Galatians 5
September 24, 2013
SCRIPTURE
5:16 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
OBSERVATION
There is such a tension here between outward acts that we use to measure holiness and simply standing passively on the sidelines and saying that the Holy Spirit will do everything for us. So what does it mean to live by the Spirit?
UNDERSTANDING
The more we attempt to live by rules and regulations the more we stifle the work of the Holy Spirit. Although Bible study, prayer, worship, witnessing, and other behaviors are commanded of believers and are necessary to faithful Christian living, spirituality cannot be measured by how often or how intensely we are involved in such things. To use them as measures of spirituality is to fall prey to legalism, whose only significance is in the outward, the visible, the humanly measurable. To live just by a set of laws is to live in self-righteousness and hypocrisy and to suppress the Spirit, who alone is able inwardly to produce works of true righteousness. Holiness comes only from the Holy Spirit.
Yet in emphasizing the central work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life, some Christians have lost the tension between the human and the divine
The power for Christian living is entirely from the Holy Spirit, just as the power of salvation is entirely in Jesus Christ. But both in the justifying work of Christ and in the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, man’s will is active and commitment is called for. We are not to sit on the sidelines and just watch the Holy Spirit do battle for us. We are called to consider that we are “to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus,” to refuse to let “sin reign in [our] mortal body,” to resist presenting “the members of [our] body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness,” and to present them “as instruments of righteousness to God” (Rom. 6:11-13).
If we are led by the Holy Spirit we must be willing to go where the Spirit sends us and do what the Spirit leads us to do. To claim we are surrendered to the Holy Spirit but not be personally involved in God’s work is to call Jesus, “Lord, Lord,” and not do what He says (Luke 6:46).
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
A life led by the Holy Spirit is one where we are continually conscious of His presence in our lives and we are desiring to let Him mold and shape us in the image of Christ. We are willing to obey Him. We are committed to letting Christ be glorified in our lives and that only happens as we are open and obedient to the promptings of the Spirit. We must constantly tend the garden of our heart so that the fruit of the Spirit can develop. We cannot become good by what we do but in the willingness to listen and respond to the Spirit (walking in the Spirit) we are made in the image and likeness of Christ.
Lord I will live by the Spirit.