Life by the Spirit and Our Position

Well, today we're going to finish up Chapter 5 in Galatians. And I want to just point out, over the past, you know, several weeks, people ask about, we've had some dear brothers and sisters taking pictures of the overheads with their cell phones, which we're really excited about. So, in response to that, started about three or four weeks ago, we started printing out the overheads.

They're in a double-back format. They're available at the little table at the end as you go out the door there. So you're welcome to those. Plus you have the summary outline of what I'm going to talk about, too. Okay. Well, I thought today, since we're kind of finishing up this section of Galatians, it'd be good to kind of go back and review a slight bit to make sure we kind of wrap up this book. This section of scripture is really just vital. Let's look at the outline that I like to use from Macaulay.

The overall outline is the dynamics of the Christian life, and he has two parts to this. Part one we talked about many months ago about our liberty in Christ, our call to freedom. This part we've been studying for the last seven weeks, talking about spirituality in the believer's life, walking by the Spirit, the works of the flesh, the fruit of the Spirit, which we covered last week, It actually took two weeks to do that. And today there's kind of a wrap-up section that talks about life by the Spirit and our position in Christ. And you know, it's just, this is really an amazing section, a really critical section, because it kind of lays the foundation for a believer's life.

Walking by the Spirit, or as we learned last week, abiding in Christ, walking with Him in fellowship is what the Christian life is all about. And the way he presents this is significant, the way he talks about walking by the Spirit is significant, the way he presents it, and I'll show you that shortly. Okay, so let's just move on here. So I'm going to review first. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

So the idea of walk in Scripture, you know, is just all over the place, maybe a hundred or so different occurrences in the New Testament about walk or walking. used by Paul, used by Peter, other people. A really significant way to talk about conducting your life with our Savior. The word walk is peripateo in the original. It's to walk about. It's a whole round of activities that a believer has in his life. You could talk about it's his conduct. How does he conduct his life?

And what's interesting is that if you notice, if you look carefully, he's giving us, he approaches this by saying, rather than saying, I don't want you to be involved in the desires of the flesh, he gives you the positive first. He says, I want you to walk by the Spirit so that you won't do something that you shouldn't be doing, that you won't be following the desires of our flesh. So that's kind of the way he approaches it.

And you will not carry out, and actually what's amazing is, The force of this, you cannot, you will never, never bring to completion, it's an impossibility, the desire of the flesh, the sinful nature. So, what's interesting is that Paul's not saying that you won't have any desires. In fact, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you're going to have desires. And many times you're not to, in a negative sense.

We have good desires from the Lord, But we have negative desires, things we shouldn't... They come into our minds, we're probably ashamed that they come into our minds. You know, you've heard the expression, brother, if you knew what I was thinking about you, you probably wouldn't even talk with me. So, I mean, we all have that.

But what's amazing is the promise here is that those desires won't become deeds. And the deeds are listed later on. The desires will not become deeds. That's what the wonderful promise here is. So, every believer is going to have desires. But they won't be brought to completion.

That's kind of the main thing here. Walking by the Spirit involves our focus on Christ and not on the flesh. And kind of the parallel we saw last week about the vine and the branches, abiding in the vine is equivalent, if you will, to walking. There's different pictures that the Lord has given us, but they're all helpful in understanding what the Christian life is about.

So now in the context, as we come to verse 16 and we go through, we get to see this what I call the battle or what's been called the battle, the battle between the flesh and the Holy Spirit. It's interesting that people think, well, I have a battle in my life. I have a battle to do good or to do bad. Well, what's presented here is that that's not really the battle he's talking about. What's amazing is he's saying, I've given you the Holy Spirit to as a grace gift so that you can handle the desires of your flesh. And that's the battle that's going on. Not that we don't have battles within ourselves, but that's the battle he's talking about here. So first of all, in this context here, it says the flesh sets its desires against the spirit, and the spirit sets its desires against the flesh. So they equally oppose one another. And then, you know, we went through this.

So what's interesting is that we really We have the upper hand. It doesn't seem like that, but God has promised, He's given us the Holy Spirit, and who we are in Christ, and so we have the upper hand in a way. It says, in our position in Christ, we're in the Spirit. We have His Holy Spirit.

And we're not in the flesh. The question is, how will we walk? Will we walk in concert with His Spirit, or will we walk outside that? Will we succumb to the deeds of the flesh? And so we went through that, and there's a next chart, just kind of a list.

Mike went through this list of deeds. You know, they're all sinful activities. They're all against God's law. I know, immorality, impurity, sensuality, and the rest. There's 14 of those. Not a very pretty picture of what man can do and what man can be. But God says, I want you to focus on my son. And then what's interesting is he contrasts these deeds of the flesh, which are all out from our fleshly nature, all from our sin nature, he contrasts those God describes the singular. It's not plural and actually boy. I have to watch myself I even last week Bonnie was pointing Roger. You know you pointed out singular flesh of the sphere I just was and I did the week before that You know we have to remember we're talking about these are attributes of a person there.

This is not a list of Things we should be doing this is attributes of a person who is our Savior, and these are wonderful attributes and Christ is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. That describes our Savior. And as we walk by faith, His life is lived out through us. And we can have those attributes. But it's the attributes of a person who loves us and who died for us. So that's really critical. We see that contrast. And it's the singular fruit of the Spirit. I'll probably save fruits before the day is finished, but keep in mind, mark your Bible. I tell people to do that. Okay, so now let's look at the new verses for today. I was going to put them in one at a time, but let's just talk about each one.

24 says, Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with his passions and desires. So if you look carefully at that, it talks about us. Those, that's a believer, We've done something and it's an it's an amazing says it says that we as a believer have crucified the flesh Boy said wow I don't remember when I did that or you might say well I'm gonna take it I gotta get busy and crucify that flesh tomorrow You know Mike's gonna get out there and I'll be out there with a big crucifying our flesh tomorrow. Is that what it was talking about? We're gonna see that is that You know, it can't be that if you're a good Bible student, it can't be that so that's actually a positional statement of talking about a position that we have because we belong to Christ Jesus. Then the next verse is kind of a position going into condition. If we live by the Spirit, and we do, let us also walk by the Spirit.

And then as a result of that, he kind of, some final wrap-up things here, he says don't, he's already given us that list of 14 things that are awful, he says here's three more that you shouldn't be doing either. Don't become boastful, challenging, or envying one another. You know, adds those to the list of things that shouldn't be part of a Christian's life, a believer's life. Okay, so let's look at, let's go through each of these.

And, okay. Now, those who belong to Christ Jesus. Just look at that little phrase. Now, or but, is the idea. In contrast to where it's gone before, those are believers. And, modifying, they belong to Christ Jesus. So, you know, I thought here, as I looked at this, I say, You know, you say, well, someone might ask, well, how do I, what does it mean to belong to Christ Jesus? You know? For many, that's a very easy question. A very easy question to answer. To some, that might be confusing.

So I thought just to, maybe to, you know, make sure, or actually it's literally, I'm going to have to mix a little bold here, it's literally of Christ Jesus in the original. So it would belong to Christ Jesus, of Christ Jesus. How can a person say that? How can a person say, I belong to Christ Jesus, or I'm of Christ Jesus? Well, you know, it's a pretty wonderful, wonderful piece of information. And we all know this, or should know this, that we're to believe in a person, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, and we're to believe in what He's done, right?

The person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, His person, He's God. You know, all through Scripture, a lot of the Gospels, Jesus Christ is declared as being God. The Son of God. And they were going to stone him because he claimed to be, he said, I am. And that's the name for God. And they were going to stone him for that. So he's clearly God from Scripture. But how about his works? His works on the cross. It's described by four action verbs. Christ died for our sins. Christ was buried.

Christ was raised and Christ appeared those four things are called the good news the gospel and that's what what what makes you that what allows you to become that I might belong to God and that's kind of summed up in Acts 16 where it says what must I do to be saved and the answer that question is given the following verse believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved so that's how you that's how you belong to God you come to belong to the Lord Jesus Christ So now we're going to see a list of things that, as a result of believing in Him, what are some of the attributes of that? First of all, it says that you've been born again. And this is only a short list. This is a short list. You've been redeemed. You've been justified. You've been identified.

There are many, many more riches that we have once we put our faith and trust in our Savior. So let's look at those in detail Actually, I got him and first John 5 1 a it says whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God in Ephesians 1 7 it says in him we have redemption Through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace then in Romans 5 1 Therefore having been justified by faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ And then lastly, that's about four verses there, the key part of that is that we've been identified with Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. And we're going to talk about that in more detail here shortly. So that's the result of belonging, the short list of belonging to Christ. Those are the wonderful blessings we have, the wonderful graces of God that we have. So now, Continuing on as I'll just start from the beginning now those who belong to Christ we've established that they belong to Christ Jesus They're his they're his own.

They've been born again They've done something they have crucified the flesh So how we and it with his passions and desires, so how are we going to how are we going to handle this? How are we going to understand this so let's just look at some of the parts of it here have crucified.

It's literally as you might guess if you think crucifixion it's to put to death on a cross and Christ was crucified, right? He was put to death on the cross. That word literally means that. So that's saying that the believer has put his flesh to death on the cross. Wow, that sounds... Did I get teleported? We'll see. Hopefully you'll like my explanation. We'll see here. Flesh. That's our sinful nature. So this is saying the believer's flesh was put to death. in this context? And how and when was the flesh crucified or put to death? And then maybe a third point might be, how did we do it? How was that accomplished?

So I hope that kind of piques your interest. OK. So first, the A part. The flesh in the context. This actually is, for most of you, this probably isn't too hard. The flesh in Scripture is just, can describe the physical flesh, right? Our physical being. It can describe, and I believe that's what in this case, it can describe our sinful nature. And that's really the focus there. Plus there are other things it can describe as well. Those are the two differentiations I want to consider here. So it says that we've crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

The flesh is not speaking of our physical body, but our sin nature. And then Paul declared that his flesh, there was nothing good in his flesh, right? He says, for I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. He wasn't talking about his physical body. He was talking about his sinful nature. And these passion desires can be manifested. And that's more the description of the deeds of the flesh again. So how and when was the flesh crucified?

I'm going to borrow an illustration from Vern Peterman here. So I have this... I wanted to get it longer. This is kind of narrow. Can you see my little BIC pen here? So this is going to represent all eternity past to eternity future. All in this timeline, this pen. So what this verse is saying is... Hang on to that thought there. I've got my pen here.

Eternity past eternity future here, okay Okay, so So I think I think it can be understood by our identification with Christ so so the point is that when we were identified And let me just go down here so first of all as I mentioned we trusted Christ as our Savior Then I'm going to use the words and our brother house use the word to God retroactively Placed us Christ's crucifixion, so if you can think about Christ's crucifixion, maybe is that the the black part of this?

It's a crisis crucified here in in human time, and I Roger believed here in 1981 that's my and I've had a date written down I should know the date better, but it's 1981 I know the year at least so when I did that Christ retroactively placed me in in his crucifixion and a whole bunch of things happened as a result of that so I was retroactively God says Roger based upon your faith in my son I'm gonna place you in in his crucifixion okay hope I didn't mess it up too bad okay so let's see what happened here so I was identified or placed into Christ's death Christ's burial Christ's resurrection Christ's ascension, and Christ's seething. And Verne had a cool chart about this that I didn't pull up.

But anyway, Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, ascension, and seething. We were then counted as having been with Christ, carried up to the cross. There's this wonderful verse, and I've forgotten it, where it pictures Christ carrying the believer up to the cross with Him. I think Verne also had the cross as a crowded place. You think of all the believers in the world, and all of them being carried up to the cross with Him.

So that's how this verse can say that. So my part in that was I exercised faith. I didn't get a cross in my backyard and do something. I exercised faith in what Christ had already done. Okay. And it says, with his passions and desires... So I want to continue on here. There's a little continuation. So when Christ was crucified on the cross... So here's some other important details.

So, first of all, He died for our sins, plural, as our substitute. And interestingly enough, or significantly enough, if you look in 1 John, you'll see He died for the sins of the entire world. Every man, woman, and child, He died for their sins. But those sins, that death can't benefit me until I come to trust Him. When I trust Him as my Savior, it's put to my account. If I don't trust Him, even though my sins are forgiven, I won't be I will I will not be his I won't belong to him and Then secondly a very important part was often missed he died under sin under the sin nature and that's significant Because the sin nature as the flesh right as we've been talking about that's the source of all those Awful things we saw that's the source of those sins He didn't forgive the sin nature he didn't condemn the sin nature in the flesh and And the fourth point, God took all of who we were in Adam, our fleshly nature in Adam, and co-crucified it with Him. So the summary is, when Christ was crucified, we were co-crucified with Him to the flesh with His passions and desires. Just a wonderful, wonderful blessing that we have that God included us. We were included with Him.

It wasn't like He You know, it's really kind of amazing. It's not like, well, I thought about Roger, and I thought about different believers. I thought about you. No, he did more. He took you with him. I mean, it's so much... The pictures that we have, and we're in Christ. It's not like Christ... I'm walking with Christ as my... You've seen this thing, walking in the sands, footsteps in the sands. Well, it's so far from what God has declared in His Word. We are in Him, and He's in us. This relationship is just incredible.

And a wonderful verse here, in Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. Just a wonderful, wonderful verse. Okay. So that was verse 24. So we're finished with 24. I'd be curious to see what your version says about 25, Jim. I'll have to get with you after. Because 25 is kind of a cool verse. Okay.

It's a conditional verse too. Conditional in the Greek. So we'll talk about that shortly here. If we live by or in the Spirit. So it's one of these ones that's considered assumed to be true. Paul's making an argument here. He says if we live by the Spirit. And he's saying we do live by the Spirit. Assume is true that we live by the Spirit. That's how Merriman translates it. So we know the following. If we live by the Spirit, we know the following.

Every believer has the Holy Spirit dwelling within him. We don't have to worry about God's Word declares, and it's in Romans 8, 9b, it declares that we have the Holy Spirit living within us. The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Life in 8.2, and also in the first part of 9. It says, however, you're not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. Every believer has a Holy Spirit residing in him.

This is our position. This is unchangeable. We have been separated from our fleshly nature, but we can still walk in it. That's just kind of an aside there. So let's just kind of look about the walking part here. That's the second part of the verse. Let us also walk by the Spirit. So based upon the fact that the Spirit of God dwells in us, that's called our position.

And I was thinking about that, you know, we kind of talk here about position and condition a lot. Mike, we've had classes on this. I was trying to think of just a way to kind of just review that again. You might say, I could talk of myself as a husband. That's my position, right? And I share that with many other men. I'm a husband, and that's my position. And my condition is From scripture might be love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for for him I also be thought of as a father. I have a father That's my position.

My condition is Bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and so on so position states who we are our condition is how we live out that position and Hopefully, and the admonition of scripture is, you know, sometimes you're not in line. You're not acting like a husband or like a father. You're doing something contrary to that. Okay, so now in this passage, it looks very familiar. It looks like we saw this before, and we did sort of see it before.

Let us also walk by the Spirit. And we saw that back in 16 where it said, walk by the Spirit and you will not conduct, you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. But walk is a different word. This walk is a Greek word, and I'm not going to pronounce it. I'm going to try to pronounce it. But it's the walk in a line or in a row.

And it's used metaphorically of keeping step with the Holy Spirit. So this is going to tell us a little another piece of information about walking, walking in the Spirit or walking with the Lord. It speaks of a moment by moment Condition so this is speaking of our condition where we the spirit lives in us, but we are part of that We need to walk with him or walk in step with him moment by moment The holy and here's some things that as we do that as we walk moment by moment with the Holy Spirit Here's some things that he does on our behalf. He convicts us of sin And it says the first John 1 9 that were to confess it or agree with him about that sin He reveals Christ to us The Holy Spirit manifests the fruit of the Spirit as we saw. I say fruit or fruit, hopefully the singular fruit of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit conforms us to the image of Christ.

Okay, the last verse here. So now we're going to have a couple things here. We're going to have some warnings. This is going to be some warnings about what might transpire. Let us not become If you think about what's gone before, we're in the Spirit, we're walking, we should be walking with Him in the Spirit, but this talks about, it said, let us not become. This is talking about a change of state. The idea here is, let us not become in our practice what we are not in our life with the Spirit. Don't let your walk characterize anything. Don't let your walk not be inconsistent with who you are in Christ. It's a picture here. And actually, it's an action that is assumed to be going on. Let us stop becoming boastful, challenging one another, ending one another. So here are the three warnings. First one is boastful. And this is sometimes translated, it's a compound word.

It's a word for vain or empty with glory. Vain glory, I think maybe the King James translated it that way. So in Philippians it says, do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit or it could be vain glory. So the idea is one who is empty of glory has vain glory.

He's glorying in something he doesn't have. He's boasting about something who he's not. One who tries to produce the fruit of the Spirit, the singular fruit of the Spirit, by the flesh. And Paul struggled with that, right? He was struggling to be righteous outside of the Lord. And that's a Roman 7 experience. More deeds of the flesh. So two more. Challenging one another. These are both very interesting. Challenging one another. Stirring up evil in one another. And actually, this is from our brother Hal that I did, push the right buttons.

Have you ever had people that you know them so well, that you know if you say certain things, they'll react a certain way? Many times I find, hopefully I do it in a positive sense, if I know I'm going to hurt somebody by saying something, I don't say it. I try not to say it, but sometimes I might.

But this is a negative one, where you say something to really get them going, and that's not the life of Christ. Envying one another, this is kind of another negative one that shows up. Feeling displeasure when something good occurs in another's life. There should be joy for one another, but there's sorrow. We should not envy the blessings of others. But sometimes, you know, to be honest, a desire becomes, you know, hopefully it's only a desire, it's in our head and doesn't go any farther than that. But that can be a common thing where we envy one another. We shouldn't.

We all are blessed as believers with knowing the Savior. And that's the most important thing in our lives. Okay, so final thoughts here. Boasting, challenging, and envying come from the flesh. We are Christ and have crucified or put to death the flesh with all its passions and desires.

We live in the Spirit in our glorious position. So let us walk in the Spirit so that He can manifest the person of Christ in us. That's the Spirit's job. Remember, we'd look at those passages in John, the Spirit is to, He says, Christ said, He takes a mind and reveals it unto you. The Holy Spirit is given to us to show us the life of Christ.

The person of Christ This is who he is the person of Christ is those is that singular fruit of the Spirit his love His joy his peace his patience his kindness his goodness his faithfulness his gentleness That all describes our wonderful Savior the Lord Jesus Christ All right, so let's close we thank you father. We thank you for our time today Lord We thank you for the wonderful blessings. We have father. We thank you for your desire that that Christ's life be shown through us father I We ask it in his name. Amen.