Unit 3: Liberating Letters
Key Verse:
Galatians 5:25 NLT
25 Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.
Beloved, surrender every part of your life to God. The reward is immeasurable.
What you need to know
Galatians 2:19 NLT
19 For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God.
In this epistle to Galatia, Paul’s primary argument has been the fruitlessness of the law. The law of Moses could not impute righteousness. Paul stated that fact throughout the epistle. Thus, if righteousness could not come by the law, neither can holiness. What then? Surrender all to the Spirit. Let Him have His way in you. You can’t live by the law. God is not rewarding that.
Galatians 4:22-23 NLT
22 The Scriptures say that Abraham had two sons, one from his slave wife and one from his freeborn wife.[g] 23 The son of the slave wife was born in a human attempt to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise. But the son of the freeborn wife was born as God’s own fulfillment of his promise.
In making his argument against the strength of the law to save, Paul used a narrative familiar to the Jews to make an allegorical comparison between the law and grace. He likened the law to Abraham’s first son, Ishmael because his birth came about as an effort on Abraham’s part to fulfill God’s promise through human effort. When Abraham sought to continue his lineage through Hagar, because of Sarah’s apparent barrenness, he effectively cut God out of a process that was entirely the responsibility of God to perform. It may have seemed that Abraham was acting in faith, but he was not. Abraham’s good intention could not bring the righteousness of God.
Paul juxtaposed the slave child, Ishmael, produced by Abraham’s human effort to the child that God blessed him with through his covenant relationship with his wife Sarah. That child, Issac, promised to Abraham and Sarah when God called Abraham out of Ur came through Sarah long after she was past childbearing age. Issac represented the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham to give him an eternal inheritance, something only God could accomplish by grace, His (God’s) undeserved favor towards Abraham.
Galatians 5:1 NLT
1 So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.
Subsequently, as Paul begins his final plea to the Galatians in Chapter 5, he pleads with the Galatians to remain free from the bondage of the law of Moses. They must not frustrate the grace of God by attempting to please Him merely by our human performance. Righteousness can not be earned. It is a free gift. A free gift of God, unearned and undeserved. Righteousness can only be attained by grace, through faith in God, through Christ.
Galatians 5:13 NLT
13 For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.
Paul then turned from his argument for grace and faith (last week’s close) to our entirely human proclivity for sin. To the regenerated mind, Paul’s argument for freedom by grace might have seemed ‘too good to be true’. Since you didn’t have to earn salvation and you didn’t have to do anything to keep it, it might seem, from a human perspective, that one was ‘free’ to do whatever they pleased. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. We are not to use our liberty as a license for sin. Paul offered an alternative. An alternative that would produce true holiness.
The Lesson
Galatians 5:16 NLT
16 So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.
Paul implores his audience to allow the Holy Spirit within them to lead them and teach them. As this was the first or second epistle of the New Testament, believers had to rely primarily on the study of law and the prophets, on fellowship with other believers, on the teaching of the apostles and prophets of their day, and on revelation and inspiration from the Holy Spirit of God, who had descended onto the earth on the day of Pentecost for the express purpose of building and sustaining the Church. Paul implored his listeners to resist the urge to use their freedom to fulfill their sinful desire and follow God.
Galatians 5:17 NLT
17 The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions 18 But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses.
Paul rightly pointed out that the sinful nurture, our flesh, only desires after its own lusts. He goes on to say that the Holy Spirit gives us a new desire. The desire for God and the things of God. Then Paul reveals a nugget of truth. The Spirit and the flesh are at war. And that war is carried out in what was once, and still is the domain of our sinful nature; our flesh. The Holy Spirit has taken up residence in our sin-ridden members and has begun a restoration project. That restoration project, directed by the will of the Father, is at odds with our own will, and that war is constant. That ongoing struggle within our members, our flesh, prevents us from yielding completely to God’s will for our lives. Some years later, in his letter to Rome, Paul makes a similar argument, painting a vivid picture of the struggle within our members in Chapter 7. He completes the thought by pointing out in v.18 that if you are being led by the Spirit, you are no longer obligated to the law of Moses. In other words, you are no longer subject to the penalty that the law demands: death.
Romans 7:21-25a NLT
21 I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. 22 I love God’s law with all my heart. 23 But there is another power[e] within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. 24 Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? 25 Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
To the Romans, Paul revealed the key: Jesus delivers us from the penalty of sin that pulses in our old nature. The law makes known our crimes against God. Jesus released us from the penalty required for our crime. Jesus paid the price.
Galatians 5:19-21 NLT
19 When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, 21 envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
In v.19, Paul goes on to describe the result of a life lived following the old, sinful nature. He describes several that follow after lustful pleasure; desires that feel good, that are pleasing to our eyes and our flesh. In v.20, he describes several more that are the result of our selfishness and pride, causing us to war with our brothers and sisters in Christ, seeking to exalt ourselves above others. In v.21 Paul finishes with very real excesses of the flesh that can prove to be debilitating over the course of one’s life, resulting in a life of misery and loss. He warns that those who live after the old nature will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:22-23 NLT
22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
Paul then juxtaposes the sinful nature to the new nature, which is guided by the Holy Spirit of God. The new nature yields the fruit of the Spirit. Love, Joy, and Peace reflect the response of a believer who has come into a place of intimacy with God, and in doing so, has discovered the benefits of a relationship with a loving God. Patience, Kindness, and Goodness have to do with how we treat others when we have truly been born-again; when we have been changed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control come as a result of a life lived in the shadow of the Almighty; a life of a maturing Christian who has come to know that their peace is not in their members, but in Christ. Paul completes this thought by again pointing out that these traits are not subject to the penalty of the law. This fruit of the Spirit gives life.
Galatians 5:24 NLT
24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.
Paul describes those who are living victoriously in Christ. They are no longer led by their sinful passions and desires. They have recognized their old nature, at work in their members, have nailed them to the cross of Christ, and have left them there. Christ bore our shame. We no longer have to.
Galatians 5:25 NLT
25 Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.
Paul entreats his audience to allow the Spirit of God to touch every part of our lives. In doing so, we allow healing, life, and grace into every part of our being. We allow God to make us whole, to make the crooked places straight, to make the low places high, to make the rough places smooth. Every part, Beloved. God wants us to surrender every hidden part of our lives to Him. Then we will know peace, both within, and without.
Galatians 5:26 NLT
26 Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another.
Chapter 5 closes with Paul entreating his audience to put Christ-like behavior into practice. Remain humble at all costs, not esteeming yourself higher than others, for to do so is idolatry. Furthermore, we are not to constantly find ourselves in conflict with others. Those are the sins of the old nature. We are alive in Christ. Let us seek after God for the remainder of our days here on earth, looking forward to the day when Christ, our redemption, appears.
Selah,
wb
1 John 3:2-3 NLT
2 Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. 3 And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure.
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