Trinity 14

Galatians 5:16-24 - Trinity XIV - September 9, 2012
Working Works or Bearing Fruits

The central teaching of Holy Scripture is that a sinner is justified before God by grace alone through faith in Christ.  This is to say that God forgives us our sins and declares us righteous on account of the holy life, the innocent suffering and death, and the glorious resurrection and ascension of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.  All this God does by grace alone apart from any of our own merits or works or preparations.  We are saved from sin, death, and hell by faith alone, that is to say, when we believe that for Jesus’ sake God receives us into His favor.  This is the resounding and consistent message of the whole Bible.  St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians is perhaps the clearest of all testimonies in Scripture to this precious doctrine of justification.  

The occasion for which Paul wrote what he wrote was that this doctrine was being challenged and perverted by false teachers in Galatia.  They were teaching that after people came to faith, they had to do something beyond just believing in order to perfect their righteous standing before God.  This was an error that could not be tolerated because it totally contradicted the whole Christian religion.  It denied the very definition of grace by saying that the righteousness faith received in the forgiveness of sins was not good enough.

The teaching that we must do something in order to receive God’s full favor enslaves sinners to the very works that accomplish nothing before God.  We can’t trust in anything we do, because everything we do is tainted by sin.  St. Paul writes in Galatians 2, “by the works of the law – now he’s talking about good works here – no flesh shall be justified,” because when the flesh works – when the flesh does anything – it sins.   It is a terrible slavery for one to trust in his own labor to make himself righteous, when it is his very labors that he needs to be rescued from.  Jesus said it best when He said to the multitude in John 6, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” 

“Therefore I say:” says Paul, “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” 

Now I’d like to explain what this means.  But before we can know what it means to walk in the Spirit, we need to understand what the flesh is and what it lusts for.  When we talk about the flesh, we’re not just talking about our physical meat and bones.  After all, the Son of God assumed our flesh without becoming a sinner.  But no, by flesh we are talking about our fallen sinful nature that we have inherited from our first father Adam.  Now, on one hand, as we know, this flesh of ours desires to satisfy itself by doing what God forbids.  These are called the works of the flesh.  The flesh is never satisfied.  On the other hand, the flesh desires to justify itself by doing what the law tells it to do.  These are called the works of the law.  But the flesh can never be confident that it has done enough. 

Now, it’s not as though there are two roads to take: the works of the law that appear good, and the works of the flesh that are obviously bad.  No, it is essentially one and the same road that ends in the same place.  But “walk in the Spirit,” Paul says, “and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.”  Now notice that Paul does not say lusts of the flesh, as in many different desires, but lust — it is singular.  The desire of our sinful nature is ultimately one desire.  It is the desire to claim for itself what God has not given. 

But walk in the Spirit.  This means go where God the Holy Spirit leads you.  He leads you to Jesus.  Walk in the Spirit.  Find your refuge in Christ who accomplished the law in your place.  This should comfort anyone who has tried and failed to find peace by working the works of the law.  Because where the Spirit leads us we find our righteousness accomplished for us.  Walk in the Spirit.  The Spirit of God also offers strength to resist for those who are tempted to do what they know is wrong.  He does this by leading the struggling sinner to where sin was defeated for him on the cross.  “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.”  The Holy Spirit who turns us away from our own good works in order to create faith in what Jesus does is the same Holy Spirit who also works in us the will and the ability to do what truly pleases God.  The one and same Holy Spirit draws us away from all our works – both those that appear to be good and those that are obviously bad.  The Holy Spirit makes us holy.  But He doesn’t do this by means of the law.  The law can’t make us holy.  No, the Holy Spirit makes us holy by means of the Gospel. 

To walk in the Spirit is to walk with Jesus.  It is to believe in Him and trust in Him for the life that you need and that you cannot find in yourself.  “If you are led by the Spirit,” St. Paul tells us, “then you are not under the law.”  This means that the law cannot say anything to you.  It cannot condemn you or boss you around.  It cannot put conditions on your salvation.  No it cannot.  Not if you are led by the Spirit.  Not if you are led by Him who shows you where all conditions have been met and where all demands have been fulfilled in the sinless flesh of the Son of God.  The Spirit leads you to where Jesus lived and died and rose for you.  He leads you to where your ascended Lord comes to you in meekness through the word that is preached and through the sacraments that promise you salvation.  He comes in meekness, but He comes with all the power and authority of heaven and earth to forgive you your sins. 

I remember when I was a young boy being a little bit troubled by how much we asked God to save us.  We would pray that He would deliver us from this present evil age, and bring us to heaven, and that He would save us from our sin.  And I knew that we needed this.  But it seemed strange to me that we would ask God for what – I thought – we already had.  By asking so often it seemed to imply that we didn’t really already have it.  Was there doubt in our repetitive pleas for mercy?  Should there be?  But then I got a little bit older.  And the struggle within me became a little bit more apparent.  That the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and that everything that God wanted me to love and cherish was the exact opposite of what I naturally desired.  To ask God for mercy is to ask Him to fight for you. 

There is a battle within the heart of every Christian.  And this battle doesn’t go away until we die.  As long as we live with our sinful flesh in this world, we will have desires that we are ashamed of, and that we must repent of.   We will experience temptations that vex our souls and into which we will even fall.  We are weak.  We are sinners.  And this battle will teach us, if we continue to listen to God’s word, how much we need the forgiveness that is found in Jesus alone. 

We can’t reform the flesh.  We can’t win the battle by converting the natural man.  No, all there is for the flesh to do is to die.  And so as often as we find no true life within ourselves on account of our sin, we go to God and we plead for mercy, and we don’t stop – not because it is not already ours – No – the exact opposite – but because we know that it is always ours as often as we need it at the throne of God’s mercy at the foot of the cross. 

Faith is not getting what you’re looking for once, and then moving on.  Faith is not reforming the flesh so that it no longer does what the flesh is prone to do.  No faith is constantly repairing to the same forgiveness that you needed last time.  This is what the Spirit desires.  Yes, the flesh lusts against the Spirit, but the Spirit lusts against the flesh; and the Spirit is God Himself!  Here is our comfort.  That as often as you lose, as often as the fight is difficult, as often as you suffer, and your flesh resents it, you come and you ask your God again for what He always gives you – for Jesus’ sake. 

The battle of a Christian between the Spirit and the flesh is painful.  It is wearisome.  But the fact that you struggle with sin – and even the same sins again and again – the fact that you fall – is not a sign that you are not walking in the Spirit.  No, it is the exact opposite.  It is a sign that the Spirit is leading you to hate your sin and love God’s mercy more. 

This is extremely important!  There is a big difference between falling into sin and defending sin.  It is when the battle stops that we are in real trouble.  When there is no longer any struggle it is either because we have convinced ourselves that we have overcome our sin, or it is because we have made peace with the sins that God’s law condemns.  In either case, there is no room for repentance. When the Christian no longer engages in the spiritual battle it is because he is no longer a Christian.   

But this is not where the Spirit leads us.  He does not lead us under the law, but to the grace of God in Christ.  We do not define ourselves as Christians by our spiritual victories any more than we define ourselves by our sinful desires.  No, we identify ourselves as those fighting in the midst of the battle.  And we are led by the Spirit to walk with Jesus who has already won! 

But we need to know the battle.  Let us briefly consider, then, the works of the flesh.  St. Paul says that they are obvious.  They are.  He begins with sexual sins.  Sexual sins are sins committed against the body that Christ has redeemed and set aside for his own dwelling.  These sins drive out the Holy Spirit.  Paul then lists idolatry and sorcery.  These are sins against true worship.  They are the sins of seeking God’s will apart from His word.  These sins ignore the Holy Spirit.  Paul then goes on to mention a long list of sins that describe for us what selfishness does.  Selfishness is self-love.  Selfishness is what selfishness does – everything ranging from outburst of wrath, holding grudges, jealousies, drunkenness, and living for the day.  Those who practice such things don’t inherit the kingdom of God. 

The works of the flesh are just that.  They are works.  They are burdens that deprive sinners of rest.  They enslave, but they pay nothing.  But notice that there are no works of the Spirit.  There are only fruits.  The first fruit of the Spirit is love.  It is a fruit that is born in the Christian who has witnessed and known the love of God in Christ.  Love fulfills the law.  Jesus fulfilled the law by loving His Father, by loving His neighbor, by loving us.  Only when we see the love of God that washes our sin away are we able to love in return. 

This love produces joy – not a shallow happiness that comes and goes, but the joy of being at peace with God and with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  This peace produces patience.  We don’t need to get what we want when we want it because we already have everything worth having in Christ.  This patience leads us to kindness as we tolerate the weaknesses of others, imitating our Lord Jesus.  Kindness does not rejoice in evil but in what is good.  Goodness is honorable and faithful and true.  There is no deceit in it.  Gentleness comes as a fruit because the gospel doesn’t coerce.  It woos and wins over the heart.  And finally there is the fruit of self-control.  Being filled with the Holy Spirit does not entail an obnoxious display of emotion as if letting it all hang out were an indication of true spirituality.  No, but the Holy Spirit makes us reverent.  The peace in which we live enables us to control ourselves. 

But we fail, don’t we?  The works of the flesh rise up to claim us.  We fall into sin.  What do we do then?  We reclaim our inheritance in God’s kingdom, that’s what.  We claim the promise of God in our baptism.  God has named us.  God has joined His name to ours.  He has washed us in the blood of the Lamb.  He has joined us to the crucifixion and resurrection of His dear Son.  This is who we are.  Crucifying our flesh with all its passion and desires is precisely this: it is to claim this identity for ourselves. We are forgiven of all our sins.  We are children of God. So we walk in the Spirit and we rejoice in the privilege of being Christians. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen