Walking in the Spirit Galatians 5.25

-Thank you for your patience over these 16 lessons.

-Let me begin by reminding you of the context of the letter to the Galatians. …The Galatians had heard and believed the gospel and had received the Holy Spirit. …Some Jewish teachers came to Galatia and were teaching that these new believers had to keep the Jewish Law in order to be righteous and acceptable before God. …Faith was not enough to make them righteous before a Holy God. …They needed to keep the Law in order to satisfy God.

-Paul is writing this letter to remind the Galatian believers that they are free in Christ. …Free from the penalty of sin, free from the condemnation of the law, free from the power of the flesh, and free to walk in the Spirit.

-Paul writes to warn them of falling back in slavery to sin, either by trying to keep the law or by indulging the flesh. …Instead they are to walk in the Spirit which now dwells within them. …By walking in the Spirit they will both fulfill the law through serving others in love, and not indulge the flesh. …By walking in the Spirit they will know and experience the freedom for which Christ has set them free, and will produce a harvest of spiritual fruit that will bless them and others as well.

-This morning I want to provide a summary of how to walk in the Spirit, a kind of checklist of what we are to know and what we are to do in order to walk in the Spirit.

1) Walking in the Spirit begins by receiving the Spirit at conversion to Christ. …As Galatians 5.25 says, before walking in the Spirit we must “live by the Spirit”. …A true Christian is one who has trusted Christ for salvation and who has received the Holy Spirit inside of them.

-Turn to Ephesians 1.13-14. …“You also were included in Christ (union with Christ) when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, Who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession – to the praise of His glory.” …So we must be sure that we belong to God and have the Holy Spirit residing within us.

-These days when it is easy to just accept Christ by lifting up your hand at a meeting in an emotional response to music and message, and to be told that you are a Christian and are going to heaven, it is important to have a true conversion. ..True conversion produces a changed life that is filled with the Holy Spirit and desires to please God and to know God better through His Word. …A changed life turns from sin and pursues holiness. …Walking in the Spirit begins with the Spirit’s work of conversion and His coming to live inside of you.

2) The next step is to have a full understanding of justification by faith. …Justification by faith is the truth that God fully and completely and always accepts me as righteous before God because Jesus Christ died for me on the cross and paid the penalty for my sin and gave me His righteousness. …In Christ I always stand before God as righteous, no matter what I am in experience. …I no longer have to strive to be right with God by works because I am right with God by faith. …In Christ I am free from the condemnation and the demands of the law.

-The Jewish teachers were teaching that the Galatian believers had to keep the law in order to be righteous before God. …The gospel teaches that we are righteous before God not by works but by faith in Christ.

-Look at what Paul says in Galatians 5.2-6. …God does not need any help from you to make you righteous. …The fact is that any attempt on your part to be righteous before God is working against God. …God wants you to believe in His declaration that you are righteous by faith in Christ.

-Look at Galatians 3.1-9. …Paul makes it very evident that a right standing before God comes by faith in Christ alone and has nothing to do with works.

-Study Galatians 3, and Romans 4 and 5.

–Right teaching is so very important so we can follow God in the right way and the teaching of Justification by faith is the first teaching you need to take a hold of to walk in the Spirit.

–Law of any kind has no power over sin. …Only faith in the work of Christ and walking in the Spirit can overcome sin. …Paul says this quite well in Colossians 2.23, “Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility, and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”

-We need to live each day knowing that we are justified by faith in Christ and that we are fully and completely and always righteous before God in Christ. …Here is how to do that. …You are walking along with some friends from your old life and they start gossiping and you join in with them and feel very bad about it. …You are channel surfing and you come across something you should not watch and you decide to watch it. …You lose your temper while arguing with your spouse. …What do you do then? …Do you get so depressed and discouraged at your constant failure that you decide to give up the Christian life because you cannot keep the holy demands that your heart longs for? …That is a common response but it is not a faith response but a works response. …Being discouraged with your failure is falling back into thinking that you need to earn God’s acceptance by keeping a righteous standard and thinking that you can actually do it. …Thinking that when you sin God considers you unrighteous and that you need to claw your way back into right standing with God means that you are not understanding justification by faith or are not living in that truth. …You will never be able to please God on your own but only in His Son Jesus Christ. …You will never live up to God’s standard except in Jesus Christ.

-If you know the truth of justification by faith and choose to live by it you will confess your sin and be sorry for your sin, but you will also thank God that you continue to be accepted as righteous before God in Christ Jesus. …If you beat yourself up because you have failed to keep your high standards, you are expressing a belief in your own righteousness and not the righteousness of Christ. …When you live in the truth of justification by faith you will thank God that you are righteous in God’s sight in Christ, and you will ask for strength to live a holy and loving life, and to make better choice, and you will seek to know God better, and to increase in your vision of God so that sin will lose its appeal and its draw upon you. …Slowly but surely you will see holiness take shape in your life and you will give God the glory for justification and the power of the Holy Spirit to live a holy and a loving life. …You will not be discouraged and quit but rather you will be empowered by the grace and love of God who accepts you in Christ.

-Justification is a must for walking in the Spirit.

3) Paul also warns the Galatians that not being under the Law does not mean living a lawless life that indulges the flesh and turns back to sin. …We are not to indulge the flesh in any way.

-We have spent much time in the truth of our union with Christ, the death of the old man in Adam, and the fact that sin no longer has any power over us. …The body that once served sin still has the effects of sin, called the flesh, and continues to call us back to sin, but sin has no power over us.

-Study Romans 5 and 6.

-Because we are dead to sin in Christ we are to crucify the flesh. (Romans 8.13-14) …We are to put off the old man and put on the new man. (Ephesians 4.22-24; Colossians 3.1-10) …That means cutting ourselves off from access to sin and saying no when temptation presents itself. …To crucify the flesh means that we need to deal radically with sin even to the point of figuratively poking out our eye or cutting off our hand.

-Ask God to given you a greater vision of sin. …Ask God to show you the rebellion, deception, destruction, and loveless brutality of sin so that you will not want anything to do with sin, and that you will fear sin taking a hold of you.

4) We will not walk in the Spirit if we only focus on saying no to sin. …We must fill our life with God and with good. …Paul says that we are not to indulge the flesh but rather we are to serve one another in love. …We are to express our faith in God through love. (Galatians 5.6)

-Love is yielding to God by giving our lives to others. …Love is a having a servant heart and a humble mind. …Love is accepting God’s will for our life and living for the Glory of God no matter what the consequences.

-God is always calling us to a greater abandonment of ourselves to Him. …The greatest example of love is the cross of Christ. …There is much sanctification pressed into this call to serve one another in love

-To walk in the Spirit and to serve others in love fulfills the Law, pleases God, keeps us from sin, and furthers the purposes of God in His kingdom.

-We need to expand our vision of God and our fellowship with God, and our service to God each day. …That is part of walking in the Spirit. …Part of our responsibility of walking in the Spirit is to pursue God and God’s truth and the filling of the Spirit of God. …That is why I encourage over and over again to daily meet with God through His Word and through prayer. …Learn to walk with God every day. …If I can put it this way, take time to sit down and have a coffee with your Father in heaven and talk things over with Him. …Tell Him what is on your heart and ask Him what is on His heart, and get caught up in God’s larger purposes.

5) The result of regularly walking in the Spirit is the fruit of the Spirit and that fruit needs to be evidenced in our life or we are not walking in the Spirit. …Love and godliness need to be more and more apparent in your Christian life if you are walking in the Spirit. …If the fruit of the Spirit is not evident in your life then you need to go back over these five points and find out where you are grieving or quenching the Holy Spirit.

-Are you born again and does the Holy Spirit live in you? …Perhaps you need to ask God to save you today so you can begin to walk in the Spirit.

-Are you still trying to be righteous by your own effort and getting discouraged in the process? …You are justified by faith in Christ so walk in justification.

-Are you quite content to continue to indulge the flesh and to enjoy your sin? …There is no compatibility between sin and the Holy Spirit. …You need to go through a crucifixion of that sin and turn your will and your body toward serving others in love.

-Are you yielding your life to God so God can use you to serve others in love as He chooses each day? …Have you given up your life so that the Holy Spirit can lead you in God’s direction?

-Are you getting to know God better every day and learning His Will through His Word?

-Walking in the Spirit is to walk in life, in joy, in peace, and in the freedom for which Christ has set you free. …Walking in the Spirit is not a constant adrenalin rush of excitement like riding the Mindbuster or the Behemoth at Canada’s Wonderland, but a steady growing relationship with the living God and a greater participation in His eternal purposes.

-In Isaiah 40 the prophet writes one of the great Biblical descriptions of the Majesty of God. …Isaiah ends the chapter with these words of what a vision of this Majestic God can do, “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord (those who wait on the Lord) will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.”

-It is exciting to soar on wings like an eagle and to run and not grow weary, but the greatest evidence of God’s strength and power is shown in the steady loving, holy walk of daily life in the midst of ordinary circumstances where we spend most of our time. …As we walk in the Spirit we shall walk and not faint, day by day by day, until we walk into the presence of God and stand before Him to give an account of our life. …Learn to walk in the Spirit and you will walk in the ordinary, in the common, in the routine, bearing fruit that will nourish others, and you will not faint until you reach your home in glory.