Hebrews
Lesson 55
May 25, 2006
NKJ Isaiah
40:31 But those who wait on the LORD
Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.
Hebrews
5
Let’s
get back into our study. We are still in Hebrews; but we have migrated
around through a little lesson in discernment the last few weeks talking about
the subject of the leading of the Spirit, answering the question - is the leading
of the Spirit the same as divine guidance. The last two weeks I spent
time in Romans 8 because there are only two passages in the epistles that talk
about the leading of the Spirit. There is one passage in Luke 4 where
Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. But the context and the
dispensation and everything are different. So we only have two passages
in the epistles related to the spiritual life of the Church Age believer where
we have this vocabulary of the leading of the Spirit. Almost everybody
down through the ages is taking it to mean divine guidance. In fact my
good friend and former professor Charles Ryrie writes this quote in his book
“Basic Theology” which we have examined. He emphasized in here quote from
Romans 8: 14 that “the leading of the Spirit is a confirmation of sonship for
sons are led”.
In
that he is almost saying that leading is a confirmation that you are a believer
because every believer is led. So if you are not led, maybe you aren’t
saved. I find that what he said here is somewhat questionable. He
goes on to say …
This work of guidance is particularly of the Spirit.
Romans
Then
he cites several examples from Acts which we looked at and saw that none of
those relate to this. They all involved special revelation. I am
emphasizing to you that it is important to be students of the Word and to look
verses up and not just take somebody’s word that the verse teaches some point
that they just said. He goes on to say…
This is one of the most assuring ones for the Christian. The
child of God never needs to walk in the dark. He is always free to ask
and receive directions from the Spirit himself.
That
last sentence is so dangerous because it sounds like if I am in a quandary I
can ask God and He will speak to me. I know that Dr. Ryrie doesn’t
believe that. He took this almost verbatim out of a book he wrote, maybe
one of his first books on the Holy Spirit. It is just stated very
poorly. But we are taking this as an example of how to be a discerning
reader and how to develop critical thinking skills when it comes to analyzing
what you hear from the pulpit or what you read in any kind of Christian
literature. There is a lot of Christian literature out there that is very
good. There may be 1% or 5% of it that is a little screwy, but you can
learn a lot from the other 85% - 95% that is there. You have to have your
doctrinal radar on and be paying attention to what they are saying because
every now and then something goofy slips in like we have here.
The
second passage that Dr. Ryrie doesn’t even mention in that brief paragraph that
relates to leading of the Spirit is Galatians 5. So turn with me to
Galatians 5.
Galatians
is the first epistle that Apostle Paul wrote. He wrote it to correct a
problem, a doctrinal error that was creeping in to the congregation in
“It’s
not enough to trust in Christ alone for justification. You have to trust
in Christ and keep the law and enter into the covenant of Abraham by
circumcision in order to receive the blessing.”
So
this becomes a major problem because a work salvation is being introduced by
these heretics after the Apostle Paul had gone to
In
NKJ Galatians
Literally
it is an instrumental dative that means “walk by means of the Spirit and it
will be impossible for you to complete or to fulfill the lusts of the
flesh.”
NKJ Galatians
Galatians
5:17 is parenthetical to emphasize this battle that is going on that every
believer experiences between the Holy Spirit who is indwelling the believer and
guiding them with the Word and the sin nature.
These
are contrary to one another. They are polar opposites. It is one or
the other. One thing you run into and is popular with many people who
teach the Christian life is you can be a little bit carnal and a little bit
spiritual at the same time.
They
say something like, “We all do things by mixed motives. It is a little
bit good; it is a little bit bad. It is a little bit selfish: it is a
little bit generous. But it is a mixed bag.”
In
Galatians
That
last phrase is very important for understanding what is going on in the
background. You do not do the things that you wish. In other words
the believer that is not walking by the Spirit won’t be able to do or bring to
fulfillment that which he wants to do. That is Paul’s experience in
Romans 7. We will deal with that in a minute.
Then
there is a conclusion.
NKJ Galatians
Verse
18 must be understood in the context of
So
just as we walked our way through Romans we are going to walk our way through
the book of Galatians to see how Galatians 5:16-18 fits within this whole
pattern or structure of what Paul is saying in this letter to the Galatians.
What is important to understand is that too often we get so microscopic in our
analysis of the Scripture that we lose the picture. We understand the verse,
but we don’t fit it within the overall flow of what is being said. There is
also a place for micro-cosmic exegesis but there is also a place for
macro-exegesis where we are looking at the overall flow of what is being said
in a letter. Remember when Paul wrote these they were received by a
congregation and the pastor would stand up and read it from the first verse to
the last verse. He wouldn’t take a whole lot of time explaining a lot of
the details. He just read the whole thing straight through
Let’s
go back to the beginning.
The
first 5 verses give us the introduction to the book. There is always a
standard greeting. Paul identifies himself as an apostle.
NKJ Galatians
1:1 Paul, an apostle (not from men
nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him
from the dead),
He
is an apostle because Jesus Christ designated him to be an apostle and
designated him to proclaim the gospel to the gentiles. He includes those
who are with him.
NKJ Galatians
1:2 and all the brethren who are
with me, To the churches of
Then
he gives the opening greeting.
NKJ Galatians
1:3 Grace to you and peace from God the
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ,
There
is always a connection between grace and peace in these letters. Grace or
charis was the standard greeting of any Greek to another Greek just as
we say howdy, hello, or how are you a Greek speaker would say, “Charis”.
It means grace.
If
you were a Jew and you greet somebody on the street of
What
Paul does under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is he takes these two common
greetings and he links them together because it is the grace of God that is the
one and only source of real peace for the individual. It is because of
God’s grace that we have peace with God. That is the argument of Romans 5
that because we are justified we have peace with God, reconciliation.
NKJ Galatians
1:4 who gave Himself for our sins,
that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of
our God and Father,
In
this verse we have the synopsis, a snapshot of what he is going to develop in
this whole epistle. Number one, Jesus is the one who gave Himself for
us. That is focusing on phase, one salvation, what we call justification,
a recognition that Jesus Christ died for our sins as our substitute. So this
summarizes the message that is going to be covered in the first section of the
book, the emphasis on justification from 1:6-2:21, the end of the second
chapter.
He
gave Himself for our sins for a purpose – that He might deliver us from this
present evil age. It doesn’t say that He might deliver us from
hell. It doesn’t say that He gave Himself for our sins that He might
deliver us from the
Now
just let’s have a little side bar on these two terms and their connection. If
you were born in the Middle Ages any time after Augustine who was the Bishop of
Hippo who was considered the prime Roman Catholic theologian, then you thought
that justification was a process. It occurred over time. We
use the term progressive sanctification. You have heard that many
times. They understood justification to be progressive.
Justification and sanctification were progressive. The problem with that
is that it leads to knowing you are justified by knowing you are sanctified.
Wait a minute. Sanctification is the Christian life. What they are
basically saying is that the only way you know you are justified is if you are
living the Christian life. If you aren’t living the Christian life you
don’t know that you are justified. So you can’t know that you are
saved or have an assurance of your salvation unless you are living the right
kind of life. If you are living the wrong kind of life or you commit any
of the list of sins that is that century’s worst sin (and every century and
every culture has a different list), then if you commit those sins, then you
are probably not a Christian. You are just not saved. The only way
you know you are saved is by what you do.
Jody
Dillow who wrote the book “Reign of the Servant
Kings” which is a book that as soon as someone gets serious about seminary or
going anywhere in formal academic training - that is the first book that I have
them read is “Reign of the Servant Kings.” It has been out of print for
awhile. It has just come back into print.
I
had a meeting with him on Monday as well. It was very enjoyable. It was
the first time I have had a chance to spend time with him. He has written
5 books in his life. His book on tongues which was only in print for a
couple of years is the finest books on tongues issue that I have ever
read. His doctrinal dissertation was on the water vapor canopy of Genesis
1 and all the implications of that. His undergraduate work was in
engineering. Then he wrote the book on the “Reign of the Servant Kings”
which is the finest discussion of the difference between lordship salvation and
the free grace gospel. It is about 700 or 800 pages. It is
basically a systematic theology for understanding all of the problem passages
that people go to for understanding the gospel and whether or not you are
lordship or free grace. What we have to understand is that the backdrop for all
of this came out of Roman Catholicism and in the Protestant Reformation
understanding that justification and sanctification were separate.
Justification was punctiliar. Have you ever
heard that word before? It is a point in time.
The
instant you put your faith alone in Christ alone, you are justified. God
imputes to you the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. His justice
sees that you possess the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ and declares
you justified. That is what the reformers understood. That is what Martin
Luther understood. Later Calvin understood it. It is the
doctrine of justification by faith alone. One of the mottos of the
Reformation was the phrase sola fide, by faith
alone. (Sola Scriptura
means by Scripture alone and sola gratia
by grace alone.) This is biblical. Lordship salvation comes along
and it makes the same claim that Roman Catholicism made. It blurs the
distinction between justification and sanctification so that if you trust
Christ as your savior, you don’t know if it is a true saving faith until you
have lived the right kind of life.
Dillow in his book “Reign of the Servant Kings” calls it
experiential predestinarianism. Don’t you just
love it? I just love these terms. The only way you know if you are
part of the elect is through the experiment of your life. So you don’t
know if you are saved unless you live like you are saved. If you don’t
live like you were saved, then you didn’t have the right kind of faith.
You
see the Bible talks about faith generically. Everybody believes.
You are sitting in a chair. When you sat down you didn’t walk up to it
and knock it around a little bit to make sure it would hold you. You
trusted it would hold you and you sat down in that chair. It is the same
kind of faith that you exercise toward the chair is the same kind of faith you
exercise toward the cross. There is no “different kinds of faith”.
Faith is simply believing something to be true.
In
language we understand, that faith always has an object. It is the object
that is significant not the kind of faith. It is the object of faith that
saves. If you believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins;
then the object of your faith (Christ on the cross and His death) is what saves
you, not the faith. It is Christ’s on the cross that saves you. It
is having the right object. If your object is that I am saved because I
trust in Christ and I am baptized and I am living a good life and I join the
right church, then you are not saved. It is a false gospel because
whenever you add any human effort to the cross, it dilutes and destroys the
cross. It waters down the gospel. This is what Paul gets into in
Galatians 1:6.
NKJ Galatians
1:6 I marvel that you are turning
away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different
gospel,
A
heteros gospel, one of a different
kind. It is not the same kind of gospel. The message is
different. It is a faith in something else; it is not in Christ alone.
NKJ Galatians
1:7 which is not another; but there
are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
NKJ Galatians
1:8 But even if we, or an angel from
heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let
him be accursed.
NKJ Galatians
1:9 As we have said before, so now I
say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have
received, let him be accursed.
Twice
he mentions this! The word there for accursed is anathema.
This is strong language from the Apostle Paul.
He
virtually is saying, “If anyone preaches another gospel, let them go to hell.”
The
emphasis here is on faith alone in Christ alone. He goes through an
explanation of his defense of the gospel. He had to defend it in
The
Judaizers came along and said, “Well, that is fine and good that the gentiles
are getting saved; but they have got to get under the law. We can’t have
a bunch of unclean, immoral gentiles getting saved. They have got to
enter into the Mosaic Law and come under the provisions of the Mosaic Law
otherwise they are not saved.”
He
completely blasts Peter for that and explains that encounter with Peter in
NKJ Galatians
Wouldn’t
you have liked to be a fly on the wall in that encounter? Paul reams out
Peter because he screwed up the gospel.
Paul
goes down to explain the basis of the gospel.
NKJ Galatians
Then
it begins with the word knowing. Actually it should be translated as a
causal participle from the Greek – because we know something.
NKJ Galatians
2:16 "knowing that a man is not
justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have
believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not
by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be
justified.
No
matter how good you are, no matter how consistent you are, the works of the law
will never, have never bring justification to somebody because what a person
needs is perfect righteousness. That can not be achieved through
obedience to the law.
Jesus
Christ is the object of our faith.
Three
times he makes this point that the works of the law can’t bring
justification. Justification only comes because you put your faith alone
in Christ alone. Jesus is the object of the faith and only Jesus.
That
is why we say, “By faith alone.”
Faith
is not accompanied by anything else - faith alone in Christ alone. The
object is not accompanied by anything else. It is really important
especially if you are evangelizing, if you are witnessing to somebody who is
coming out of
“Well,
what do you mean by grace?”
I
remember talking on the phone to a person one time and I was doing a lot to
help out my folks. My mother had a series of strokes.
This
person said, “Well, you certainly are earning a lot of grace.”
They
were Roman Catholic and that was their concept of grace. It wasn’t your
concept of grace. It wasn’t the Bible’s concept of grace. It is
something that is worked for, not something that is freely given.
Somebody
may say, “You are saved by grace.”
Take
a little time and ask, “What do you mean by grace?”
Pull
out what they mean by these terms.
“Christ
died for my sins.”
“Well,
what do you mean by that? If you didn’t go to church, if you never
participated in the sacraments, if you never took mass, if you never did any of
these things, if you committed a bunch of mortal sins would you still go to
heaven by trusting in Christ alone?”
If
the answer to that is, “Well, I am not so sure.”, then they aren’t saved.
They haven’t understood the gospel. They are trusting in Jesus plus
something else, their own works or their own obedience.
Paul
says, “That is a different gospel and you aren’t saved.”
They
are trying to be justified by works. So chapter 1 and chapter 2 deal with
justification by faith.
A
key word is missing from chapter 1 and chapter 2. I put together a chart
of three key words in Galatians. It is kind of like the chart we had last
week in Romans. These three words come out of Galatians 3:3-4. The
first is pneuma which is the word for the Holy Spirit. The Holy
Spirit isn’t mentioned in chapter one or chapter two. It isn’t that He
isn’t present in regeneration. Paul isn’t taking about that. He is
focusing on justification. We don’t see the word pneuma appear
until Galatians 3. Four times the word pneuma appears in Galatians
3 in reference to the Holy Spirit, two times in Galatians 4, 8 times in Galatians
5, and once in Galatians 6. So if you want to study what is happening
with the Holy Spirit in Galatians, where would you go? To our passage in
Galatians 5.
Okay,
let me back up. There is a shift that takes place between Galatians 2:21
and 3:1. Verses 1 and 2 dealt with justification but then he reams them
out again. As he started to talk about the gospel he really laid into
them.
NKJ Galatians
3:1 O foolish Galatians! Who has
bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus
Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?
NKJ Galatians
3:2 This only I want to learn from
you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of
faith?
He
pulls them up and says, “I want to know one thing, just one thing. Pay
attention. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the
hearing of faith? Now how did you get the Holy Spirit when you were
saved? Was it by the law or by hearing with faith?”
We
have just gone through this whole explanation of justification that you are
justified by faith alone is and that is when you receive the Holy Spirit.
Then
in verse 3 he says…
NKJ Galatians
3:3 Are you so foolish? Having begun
in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
This
is the second time he has used the word foolish. You can tell Paul is
really wound up here.
How
do you begin? By means of the Spirit? Justification, the Holy
Spirit makes it clear to us. The Holy Spirit regenerates us.
“Now”
is what? After salvation or at salvation? After salvation.
Now
let’s bring this into our vernacular. “Being made perfect” doesn’t mean
sinlessness.
It
means completion. It is a form of our verb epiteleo.
Epiteleo means to bring something to
completion or to bring it to maturity.
Translation:
Having begun by the Spirit you were saved because of the ministry of God the
Holy Spirit in salvation. Are you now trying to grow, not by the Spirit,
but by the flesh?
Now
let me ask you a question? What were these Galatian believers doing to
try to grow? Were they a bunch of immoral, antinomian sinners out there
raising hell all of the time? No, they are trying to obey the law.
But what does Paul say?
“You
are trying to reach spiritual maturity by the sin nature.”
So
he is equating obeying the law apart from the Spirit with being perfected by
the sin nature.
He
is saying, “Trying to be moral and live the law apart from the Holy Spirit is
nothing more than the works of the sin nature.”
In
other words, all of your morality and ritual and religious activity is all from
the sin nature because you are leaving the Holy Spirit completely out of the
equation.
Now
there are three key words that are in verse 3. Those three key words are
Spirit, made perfect and flesh (sin nature). We don’t see these three key
terms connected again until Galatians 5:16. Now if you have these three
key terms in this rhetorical question in Galatians 3:3 and Paul doesn’t come
back to mention those three things together until Galatians 5:16, that ought to
raise a red flag that Galatians 5:16 finally going to answer the question and
explain the issue that is raised in Galatians 3:3. But he has to go a
long way around the barn in the rest of chapter 3 and chapter 4 in order to
explain the role and purpose of the law and its relationship to Abraham and the
Abrahamic covenant before he can finally get back to explaining the role of the
Holy Spirit. They have been confused. They are trying to get grace
and get saved or sanctified through circumcision. Circumcision wasn’t a
sign of the Mosaic Covenant. It was a sign of the Abrahamic Covenant.
(Genesis 18) The sign of the Mosaic Covenant was obedience to the
Sabbath. Paul is first of all going to show that the Abraham Covenant
guaranteed that in Abraham all nations would be blessed and quotes that in
3:8. He doesn’t connect it to circumcision. He says in verse 9…
NKJ Galatians
3:9 So then those who are of
faith are blessed with believing Abraham.
Faith,
not those who are circumcised.
See
that is an illusion to the same thing that he does in Romans 4 showing that we
are justified by faith just as Abraham was justified by faith because Abraham
is the Old Testament example for justification by faith alone.
NKJ Genesis
15:6 And he believed in the LORD,
and He accounted it to him for righteousness.
Then
in verse 10 and following he emphasizes the fact that the law doesn’t bring
life; it brings condemnation. It brings a curse. Then he goes on to
explain the importance of the law and the purpose of the law and the
covenant. What we have is different. The law’s purpose wasn’t
to bring righteousness. The law’s purpose was to act like a school
teacher, a pedagogue. It was to teach people that you can’t be justified
by being moral. No system of ritual or sacrifices can bring
justification.
NKJ Galatians
That
is faith in Christ.
The
law was temporary.
NKJ Galatians
The
emphasis here is on our adoption.
NKJ Galatians
Here
he is talking about the result of faith alone in Christ alone and baptism by
means of the Holy Spirit.
Then
in chapter 4 he goes to deal with the law versus the Spirit. He uses the
situation between Sarah and Hagar down towards the end of the chapter that one
is the picture of the Spirit and the other is a picture of the flesh.
That which was produced through Sarah is a fruit of the Spirit; that which was
produced according to the flesh (Abraham’s effort to produce his own heir) is
according to the flesh. So after he develops this analogy between Hagar
and Sarah, Sarah representing those who are relying upon God and trusting in
Him and Hagar is the sin nature solution, he says…
NKJ Galatians
Just
as Isaac was the result of an Old Testament promise and the result of grace so
we as Church Age believers are the result of grace and children of the promise.
NKJ Galatians
4:29 But, as he who was born
according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the
Spirit, even so it is now.
What
terminology ought to catch your attention in that verse? It is Galatians
4:29 - according to the flesh versus according to the Spirit. That is the
same phraseology and contrast that we saw in Romans 8 and we are going to see
it again in Galatians 5:17.
NKJ Galatians
So
he is building his case that those who are of the law are of the flesh.
They are a product of the sin nature trying to achieve the blessing of God, not
resting in the promise and provision of God’s grace.
Then
we come to chapter 5. Chapter 5 is where he begins to talk about the
Spirit and 8 times he mentions the Spirit. He emphasizes the fact that it
is in Christ that we are made free. The law is nothing more than bondage
just as Hagar was the bond woman.
Now
let’s skip down to verse 16 where we were headed.
In
verse 16 we have the basic use of this root telios.
We had telieo earlier now we have teleo in
NKJ Galatians
What
is Paul saying? He is saying that you have two alternatives. You
can either walk by the Spirit or you can walk by the flesh. What we have
here in the Greek is a very emphatic construction. It is a double
negative. If you use a double negative in the English one negative
cancels the other negative.
You
don’t say, “I am not never going to do something” because that means you are
going to do it.
But
in Greek you would use these two different words for “no”, ou
and me. If you joined them together with a verb in the subjunctive
mood, it was the strongest way of saying that something could never ever, ever
happen. It is impossible.
So
what Paul says here is, “If you walk by means of the Spirit, it is impossible
for you to bring to completion the lusts of the flesh.”
A
lot of people say, “If I am walking by means of the Spirit, how do I ever sin?”
It
is a matter of negative volition. I got a great illustration of this
years ago when was in
I
was teaching this that night and I thought, “Walk by means of the Spirit,
walking by means of their walker.”
Now
if you are walking along with a cane then you have to think about it a little
bit unless you have done it for awhile. It is a step-by-step procedure.
And that is what walking is here. It is the Greek verb peripateo which emphasizes the walk, step-by-step
aspect. Each time you do your thinking about it, you are walking by the
Spirit.
Now
let me use an analogy. If you are walking by means of the cane, you won’t
fall down. What do you have to do to fall down? Stop using
the cane and you will automatically fall down. That is what this is
talking about. As long as you are leaning on the Spirit, as long as the Spirit
is the guide, then you are not going to fall down. But as soon as you
decide to stop using the cane (or the walker) or stop using the Holy Spirit,
you will fall down. That is how sin occurs. We choose to stop being
dependent on the Holy Spirit.
Now
is this some sort of mystical inner lightism?
No, it is not because the Spirit guides through His Word. So it is this
thing that we see over and over again in the New Testament that the Christian
life is through the joint effort of two things, the Word of God and the Spirit
of God together. It is never one without the other. So Paul
begins in verse 16 with the command to walk by the Spirit and you won’t
sin. As soon as you stop being dependent on the Holy Spirit, the sin nature
is back in that default position and you instantly go over to operating on the
sin nature. It is one or the other. They are mutually
exclusive. This is absolute spirituality. You are either walking by
the Spirit or you are not. It is not a little bit or a little bit more.
It is one or the other.
Then
in verse 18 he says…
NKJ Galatians
So
the Spirit is out in front. If I am walking by the Spirit, then I am
following the Spirit. But it’s not just guesswork.
It’s
not, “I wonder what the Holy Spirit wants me to do.”
So
let’s skip ahead. The verses in between talk about how you know whether
the Spirit is producing anything in your life. You have the works of the
sin nature versus the fruit of the Spirit explained. Then at the end of
that discussion on the work of the flesh in verses 19-21 and the fruit of the
Spirit (the production of the Spirit) in verses 22 and 23, in verse 25 we read…
NKJ Galatians
It
is a first class condition. We live by the Spirit, don’t we? At the
instant of faith alone in Christ alone, God the Holy Spirit regenerates us and
we have eternal life.
NKJ Titus
3:5 not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing
of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,
The
Holy Spirit produces life. So if we live by the Spirit (and we do) let us
also walk by means of the Spirit. Here we have a completely
different Greek word than the one we have in Galatians 5:16.
In
Galatians
That
tells us as believers we really have to learn the Word of God. The more
we think and mediate on the Word and the more we plumb its depths, the more we
are able to think biblically about the circumstances and situations in
life. The one who is working behind the scenes to help us understand
everything and put things together is the Holy Spirit. It’s like one of those
programs that you run on your computer and it’s running in the background all
of the time. You don’t see it but you know that it is running. It
is making other things work. You don’t focus on that covert action; you
focus on what you are doing in typing your Microsoft word document or working
with PowerPoint or whatever program it is that you are doing. Behind the
scenes you have a virus protection going on and you have other things that are
going on behind the scenes. That is the role of the Holy Spirit. He
works together with the Word of God.
So
Paul brings to conclusion that initial question he asked back in 3:3.
NKJ Galatians
3:3 Are you so foolish? Having begun
in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
No,
you can’t be made perfect by the flesh. He equates the flesh with the
law. This is the problem in Galatians 5:18.
NKJ Galatians
There
is the contrast between being led by the Spirit and operating on the law.
In Galatians 3:3 the contrast is between the Spirit and the flesh. So if
the contrast here is Spirit versus flesh and the contrast here is Spirit versus
law; then law and flesh are equated to one another.
Now
you say, “Wait a minute. I thought you said Paul said the law was good.”
He
did say that the law was good within its proper purpose and function.
As
we close, turn back to Romans where we were last week. This time we will go to
Romans 7. Romans 7 is sandwiched in between our position in Christ in
chapter 6 and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in chapter 8. In chapter 7
Paul is trying to live the Christian life by the law without the Spirit.
The Spirit isn’t mentioned until chapter 8. He is extremely frustrated.
He is trying to be so good and so moral and to apply the law so consistently,
but it doesn’t work. He comes to this conclusion.
NKJ Romans
There
is something good and valuable about the law.
NKJ Romans
What
is he doing? He is trying to obey the law.
“No
matter how hard I tried to keep the law consistently, I just can’t do it.”
“No
matter how hard I try to obey the law, somehow I always end up sinning.”
Morality
is a product of the sin nature. Spirituality is distinct from
morality. Jehovah Witnesses can be moral. Mormons can be moral.
Moslems can be moral. But, that’s not the Christian life.
NKJ Romans
NKJ Romans
7:18 For I know that in me (that is,
in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to
perform what is good I do not find.
What
he is saying here is basically simple.
“I
want to do the right thing. I want to please God. I am working so hard to
do it by obeying the law, but ultimately I always end up in sin.”
And,
he can’t figure out why. No matter how moral he is trying to be he always
ends up doing what he doesn’t want to do and he ends up right back in a pool of
carnality.
NKJ Romans
“What
I end up doing is the very evil that I don’t want to do.”
It
is because he realizes the evil of covetousness (that he has coveted whatever
his neighbor has) that he realizes that he is a sinner. He may
convince himself that he is following the other 9 commandments, but when it
comes to not coveting (that mental attitude sin of lust) he always falls apart
at that point.
NKJ Romans
NKJ Romans
NKJ Jeremiah
17:9 " The heart is deceitful
above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?
NKJ Romans
NKJ Romans
No
matter how much he tries to please God and be moral, without the Holy Spirit it
just falls apart. There is a conflict within him and he feels torn. He feels
like he has multiple personalities inside of him. You just feel the
frustration in verse 24.
NKJ Romans
NKJ Romans
He
connects the sin nature to the law of sin.
Then
in 8:1 he says,
NKJ Romans
8:1 There is therefore now no
condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the
flesh, but according to the Spirit.
It
is chapter 8 where he focuses on the real solution - “I can’t do it myself. I
have to do it by living according to the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, and
being led by the Spirit.”
The
Spirit leads through the Word of God. It is the Spirit of God and the
Word of God; it is not inner light mysticism. It is not some sort of
liver quiver. It is clear objective guidance down the path by God the
Holy Spirit.
So
when we come back to Hebrews next time, we are going to have greater
appreciation for what the writer of Hebrews is saying when he addresses his audience
and what he tells them in chapter 5.
NKJ Hebrews
5:14 But solid food belongs to those
who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their
senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
This
is how we practice discernment. You think through things. But, you
have to have that frame of reference of Bible doctrine in order to do
that. So next time we will come back and finish chapter 5 and get ready
to go into the warning passage in Hebrews 6.