The Flesh and the Spirit of Opposition

So we are in Galatians chapter 5, verse 17. And as I looked at the schedule, we have 5.17 this week and 5.17 and 18 next week. I wanted to go slow. Yeah, yeah. I wanted to go really slow. There's lots here. There's a lot here to dig into. We're going to read the verses in a moment, but just grabbing our context, getting a couple of things in mind as we get into it here.

What is Galatians all about? What is the, to the Galatians all about? Can anyone kind of give us a summary thought? Living by faith and not by the law. Living by faith and not by the law, that's a great summary. Any other, any other, want to put it in a brief thought? I, kind of to summarize here, I went in the direction of what Paul's purpose in writing is, and it is exactly what Bob just said. I said it's about correcting Christians who are putting themselves under the law, and of course that is that we are to live by faith and not according to law. So, exactly. So that's the basic idea of this epistle.

It's a And, you know, Paul's very stern in this letter. There's some comments we've been over, you know, past chapters where he's very direct with them. He doesn't mince words at all. Why is that? Why does Paul have to be so firm with the Galatians about this? He thinks it's very serious. Yeah, absolutely. It's very serious, right? So why is it? Why is it, yeah?

Well, the church is new, is it not? Yeah, absolutely. And you know, legalism is always a very real threat to the church. And if this legalism had gotten a hold early on, as it was beginning to, it was already making serious inroads here, it would have been a real detriment. Why? Why is legalism such a threat to the church? Why is it such a problem? Because it's not grace. Because it's not grace.

That's right. And it's very subtle. It's very subtle, yeah. Power of the flesh and not the spirit. Yes, yes. Well, and Paul says, who has bewitched you? So it sounds like it's... It's deceptive. It's because it seems like the right thing to do, right? It seems correct. Just look around the church at large, or whatever you want to call it. That's what I was going to say. Just all you have to do is look around. Almost everyone we know that are believers are under the law.

St. Miles, you mentioned how stern Paul was to the Galatians. And I really believe there's a lot of pastors in churches that are aware of this, but they don't want to put off their congregation. So they're not very stern. And so their congregation, they're confused. Yeah, absolutely. So there's an interesting tendency to steer away from some of this straight talk in the Book of Galatians, because a lot of churches are trying to... or whether they're trying to or not, they're teaching law.

Well, they don't even want to teach Galatians. They don't even want to go there. I'm not kidding. They don't even want to go there. And a lot of pastors that are way out in left field, they don't even want to talk about sin. I know, that's true. Forget about sin, too. So Roger and I were talking a little bit this morning. What's really interesting is that there are a lot of parallels.

And we talked about this last time I was teaching between Galatians and Romans. And I just wanted to read the specific verses that we're in in Galatians right now. And then just go over and read Romans 7, 4 through 6, which is right where we're at in the main service as well. And we could also bring in things from childhood. I mean, Romans is a little bit more, what's the right word for that? It has more content.

And Galatians takes a lot of these Romans truths and kind of just summarizes them. And we could go through and read Romans 8, and it would open up a lot more of these truths as well. Let's just read Galatians 5, 13 through 18 here, and we are specifically focusing on verse 17 this morning, but just kind of want to see the whole context.

He says, for you were called to freedom, brethren, only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. It's the recognition of the Christ life, it's the union with the risen Christ that men need instead of the culture of the religious self-life. In fact, the law breeds the flesh, the self-life. Yeah, yeah. Awesome, thanks for sharing that, Bob.

Is in verse 16, shall not, is that emphatic? Oh, oops, sorry. I clicked on the screen and I went back. There we go. Is it emphatic? Okay, so emphatic, arithmetic, Greek, interlinear. You know, like, you shall not, I mean, absolutely double negative. Yeah, there it is. An imperative. It is a double negative. Oh, okay, yeah, that's what you're asking. So does that mean if we fall? It's a double negative, but I believe it's a subjunctive, which is why it's translated. Which means that it's a moon of potentiality. In other words, it may or may not. But it is, I would say, the purpose.

You may or may not walk by the Spirit, but if you're walking by the Spirit, you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. Does that make sense? As a believer, you may be walking by the Spirit, you may be walking by the flesh. But, if you're walking by the Spirit, you will not be carrying out the desire of the flesh.

That's a first-class conditional thing. Yes, it is. So, since you're walking by the Spirit, Although it's imperative here. This is Roger's verse. Sorry, Roger. You can walk by the spirit. I believe, but I say walk by the spirit. I believe that's an imperative command.

So Miles, there are a lot of teachers who will take this verse and they will say since if you walk by the Spirit, you cannot walk by the flesh. They teach sinless perfection from this. So if you're walking by the Spirit, what happens to get you out of that? What happens to get you out of the walk by the Spirit?

He's not talking about the, here, if we get to him here, hopefully. Yeah, I mean, and this is what it's all about, right? As a believer, I mean, this is kind of the Christian walk. Walk is the term he's using here, right? Walk by the Spirit and you will not. But that's the question. Are you always walking by the Spirit or are you not, right? We know that we have the Holy Spirit, the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but does that mean we're always walking by or according to the Spirit? Yes. Isn't Paul talking about an either-or situation here?

If you're walking in spirit, you're not walking in flesh. But if you're walking in flesh, you're not walking in spirit. And we're going to really see that today in verse 17. So thanks, Jim. OK, so yeah, we read the Galatians passage. Let's just quickly read that Romans passage that I wanted to look at as well. Romans 7, four through six, just to see that Paul is kind of saying the same things here.

Therefore, my brethren, you were also made to die to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that, purpose clause, that we might bear fruit for God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we might serve in newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter." The main idea, and it would be helpful to read more of the Romans passage as well to see the comparisons, but essentially we can either be walking according to the flesh or according to the spirit.

Living under law will not produce the righteous life that God accepts, and as a Christian we've been released from the law's power. So a righteous life is lived not through the flesh according to law, but is lived by faith in Christ and His ability to live in you by His Spirit.

So I have a handout, I think everybody got a copy of it. We're not going to go through it in detail. This is something I made up for a youth Sunday school class a couple years ago. Because we did a Bible survey, kind of overview, where we went through every book of the Bible and just kind of gave a basic understanding of each one. In the Old Testament books of the law, I felt really necessary, as we focused on what the law is all about, to clarify for the class that we are not under the law. And so it starts out, the rule of law was given to Israel, and I italicized that because that's what we were talking about as the rule of life. And though the law is righteous and holy and good, and these are all, this basically is just a scriptural, you know, summary. Though the law is righteous and holy and good, you, as a Christian, are not under law but under grace.

For what the law could not do, weak as it was to the flesh, God did, sending his own Son. For the power of sin is the law, and my sinful passions were aroused by the law. Therefore, it was necessary that I be redeemed from the curse of the law through the cross of Christ. Now, in Christ, I am free to count myself dead to sin, free from its power. For do you not know, brethren, that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? But I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So take that home and actually look up those scripture passages. There's a lot more that you could do to flesh this out, but I wanted to get a stream of thought through from what the law is to the life that I have in Christ.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that this morning, but this is what Paul has been focusing on. And the majority of the epistles of the Galatians is teaching about our freedom from the law and really the impossibility of living the Christian life by means of the law. Our law-keeping efforts will never, please God, will never produce a Christian life.

And Paul's made that very, very clear. And now what Paul's doing in these verses is he's correcting a possible misinterpretation that arises out of this teaching. And he begins that back in verse 13. So what did Paul introduce in verse 13 that's important for understanding today's verse? We've got the verse up on the screen there. And what does Paul... What is Paul introducing?

We have freedom, called the freedom. And in context, that's freedom from what? It's freedom from the law. And do not turn your freedom into an opportunity Yeah, that's right. But through love, serve one another. So do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh. So Paul doesn't want the Galatians to think that because they are not under the law, they're free to live any way they want.

And we could call it the era of licentiousness. And Paul calls this making opportunity for the flesh. So there's a tendency to swing from legalism to license. Really important here to be clear on, because I often hear this confusion, is that people teach the difference between legalism and license as if it is the difference between law and grace.

But grace is not license to sin. Sometimes we contrast law and grace. Often we contrast law and grace. But when we're contrasting law and license, equate grace with license, okay? So legalism and licentiousness are two different fleshly responses. They're both equally fleshly.

So grace is not license, and grace is not a balance between the two either, which is a lot of times where you find people, they don't want to be legalists, so we got to have some license, but we don't want to be licentious, so we got to have some law. And you're trying to walk this fine line between law and what they will call grace often. But they're thinking of grace as license to sin. So that's a terrible confusion that goes on in the minds of a lot of believers. This reminds me of Christ saying, well, since you're free, I'll set you free indeed. Yeah. That liberty of freedom that he gives is the power of sin in our lives. Yes. Yes. That freedom to live. Exactly. By grace. Yeah. Very good. So that's really important to understand. Paul's been teaching that we're free from law. Now he's saying, now don't let your freedom from law turn into license for the flesh.

So what's really interesting here between Romans 7 and Galatians 5 is the way Paul uses this word opportunity. So we've got it there in 5.13, right? An opportunity for the flesh, freedom from law being an opportunity from the flesh. And our word opportunity is affirme. But he uses it in Romans 7, verse 8 as well, so let's look at that. But sin, taking opportunity, same word, through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind, for apart from the law, sin is dead. So in Romans 7, it's law that creates the opportunity for the flesh, and then in Galatians 5, 13, it's freedom from the law that is the opportunity for the flesh.

That's really interesting, isn't it? So how can it be both? Can anyone explain that? Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh. Why would a Christian want to do that? That's a choice. Why would someone who walks the walk of the spirit, that they have the liberty and the freedom, it's like... Why would they want to do that? Sound biblical doctrine. The sin nature never changes. That's it. That's it. The sin nature never changes.

So the flesh can operate just as well under law as it can apart from the law. That's a really, really important point. always unrighteous by nature, will always produce unrighteousness. So whether it's a legalistic unrighteousness or whether it's a licentious unrighteousness, pick your flavor, the flesh will have a heyday with it. So grace does not equal license, as we said, and whether you're thinking legalistically or licentiously, you're not thinking graciously.

You're not thinking according to grace. And the flesh will operate under both, and you'll have two very different looking lives, but both equally fleshly. Both a life produced from the flesh. So this is not grace, okay? But either, you know, if the flesh is operating, it's not grace. As Bob said, grace means that God has provided a different way to live. Grace is a new kind of life that is not of the flesh.

So, Miles. Yes. We all still have our oaths in nature. Amen. Getting right down to where the tires meet the road, what is the mechanics? of switching from one to the other, or back and forth. What does it take? Now, we have Christ living within us. And our normal Christian life should be one of Christ's righteousness. But we've still got that old sin nature. So, what does it take to get out of the spirit? And what does it take to get back into the spirit? That is going to be our point of application about 15 minutes from now. So that's a great question. It's getting our minds going in the right direction, because that's what will make this all practical, is if we answer that question.

So what is the flesh? I'm going to skip through this a little more quickly than I could have, because that's an interesting question, because we've got Dr. Bob could answer this much better, but the Greek word is sarx, and it literally means the soft, I love this definition, this is right out of the Greek lexicon, the soft substance of the living body which covers the bones and is permeated with blood. Okay, so that is a very straightforward, literal sense of the question. Dr. Bob, you probably want a more accurate definition of, this was put together by a Greek scholar, not a medical doctor. But that's literally what the word means.

So what does that have to do with sin and so forth? So what we have to understand is that God created living creatures with flesh. And he created Adam with flesh and bone right from the beginning, before he fell into sin, which is important to understand. We also know that Jesus, who was without sin, had flesh and blood, right?

And so flesh, in this straightforward, literal, physical sense, isn't necessarily a good or a bad thing. It's just what God created. And actually, the first reference to flesh in the Bible is in Genesis 2, where it says that God put Adam to sleep, took out one of his ribs, or took out his side, and closed up the flesh. It's just the physical tissue. He stitched up the flesh. So Adam was made of flesh. Eve was created out of his flesh. And then they are joined together as one flesh. We'll talk about that a little bit later when we do the Lord's Table. But flesh doesn't mean bad in and of itself, right? Or we'd have to say that Jesus was bad because he was flesh. But there's a key to understanding the whole flesh issue.

And this is really what it is. The kind of flesh that you have tells you what kind of creature you are. Bob can probably tell us how difficult it is to graft tissue from one We won't get into that, but 1 Corinthians 15, verse 39. Sorry, I duplicated the verse number there. Paul says this, all flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men and another flesh of beasts and another flesh of birds and another of fish. So there's this principle here that every kind has its own kind of flesh.

So the kind of flesh that you have, tells us what kind of creature you are. That's the basic principle that we want to see. And whose flesh do we have? What kind of flesh do we have? Adam's kind of flesh, right? And so that tells us what kind of creature we are.

We have the same nature as our father Adam. And that's really the key to the whole thing here. Flesh stands for the sin nature that we have as being part of Adam's race. So Paul's not talking about, you know, your soft tissue. He's talking about the kind of person you are. You're an Adam kind of person.

So looking at verse 17 now, What are the two desires that Paul contrasts there? So for the flesh sets its desire against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. So the flesh sets its desire, that's the first desire, and the spirit against the flesh. Now the verb isn't repeated, it's implied, right? So that's the second desire. So we have the flesh and its desire, and then the spirit and his desire. Are these desires compatible, or are they mutually exclusive?

Mutually exclusive. What does Paul tell us in the verse there that shows the exclusivity, the contrariness? Opposition. Opposition, or if you have KJV, they're contrary. And the word there is Antikamai. Antikamai. And if you're Canadian, you'll say anti. If you're American, you'll say anti. So anti means against, right? And kamai means to be placed or to lie. So it's to be placed or to lie in opposition. So, as we saw in verse 13, we don't want freedom from the law to become the license to satisfy all the desires of the flesh. And now Paul is showing us that there are two different desires, two totally different desires at play in the believer.

They're totally contrary to one another. Okay? They're antichemia. Totally contrary. And we can see that they have opposite aims. They're like totally different directions on the compass. So, you know, one is going north and one is going south. Fulfilling both desires at the same time would be like trying to walk north and south at the same time. if that kind of helps you get the idea here, right? So they're that contrary, they're opposite, absolutely opposite. So what are they? What direction are they going? What are the desires, where are they headed?

Now, Paul doesn't say in this verse specifically, but what do we know about the desires of the flesh? What is the desire of the flesh? What is the flesh always seeking? Self-gratification. Self-gratification. The desire of the flesh is to glorify and to serve me, to serve self. But what about the Holy Spirit? Does the Holy Spirit seek to glorify himself? No. Christ, no. Right. John 16, 14 says, Jesus speaking, says, He will glorify me. So the desire of the Spirit is to glorify Jesus. And how contrary are those two things? Can you be glorifying yourself and glorifying Jesus at the same time?

No. Okay, so it's one or the other. One or the other. And what we can say is that self, or the flesh, and the spirit are like Sway and it can't be it can't be both. It's impossible, right? So really what we have is the difference between God's interest and man's interest say miles. Yes. Could we substitute?

Glory for the word love. Mm-hmm Yeah It's an interesting question Because that's all that's all what the fruit of the spirits all about. Yeah. Yeah That's a good And how could you have love for your fellow man if you don't, first of all, have love for the Father? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Which is exactly what Paul is saying in these verses, right? You should love your neighbor as yourself. We're going to touch on that a little bit in a second here as well, so that's a good point. So that's the contrast between these two desires. And what is the phrase there at the end? And Barb kind of brought this up in verse 16.

Because we have this phrase at the end, so that you may not do the things that you please. So what does that mean? Um, it could be translated so that you may not do whatever you desire. Um, would be a legitimate translation. And I really think this phrase is connected with verse 16. Um, sometimes you'll, different translations actually will go different ways on this phrase.

Sometimes it's sort of translated as if, well, you have these good desires, but because you have this battle going on in you, you may not do the good things that you desire. But do we really have righteous desires in ourselves? No, I think Paul's actually talking about the desires of the flesh here.

So this is parallel to verse 16 where it says, walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. And so this is basically parallel to that. So what we can say is that the reason that the Lord has put his Holy Spirit in us with his own desires is so that we will not carry out the selfish desires of the flesh. So that's kind of my take on that phrase that Paul's sort of reiterating. He's stated, you know, how this is accomplished.

I'm just trying to think if I'm going to cover, yeah, I think I've got kind of closing, kind of a closing question here, so. You can go in about, you know, 10, I think. Yeah, I don't want to rush. I just wanted to make sure I kind of answer what Bob was saying there, and I was trying to remember if this was in my notes coming up. So we'll see what I get through here in the end, and then we'll kind of talk about that a little more. So here's the last question.

How exactly does the Holy Spirit fulfill his desire to glorify the Lord Jesus? This is very much the application of all this. How does this work out? We sort of covered that last week a little bit. He takes all of Christ and shows it to us. His focus is totally on showing us the things of Christ. Yeah. It's an act of faith. That's our side of it, for sure. So, what's coming up in the next few verses, just as Bob said?

We've got the fruit of the Spirit coming up right away. So we're going to see the fruit of the Spirit. And in this context, we're to understand that this is how the desire of the Spirit is fulfilled in us. So the Holy Spirit's desire in us is to produce the fruit of the Spirit, which is this whole list of things. But what is that list of things? Which it actually is the glory of Christ. Yeah, exactly.

So how does the fruit of the Spirit glorify Jesus, as Roger said? it glorifies Christ because it is his life, which is the Galatians 2.20 truth. This is our key verse in Galatians, right? Who lives in me? Christ lives in me, right?

That's the whole purpose of the Christian life, is that Christ's life would be manifested. And that's what the fruit of the Spirit is. The fruit of the Spirit is a manifestation of Christ's life. So we can say the fruit of the Spirit is the life of Christ in me.

That's right, wonderful. It's interesting that Paul, both in Galatians and Ephesians, has listed all the acts of the flesh before he turns to the work of the Spirit. Yeah, I know. Yeah, and we'll be getting into that more in depth in the next few weeks as we go through that portion, but that really is what it is. He talks up front here about the contrary desires between the desires of the flesh and the desires of the spirit, and this is how they work out.

So, can that manifest itself? in the new believer, or is this something that takes time in studying the Word of God, getting into the Word, maturing in Christ? The fruit of the Spirit, you're saying? Or the fruit of the flesh? Everything we're talking about in Galatians, chapter 5 here. Yeah. I thought you were talking about the fruit of the flesh at first, and I thought, well, just follow me around for a week. But the fruit of the Spirit. Follow us around for a week. Right, it's a good question, yeah.

I guess what I'm getting at is, sooner or later, the new believer has to, there's mechanics involved. And a lot of that has to do with getting into the Word of God, for one thing. And faith, not ultimately, but faith for sure, getting into the Word of God, getting to know what God wants from you. Also, confession of sin might play a part in this.

And don't you think it's so individual? I mean, it's different for everyone. I mean, it's so individualized, really. I think as you grow by faith, ultimately the ugliness of the flesh becomes more real. So we're talking about maturing, growing in faith. After I got saved, I thought I was walking more all the time, although by God's grace, you know, the power is supposed to be removed from me by faith. It often isn't. Yeah, these are great comments and thoughts, and the reality is that, yeah, gross takes time. Growth takes time.

Which does that mean that a newborn believer can't manifest the fruit of the Spirit? No, they absolutely can. But how many times did Paul tell a congregation, you should be eating meat, but you're still drinking milk? And why is that? Why is the meat of the Word so essential to that long-term growth trajectory? Because faith requires content, right?

Our faith, which is how we walk, which is that old Galatians 2.20, right? The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith, right? And it's object, the Son of God. So how do we come to know the Son of God? If our faith is in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me, how are we going to come to know him? By sitting and contemplating our navel?

And we're going to see in chapter 7, he says at the end, oh wretched man that I am. He's pretty disgusted with what he really is in the flesh. Yeah, wretched man that I am. Yeah, and sometimes, you know, we focus a lot on positional truth here, rightfully so. But, you know, I had a comment from someone to the effect that, it was last week after I talked about how I don't have this nature in myself.

Somebody was a little offended, and they said, well, yes, you do. You have Christ. I said, yeah, we do. I'm not denying that. But we have to recognize that in myself, I am a wretched sinner. And I will never have the righteousness of Christ apart from Christ. It's got to be in union with Him. And so there's a constant learning and growing in terms of our own worthlessness and of His own. And it comes from setting your mind on the things above, not on the things above. Yeah, exactly. It's not about focusing on my wretchedness. It's about realizing the reality of it, but understanding that I've been... As Mike says sometimes, get out of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil and get back over into the tree of life. We'll talk to Wade after. He'll get it for you. He'll explain it to you. All right.

Well, why don't we close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the things that you are teaching us by it. It would be all about coming to know you and coming to know your son more and more for each one of us. We pray that as we come to know him, we would realize the life that he has and the life that we don't have in and of ourselves. But Lord, we thank you that by your grace you have made us partakers of his life. so that we don't have to depend on our own fleshly ability to do anything. Life is completely by grace through faith. So Lord, I just praise you to continue to teach us these things, give us clarity in these things, and ultimately that we'd come more and more to know and appreciate and value your Son, Jesus Christ, for who he is. What an awesome, awesome Savior we have. In his name we pray. Amen.