Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness, and if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells within you, he's going to give life to your bodies.

Greg: Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pas- 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 in as JP gives part two of Freedom by the Spirit.

JP Jones: Because part of this call is to freedom. That's what he says 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 Murrieta out in uh 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'm 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 seven and and the first part of eight 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 neighbor as you love yourself. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? Cuz remember what Jesus said? The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. So 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 can 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 um 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 Dolores 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 five 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. But I'm 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 five, it says we are to love one another. We love our neighbors. We love ourselves. We're 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 And 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'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 because 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 the 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. 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.

Isn't that good? And we already have the Holy Spirit, you see? It's a package deal. The moment we cross the line and put our faith in Jesus Christ, that very moment we receive the Holy Spirit into our lives. Ephesians 1:13 and 14 says, you also after listening to the message of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who's given to us as a pledge of our inheritance. And 1 Corinthians 3:16 says that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit whom we have from God.

And Romans 8 says if anyone doesn't have the spirit of Christ, he doesn't belong to Christ. And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness, and if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells within you, he's going to give life to your bodies. And John chapter three, Jesus said, you must be born again. That which is flesh is flesh, and that which is spirit is spirit. If you're born of the spirit, you'll enter into the kingdom of heaven. See, when we cross the line, believe in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes into our lives.

We are set free in our position and status before God. And what Paul is telling us in Galatians chapter five is that Holy Spirit who lives within us will empower us to live freely, will enable us to love our neighbor, will lead us to serve one another in love and will give us the ability to resist the desires of the sinful nature. But I say live by the Spirit, and you'll not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. Live by the Spirit. It's the Greek term means walk. That's literally what it means. And it's Paul uses a lot in his letters to describe the Christian lifestyle.

And so the NIV translators, rather than saying walk by the Spirit, have said live by the Spirit. They could have said conduct yourself by the Spirit. They could have said live a lifestyle dominated by the Spirit. Live by the Spirit. You see, living by the Spirit is the means to experience everything that is ours in Jesus Christ. And in this context, it's about this birthright, this freedom, to living in the freedom that is ours. And the issue, the real issue is control. It always comes in it. Who's going to be in control? If I am controlling my own life, well then I'm going to indulge my sinful nature.

That's just what I'm going to do cuz I'm prone to be deceived just like you are, and prone to be selfish just like you are. But if I will surrender the control of my life and ask God to fill me with the Holy Spirit and live every day in the freedom and power and direction of the Holy Spirit, he will set me free. He will enable me not to gratify the desires of my sinful nature. That word gratify is from the verb The Greek verb means to begin a work and then bring it to its logical conclusion, or it means to complete something that you started, to finish it.

The New American Standard translates it as carry it out. But I say live by the Spirit and you'll not carry out the desire of the flesh. You won't finish the desire of the flesh. You won't bring it to its end. See, it doesn't say I say live by the Spirit and you won't have the desire of the flesh. As long as we're in these bodies, we are going to have all kinds of fleshly, selfish inclinations, all kinds of feelings. We're prone to having all kinds of feelings. I mean, if the if the passage says I say live by the Spirit and you won't have the desires of the flesh, I mean, I'd need to resign my job right now cuz I don't qualify.

But neither do you. I mean, think of the most righteous, holy person you've ever heard of. They had the desires of the flesh. Yeah, but they didn't live like it. You know why? They walked by the Spirit, so they didn't carry it out. That's what the Holy Spirit does. He he is like a divine governor stopping us from following through on some of those wacky thoughts and feelings that we have at times. But we have to surrender to him and ask him to take control of our lives. And when we do, he empowers us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves and to serve one another in love rather than biting and devouring one another.

If you are in any way struggling, which just from being a human being you will be with someone interpersonally, and you want to kind of act on those negative desires through gossip or slander or criticism or judgment, surrender to the Holy Spirit instead. Ask for the Holy Spirit to produce in you the freedom that he's come to give us. I say walk by the Spirit, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. You see, this is our Magna Carta. It's our freedom in Christ. We've been set free through Jesus Christ.

But there is a struggle because of our flesh. And if we misuse our freedom and misunderstand our freedom, we'll indulge our selfish desires, and we haven't been called to do that. We've been called to love one another. We've been called to serve one another cuz love fulfills the law of Christ. So how do I do it? Whether it's with my spouse or my kids or my neighbor or my coworker or my parents or someone in church. How do I actually love them and serve them? I got to live by the Spirit. And when I live by the Spirit, he produces all that freedom within me.

And I live out who I really am in Christ, a person who's free. See, this passage Paul is talking about how we live the Christian life. We've been called to freedom and we're to live free. And the way we live free is by living in the power of the Holy Spirit.

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 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. You know, in Galatians five, the Apostle Paul is telling us how to live free in Jesus Christ. We live free because our spiritual position is that we've been set free. It was for freedom that Christ set us free. Every believer has been set free in Jesus Christ. But the only way we can live out that freedom is through the power of the Holy Spirit. And that life lived out in the power of the Holy Spirit is always lived in the context of a spiritual struggle because of the indwelling sin in every believer, which is known as the flesh.

The flesh sets its desire against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh. These are in opposition to one another that we may not do the things that we please. That's what Galatians 5:17 and 18 says. The only way to freedom is to yield to the spirit and walk by the spirit, and then the Holy Spirit produces freedom within us. Picture in your mind uh uh a stick figure of a person under two influences, one coming on the right side and one coming on the left side. On the one side, there's God. On the other side, there's Satan.

And then God makes his appeal through his word, and Satan makes his appeal through the world. God makes his appeal through his word, which is activated by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Satan makes his appeal through the world which is activated through the flesh. So here the flesh and the spirit are in opposition. Well, which one wins out? And this is where the will comes in. Whatever we choose is what will win out. We can either choose the spirit and the word pleasing God, or we can choose the flesh and the world following Satan. Every person lives in that spiritual dynamic.

There is a spiritual battle within us, and freedom has been purchased for us by Jesus Christ, but can only be lived and realized as we walk by the Spirit. So Galatians 5:16 says, I say live by the Spirit and you'll not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. That comes in a context following a call to freedom where in verse 13 Paul says, you were called to freedom, but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature or to carry out the desires of your flesh. You see, our freedom wrongly used will place us right back under bondage to our flesh.

Our freedom properly applied will lead us to walk by the Spirit. It is a choice. I face that choice every day. You face that choice every day. We have to choose to surrender to the Holy Spirit. We have to choose to obey the Holy Spirit. We have to choose to allow the spirit to strengthen us with the word of God. We have to choose to walk in step with the spirit. That's why Paul says in Galatians 5:25, since we live by the spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit. We have spiritual life through the Holy Spirit.

We have spiritual life because Jesus died and rose again from the dead and we put our faith in Jesus. We have the Holy Spirit, but we have to keep in step with the spirit. We have to walk in the steps of the Holy Spirit. When my kids were little and we would go to the beach, they would try to walk in my steps in the sand. My natural steps would be very wide to each of my kids, and they'd try to jump from one footprint to the next. We need to walk in the very footprints of the Holy Spirit.

We need to obey the spirit's leading and guiding as he speaks to us through the word, as he guides us in our thoughts, as he empowers us to bear the spiritual fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Freedom is the birthright of every Christian, but freedom has to be fought for. We fight for our freedom when we yield to the Holy Spirit. Would you do that right now? Lord Jesus, thank you that you died for my sins and rose again from the dead. Thank you that you set me free. Help me live a free life by empowering me with the Holy Spirit.

Help me walk in the Spirit. May I live in life with the Spirit and follow in his steps. And I pray for that 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.