Sermon – Galatians 5 – Live by the Spirit

Rev. Chris Willis June 2022

Walt Disney had a housekeeper: Thelma Pearl Howard. Each year, Walt Disney gave his housekeeper a present in an envelope.

She retired to a small two-bedroom property. She’d been born in poverty, and her younger life was tragic. And she died in relative poverty too. What she didn’t realise, it would seem, is that the gifts which she received each year from Walt Disney which were shares, her inheritance, had, as the Disney corporation exploded to become the household name it is today, become worth nearly 10 million dollars. Thelma didn’t know quite what she had.

But what if we are also sitting on shares worth more than any amount of money and we simply don’t realise it. What if we have taken the gifts we have received from God, left them sealed in an envelope, and put them in a draw like Thelma. Are we living out our days in spiritual poverty, when we, if only we could see it, are rich beyond measure? What if we have been set free, yet are still bound by imaginary chains?

Our epistle reading today says: It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

If we are in Christ, then we have been set free. Free from the guilt and bondage to sin. Yet, the very next words are a stark warning: Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery’.

Here’s the issue. The Galatians were returning to the very things they had been set free from, the acts of sin & slavery. They thought they were being free, but they were being like caged birds, who have been in the cage so long, that no matter that the door was wide open, they would fly back inside rather than soring high.

You see, we are all one of two things. We are either slaves to sin, that long list of behaviours we heard read, or we are submitted to Christ, and live by the Holy Spirit. There is no middle ground. No third human status.

Oh, we might say, I am my own person, I do good, I don’t murder people, I give to charity. I pay my taxes, I even go to church occasionally. I’m independent. I don’t need God, and I certainly don’t ned that religious stuff.  

And doesn’t it sound just a little controlling, this idea of submitting to Christ and living by the Spirit? Have we not been brought up to believe that our personal achievement and success is everything? What we do, how we do it, who we are’ the titles and positions we hold. Don’t they make us somebody? Don’t they give us worth and meaning and freedom?

Certainly, our culture, the world we live in would agree. We naturally seek freedom in this world by being self-sufficient. But to quote the successful actor Jim Carrey, who said: “I wish everyone could get rich and famous and everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that's not the answer.”

The favourite opening question when we meet people, like at a wedding, is often, what do you do? I once sat on a table of eight people at a wedding, only one of whom I knew, and the person next to me, almost before we’d sat down, announced their profession, and demanded to know what everyone else around the table did? Yes, of course, in once sense it is an easy icebreaker, although, when I was in the police, I would do anything to avoid answering that question short of outright lies, or else risk spend the rest of the meal being told how unfair that speeding fine was!

Yet, that question, what do you do, is also possibly a way of seeing who is more important, where are you on the social ladder? But Jesus is not interested in where we are on the social ladder. He’s interested in the fruit we produce, and doi we love our neighbour as ourselves.

Yet, we should ask, ‘what do you do’? but not what do you do for a living. But instead are we living by the sinful nature, or is what we do, living according to the Holy Spirit? do I get drunk, do I envy, do I engage in immoral behaviour? Or is the presence of God in us causing spiritual fruit to grow: and patience, peace, and self-control to increase – like a tree producing good fruit. That would be a real conversation around table 8!

But what if the answer is, to that question: what do you do: that because of Jesus, because of His love, because He reached down and pulled me out of a pit of despair, and hopelessness and self-reliance, because He considered us worth dying for, that by his grace, with His help, I put to death, [as Galatians puts is] I crucify the acts of the sinful nature. What if I don’t return to the perch in the cage with the wide-open door, and instead allow the fruits of the Spirit to grow in me.

I once wrote a song with the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. Tempted as I am to sing you a rendition, I will resist. You will be relieved. But they are: ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’.

Turning back to the ‘acts of the sinful nature’ after we have found freedom from sin in Jesus, is a bit like having a get out of jail card and thinking it doesn’t matter. But it does matter. We are called to produce good fruit instead

When I was in the police, we would see cars with diplomatic plates. It effectively gave the occupants immunity from being held accountable from what they did - driving through a red light etc. but it was a privilege. We might say, it was grace. But that privilege was an honoured status, it didn’t make it right for the holder of such immunity to ignore the safety and wellbeing of others – to do what they liked. Our reading today has a similar truth. The entire law, Paul said, is summed up in a single command’. “Love your neighbour as yourself”.

Just like the diplomat is protected from the law of the land, they are nevertheless expected to behave in a reasonable way. You would have heard of diplomats who flout that privilege and are expelled from the country. Likewise, we, if we are Christians, if we have turned to Jesus as our only Lord and Saviour, and submit our lives to him, if we believe and accept that there is no other way to Heaven, to God, except through Jesus, then we too are set free from the law. A bit like having spiritual diplomatic immunity. Yet, Paul makes it clear, we cannot truly love our neighbour as ourselves and use our freedom in Christ, to engage in the old ways of behaving. We should instead be using that freedom in Jesus well. For if we use that freedom to sin, then we inevitably hurt others. After all. Every law in the bible is summed up with this one command – love your neighbour as yourself.

I’ve said this before, so forgive a little repetition, but there is no law in the bible that God gives us except that to do otherwise would cause hurt, either to us, others, our relationship with God, or society. If you find any ‘don’t do’ law in the bible, it will fall into one of those areas of hurt. God isn’t a party pooper, a spoil sport. So, we are called to love others as ourselves, and even though we might be freed from law under grace as Christians, the only way to truly do that is the avoid returning to the things the law is intended to turn us from. We may be free from law through grace, but we are still expected to act in a way which avoids hurt. To love others as ourselves.

The Good news of Jesus is that our worth isn’t found in what we do, what we are, who we are. It’s found in Him, and in the freedom we have in Him.

‘It is for freedom, that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and don’t let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery’.

Yes, we have ben set free, but as Paul urges us, don’t use that freedom, that spiritual diplomatic immunity, for ill, but rather live by and for the Spirit. Be fruitful. Amen