When my wife and I first married, we would often take walks
around a beautiful water reservoir near our apartment in Louisville, KY. When
we’d begin walking we wouldn’t always be in step with each other, so I’d do a
little foot shuffle until my steps mimicked hers so we could walk hand in hand.
If I didn’t do this, either I’d eventually outpace her or she would me and it
would lead to some awkward walking. In the Christian life, it is imperative
that we strive to keep in step with the Spirit of God, so that we are not
running up ahead in self-righteous independence or falling behind in selfish
laziness. But what exactly does it look like to, “keep in step with the Spirit”
and how does one go about doing this? For this we turn to Galatians 5:16-26.
The problem with
legalism and how to combat it
The church at Galatia had a problem running up ahead of the
Spirit, so Paul wrote a letter to both warn and remind them. They had begun well
and gave evidence that the Spirit was working in their midst, but eventually
they veered off track. False teachers, possibly a group known as the Judaizers,
came in and informed these believers that they must also keep in step with
Jewish rituals and ceremonial laws to be true Christians. By adding requirements
to the gospel of grace, Paul told this church they were in effect, “turning to
a different gospel.” He warned them that such false teachers aimed to, “distort
the gospel of Christ.”
Paul could have combated this legalistic false teaching by
giving the church at Galatia a list of Christian virtues to perform, but this
would have just been another form of legalism. Instead, Paul explained to them
that the Spirit within them would produce such characteristics in line with God’s
law and that they need only to yield to His leading. He didn’t say, “Come on
guys! Salvation doesn’t come keeping Jewish rituals, but through maintaining
love, joy, peace, patience in your life. Stop trying to earn your salvation by
works and start being good people for goodness’ sake” Rather, Paul taught them
to, “keep in step with the Spirit”. This is why Paul referred to, “the fruit of
the Spirit” and said these things were simply evidences of a heart saved by
grace. Since these Galatians were believers, they needed to be reminded that
righteousness isn’t really ours to produce. Whatever we could produce that
would look like righteousness isn’t really righteous. Righteousness comes by
the indwelling and empowering of the Spirit in our lives. Paul David Tripp
shares the analogy of an apple tree planted in his yard that won’t produce good
apples. He says to imagine what his neighbors would think if they saw him taking
delicious store-bought apples and stapling them onto his bad apple tree. Good
fruit doesn’t come by our own self-effort at being good, but flows out of us as
we submit to the Spirit in our lives.
Shortly after conversion, I worked for a summer as a youth
pastor’s intern. In one conversation, I referred to the “fruits” of the Holy
Spirit and this youth pastor corrected me, saying it was the actually the fruit
of the Spirit, singular. At the time, I thought this was a needless correction
and it didn’t make any difference, but this reveals how I misunderstood this
doctrine. The ESV Gospel Transformation Bible clarifies the importance of this
distinction in language: “Notice that
Paul speaks of “fruit,” not “fruits,” of the Spirit—the fruit of the Spirit is
not a checklist to work through but the unified blossoming of a heart liberated
by the gospel of grace.” Therefore, the antidote to running up ahead of the
Spirit in self-wrought ritual-keeping is not another self-wrought formula of character
development, but rather yielding of oneself to God’s Spirit.
Yielding to the
Spirit
In Galatians 5:16-26, Paul teaches us that there are two
very different ways to live. Either we can be empowered by the flesh or
empowered by God’s Spirit. Those who follow the lead of their flesh and fall
behind produce the rotten fruit of sin. Those who follow the lead of the Spirit
and keep in step with Him produce the beautiful, abundant, and delicious fruit
of righteousness. When the world tastes this fruit from a Christian’s life,
they know it didn’t grow from man’s planting but was put there by God. But the way we keep the tree of our lives
from producing so much rotten fruit is through yielding to the Spirit. When you
approach a yield sign on the highway and notice another vehicle coming, there
are consequences for failing to yield. Accidents that could lead to tickets,
fines, insurance problems, or even death. In the same way, the Spirit of God is
directly opposed to your flesh and when He is calling you to obey and your
flesh is saying to ignore him, there are dire consequences for failing to yield
to Him. Such as: being deceived by sin, then hardened by it, then ultimately
proving to have never been converted in the first place. Paul warns that those
whose lives are marked by the rotten fruit of jealousy, envy, immorality, and
all other manner of sin, will not inherit the kingdom of God. We cannot forget
that he is writing to regenerate church members. If we wish to inherit the
kingdom of God, we must live lives marked by submission to the Spirit, not
resistance to Him. How we go about this is through the means of grace: reading,
meditating on, praying through the Word of God, quick confession of sin,
continual prayerful dependence on God, submitting to one another in the body of
Christ, killing sin by the Spirit. We must remember that there is a war within
our hearts and that we will not win this war in our own self-effort, but only
as we depend on and lean upon the Spirit for strength. Only the yielded heart
is capable of producing a righteousness that surpasses that of the scribes and
Pharisees and that fulfills the whole law. May we endeavor to remove from our
lives any barriers or hindrances to the Spirit’s way and strive to die to self
in the power of the Spirit until we see Jesus. Are you in step with the Spirit
today?
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