GALATIANS 5:22

In Galatians chapter five we have been looking at a very important subject. You need to understand this subject if you are going to serve the Lord in this world and bear fruit. If you know Christ as Savior, there is a war taking place within you everyday: the war between your flesh and the Spirit of God. You cannot be saved by your own strength and efforts, and you cannot bear fruit in the service of God by your own strength and efforts either. “The flesh lusts against the Spirit.” In other words your flesh has strong selfish desires that will be contrary to the Spirit. If you walk according to your will and your desires, you will do the works of the flesh: none of which are good. But if you walk according to the Spirit and are led by the Spirit, you will bear the fruit of the Spirit. The Bible says in Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”

Goodness is part of the fruit of the Spirit. Of course, goodness cannot be produced by our own efforts. There is none good, no not one. To be good is the opposite of being evil. It comes natural for the heart of man to be evil. Genesis 6:11-12 describes what had happened to the human race in the days of Noah. It says, “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.” Jesus said that as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. Why is it that way: because the heart of man is corrupt and evil. It does not come naturally to man to manifest goodness. But it is important to manifest goodness. One of the chief goals of life should be to be good instead of evil. How can a human being manifest goodness: through the fruit of the Spirit.

Faith also comes from the fruit of the Spirit. Faith is confidence that what God has said, He will do. Faith is greatly needed by human beings, but faith does not come from the flesh, from the human life. Faith is the unseen essence by which an isolated and spiritually dead human being becomes connected to God through Christ. Faith is the difference between a human being without God and a human being with God. The Apostle Thomas in effect said, “I will not believe unless I see.” But true faith has as its object the unseen, and therefore it is totally and completely spiritual in nature. It has nothing to do with the physical or the material. That is why there is no place where you must go and no building where you must be in order to get more faith.

You will not have true faith unless you have it as a result of the Spirit working in you. Of course, there is a relationship between both the Word of God and the Spirit that results in faith. Romans 10:17 says, “So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” If someone takes the Word of God and reads it and studies it without the Spirit giving them understanding, then they will come up with strange interpretations and go into heresy and false doctrine of some sort. Heresy is one of the works of the flesh. That is what happens when the false cults use the Bible. They have the Bible, but they do not have the Spirit; and so they do not have faith.

Something else happens when you have the Spirit, but do not have the Word of God. You end up with a lot of human emotionalism, but emotionalism is no foundation for true, deep, abiding faith. Remember that faith is based upon the promises of God as they are applied to the heart by the Spirit. So true faith is tied to sound doctrine. And true faith is a product of the fruit of the Spirit. The works of the flesh will tear into faith. Behind every doubt is a sin. You must confess your sins, and you must walk in the Spirit if you are going to have faith.

Meekness is also part of the fruit of the Spirit. Some people misunderstand what meekness really is. Meekness does not refer to being some milk-toast type of person without a backbone who never stands for anything. Meekness refers to not demanding your own way: not grabbing after everything around you the way that most people of the world live. When Jesus came into the world, He gave up the glorious throne of heaven. He went out of the ivory palaces and into the world of woe. We have the capacity of being like that, but only through the Spirit. Your flesh will be selfish and demanding and grabbing. Remember that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” God will turn the tables. Those who appear to be grabbing after everything will lose everything in the end. Those who give up for God and for Christ will eventually win all that God has for them in the Kingdom. Meekness will prove to be a very valuable quality, and you can have that kind of meekness through the Spirit.

You can also have temperance through the Spirit. Temperance refers to self-control. In a way there is really no such thing as self-control. Temperance refers to you being under God’s control. That is why it is called part of the fruit of the Spirit. Only the Spirit can produce true temperance. Many sins take place when a human takes a good thing, but then goes into excess with that good thing. If only human beings could be under control: if only they could avoid going into excess. If you know Jesus as Savior and if you have the fruit of the Spirit, you will be able to have that control over yourself and your behavior because you will have temperance.

After listing the fruit of the Spirit, it should be obvious that man cannot get justified through obeying the law; and also man does not manifest Christian character through obeying the law either. You do not become the person that God wants you to become through obeying the law. Some people try to turn Christianity into a bunch of rules and then they keep track of how well they obey those rules as if that was the measure of their Christian character: such as going to church, reading the Bible, tithing, praying, or witnessing. They measure their service to God by how often they do these things. That is a form of legalism. But you will not manifest the things that God wants you to manifest in your character through the keeping of law. That is why Galatians 5:23 says in speaking of the fruit of the Spirit, “Against such there is no law.” What laws could there possibly be against the fruit of the Spirit: “Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”

In the next verse Paul reminds us again how we can walk according to the Spirit instead of walking according to the flesh. Paul wrote in Galatians 5:24, “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” Crucifixion was the means of putting to death an evil doer. If the flesh is crucified, then it is put to death. If the flesh is put to death, then it will not perform its works. Of course, when the Bible speaks of the flesh, it is not talking about the material body. Some people get this mixed up and they think that their body is evil and they punish their body. That would be wrong.

The flesh is symbolic of the human life without God. There are two words used in this verse that help to clarify just what is meant by the flesh. “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” Lust means strong desire. The flesh is made up of the affections and strong desires of a human being. The things that you love and the things that you desire as a natural human being are your flesh: that is, when you love the wrong things or desire the wrong things. It will always be the wrong thing when you love something or desire something instead of God. You will walk according to the flesh when you walk according to your own desires and affections. When you crucify the flesh: that is, when you put your own desires and affections aside; then you will be led by the Spirit and then you will walk with the Spirit.

The Bible says in Galatians 5:25, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” If you have eternal life through faith in Christ, then you live in the Spirit. You have spiritual life, because when you believed on Jesus, God put His Spirit within you. That was the baptism of the Spirit. There are some people who have received spiritual life through faith, but who are not now walking in the Spirit. We call them carnal Christians. It should not be that way. What should happen is that “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”

In Galatians 5:26 Paul returns to the subject of two verses previous to this one when he said to “crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts.” Watch out for the strong selfish desires. Some of those strong selfish desires will be directly related to your attitude towards other believers and your relationships with them. It says in Galatians 5:26, “Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.” To be desirous of vain glory means that you are desiring to bring attention to yourself. It is a certain kind of selfishness. We are supposed to bring attention to Jesus and to glorify His name. Jesus paid it all; all to Him we owe. Jesus said, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself.” Jesus also said, “He that speaks of Himself seeks his own glory; but he that speaks of Him that sent him the same is also true.” Let’s speak of Jesus and not of ourselves.

We should not be provoking one another. This refers to being confrontational, or having a chip on your shoulder, or to be looking for a fight. Believers should work together as team members, and we should understand that there are certain things that will help the team to be effective, and there are other things that will irritate fellow team members. We should avoid such things. Remember that other believers are not our enemies and not our competitors either. We don’t do things to draw attention to ourselves, and we do not do things to compete with other believers.

If another believer accomplishes something, we are not envious of them either. We are glad to see good things happen to our brothers and sisters in Christ. The people of the world want to get all the credit, all the glory, and everything else that they can get for themselves. When someone else succeeds, they are envious and jealous. Believers who walk in the Spirit are not envious or jealous because they seek nothing for themselves, but to do what God wants them to do for the honor and glory of Christ their Savior.

Of course, in a church or in any group of believers not everyone always walks in the Spirit. Sometimes some of us do the works of selfish flesh, because we are made of clay and are not yet perfect. So how should we respond when others fail? What should our response be? The Bible says in Galatians 6:1, “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, you which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted.”

We are told who is qualified to the to the person who has fallen: “you that are spiritual.” It will not work to have one carnal person going to another carnal person to give advice or counsel. We need to be led by the Spirit in everything that we do in the Christian life in order to see the right results, and that is especially true when we go to talk to someone about their spiritual condition. If you put human pressure on someone to get right with God, or to get saved, or to get baptized; then you will not be doing the work of God. Remember that it is the work of the Spirit to touch someone’s heart. If you are going to be involved in that work, then you must be a spiritual person who is being led by the Spirit of God in what you say and how you say it.

Speaking of the manner in which you should talk to a believer who is in need of being restore to God, Galatians 6:1 says to “restore such an one in the spirit of meekness.” We are not any better than another believer just because for the moment he or she has been taken in a fault. Most of us have been there also at one time or another. We are all dependent upon the grace of God any way. We are saved by grace and we are kept by grace. We got saved when we repented of our sins the first time, and in order to stay in fellowship with God and Christ we have to learn to live a life of repentance. We do not walk in the Spirit because of our own goodness. We walk in fellowship with Christ because of His daily mercy towards us. Do not ever get tired of asking the Lord to forgive you so that you can walk in fellowship with Him. That is what the Christian life is all about. First John 1:7-9 says, “But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth us not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

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