Galatians 5:13
Please turn in your copy of God’s
word to Galatians chapter five. Our passage says verses 13 through
15. We’ll just cover today verse
13. If you’re using the pew Bible,
you can find that on page 975. As I mentioned a few moments
ago, Galatians is now taking a turn from, well, really a lot
of, heated argument, Paul with the Galatians, quit trusting
in yourselves, quit trusting in your law keeping, and especially
quit trusting in circumcision, only trust in Jesus for salvation. Now he’s going to turn from legalism
to libertinism. Just because you’ve been saved
doesn’t mean you can send your brains out and get forgiveness.
And in this context, if we were to go on today through verses
15, he would say, Just because you’re saved doesn’t mean you
can treat people any old way you want to. We’ll cover the
love your neighbor portion next week, but today we’ll look at
verse 13. Hear God’s word. Paul says to
the Galatians, for you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do
not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. Amen, the word
of the living God. When you’re in middle school,
and you’re obnoxious, you probably went up to someone when you learned
a big word and you used that big word. I can remember when
we learned what an epidermis was. And you go up to somebody
and say, ha ha ha, your epidermis is showing, and because they
were ignorant of what that meant, it’s your skin, right? They were
patting themselves down, what’s showing, what do I need to fix?
Your epidermis is showing. Well, as we come to this passage
of scripture today, the word flesh needs to be explained a
little. I think perhaps the flesh in
the scriptures, the New Testament scriptures, and in Paul’s theology,
maybe y’all have covered this a little in the Sunday school
class, is perhaps one of the biggest concepts that every Christian
needs to know. I think I mentioned before, You
probably don’t need to understand how your car works. You just
know that you get in it, push the button, get in it, put in
the key, turn it, however your ignition works these days. You
stick it in gear, mash the gas, and you go. If you want to stop,
you hit the brake. And when you get somewhere, you just turn it off,
go backwards doing all those things. But you don’t need to
know about internal combustion engines and spark plugs and computers. You don’t need to know all that.
You just need to know that it works. And if it doesn’t, you call AAA
or whoever your people are. But I think it’s very helpful
for us to understand the Christian life. You can get by without
understanding how your engine works. You can get by without
understanding how your lawnmower works. You can get by without
understanding how your HVAC system works in your house. But I want
to say to you, you can’t get by, I don’t believe, without
understanding how the inner workings of your life, your Christian
life works. And so it’s good for us to understand
what is this concept of the flesh? He’s not talking about our skin.
He’s not talking about our bodies. He’s not talking about our epidermis,
right? He’s talking about remaining
sin in the life of the Christian. We understand from the scriptures
about creation, God took what was formless and void and he
formed it and filled it. And when he formed and filled
this earth, he planted a garden in the east and he created man
from the dust of the earth and he put man in that garden to
work, to keep and to be fruitful and to multiply and to have dominion
and to make the earth flourish. And the ultimate goal of man
in the garden was to make the glory of God known by keeping
his commandments. And the goal was to spread Eden
The goal was to spread God-fearing people across the face of the
earth until the whole earth was full of the glory of God. Now, if we understand creation,
we also understand the fall or corruption. We understand that
Satan in eternity past as an angel of light in heaven decided
it would be better. It would be better to rule in
hell than serve in heaven. And so when he fell from grace
and glory in the heavenlies, he came to this earth and sought
to destroy God’s wonderful plan that he had made the world and
everything in it to complete. And God in his wisdom, God in
his providence permitted sin. And so Adam and Eve met with
Satan in the garden. The serpent was more crafty and
he came and he twisted God’s word. Did God really say? And of course, Eve and Adam took
the fruit that God had forbidden, they ate it, their eyes were
open, they were naked, they were ashamed, and they were no longer
happy and holy, but they became sinful and miserable. Now, we call this in theology,
they became totally depraved, they became radically corrupt. What sin did in their lives,
what sin did in their souls, What sin did to their relationship
with God, what sin did for their eternal state was devastating. And we call this total depravity.
We call this radical corruption. We’re born with the sin of Adam
and Eve. We’re born with what we call
original sin or we’re born unrighteous. And because we are born unrighteous,
we only live for ourselves. We only live to serve ourselves,
worship ourselves, and do what pleases ourselves. And so from
delightful living in the garden, presence with God, fellowship
with God, happy and holy, Adam and Eve became sinful and miserable,
falling from original righteousness, losing communion with God, and
being exiled from the garden. Uh, they went from the jungle
or from the, the, the, the pure beauty of Eden to the jungle.
They went from order to chaos. And so they also fell under God’s
justice, his wrath and his curse. And we see in the scriptures,
the wonderful coming of the Lord Jesus. And we call him the second
Adam. We call him the last Adam. What
first Adam failed to do, Jesus came and fulfilled. He fulfills
all righteousness. Where Adam failed to keep God’s
law perfectly, Jesus comes and fulfills all righteousness, keeping
God’s law perfectly. Adam was tempted in paradise. Jesus tempted in the wilderness. Adam had fellowship with God.
Adam had fellowship with Eve. Jesus was out in the wilderness
40 days and 40 nights, no food, no company, no nothing. Yet,
as he sought to do the will of God, as he was ministered to
by the Holy Spirit, he gave scriptural answers to Satan and kept the
faith. He kept all righteousness. And
so when Jesus goes to the cross, He goes to the cross as a perfectly
obedient human. He goes to the cross as a spotless
lamb. And so when Jesus sacrificed
at the cross is accepted by God, his atonement, satisfies the
wrath and the justice of almighty God. We come to faith in Jesus,
receiving two things. We receive the forgiveness or
the pardon of our sins. Those sins have been paid for
by the blood of Jesus, the spotless lamb at the cross of Calvary. But we also receive Jesus’ perfect
righteousness. And we like to say that our justification
is twofold. God sees us as if we’ve never
sinned and as if we’ve always obeyed. Well, whose sacrifice
forgave your sins? It was Jesus. Whose obedience
does God see when he looks upon those who have faith? It’s Jesus’
obedience. And so when we are justified
people, our sins are pardoned. But then the rest of our Christian
life, is one of sanctification, one of becoming holy, sanctified,
holy. And so our lifelong journey of
life with God is one of sanctification where we have our sins pardoned
in justification, but we have our sin nature subdued in our
sanctification and that remaining sin nature in us. stays with
us till our end of our days. It is not until heaven, it is
not until we are glorified. It is not until we are raised
up in heaven that sin is eradicated. And so brothers and sisters,
the bad news of the Christian life. Yeah, there’s good news.
Salvation through faith in Jesus, the hope of heaven and all that.
But the bad news is, and it’s really not bad news because God
has his good purposes in it. but you will struggle with remnant
sin the rest of your life. You will struggle with the flesh. You will struggle with the desires
of your old nature. You will struggle with your old
man, though you are a new creation in Jesus. Yes, your sins have
been pardoned. Yes, God has put them away in
his son on the cross. We think of these concepts, these
truths, In some of the hymns we sing, that little line we
sing in Top Ladies, Rock of Ages cleft for me, be of sin the double
cure, cleanse me from its guilt and its power. Our sins are washed
away and that power of sin is taken from us. And then we sing
of the hope of heaven will be saved to sin no more, be saved
to sin no more. We look forward to our glorification
when there will be no more sin in our lives. We will be fully
and finally and completely sanctified in our great God. Now here’s
the $64,000 question. Why do I still sin? Why do I
still struggle with the flesh? Why didn’t God just wipe it away
and make me perfect on earth? Well, we still live in a sin
filled world. We still live in bodies that have remnants of
that radical corruption, that total depravity, and it’s in
God’s wisdom. It’s in God’s plan. It’s in God’s
providence and it’s for his glory. And so let me encourage you.
If you are in this lifelong battle and it’s got you beat into the
corner, Just think of boxing for a moment. You’ve got Jesus
over there in the corner. He’s squirting water on your
face. He’s washing the blood off. And he’s saying, you keep
fighting until I bring you safely home. That’s one of the great
blessings we have in Christ. His work of salvation has completed
the cross, but the ongoing work of his Holy Spirit is in us.
And it’s a messy fight the rest of our Christian life. You know,
you hear people from time to time say, come to Jesus. and
all your problems go away. Oh, that is, that is a big fat
one, isn’t it? Come to Jesus and you become aware of sin.
Come to Jesus and Satan is going to be after you. Come to Jesus
and your old nature is going to kick up its dirty old habits
and wreak havoc in your life. Come to Jesus and the world will
try to tug you in its direction. You know, we speak very often
about the Christians, three enemies. And they are the world and all
that it offers, its systems, its ways. It is Satan and his
deception and his temptation and his desire to discourage
you and deceive you and destroy you. But that won’t happen because
Christ upholds you and lifts you up. What is your only comfort
in life and in death? It’s that you belong to your
faithful savior, Jesus Christ, and he’s not going to let Satan
hurt you and harm you unto death. Now he may, in his wisdom and
his providence, let Satan shake you up. Just read the book of
Job. He said to Job or to Satan, you
can have every inch of Job except his life. Or think of Peter. When Peter denied Christ three
times, Jesus said to him, Satan’s going to have you and he’s going
to sift you like wheat. but I’m going to be praying for
you. God in his wisdom and God in his providence, he lets from
time to time things that we wish didn’t get ahold of our lives,
get ahold of them. And he’s there with us, but he is consuming
our draws and he is refining our gold. So that $64,000 question,
why remnant sin in our lives? Why the flesh? That’s the third
enemy of the Christian world, devil flesh. Why does it still
remain in us? Some of you were in the confession
of faith study this past spring when the men, back then it was
Mondays, looked at this subject. I think the ladies confession
of faith studied this maybe back in the summer or the early fall.
And we went through the nine reasons that God leaves remaining
corruption in us. The nine reasons God leaves us
with the struggle with the flesh. And I want to mention those today
by way of your knowledge, but also your encouragement. Why
does remnant sin, why does the corruption of the heart remain?
It obviously remains in those who are not saved, the unregenerate,
but why do kernels of it, leftovers of it remain in our lives? One
reason is it causes God to be glorified daily because we need
him. We depend on him. We can’t live
without his help and his blessing. We can’t live without his spirit.
And so it glorifies God because we need him daily. We depend
on him. We also believe that our sanctification
is by degrees. God could point his finger at
you and all his mighty power could say, you are perfectly
holy now. He could do that. But for some
reason, sanctification is by degrees. And Thomas Boston said
of the Israelites, their taking of the promised land was by degrees.
They had to continue to fight against the iths, the Canaanites,
the other iths of the land. And slowly by degree, the land
became the holy land. And slowly by degree, we become
more and more conformed to the image of Almighty God. Sanctification
is by degree. A third reason remnant sin remains
in us is to make us more watchful. We sing from time to time the
hymn, I Need Thee Every Hour. And if you’re aware of what sin
is and what sin does, and you’re aware of the experience of sin
in your own life, you need God every hour. Prone to wonder,
we sing, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. We sing and we pray. God wants
to make us more watchful. A fourth reason remaining sin
stays in our lives is so that we will pray, Lord, lead me not
into temptation. Lord, deliver me from the evil
one. We beg God for our daily bread,
but do we beg him for our sanctification? Lord, let me not bring shame
to the name of Jesus. Let me not be happy in my sin. Let me not dwell in the flesh. Help me to live by the spirit. Give me grace. Fifth reason,
it’s to humble us. Think of King David when he saw
Bathsheba, took Bathsheba, committed adultery with Bathsheba, tried
to cover up the sin by bringing her husband home. He was more
righteous than David and would not take vacation from the war
with his wife. And so David had to put him on
the front lines and have him killed. And he kept covering
and covering and covering until finally, by the grace of God
and through the ministry of Nathan the prophet, the little parable
was told. And David said, that man ought
to be punished. And by the spirit of God, Nathan
said, you are that man. And so David began a stretch
in his life of humility before God. He was a man after God’s
own heart, yet he fell into gross immorality and sin and murder.
He shattered the 10 commandments, didn’t he? And it humbled him. A sixth reason is to chastise
us. God treats us as children. The book of Hebrews says, what
kind of child doesn’t have a father who disciplines? How much more
does your heavenly father treat us as children and care for us
in a fatherly way? And so our sins that remain in
us chastise us for our unrighteousness. It’s for trials and testings.
We go through these hardships and we struggle with sin and
misery and it’s under the wisdom and providence of God. In fact,
there’s this really scary chapter in our confession of faith. You
confession of faith students this past year went through it,
where it says in chapter 5.5 of our confession on the providence
of God, in his wisdom and for his own holy ends, God sometimes
leaves us under the power of the flesh. And in one of the
commentaries on the confession of faith, it says this, you may
have sin so break out in your life that it may look as if you’re
a pagan. It may look as if you are under
the power of the flesh and you are not saved, yet Christ remains
your savior. Christ still upholds you, but
your boat is dragging bottom. And the difficulties you are
going through are meant to chastise you, to lead you to humility,
to cause you to pray. It’s for God’s just and holy
ends. It’s why Job is an important
book. It’s why the story of Peter is
an important thing to understand. God, as a father, sometimes puts
us through misery so that we will look to him and not rest
in our own strength. But so we will look to him. These
trials and these testings are good for us. An eighth reason.
The hidden strength of sin is revealed in us. I bet you’ve
read the Bible before. Let’s just take the King David
story. And I bet you’ve read that story before and say, never
me. And then you read the story of Peter. Peter says to Jesus,
you know, everybody else may fall away, but not me, Lord.
And then rooster crows, rooster crows, rooster crows. And what
does Peter begin to realize? The hidden strength of remaining
sin. We’ll turn on a dime, won’t we? We will tell and run the other
way when someone says, do you know Jesus? I never heard of
him. Right, we will look at things, follow things, chase things,
pursue things, and it will make a shipwreck of our lives, as
Paul says, of people at the end of his own ministry, because
we can’t come to our senses. Sin has power over us at times,
and it is a hidden strength that can wreak havoc in our lives.
Well, there’s a final reason, and this is the cop-out one,
but it’s true. God leaves sin in our lives.
I love how the confession of faith puts it, for sundry and
just other reasons. God can do what he wants. He
can do what he wants when he wants with you, his creature,
with you, his child. But take comfort in this, his
dross consumes, his gold he refines. He leads you through these dark
moments, these dark struggles in your life to make you look
to Him. And brothers and sisters, be
encouraged in this. I know these are dark and heavy
words, struggling with the flesh. It’s a continual and irreconcilable
war in this life. You will never not struggle with
sin until you get the glory. You will never not struggle with
your flesh in this life. I’ve told the illustration before
and I think it’s appropriate and it’s very, I don’t know,
it’s a good picture, I think, of what remnant sin is like.
I’ve told you that growing up, maybe back in the end of the
Jimmy Carter days, we had electric heat in our house and our house
got really cold and my dad was a poor preacher, as it were,
and so we kept the house pretty chilly. And one of the elders
in our church had just bought himself a wood stove and he heard
our plight and bought the exact same one for our house. We had
a load of wood come and we fired that baby up and 600 degrees
and the house was toasty. All our family has good memories
of those days. But if you woke up the next morning
and you opened the wood stove, there was just gray ash. But
if you brush that gray ash beside, under that gray ash, there would
still be red hot embers. And I think that’s a lot like
remnant sin in us. It’s still there. And if you
put a little kindling and a little wood on there, you’ll have a
600 degree fire. And so remnant sin in us has
the power to do great evil. It has the ability to destroy
not eternally and not ultimately because you’re still in Jesus
and justified and forgiven, but it can make a mess of your lives.
And so think for a moment about what fleshy sinful things you
fuel. What kindling you’re adding to
those hot ashes. We sing a little song when we’re
little, don’t we? Be careful little eyes, what we see. Be careful little ears, what
we hear. Be careful little feet, where we go. Be careful little
hands, what we do. I’m probably messing it all up,
but you get the idea. For the father up above is looking
down in love. Be careful, and you know how
the chorus goes. And we say, oh, that’s a kiddie
song. Be careful what you see, be careful
where you go, be careful what you do, be careful how you feed
your soul, or be careful how you starve your soul because
you feed the fire. It can destroy and it can rage
hot. And so brothers and sisters,
we’ve got to be careful with the reality of remaining sin. We’ve got to be careful with
the remnant flesh that is in us. because we can produce works
of the flesh. Our life can look extremely pagan
and unregenerate. We can fall into a trap like
David or fall into renouncing Christ like Peter. We can fall
under the displeasure of God, but thanks be to Christ. If we stand justified in him,
we are not put away. We do not fall away, but God
forgives the justified. God restored Peter. God restored
David. Yes, there were consequences
of their sin. David had a child die. David
was probably not the greatest military man because it got around. He let Joab. put Uriah on the
front lines and that kind of stuff gets around. David was
never the same king. He was never the same father.
He was never the same man. I think of Paul when he writes
in Romans chapter seven of the struggle with the flesh, I know
the thing I ought to do and I don’t do it. And I know the thing I
ought not to do. And that is the very thing I
do. And then he proclaims, Oh, wretched man, that I am. You feed the flesh, you stir
the fire, you fuel the fire, and then you come to your senses
later and you say like Paul, oh, wretched man that I am. But
you don’t stop there. You don’t lose hope there. Thanks
be to God for Jesus Christ. His blood covers. His spirit
can restore. You think of David in Psalm 51,
created me a clean heart, oh God. Renew a right spirit within
me. Take not your Holy Spirit from
me. Restore to me the joy of my salvation. And then you know
what David goes on to say? I’m gonna teach others not to
screw up like I did. I’m gonna teach others not to
abandon the spirit and live according to the flesh. Brothers and sisters,
sanctification is a real deal business. It’s something we must
lean into. It’s a war that we have been
conscripted into, we fight it or we let it fight us. In our
life, it can wear us out, but thanks be to God for his grace.
Remember several things as you battle the flesh. Number one,
if you’re in Christ, you are dead to sin. Yes, it’s still
there, but remember your position in Jesus. I am dead to sin and
I am alive. to the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember
the command that we’ll think of a lot in the coming weeks
from Galatians 5, we are to walk by the spirit and not the flesh. We are not to take our justification,
our freedom from sin and from the law because Jesus has pardoned
us and he’s obeyed for us. We’re not to be libertines and
say, well, I can do what I want because all I’ve got to do is
confess it. The way of God’s children is the way of righteousness. The Holy Spirit take comfort
in this sometimes holds us back. He keeps us from getting into
messes that we ought not to get into, but because of our sin
and because of temptation and because we’re like, um, is it
Edmund and, um, the lion, which in the wardrobe, he can’t help
himself until he gets some Turkish delight and he gets himself hung
up in the witch’s grip until Aslan saves him and rescues him. We’re to make no provision for
the flesh. We’re to keep on flipping on the TV channels. We’ve got
to be careful what we see on the internet. We’ve got to put
to death what is earthly in us and say, God, I want to be an
instrument in my body of righteousness, not an instrument of unrighteousness.
This is a fight. This is a battle. And the Holy
Spirit gives us the power and the strength to fight the fight,
but we’ve got to show up for war. We’ve got to hide God’s
word in our mind. We’ve got to treasure it in our
heart. We’ve got to not be conformed to this world and this wicked
evil age, but be conformed into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is often called the subject,
the ethical life of the Christian. Because you’re now saved, because
you’re now in Jesus, you must live this way. And God tells
you what that way is, and he gives you the power of the spirit
to do so. When we come to places like Peter’s
letters, and he says, work out your salvation, with fear and
trembling. We need to understand the holiness
of God, the wickedness of sin, and where we stand until glory,
that we’re in this fight, we’re prone to evil. We love to do
good, but we’re prone to evil, and sometimes we go headlong
into it. And so we work out our salvation with fear and trembling,
and we let the spirit do the heavy lifting. We rest in Jesus. We work out our salvation with
fear and trembling, seeking God’s blessing. But let me encourage
you in this way, as we end, go back to the wood stove and those
red hot coals, they’re under the gray ash. And if you and
your life begin to fuel those things, you’re playing with fire.
And that fire will burn, that fire will destroy. You won’t
lose your salvation, but you can make a wreck. You can burn
the house down. And you can destroy a lot of
things. And so the concluding encouragement I want to give
you is don’t play with fire. Let’s ask for God’s help and
grace. Lord, we thank you that your word shows us the reality
of remaining sin, remaining corruption. And yes, it scares us. It makes
us shake. It makes us even wonder why you
would do this. But when we understand your purposes
and your ways, we say with all our heart now, Lord, help us
to fight the good fight. Help us to finish the race. Help
us to run with perseverance. Help us to cast aside everything
that clings so closely and hinders our running. Help us to look
to Jesus, to rest in him alone for salvation. And help us to
put to death what is earthly in us. Help us to make no provision
for the flesh. Help us to renounce what is evil
and hold fast to what is good. Lord, easily prayed, hard to
do. Because our desires sometimes
lead us astray. We want the things we shouldn’t
want. Take that appetite from us. Give
us the expulsive power of a greater affection. And that’s your glory. That’s our relationship with
you. And that’s the salvation of others. because they see Christ
in us and we get to speak. Lord, help us, help us mightily. We pray in the name of Jesus,
our great savior. All God’s people said, amen. Let’s respond to God’s word by
singing together number 538. We’ll stand and sing, take my
life and let it be.