Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Mark Daniels: Welcome to hear the word of God, the online and broadcast teaching ministry of the Reverend Eric Alexander.

Eric Alexander: For some time on Sunday mornings, we have been seeking to discover the message that God has put here for us in the letter Paul wrote to the Galatians. And last Sunday, we turned to the epistle to the Galatians at both services, and I was suggesting we would be doing this through these coming weeks until we conclude our study of it. Last Sunday evening in chapter five in verses 16 to 23, we thought together about the inner conflict which takes place in the life of every single believer between the sinful nature, which is still present in us all, and the Holy Spirit, who Paul assures us is also present in every believer.

And these two powerful forces war with each other in the life of every true Christian. Paul summarizes that in verse 17 and says for the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other. Now Paul gives to us a fairly substantial description both of the effects of the sinful nature that is in us at work in our lives and of the effects of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives. The sinful nature produces this dreadful catalog in verses 19 to 21 which he calls the acts of the sinful nature.

They are obvious, that is they are glaring, they stand out in people's lives like sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage and so on. This dreadful collection of effects in people's lives and behavior and character of the sinful nature dominating them. And then he turns to tell us that the Holy Spirit opposes this crop the sinful nature produces by producing in the believer the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And it is to this that I want us to turn especially this morning in Galatians five from verse 22. All of it began of course as you may remember if you were with us in our earlier studies with Paul's ringing statement about Christian freedom.

Both in chapter five verse one and repeated in verse 13, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free, he says. And again in verse 13, you my brothers were called to be free. And he glories in the liberty that Christ has brought to us, liberty from the curse of the law as our accuser, liberty from the law as a way of salvation which God never meant it to be. And he says we have this glorious liberty in Christ, but then he adds the warning, do not use your freedom to indulge your sinful nature, verse 13.

And if you ask Paul, how can I avoid this danger? How can I avoid the danger of allowing my liberty in Christ to become an excuse for license and libertarianism in the way I live? His answer would be in verse 16, live by the spirit, keep in step with the spirit, and you will discover God producing in your life what he calls the fruit of the spirit. Now I want to point out four things about the fruit of the Holy Spirit which he produces in our lives to combat the works of the sinful nature and more important still perhaps to transform us into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

This is the evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in the life of the Christian believer. And Paul has certain obvious things that he's saying to us about it. Let me put the first one to you in this way. The fruit of the Holy Spirit that Paul here describes to us is comprehensive in its nature. Now perhaps I could best explain what I mean by that by saying this to you. When you have in this country an insurance policy for your car, there are two kinds of insurance policy you can take out. You can either take out a restricted policy that covers only fire and theft.

Or you can take out another kind of policy which covers every possible eventuality. It's called a comprehensive policy. Now translated into these terms the apostle is using, the fruit of the Holy Spirit is comprehensive in its nature. That is it covers everything. It touches every area of life. That is it is not confined to certain things we might think of as being spiritual areas of life. There is no part of our life that is untouched by the fruit of the Holy Spirit. In passing last Sunday evening, I said that these nine fruits of the Holy Spirit might well be divided into three groups of three.

The first of them referring to our relationship with God, the second our relationship with one another, and the third in relationship to ourselves. And you will notice that this coverage of life in a Godward, manward and inward direction is indeed comprehensive. Love and joy and peace for example are not just ordinary emotions of natural people. Love in the fruit of the spirit is primarily love to God. That is what Christian love in its strictly biblical character is when it's seen in the life of a man or woman. It is primarily love to him. Secondly, the joy of which Paul speaks is not just human happiness.

It is a joy in God indeed that probably is one of the most distinguishing hallmarks of the Christian. Where do you find your joy? In what do you discover yourself rejoicing day by day? Well, Paul tells us the fruit of the Holy Spirit is in a joy which nothing in the world can ultimately touch because it is joy in God who never changes. And so you find the apostle saying to his Christian friends, rejoice in the Lord, and again I say rejoice. And when he speaks about peace, he is speaking about a peace with God which we have through our Lord Jesus Christ, not just an absence of trouble, but peace that is part of our essential relationship with God.

We are no longer hostile to him. We are no longer alienated from him. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the Godward aspect of the fruit of the Spirit. And you can see very easily that patience, that long suffering, that characterized the Lord Jesus Christ in his relationship with other people. That is a matter of our manward living as is kindness and goodness which is the practice of generosity. And faithfulness and gentleness and self-control are by and large inward qualities. Faithfulness something that is essentially trustworthiness, a quality of integrity of life.

Gentleness are what the Bible often calls meekness, self-control. These largely relate to ourselves and to our inward life. And all together you can see this comprehensive balance Christian godliness and Christ likeness covers every area of life. And we are to cultivate all of them. Now this is where of course the fruit of the Holy Spirit is distinct from the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are seen some in some people's lives and some in others. And we are specifically told that we will not all have them all. We may have some, we may have others, but we will not any of us have all of them.

But the fruit of the Holy Spirit is general in its character. It belongs to every believer. And what God is intent in doing is not creating a life that is satisfactory in its relation to God, but atrocious in its relationship with other people. But a life which has a balanced, comprehensive, biblical, godliness. That's the first thing then. And the second is this. The fruit of the Holy Spirit is not only comprehensive in its nature. It is supernatural in its origin. Notice the three words that come after fruit. The fruit of the spirit. Now it's really important for us to grasp that this remarkable list of qualities that Paul sets before us in verses 22 and 23 are not just a description of the kind of things you naturally find in nice people.

This is a harvest which the Holy Spirit alone can produce in people he indwells and fills. I can demonstrate that to you very simply from what we've just been saying. You take these first three fruits of the spirit which refer to our relationship with God. And if you think of it, it is totally unnatural for anybody to love God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength. That is not part of the natural bent of your life. There are all manner of other things that we love by nature. We do not naturally love God.

Indeed scripture tells us by nature we are alienated from him. And that's why most people in practice have dismissed God from their lives because it is not natural to love him. And when someone comes to me and acknowledges that they have begun to discover in their life and character a love for God and for Jesus Christ beginning to dominate their affections. I know there has been a work of grace there. It's supernatural in its origin. It is not natural for us to delight in God. It's an extraordinary thing for the unbeliever to find someone coming to Holy Scripture and searching it that they may know more of God because they delight in him.

But when the Holy Spirit begins to work in such a life, you discover that the things they once delighted in have disappeared to the margins of their lives and been replaced by solid joys and lasting treasure which only Zion's children know. These things are a real test you see of whether there has been a supernatural work of grace or whether we have just gone along with the Christian way of things. The same is true of peace with God. We are by nature alienated from him. Now that truth ought to affect us in two ways that the fruit of the Holy Spirit is supernatural in its origin.

It ought to produce in us first of all a genuine humility. As we recognize that there is no good thing in my life, character or behavior which is not the direct result of the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit within me. Now that's why humility is the basic Christian character. It is because we know as the hymn has taught us to sing that every virtue we possess and every victory won and every thought of holiness are his alone. So the only good things in your life as a believer and in mind this morning are what the Holy Spirit has produced.

And that ought to produce a genuine not an affected but a genuine Christian humility. But I tell you the other thing it ought to produce. It ought to produce a solid Christian hope for the simple reason that if God the Holy Spirit is able to come and indwell me and to produce this kind of character in me, then there is a glorious ground for hope. I am no longer merely the victim of my circumstances or my past or my temperament or my genes or whatever. God the Holy Spirit is able to bring out of such a life as mine patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

And no man or woman in Christ in whom the Holy Spirit truly dwells need ever despair therefore. We have the most glorious ground of solid hope that the beauty of Jesus can be seen in us. That's the second thing then. The fruit of the spirit is supernatural in its origin. And the third thing is this. The fruit of the spirit is gradual in its development. I can deal with that very briefly. It's very obvious, isn't it? But it's very important. The very process by which fruit appears teaches us that the production of this kind of character is not the work of a day.

It is not the result of some kind of mechanical pressing of a button. It takes time. You will remember that of the grain harvest Jesus said it is first the ear first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. And it is the same with fruit. And what applies in the world of nature applies in the world of grace. We therefore need to be patient waiting for God to produce in our own lives and in the lives of others. The evidence is of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. So do you see what these truths press upon us by way of application?

We need humility because this work is a work of God and not ours. We need hope because God is able to do what none other can do in the lives of his children. We also need patience, patience with ourselves and patience with other people. So easy for us to become impatient where we do not see these signs speedily. But the fruit takes time to mature. I'm sure I must have told you of how Charles Simeon of Cambridge once went to visit the family of Henry Venn, great Church of England minister who lived in the suitably named village of Yelling.

And he took his family out into the garden to meet Simeon. And Simeon was a rather raw youth at the time, rather gosh and difficult and not the easiest person to get along with. They thought perhaps rather highly self-opinionated. And after he had gone, his family said to Henry Venn, what an extraordinary man he is to be a Christian. You would have expected so much more from him than this. And about to be a minister as well, they said. And Henry Venn called his children and said, come over here. And he took them to the wall of his home where there were peaches growing up.

That shows you it was in England and not in Scotland. There were peaches growing up in the wall in the summer. But it was not yet time for them to be ripe and ready and he plucked one of them down green and hard and unyielding, sour a little to the taste. And he said, what's wrong with it? Well, sir, they said, that's how children address their fathers in these days. Shows you how long ago it was. Sir, they said, it needs time to ripen and to mature. And the sun shining upon it will do that if you had just left it.

And the same is true for ourselves. The fruit of the spirit is gradual in its development. Here's the last thing. The fruit of the spirit is conditioned in its growth. That's Paul's point in verses 24 and 25 when he has given us this list and said against such things there is no law. I think the reason that there is no law against these fruits of the spirit is that what God is doing as by his Holy Spirit he produces this fruit is etching the law of God into the hearts of his people. But he then says in verse 24 and 25 there are conditions for its growth.

And this is really a balanced to the idea that the fruit of the spirit is all God's work and supernatural. To balance that Paul adds that we must have the right attitude not only to the Holy Spirit who is producing this fruit within us, but to the sinful nature which is opposing that work within us. And we found last Sunday evening that that sinful nature is present still in every believer and will be until we die. But we need to have the right attitude to both the sinful nature and to the Holy Spirit, to the sinful nature, he tells us in verse 24.

We must have an attitude that is both ruthless and radical, refusing to nourish it or feed it or encourage it. We must rather mortify it and starve it into weakness, deny it or as Paul says crucify it. Those of us who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Now I think what he is basically referring to is that initial work of grace when we repented of our sin and turned from it and radically refused it to embrace Christ. But we continue to do that day by day. My dear friends, there is something of great importance here.

Our forefathers thought far more than we do about the mortifying of sin within our own lives. And instead of mortifying it, we can so often encourage it, feed it, help it to grow by our attitude and approach to sin. Our repentance needs to be a daily repentance. And day by day we need to mortify, crucify sin. This is what Jesus was meaning when he said, if you're going to come after me, take up the cross daily and follow me. It is that radical attitude to sin and to the sinful nature which is essential. To the Holy Spirit, we must be gladly obedient, says Paul.

If we live by the spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit. That is with what he teaches in scripture, yielding ourselves to his promptings and pleadings in our lives. And as we mortify the flesh and keep in step with the spirit, these are the two conditions of healthy spiritual growth of the fruit of the spirit. I think they are a little like the horticultural conditions of weeding and feeding. When I was in New Mills in the early days of my time there, one of my neighbors, an elderly man of 80, used to come up from his house three down the road to tell me just how I could transform the wilderness into a garden.

And he had two rules, weeding and feeding, he said. That's the key, weeding and feeding. And as he saw me working at what I called a rose bed, he used to say, weeding and feeding. If you neglect either of them, you'll have trouble, weeding and feeding. Now there are some things we need radically to rip up out of the soil of our lives in order that the fruit of the spirit may grow. There are some areas where we need to concentrate on feeding what God is planting and hovering over to encourage and grow. And if you neglect either of them, you most certainly will be in trouble.

Weeding and feeding. And in the end of the day by God's grace and by his Holy Spirit's ministry, these things which are really the lineaments of the character of Jesus in whom do you see love, joy, peace more than in Christ. Patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This is Jesus, the great fulfiller of the law dwelling in the life of the believer. And God is able to make it true for the least likely of us. Let us pray together. Father, we bless you for your infinite wisdom and grace, for the work of your Holy Spirit to change us into the image of your son.

Help us, we pray that we may see such a crop in our own lives for your greater glory. We ask it for his name's sake. Amen.

Mark Daniels: You're listening to hear the word of God with the Reverend Eric Alexander, a minister in the Church of Scotland for over 50 years. To access more Bible teaching from Reverend Alexander, visit hear the word of God.org where your generous contribution will help us sustain and grow this ministry. That's hear the word of God.org You could choose instead to mail a check to this address, 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17601 or call 1 800 488 1888. This program is a presentation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. I'm Mark Daniels. Thank you for listening. Please join us again next time for Eric Alexander and hear the word of God.