Sermon by Dr. Jeffrey Jeremiah
October 16, 2005

"In the Spirit - Victory"
Galatians 5:16-26

We’re in this series, "God’s Great Desire for You," looking at what God put you on earth for. From His Word He declares that He created you to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. We’ve seen that you glorify God when you receive His Son as your personal Savior and Lord, when you live a generous life and a life that is honest, real, and authentic. You glorify God when in the midst of difficulty and weakness, you rely on His power and goodness to get you through. You glorify God when you’re united in your relationships with each other. Last week we saw that we glorify Him when we worship Him in spirit and in truth with a heart that is humble and hungry for Him. When these things are happening in your life, you’ll enjoy a full-blown vision of God and a companionship with Him that will bring you delight, satisfaction, and joy. In Jesus Christ, God’s called you and me to an incredible life!

While we understand and appreciate what all this means, if we’re honest, we’ll admit that it’s not easy to do what God desires and what we want. We struggle to glorify God, to put Him in first place in our lives. And of course, when we lose in that struggle, there’s no enjoyment of God at all. Now we’re so far from the life God desires for us that it seems to be a pipedream, an impossibility. Where does that leave us? If we go to God’s Word, we find not only the ideal, the vision He has for us, we also have what’s real, because God acknowledges the struggle we face, a struggle that is clearly described in our passage. In two points today I want to address the reality of the conflict and the reason for our victory in the conflict.

First, the reality of the conflict. Verse 17 says, "For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want." This conflict between good and evil within us is not a secret. In our culture it’s presented in a humorous way in cartoons on television like "The Simpsons," although for me, I remember this happening in "Bugs Bunny" cartoons that featured Bugs’ enemy, Yosemite Sam. At some point in the cartoon, a little devil would appear on Sam’s shoulder, telling him to do what was wicked and wrong. On the other shoulder would be a little angel, pleading (in vain) for Sam to do the right and good thing. In a cartoon, doing the wicked and wrong thing could be quite funny. But in real life it isn’t funny at all. It might be a "little devil" in a cartoon, but in real life its your sinful nature, the proud and unsubmissive root of depravity in every human heart that exalts itself and flaunts itself through blatantly God-despising behavior. Follow the lead of that nature and according to verses 19-21 you’ll bring into your life problems like sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery, or idolatry and witchcraft. We all know how important relationships are in our lives, right? Destruction. That’s what the sinful nature will produce in relationships: hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy. Finally, there’s drunkenness and orgies. That’s the sinful nature.

In the opposing corner is the Holy Spirit, alive in our lives because Jesus Christ is our personal Savior and Lord. The Spirit’s work in us produces love, joy, and peace. It results in patience, kindness, and goodness. The fruit of the Spirit includes faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Sinful nature versus the Spirit: this is the irreconcilable antagonism in our lives. The main truth to learn from verse 17 is that being a Christian means that you’re going to struggle in here. When I was listing some of the activities of the sinful nature, if you said to yourself, "Well, I can clearly identify some of that stuff still going on in my life," or "I struggle with some of those problems," it doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t a Christian. A believer in Jesus Christ is not a person who is immune from bad, evil desires. A Christian is a person who is at war with those desires. Conflict in your soul is not all bad. Even though we long for the day when the power of sin in our lives will be utterly defeated and destroyed, understand that there is something worse than that war. That is no war at all, no conflict because the sinful nature is in control. So praise God for the war within! The sign of whether the Holy Spirit is alive in you is not that you have no bad desires, but that you are at war with them! There is a conflict, and it is real, and yet this is not the whole story, for we’re promised victory in the battle, which is our second point.

Look at verse 16: "live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature." What does it mean to win the victory, to live by the Spirit? Four important truths stand out in our passage. One, verse 24 says you must "crucify the sinful nature with its passions and desires." This verse is frequently misunderstood. It is not the same as Galatians 2:20, where Paul writes "I am crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me." In that verse, the crucifixion of our sinful nature is done to us, with Christ. Verse 24 speaks to something you and I do. We are to "crucify our sinful nature." What does this mean? It means we must not only take up our cross and follow Jesus daily, as He commanded in Luke 9:23, we must also make sure the execution has taken place. We’re to take our sinful nature and (spiritually speaking) make sure it is nailed to the cross. You see, as one who has been crucified with Christ, you have a dramatically different relationship with the power of sin in your life. Your rejection of sin and your sin nature is pitiless. Crucifixion in the Roman world was not a pleasant form of execution, nor was it administered to nice, refined people. It was reserved for the worst criminals, which is why it was such a shameful thing for Jesus to be crucified. Our sinful nature is not something to be treated with courtesy and respect. It’s so evil that it deserves nothing better than to be crucified. Second, your rejection of your sin nature is decisive. Although death by crucifixion was a lingering death, it was a certain death. People nailed to a cross did not survive. On your outline is an excellent quote by John Brown that emphasizes the significance of this fact and its significance for us: "Crucifixion…produced death not suddenly but gradually. True Christians do not succeed completely in destroying (their old sinful nature) in this life, but they have fixed it to the cross, and they are determined to keep it there until it dies." If you are crucified with Christ, you must leave that sinful nature on the cross, leave it there to die.

A first great secret of winning this battle is your ruthless and uncompromising rejection of the sinful nature in your life. If sins persistently plague you, it’s either because you’ve never really rejected those sins (you’ve never really repented of them), or because, having repented, you haven’t maintained your repentance. It’s as if, having nailed our old nature to the cross, you keep wistfully returning to the scene of the execution. You want to fondle it, caress it, long for its release, even try to take it down again from the cross. You must leave it there. In Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit alive within you, you have declared war on it; the issue is settled for good; you are not going to re-visit it.

A second way to live by the Spirit is found in verse 18: you are led by the Spirit. The emphasis here is not on what you do, but on what the Spirit does: He leads, you follow. The Spirit is not a leader like the pace runner in a race, who’s trying to run away from you. The Spirit’s leadership is like a locomotive on a train. We don’t follow in our own strength. We’re hooked up to Him and go wherever He leads. Another image of living by the Spirit is living a fruitful life: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness," etc. becoming more plentiful, more prominent in your life. Again, it’s all about the Spirit alive in you. He does the work, He produces the fruit, the evidences that He’s working (and winning the battle) in your life. It would be a huge mistake to think that in our relationship with the Holy Spirit our responsibility lies in passive submission to His control, as if all we have to do is "let go and let God" as it used to be said.

The last picture of living by the Spirit speaks to our active role. In verse 25: we’re to "keep in step with the Spirit." The picture that comes to mind is following someone who’s walking in the snow. You put your feet in the footprints of the person you’re following. The Greek word translated "keep in step with" means to walk in the path that the Holy Spirit lays down. The Spirit leads, and we walk, step by step, with Him.