Walking by the Spirit, Part 1
Galatians 5:16-18
Galatians 5, beginning in verse 16. And I'd like to read just as the setting verses 16-18. "This I say then walk in the Spirit and ye 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 ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law." Now anyone who knows anything about the basics of the Christian life knows that the key to living the Christian life is the Holy Spirit.
At the moment of salvation, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in the life of a believer and becomes the resource and the energy and the power for that believers life. That is basically the theme of these verses. The Spirit controlled life and what it produces. When we get to the production end of it, we get to verse 22 and it tells us about the fruit of the Spirit, "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control."
The basis of the Christian life when it's lived successfully and to the glory of God and fruitfully is the energy and the power of the Holy Spirit. Now remember that in the book of Galatians, there is a contrast going on all the time between law and grace. And the contrast in the last two Chapters of Galatians is between law as a principle of Christian living and grace as a principle of Christian living. And Paul's argument is that you do not need to circumscribe yourself as a Christian to a law. To an external code. Because the Holy Spirit internally produces what the law externally never could produce.
And so the contrast then is between the legalism and living a Spirit filled life or walking by the Holy Spirit. The believer does not need to live legalistically under a code of written law, under a system of ceremonial routine and ritual, he can simply walk by the Holy Spirit indwelling him and fulfill what God always intended for man in terms of holiness. And so the whole idea of holiness goes inside and a resident Spirit accomplishes what the external law never could accomplish.
Now before Christ, we have learned in Galatians that there was bondage to the external law and since men couldn't keep it there was a condemnation that was written right into it. Christ came along and He paid the penalty that the law required. God's law is a holy law. God said if you don't keep my law you're dead, I'll kill you, take your life. The soul that's in it that shall die. The wages of sin is death. And so the law had a penalty and the penalty was execution or death spiritually. Christ came along and paid the penalty. Thus, He liberated all men who come to Him in faith. He liberated them from having to keep a code of laws. Either for their salvation or in response to their salvation because He provided also after His death the gift of the Spirit who would be resident inside the believer and become the restrainer of sin. Something the external law used to do.
Now in the book of Galatians, we know that there are several churches being addressed because Paul had founded no less four in Galatia. And we know that the Judaisers or the circumcision party or the super-legalistic non-Christians, they attached to the church, but were not really born again, had arrived in Galatia and they started to preach to those Christians there and to those people coming to church not yet Christians and they messed them up. Because what they told them was, number one, Paul is not a true apostle. Paul has no credentials. You can't believe the man and so in Chapters 1 and 2, Paul answers that very clearly and establishes his apostleship and his authority.
The second thing they said was, you can't be saved by grace alone. You must be circumcised and you must maintain mosaic law, Chapters 3 and 4, Paul answers that. The third thing that they unloaded on the Galatians was that once you're saved, you then must obey the law. You must continue to obey the law and this is the way to live your life circumscribing yourself to the written law and Paul answers that in Chapters 5 and 6. And what he says in effect is that you do not need an external law. You do not need to follow the ceremonies and all the observances and all of the routine and the rigmarole and the ritual. And even the written moral law is unnecessary, because the Spirit of God comes inside of you and effects the holiness that the law externally was meant to force you into in the old covenant.
And do you remember last time we saw that what the old covenant was designed to do was to scare people into obedience. In other words, you better do this or you'll die. But under the new covenant, the Spirit of God produces that in us without fear. That's really the message of Galatians 5 and 6. Don't try to circumscribe yourself to law. Look at verse 1 of Chapter 5. It simply says this, "For freedom Christ has set us free. Therefore standfast and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." You've been liberated. There's no sense in imposing a legalistic situation on Christians. The Holy Spirit will produce that. And I told you something very significant two weeks ago.
I told you something that I repeat because I think it's so important. The more legalism you apply to your Christian life, the more you choke the Holy Spirit. Because what you're doing is you're eliminating the necessity of His ministry. Plus you're creating a sort of a spiritual hypocrisy. Jesus said if the Son shall set you free you shall be free for real. Leave it at that. And allow the Spirit of God to produce the works of holiness as you simply walk by the Spirit. There are some people who equate holiness with how many times you go to church, how many times a day you pray, did you read your Bible?
I had a guy like that in college. And they had an optional prayer meeting, you didn't have to go to. It was the only optional thing they had, and so I took advantage of it. I didn't go. That's simple enough. It was the only chance I had to exercise my own prerogative as a Christian and I had none. Those were carnal days as I told you a couple of weeks ago. But I didn't go to this and the guy trapped me in the hall one day and he said you're not spiritual. And I said, I know that, but how do you know? He said because you don't go to the optional prayer meeting. Now you see what his view of spirituality was? It's where you went, not what you were.
And I'll never forget I had an opportunity, somebody got sick in desperation they asked me to teach a class on a Sunday morning. They had a Sunday School class, I guess about four or five people got sick, because I wasn't even on the list an alternate. But a lot of people got sick and in fact, as I remember there was an epidemic going on. And somebody said, we don't know of anyone else and we know you're a preacher's son and so forth and so forth. So would you teach the class. And so I'll never forget I taught this class and another fellow came to me afterwards and so oh my, he said. That was a marvelous lesson. I didn't know you were spiritual. Oh.
Now you see spirituality was predicated on whether I did or didn't go to prayer meeting or whether I did or didn't teach a class. Well, you see for some people that's the mentality of spirituality. Spirituality is where you go and what you do and all of these little things, not what's going on inside. That's legalism. That's attempting to equate holiness with performance, you see. And that's what Paul is really arguing against. He is saying that freedom in Christ is the freedom, not just to run amuck, but it's the freedom to allow the Spirit of God to produce holiness without you grunting and groaning to try to effect your own by self effort.
But you know, Paul came along and he was preaching all of this freedom and man the Jewish people had an awful time swallowing this. You see the reason they had a hard time swallowing it was because they only knew of one way to hold back sin and that was the law, right? In the Old Testament that was the only restrainer there was. Where you keep the law, you get it. So everybody kept the laws as close as they could or else they knew they were going to be in real trouble. Lose your life. Commit adultery, you just didn't get a lot of hmmm, no, stoned. It was a whole different thing. So they were in fear. So Paul comes along and says we're not under law as Christians and the Jews, the legalistic Jews, say wait a minute if you pull the law out, you're going to have sin going crazy, because the only restrainer for sin that they could conceive of was the law.
But we know from 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2 that the Holy Spirit is called the restrainer, isn't He? He restrains sin from the inside. But it was hard for them to understand it. So they saw the message of freedom from law as the bursting of the dam wall and the waters of sin would drown everybody. So Paul has to stop in these two chapters and very carefully show that Christian liberty, Christian freedom, walking in the Spirit does not mean sin runs crazy, sin runs wild. Just the opposite. In fact, if you want to compare the saints of the New Testament with the saints of the Old Testament, you're going to have an interesting time because you're going to find there are infinitely more dirty blotches on the saints of the Old than there in the New, right?
I mean, we look back and we scratch our heads and we see David, blessed man of God and then we read what he did. Or Abraham and so many of them like that. Yes, because they didn't have the strength of restraint. The law could not effect that restraint because they were so fleshly, so bent towards sin, but the Spirit of God can in a more powerful way. So Paul wants to show that Christian liberty does not mean sin goes wild. Now remember last time, we said that Paul shows in verse 13-15 that freedom does not mean freedom to indulge the flesh. No.
Verse 13, "For brethren you have been called unto liberty only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh." So Paul is saying that freedom is not freedom to indulge the flesh and that's what people would say, you know. Well, if you're just going to live like you want, just walk in the Spirit and not have law, you're going to run crazy and you're going to get into sin. No, no. Our freedom is not to indulge the flesh.
Secondly, it is not freedom to injure others. The end of verse 13, "but by love," do what, "serve one another." It's the freedom to love one another. Thirdly, it is not freedom to ignore the law, verse 14. "For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." So Christian liberty is not to indulge the flesh, injure others, and ignore the law. But rather, you can fulfill the law verse 14 says, by the power of the Spirit. How can the Christian free from law? The only restraint that the Jew ever knew to keep from messing up his whole life. Verse 16 gives the answer. "This I say walk," watch this, "by the Spirit." Put that in your Bible if it says in. Cross it out and write by in it. "Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh."
Now listen to me, Paul says this, your Christian liberty is not to indulge the flesh. It is not to injure others. It is not ignore the law. You say well, that's fine well and good Paul. You tell me that, but how do I keep from doing those things? Walk by the Spirit. Not walking in the Spirit as if you're in some big box, but it's walking by His power, by His energy. This is the springboard for all of Paul's discussion then from verse 16-25. And here we have a complete presentation of the doctrine of walking in the Spirit or the concept of walking by the Spirit.
Now this is basic to the Christian life and it's the theme. If you notice verse 18 and he repeats it again, "If you be led by the Spirit, you're not under the law." Verse 25 says "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit." And so three times in this passage he talks about walking by the Spirit. That's the theme. The Spirit walk. Walking by the Spirit. This is basic to holiness. Now mark it friends. I want you to get the introduction so you can smoothly slide into the passage. He is trying to point out that sin doesn't run wild without law, because the Spirit is there and we can have holiness in our lives without legalism. The holiness comes as we walk by the energy of the Holy Spirit.
As we yield to Him. It's essentially the very same concept that you have in Ephesians 3:16 where he prays that you be strengthened with His might by the Spirit in the inner man. Or in Ephesians 5:18 where he says, "be being kept," what, "filled with the Spirit." It's the same idea. That in order to live a holy life, the Christian does not set up a bunch of dos and don'ts a bunch of little nitty gritty rules and all the time he's doing all these things externally, inside he's wishing and he's lusting and he's doing all these things mentally, you know. He's a classic Pharisee that whom Jesus said that's fine Pharisees. You don't do this and you don't do that, but your thoughts are polluting. Yeah, you talk about murder and you hate and if you hate in your heart you're as well as murdered. Or you talk about lust you say you don't commit adultery, you lust after a woman in your heart, you've committed adultery, right?
I've seen situations where Christians did not do things, but their thoughts were so corrupt that God must have treated their not doing them as he would have treated their doing them. Because of the patterns of thought. Because they knew nothing of the Holy Spirit and walking by the Spirit. Only of being circumscribed to an external ethic. And so the walk in the Spirit then simply allows or by the...keep saying walk in Spirit, really should be by the Spirit, but the walk by the energy of the Spirit then is what fulfills in us the holiness of God.
Now I'll tell you something, it's obvious that this is going to work if we're faithful. I mean, if I had my choice of being obedient to an outside list of rules or simply walking by the energy of an inside power isn't even a choice is it. Man, I'm glad I live in the new covenant. I'd have a bad time in the old covenant. The Lord knows I may not have lived long from all of the sins of the past in my life knowing what I knew, how responsible would I have been under the old covenant. But I've learned in the new covenant what holiness is and holiness for me is not a list of outside rules. Holiness for me is simply walking by the energy of the indwelling Spirit who empowers me to do the things that I couldn't force myself to do no matter what the outside rules were.
And that was the hang up in the Old Testament. That's why David poured out his heart in the Psalms and says God, I can't stand this. There it is, but I can't seem to maintain it. And yet the Spirit of God maintains it in me as I walk by His power in the new covenant. Well, the walk by the Spirit then comes in four parts in our text and I'm just going to show you just a beginning look. But four parts, the command, the conflict, the contrast, and the conquest, the command, the conflict, the contrast, and the conquest.
First of all, let's look at the command and we already read it. Let's look at it again. Verse 16, "This I say then," now if the then bounces you backwards, if our liberty is not liberty to sin, how do we prevent it, "walk by," and it's really in the present tense, continue to walk or keep on "walking by the Spirit." This is a daily routine. This isn't something you come to in one point in your life and say from now on I commit myself. I'm going to accept the Spirit walk. No, no, no. It's not a once for a deal. You just do it every day. It's walking. It's walking continuously. Keep on walking by the Spirit. "And you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh."
Boy that's a beautiful concept. You know what this says to me? This says that a Christian if he's only a minute old in Christ has the wherewithal to completely fulfill the requirements of God for holiness. You say, but he doesn't know anything. He only needs to know one thing. What? Keep on walking by the Spirit and the Spirit will produce in him the things that God desires. You know, it's very easy for us to say well, I know he's a young Christian and that's why he got goofed up. Well, wait a minute. He's got the same resource. It's simply in the Christian life boiled down to this. Walk by the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.
Sin is usually not a question of information. It's a question of whether you're walking in the Spirit or not, walking in His power and His energy by His strength. Now the fulfillment then of God's holiness comes by walking by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit, when He comes in, controls the life and begins to exercise our liberty in a way that never violates ourselves. It never violates others. It never violates God and that's the three things our liberty, Paul says, will not do if we continue to walk by the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit becomes our restrainer. Now in this passage, the Spirit is mentioned seven times. And so we certainly are aware of what the apostle is saying. He is seven times over emphasizing that the Spirit subdues the flesh. That the Spirit is the power over the flesh. That the way to walk as a believer is to walk by His energy. We will check our lusts. We will insight love. We will fulfill the law, not by circumscribing ourselves to an outside code, but by walking by the Spirit.
And I can say and so can you that you've seen in your life many, many Christians, bless their hearts, who got under some kind of legalistic teaching and wound up trying to live by a code that somebody else set for them and never did know the meaning of victory in their whole lives. Now what does the word walk imply? Well, you can go into a lot on that, but you're familiar with it. Let me just say this. It implies progress. It's a present tense, keep on walking idea. It's a day by day, step by step progress. It's a continue on with the Spirit as the life of the Christian unfolds on step at a time he yields that one step to the control of the Holy Spirit. That's the key to holiness.
It's governed by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. I'm sure you're well aware that we believe with all our hearts that every Christian possesses the Holy Spirit. If I didn't believe that people, I'd be the most frustrating human being in the world trying to communicate to people that I live the Christian life when I wasn't sure they had the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:9 tells us clearly that every believer has the Spirit. So you say well, all we have to do then is submit to the Spirit and just allow Him to control our lives. Boy that really sounds easy. Well, it is. I mean, it sounds easy. It's not a complicated doctrine. There's nothing I can really say about it. But let me just say this, don't make it sound too easy.
I remember a chorus that we used to sing long time ago when I was a little guy. I almost said younger, young. But when I was a little kid I used to sing this song, Let Go and Let God. Now I thought that was nice song and I used to sing that little song, Let Go and Let God, have his wonderful way or something like that. You know, I began to think about that the other day. Let go, now wait a minute. Let go, I don't like that. The implication of the song is that you just sort of flop on the Holy Spirit and you say well there I am do it.
That's what we call the theology of quietism. If you want a te