me and as a result of that, I want to please and I want to serve this person. There’s two different ways to do it. In fact, if you, just to show you, turn over to the back and I’ll be as candid as I possibly can. I’ll give you a case study. There’s two ways to preach a sermon. Now, some of you say, well, so what? I don’t have to do this but let me show you because I’m just telling you. I try to tell you as much as I can about my own struggles in my profession. You’ve got a different profession, but every time I come up to speak, I can do this. I can operate out of the flesh drive, or I can operate out of the spirit drive. On the one hand, I can be saying to myself, you better preach or people will never come back. Now, I’m not saying that consciously, but at a certain level, it’s certainly operating. People have put a lot of money up for you to come here. People are expecting results. Isn’t this awful stuff? I mean, when I say it out loud, and this is one of the things I’ll show you in a minute, you feel like an absolute ass. And yet you realize when you say it’s so embarrassing, you realize that you have been thinking like that. You know, you start to, you can feel yourself blush when you say these things out loud, because you realize, oh my word, that’s really true. I do say that, how embarrassing, how awful, how unworthy. But you see, a Christian is somebody who can see the worst in him or herself, because the gospel has framed your conscience. Because you know that you’re accepted in him and you can face the words about yourself because it’s not the basis on which God Talks to you and deals with you So you know on the one hand you can have this minister getting up saying better preach Well, so people will come back so they’ll bring friends so that you will be seen as a successful minister That’s there. It’s there what happens if I operate out of that What is the fruit if I was really now that I’m thinking about I should have put another column down What is the fruit of that the fruit of it is this?
If you end up preaching a sermon that you can tell everybody else think was great it puffs you up It creates a pride. I don’t know why I’m telling you this we might as well know If what happens is you it makes you proud and you don’t find a need to pray the next day Not only that you when people call up from all over the country and they say how many people are coming to your church You mean you just you’re just dying to have a mask All kinds of awful things begin to happen and you tend to get you tend to get puffed up in fact after years and years of it getting puffed up you find that you can’t Brooke people telling you what’s Something different you want to do whatever you want to do in the church and if people disagree with you that you see it as being questioning of your authority and Then what happens is eventually you find constantly need strokes. You constantly need people telling you how great you are and By the way, that’s one of the reasons why so many ministers have affairs .
Very often it’s because and I got a good friend a lady who does counseling Mainly of ministers who are having affairs. It’s almost her entire practice. She’s a licensed psychologist and she says it’s not that their marriages Go bad. It’s just that the guys need so many strokes more strokes more Affirmation about their gifts and how great they are then their wives are willing to give them and they find somebody who can That’s the works of the flesh you say well how in the world can all these works of the flesh sexual immorality and impurity and debauchery and and so it starts with a selfish ambition and it goes into everything else all from You’re all from operating and preaching a sermon out of this particular motive. You better be good, because then you’ll know you’re not a bum. And on the other hand, you can turn over to the other side and you can say, preach well so people will be helped, God will be honored, the truth will be known, because frankly, God called you to this job, and all you need to do is please Him, and whatever the results are, who cares?
You’ve got heaven, you’ve got God, you’ve got the Holy Spirit in your heart for crying out loud. That’s what it means to walk in the Spirit. Now, why did I tell you that? Unfortunately, because I was, you didn’t have as much time to prepare this as I should have. I’ve been very busy, and if I sat down and said, well, let me think about some illustrations that most of you could relate to, it takes time. So I immediately threw down something that I could relate to, and I hope you can realize that this is my profession.
Do you think being a full -time Christian worker is somehow a holier thing, that you don’t struggle with the flesh? Of course you do. Don’t you see that? Those are two disc drives.
Now, let’s be real practical. How can you walk in the spirit? You walk in the spirit, by the way, see some of you are visiting for other churches and so on. Don’t say, aha, now I figured out the minister. Please don’t use it this way against anybody else. All right, please. Use it this way against me. Hold me accountable. Tell me about it. Remind me, do you remember that thing that you shared a year ago? And go ahead, but nobody else, please. Now, go back to the front and look near the bottom. How do you walk in the spirit? Let’s be as practical as we can be. When you’re not prepared, you talk off the cuff. And you say all sorts of industry things.
How do you walk in the spirit? Number one, please recognize that ordinarily, both motives are there at the same time. Unlike my computer, which you have to operate out of A drive or B drive, right? I don’t know if there’s any computers. Well, there’s almost, I’ll tell you what, it’s almost a little bit like A and B. You put them onto your C drive and then you can pull files up from either. But even that doesn’t quite work. What you have to realize is in the Christian, both drives are working at once. You’ve got plenty of people that have a theology that says you’re either in the flesh or you’re in the spirit. There’s plenty of people that say, you’ve got to have this baptism of the spirit. And when you have a baptism of the spirit, you’re out of the flesh and everything you do will be fruit of the spirit and you won’t have any of the works of the flesh. And I think that’s poppycock. I also think that it’s unscriptural. You will see Paul in Romans seven. You know the place where Paul’s talking in Romans seven and he says the very things that I want not to do, I end up doing, I do the very things I hate. It even says so right here. He’s talking to them. He’s talking to the Galatians. He says, the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the spirit. And the spirit is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other so that you do not do what you want. He’s talking present tense. The fact is that the flesh is always tainting what you do. There is no such thing as a perfectly perfect. perfectly good deed from God’s point of view. Now, God, in his mercy, receives all the things that we do as good deeds out of, because we’re in Christ. You understand that? Because we’re in Christ, he receives these things. It’s very much like when my little boy says, can daddy, can I have 25 cents to buy you a present? If I give him 25 cents, and he comes back and gives me the present, I’d be crazy to think I’m 25 cents of the good, but I like it. Why? Because, you know, the motive and so on. In a sense, when we do a good deed, the only good deeds that are there are things that God inspired us to do and helped us to do, and yet, in his mercy, he chalks it up for us.
Nevertheless, actually, the flesh is always there taping things, because most motives are always operating. And what it means to walk in the spirit is simply to refine your motives, to recognize the wrong ones, and to support the right ones. It’s almost like every deed, every effort, it’s got both going on and it’s your job to try to as much as possible beat down the wrong motives, push up the right motives, so that you have this great balance, so that the spirit is always overwhelming the flesh act, you know, in you.
And the fact is, during the day, you find you can come to the end of the day and you can look back and you say, I know which side won today. There’s always this warfare going on, it’s JC Ralph said. So recognize that ordinarily both are present. Your fear and your anxiety and pride will ordinarily be a good indicator on a given day of a high level of works righteousness and motive present. The best way for you to check out whether or not you’re operating in the flesh is how anxious you are, how anxious you are, how afraid you are. It’s the anxiety and the fear that comes by saying, if I don’t accomplish this, if I don’t get this, if this person rejects me, the anxiety and fear is really the curse of the false God that’s still operating in your life. These false gods that you set up in your life years ago, bless and curse you. If you’re doing what they say, they bless you and say, you are great, you did it, you accomplished it. And if you don’t, they say, you failure, I can’t believe you. You say, they’re cursing you. And that’s where the anxiety is coming from. So whenever you see a situation, there’s lots and lots of that anxiety coming from that works righteousness motive is present. Number two, look at what the sinful nature’s verbalizing in your heart. Check it out. Do what I just did. And that is, you know, embarrass yourself by admitting the kind of things that you know are being said down there, the curses that are going on. Say, Father, I see how much I want this out of fear. My anxiety, my anger occurred because I habitually forget you’re unwavering love for me and Jesus Christ. You have to do that during the day. Forgive me and cleanse me from these motives, which free me, which rise from the habits of my own life. Repentance is possible as the spirit makes the word real to us. And then articulate the motives of the spirit nature. Say them to yourself as you go through the activity, say things like, constantly remind yourself that you’re a child of God, that you’re not a slave under the law. Say Father, I do this for you, not for the success it might bring to me, I am not worried about failure since your recognition is the only one I need. You know, you articulate it, you operate out of that. Now the fact is, some days it’s very hard to do. Other days you might be studying the word in the morning, this is one of the reasons why you ought to do it, and a particular passage just penetrates you like a shaft comes into your life. And you say, oh, why didn’t I think of that yesterday? Well, I don’t know why, but now you got it today, so use it all day. Use it to help you live out of bee drive. Use it to let you live out of the spirit.
Now, turn over to the back, and I just have to show you this, because I really don’t want it to take you as long as I usually do. On the back, now, the results of walking this way, fruit of the spirit grow, and over the next number of weeks. What we’re going to do is we’re going to take a look at the different fruit. The fruit of the spirit are basically just the communicable attributes of God. Let me say this. You know what the communicable attributes are? Unless you’ve read some big old theology book, you won’t have heard that, but it’s a very interesting and great designation. The theologians used to take a look at all the characteristics of God, and there would be some that they would divide them into two categories, and you would get a chapter on the incommunicable attributes of God, and you get a chapter on the communicable attributes of God. The incommunicable attributes of God were things like omnipresence, that He’s everywhere at once. In fact, you want to hear this one? The Bible teaches not just that God is everywhere at once. You’ve heard that.
But there’s a tendency for us to think that He’s everywhere at once, sort of the way gas is diffused all through a building. In other words, if you have so many molecules of gas in this little jar, you open the jar, and then it goes into the building, but really what happens is it just spreads out. And when we say God is everywhere at once, we mean He’s repletively present. That means He is completely present everywhere. Not because He’s diffused by gas, but part of Him is here and part of Him is there. But at every spot, every place, He’s completely there. He’s omnipresent. He’s everywhere. Psalm 139. He’s omniscient. He knows everything. And He doesn’t just know everything the way a computer knows all sorts of things. He doesn’t say, oh, He knows everything at once. He’s also omnipotent. That means there’s nothing He cannot do. Nothing He cannot do. And the Bible tells us that we’ll never be like that. We’ll never be everywhere at once. As far as we know, we’ll be able to get places that might be fast, much faster than the subway when we’re in heaven, but we’ll have bodies. We have glorified bodies. And we’ll be constantly learning. And so we’ll never be in that condition. And so what happens is the Bible would say these are the incommunicable attributes of God, but the communicable attributes are things like His love and His wisdom and His power and His grace. And you know, that’s beautiful because communicable means you can catch it, right? What’s a communicable disease? Something that’s contagious. The communicable attributes of God are those parts of God that when you get near him, you can catch. If you really love somebody and you live with them, whether that person’s your friend or if that person’s your spouse, if you’ve got a good relationship with them, it’s pretty hard to avoid catching what they get. If they come down with a virus, you know, you can do what you want. But if you’ve got a very good relationship, you’re going to get the virus through. Why? Because you see, it’s communicable. And anything that a person you really love and that you spend a lot of time talking to, or, you know, you’re married to somebody, they kiss. You hold hands. You know, you sleep with them. You’re together with them. You’re going to pick up if you have a good relationship, if you spend time with them, what they have. And that’s what’s so amazing about the Bible.
The Bible tells us that there are attributes of God. you can catch. If you spend the time with him, if you gaze into his eyes, if you’re willing to open the Word of God and not just say, oh yeah, I know that already, but sit and meditate and let it wash over you.
If you, as John Owen, one of my friends used to write in the 1600s, a great, great man of God used to say, if you abase yourself before the majesty of God, if instead of just seeing a passage that talks about His majesty, you say, oh yes, I know that, but instead you bow before it and you let it wash over you and you think about His greatness and you think about His goodness, you look into His eyes, you catch it. Don’t you see why it’s critical to be working, to be living in the Spirit instead of in the flesh? If you’re living in the flesh, if you’re living under law, you do good deeds. You come to church, you read the Bible, you give to the poor, but you’re doing it hoping, hoping that God will accept you, that you’ll feel righteous.
In other words, you don’t love God for Himself. You’re not doing these good deeds just out of love for Him. You’re doing these good deeds because you’re trying to get something from God. When you’re walking in the Spirit, all the things you do are simply because you love Him. I’m doing this just because I love you. I’ve already got everything I possibly want from you. When I received Christ as Savior, when I received your salvation, I got everything. I love you for what you are and I’m just looking at you and I just want to spend time with you and I want to be near you. That is the secret of walking in the Spirit and developing fruit of the Spirit. Get near Him. There’s not a lot of tricks, not a lot of tricks at all. And these attributes are the fruit of the Spirit. What I would consider and what I would really urge you to do is take a look. When we study these, we’re always going to look at four things. Every week we’re going to look at four things. You’re going to have the fruit, then secondly, what’s the opposite of the fruit, which is the weed. The weed that you need to get rid of in your life.
- What’s the fruit?
- What’s the opposite of the fruit?
- What’s the counterfeit of the fruit? Something that looks like the fruit, but it’s not.
You know, you can have an apple, and then you can have the thorn that gets in the way of the apple, and then you can have a false apple that if you eat it, it’s poison. So you have the fruit, you have the weed, the opposite, you have the counterfeit fruit, and you have the attribute of God that you have to catch in order to develop. See, for example, patience. Where does patience come from? Patience is marvelous. Patience comes from looking at the wisdom of God and his patience with you. Do you know how patient he’s been? Do you realize how patient he’s been with you? If you know that, to the degree you know that, you’re patient with other people. If you know it at the minute somebody else is irritating you, the irritation’s gone. Because you catch the attribute from God. Patience is simply catching the attribute, looking him in the eyes, living in the spirit. So each week we’re going to do that, and what I’ve given you is a summary of what’s coming up for the next nine weeks. Love, for example, is sacrificing your interest for the good of others. The opposite of love is fear, not hatred. The counterfeit of love is selfish affection, or, you know, things like meekness, humility. Humility is self -forgetfulness. The opposite of humility is pride, right? But the counterfeit of humility is shyness, which is just a form of self -centeredness. It’s not humility.
Now, what we’re going to do is we’re going to go through these each week, one at a time. But what I would suggest is that you take a look at them this week. Maybe some of you are going to make that incredibly reckless promise because you just want lots of fighting in your life to start really getting serious about giving God some focused attention every day, quality time. It’s about time after all. You know, He knit you together in your mother’s womb, and He, you know, He died for you, and He has, you know, come an infinite distance for you. He was bled, and He absolutely pulled him.
He was pulled apart on the cross for you. He keeps you alive every single second. How about 30 minutes of focused attention? You know, is that asking too much? And if you start to do that, if you start to do that, start with these. Look down this list. Get to know the list. And then, first of all, I would suggest that you choose one or two where you’re already growing, one or two where God is really working in your life, and celebrate that.
Celebrate that. Say, you know, there’s stuff here that I didn’t have a year ago. God is working in my life. Praise Him for that. Celebrate that. But also, pick out one or two, or just one, which right now is the weakest thing in your life. You definitely see that you don’t have it. And begin to say, Lord, how can I cultivate this? What do I need to do? And start to pray for it. And, you know, one of these weeks we’ll get to it, and we can give you a few more handles. So just remember, live by the Spirit. Do not gratify the sinful desires of the flesh. For the flesh wars against the Spirit. There’s a fight, a good fight, in the life of every believer. favor. Are you fighting a good fight?