Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: The call of God is God working out in history his sovereign plan. God has a call on people's lives, and when God calls people, they hear that call and they're compelled to respond.

Greg: Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled Galatians. Let's listen as JP gives us part one of freedom by the Spirit.

JP Jones: If you have your Bibles, would you open to Galatians chapter 5? We're going to continue our study there. We've been in this book the last several weeks. It's this manifesto of our freedom in Jesus Christ, and we're going to look this week and next week at a passage that's talking about our victory by means of the Spirit. How it is the Holy Spirit who empowers us to live out this free life that has been given to us through Jesus Christ. Let's read the Galatians 5 verse 13 to chapter 6 verse 2. You, my brothers, were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature.

Rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command, love your neighbor as yourself. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. The sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit to what is contrary to the sinful nature. They're in conflict with each other so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious, sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like. And I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things, there's no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. This is a great passage. It it's a passage that proclaims once again our freedom in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to live out that freedom and the call that freedom has upon us is to love one another and to serve one another. We're going to look at this this morning and next week because this is a place where the apostle Paul in the book of Galatians is moving towards applying what he's been teaching.

You see the first four and half chapters of Galatians is all about this truth of our freedom in Christ. And we've talked about this that the truest thing about us is what? What God says is true. God says we've been set free. The the emancipation proclamation has been given. Jesus Christ died on the cross. And the atonement of Jesus Christ, the blood of Jesus Christ covers all of our sins. The Bible says, where sin did abound, grace did much more abound. We are free in Christ if we've crossed the line and embraced Jesus as our savior and Lord.

But as we talked about when we discussed the historical document of the emancipation proclamation, in actuality, no one was truly experienced that freedom until the 13th Amendment because the Civil War was taking place, and President Lincoln announced this freedom. But those slaves under the Confederate rule continued to be in slavery until the Civil War was ended, the 13th Amendment was signed, and slavery was abolished. Our freedom has been established by virtue of Christ's death and resurrection. Heaven is going to be our 13th Amendment. That's when we're going to be totally free and experience the fullness of that.

But right now, it's the Civil War. It's a spiritual battle every day to claim and live out what is ours in Christ. And there's a struggle, and it's a struggle with the flesh. The passage here in the NIV says the sin nature, the old nature. It's the word sark in the Greek New Testament. And it means the old nature, the old disposition. It's literally the flesh. It's that part of our humanity that lives selfishly and independently from God. It's that part of our humanity that is attracted to and propelled to sin. And we're told in this passage that there is a spiritual conflict between the spirit and the flesh.

But the reality is we've been set free in Christ and can walk in the Spirit and resist the flesh. In fact, Paul begins this passage by telling us our call. He says verse 13, you, my brothers, were called to be free. The call of God is God working out in history his sovereign plan. God has a call on people's lives, and when God calls people, they hear that call and they're compelled to respond. It's the grace of God moving people to cross the line. It 's the grace of God moving people to experience God's blessing.

It's the grace of God moving people to step into the fullness of what God has for them. Now we don't always see it because we tend to live life, you know, with kind of spiritual blinders on. When I was 16 years old, my brother shared the four spiritual laws with me. I for the first time came to understand what it meant to know God personally, and I prayed and asked Jesus Christ to come into my life. That's when I became a Christian. From my vantage point at the time, it looked like just some conversations I was having with my brother.

Now I'm able to look back in hindsight and realize God was sovereignly orchestrating all kinds of things in my life to bring me to become one of his followers. God had a call on me. And God has a call on you. In fact, maybe this morning you being here at this service is part of God's call to bring you to cross the line and receive Jesus as your Lord and savior and to be set free. Because part of this call is to freedom. That's what he says in in verse 13, you, my brothers, were called to be free.

That's our birthright as Christians. It 's our spiritual legacy. It's the truest thing about us. Jesus Christ has set us free. We've been called to be free. Friday and Saturday I was at Marietta out in near Temecula speaking at a men's retreat for Saddleback Church. Pastor Greg and I were out there, had a great time. After one of the sessions speaking to their men, guy came up to was asking me some questions about my talk, and I couldn't help but notice he had this really strong Scottish brogue. And so he's asking me some questions about what I just spoken on.

And the whole time I'm thinking about his Scottish brogue because I just wanted to ask him a question because as soon as he finished dialoging with me, I said, can I ask you a question? He said, yeah. I go, I said, will you say as loud as you can, you can take our lives, but you can't take our freedom. And so he did. He yelled it out, and everybody turned around and looked at us. He's he's talking to me about some deep issue, and I'm just thinking about William Wallace and Braveheart, you know? That's that's a great speech there that William Wallace gives.

And one of the things that he says as he's challenging the men of Scotland is he says, you're free men. What will you do with your freedom? Well, that has biblical implications. Paul says, you were called to freedom, but do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh. But through love, serve one another. If we're followers of Jesus Christ, we've been set free. What are we going to do with our freedom? Because in this passage, the call to be free is followed up with the warning. Do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature.

Rather, serve one another in love. You see there's a lot of ways to mess up the Christian life, but only one way to get it right, keeping our eyes on Jesus Christ and living in the power of the Holy Spirit. Up to this point, Paul has been saying one of the major ways you can get it wrong is through legalism, through trying to be super religious and living by rules and regulations and and living on the basis of what you bring to the equation. All about your good works and your religious conviction and your pious obedience to certain rules.

That legalistic approach ends in death, Paul says. But now he's introducing another way we can mess it up, and that's through license. That's through selfishly indulging our own desires. That's by taking a good thing, which is our freedom in Christ, and saying, well, I can do anything I want now because I'm free. And just kind of act like, hey, I am covered by grace, so, you know, it doesn't matter. I've prayed the sinner's prayer, so I can live any way I want. I'm still going to heaven. Paul says, man, that's just as much a deception as legalism.

It it's like hitting a golf shot, and you're standing at the in the tee box and you're looking down at the flag and you're lining yourself up and you realize you got to hit it straight down the fairway because if you slice it off to the right, you end up in the woods. And if you hook it off to the left, you'll end up in the water trap. Paul says to followers of Jesus Christ, straight down the fairway is living in the freedom that Jesus has given to you and doing that in the power of the Holy Spirit by serving one another in love.

But if you slice it off to the right, you just become a religious legalist, someone who's self-righteous and pious, and it's all about you and not about Christ. If you hook it off to the left, well, then you just become a worldly person who isn't any different than anybody else because you're just indulging your selfish desires. Now freedom is transformation. Freedom is life in Christ. Freedom is living in the power of the Holy Spirit. The call is to be free and to live free. The warning is, don't get caught up in selfish living. Paul says in Romans chapter 7 and and the first part of 8 that there still is within us as believers a sin principle that can lead us to selfish living.

He he says, uh, wretched man that I am, who will set me free from this body of death? I myself with my mind I'm serving the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin. There's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. To be a new person in Christ is not just to have your sins forgiven, it's to live a new life, to be free from sin and death.

That's what Jesus Christ has given to every one of us. It is our birthright, and so we're called to live freely, not getting into the woods of legalism or into the water trap of worldly, selfish, indulgent living. The command is this, serve one another in love. Verse 13, verse 14, the entire law is summed up in a single command, love your neighbor as yourself. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out, you'll be destroyed by each other. Rabbi Hillel, who was one of the famous authorities within the Jewish religion, was being quoted as saying that he could quote the entire law in the Hebrew scriptures while standing on one foot.

And when he was asked to do it, he said, you shall love your neighbors, you love yourself. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? Cuz remember what Jesus said? The greatest commandment is love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. See Hillel was looking at those ethical commands in the Hebrew scriptures that talk about our interpersonal relationships, talk about our relationships with one another. And he says you could take all of them. And it comes down to this, love your neighbors, you love yourself. The apostle Paul says the same thing numerous times in the New Testament.

You see the point is this, we've been set free from selfishness, set free from sin, set free from satanic bondage through the blood of Jesus Christ. That freedom is energized and and empowered in our life when we live in step with the Holy Spirit. And that freedom is not just for, you know, personal peace and prosperity. That freedom is so that we can serve one another in love, serve one another in love. I shared this with the the first service. You know, we recently did a church health evaluation. We've been doing this, uh, since we started our church.

Scott Horn is on our leadership team. He and his wife Delores serve with Church Resource Ministries. And, uh, they did an an analysis. Several of you participated asking questions about the life of our church so that we can see where we're strong, where we're weak, how how we can be the church that God wants us to be. You know, the strongest area for our church right now in its growth, the strongest area is loving relationships. But you know what? You can always grow in love. You can always experience more of God's love. You can always release and express more of God's love.

And what we're told in Galatians chapter 5 is that our freedom in Christ is so that we can serve one another in love. And we better be careful because if we take that freedom for granted or if we selfishly misunderstand that freedom, we will easily indulge our own sinful nature and turn on one another and destroy our fellowship. You know, I've been I've been a professional Christian for my entire, you know, vocational career. I'm paid for being good. You guys are just good for nothing. I like many of you. I I've had occasion to see a lot of Christians have conflicts with one another, a lot of churches, a lot of congregations.

I've seen churches split. And there's always a presenting issue. Most of the time it's over some doctrinal issue. You know, what how we're going to worship or, uh, what we're going to call our church or what we believe about the Holy Spirit or you know, whatever, some some doctrinal thing. But there's always a real issue underneath the presenting issue. It's just like in counseling with people. People come in with some kind of presenting issue, but there's a real issue underneath the presenting issue. You know, you could talk to Scott. This is his expertise. But I I would say in my analysis, most of the time the real issue isn't a doctrinal thing.

It's an interpersonal thing, jealousy, pride, selfishness, an inability to get along in Christ's love. And we're warned about that. Here in Galatians 5, it says we are to love one another. We love love our neighbors. We love ourselves. We are to serve one another in love. But if we don't do that, be careful. If you bite one another, you're just going to consume each other. The analogy that Paul's using, you know, I love the apostle Paul. He just tells it like it is. He sometimes uses sarcasm. He sometimes uses street language. He says, if you bite at each other, it's like a cannibal.

You're going to eat each other up. There's no room in the body of Christ. There's no room at crossline. There's no room in my life to be a slanderer, a gossip, a critic, a judger. And there's no room for you either. We've been set free from that. Set free. And we're called to love one another. And we just got to stop that wherever it rears its ugly head. We just do because we're really consuming ourselves cuz we're all connected to one another with the body of Christ. We we're just shooting ourselves in the foot when we point the finger at another brother for whatever reason.

We've been called to freedom. What are we going to do with it? What are we going to do with it? Well, we're going to serve one another in love. That's what we're going to do cuz that's what the Bible calls us to. But gosh, it's hard, isn't it? It's a daily struggle. The emancipation proclamation has already been given, but we're in the middle of the Civil War looking forward to the 13th Amendment in heaven. So how can we now in the midst of the battle love each other and truly live free? Well, we have been given the Holy Spirit to be able to do it.

And so the promise is this. This is a promise. Verse 16, so I say, live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. Now you see you got to look at it in the context. In the context, the desires of the sinful nature relate back to what's just been said. What's just been said, be careful. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the sinful nature to just bite and consume each other. So Paul's saying, the means by which we resist that tendency to bite and criticize and gossip and slander and tear apart our brother or sister is through the power of the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit empowers us to live free.

It's like in a chemical equation, and some of you know a whole lot more than I do about this, but if you were putting together a compound and, uh, we had certain chemicals in there, there's a there's a chemical that's an activator. Once you add that, then the whole reaction takes place, right? So until that activator is added to the mix, it's kind of a controllable substance. But once the activator gets in there, it explodes. The Holy Spirit is the activator in our life exploding within us. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Greg: What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just $5. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 233 31 Molten Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653 or give us a call at 949 916 0250. That's 949 916 0250. For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book Facing Goliath.

Please join us every Sunday at 9 or 11:00 a.m. at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 233 31 Molten Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a moment. But before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. In Galatians chapter 5, the apostle Paul tells us about our freedom in Christ. He starts this great chapter off by saying it was for freedom that Christ set us free. The very reason why Jesus Christ died and rose again was to set us free. Jesus set us free from sin. He set us free from satanic bondage, and he set us free from legalistic religion. It was for freedom that Christ set us free. But we are called upon in Galatians 5 to fight for our freedom, to actively pursue God, to obey God, to trust in God and to abide in the resources he has provided so that we can truly live free.

The resources that God has provided in order to live out our freedom is through the indwelling Holy Spirit. You see there is a spiritual struggle within every person's heart. It says in Galatians 5 that the flesh sets itself against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh. These are in opposition to one another so that you may not do the things that you please. On our own, we will yield to our sinful natures, and we will obey the lusts of our flesh. And so it's through the indwelling Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit that we're set free from the lusts of the flesh.

It's through the power of the Holy Spirit that we can bear fruit like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Galatians 5:16 says, so I say, live by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. When we live by the spirit, it means we are to walk by the spirit. In fact, the Greek word in this passage is the word peripateo. It means to walk about or to conduct one's life. It is to be the very lifestyle of the Christian to be empowered by the Holy Spirit. The way we live every day, moment by moment throughout the day is to be as a spirit-filled person led, empowered, directed by the Holy Spirit.

When we do that, it says in Galatians 5:16, we won't gratify the desires of the flesh. To gratify means to carry out. Here the Greek word is teleo. It means to bring something to its end or to its completion. It's it's not saying in Galatians 5:16 that we will not have temptation or a struggle with the flesh. In fact, in many ways when we seek to walk by the spirit, we'll have a greater struggle. But what we have is a resource, a power from the Holy Spirit to not carry out those desires, not bring them to their completion.

We're not under bondage to the flesh. We're not under obligation to obey the flesh. Jesus has set us free from that. He's set us free from sin. He's set us free from satanic bondage. He's set us free from legalistic religion. We can now obey the Holy Spirit and love Jesus and live in the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the very life of Jesus in us and through us. That's the great hope of Galatians 5. That's why it's free. Jesus Christ has set us free. We can live in the very freedom that Christ has come to purchase for us.

But the only way we can do that is through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the spirit-filled life that is the free life. No obedience law-keeping legalism will ever set us free. It is a spiritual trap. It is a religious pseudo-fake approach to Christianity. The only real Christianity that bears fruit and that produces freedom is a life abiding in the spirit of Jesus Christ. That doesn't mean a passive life, and it doesn't mean a disobedient life, far from it. In fact, the most obedient life is a life where every part of us is yielded to the Holy Spirit.

So the Holy Spirit dominates our life and produces the very life of Jesus in us and through us, and that's freedom. When we walk by the spirit, we experience the freedom that Jesus has come to give to each of us. That's what God wants for us as followers of Jesus Christ. He wants to set us free. He has set us free by virtue of his death and resurrection, and he produces that freedom as we yield to the spirit. Would you do that right now? Lord Jesus, I thank you that you died for my sins and rose again from the dead to give me freedom, and I ask you to fill me with the Holy Spirit.

I want to live a spirit-filled life and walk in the freedom that the Holy Spirit produces. And I ask for this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Greg: We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 233 31 Molten Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653 or call us at 949 916 0250. On the internet, you'll find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.