Liberty, Not License

Galatians by H.A. Ironside

Lecture 14

Galatians 5:16-26

This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another. (Gal 5:16-26) The present section of this epistle brings before us the truth, in a very marked way, of the two natures in the believer. It is important to remember that when God saves us He does not destroy the carnal nature which we received at our natural birth. The new birth does not imply the elimination of that old carnal nature, neither does it imply a change in it, but rather the impartation of an absolutely new nature born of the Holy Spirit of God, and these two natures abide side by side in the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

This explains the conflict that many of us have known since we have been converted. In fact, I need not have said, "many of us," for all converted people know at one time or another something of that conflict between the flesh and the Spirit. Jesus said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh" that is, the old nature "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" that is the new nature, and these two natures abide side by side until we receive the redemption of the body which will be at the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ, when He will transform this body of our humiliation and make it like unto the body of His glory. Then we will be delivered forever from all inward tendency to sin. Until then we have to learn, and sometimes by very painful experiences, that the carnal nature, that old nature, "is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom. 8:7).

That old nature is so corrupt, so vile, that it can never be sanctified, and the new nature is so pure, so holy, that it does not need to be sanctified. So there is no mention in Scripture of the sanctification of the old nature. What is it then that needs to be sanctified? It is the man himself, and he is sanctified as he learns to walk in accordance with the dictates of the new nature. He is directed by the Holy Spirit of God, for the believer is not only born of the Spirit but indwelt by the Spirit.

We are not to confound new birth by the Spirit with the reception of the Spirit. New birth is the operation of the Spirit of God. He it is who produces the new birth through the Word. We receive the Word in faith, we believe the Word, and the Spirit of God through the Word brings about new birth. The apostle James says, "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth" (James 1:18). The apostle Peter says, "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you" (1 Peter 1:23, 25). And when I believe that Word I am born again; that is an inward change. It is the impartation of a new life; it is eternal life. But there is something more than that. It was always true in all dispensations, from Adam down to the day of Pentecost, that wherever people believed God's Word they were born again, but the Holy Spirit Himself as a divine Person had not then come to dwell within them. Now since Pentecost, upon believing, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of God. He creates the new nature, and then comes to indwell the one who is thus born again, and as the believer learns to recognize the fact that the Spirit of God dwells within him, and as he turns everything over to His control, he finds deliverance from the power of inbred sin.

Notice how the apostle puts it here: "This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust [or, the desire] of the flesh." It is so easy to fulfill the desire of the flesh. We must not link with that word lust the idea that it always means things base and unclean. The word itself simply means "desire," and whatever the desire of the flesh is, it is always hateful to God. Here may be one who desires all kinds of carnal indulgences, and we have no difficulty in realizing the vileness of that, but here is another who desires worldly fame, the praise and adulation of his fellows, and that is also the lust of the flesh, or mind, and is as obnoxious to God as the other. Any kind of a carnal or fleshly desire is a lust, and if we would be delivered from walking according to these selfish lusts we must walk in the Spirit.

It is one thing to have the Spirit indwelling us and quite another to walk in the Spirit. To walk in the Spirit implies that the Holy Spirit is controlling us, and we can walk in the Spirit only as our lives are truly surrendered to Christ. Somebody says, "Well, then, I understand you mean to tell us that all believers possess the Holy Spirit, but that many of us have never received the second blessing, and are not filled with the Spirit." I do not find the term, "second blessing," in Scripture, though I admit that in the lives of many Christians there is an experience that answers to what people call "the second blessing." Many Christians have lived for years on a rather low, somewhat carnal, worldly plane. They love the Lord, they love His Word, they love to attend the ordinances of His house, they enjoy Christian fellowship, and seek to walk as upright men and women through this world, but they have never truly yielded themselves and all their ransomed powers wholly to the Lord. There is something they are keeping back, some controversy with God, and as long as this continues there will always be conflict and defeat, but when one comes to the place where he heeds the Word, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present [that you surrender, hand over] your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service" (Rom. 12:1); when one makes that surrender there is indeed in the life what answers to a kind of second blessing; that is, the Spirit of God is now free to take possession of that believer, and operate through him and use him for the glory of God in a way He could not do as long as that man or woman was not wholly surrendered to the Lord. We speak a great deal about "full surrender," and yet, I am afraid, some of us use the term in a very careless way. It is of no use to speak of being fully surrendered to God if I am still seeking my own interest. If I am self-centered, if I am hurt because people do not praise me, or if I am lifted up because they do, then the Spirit of God does not have His way with me. If Christ Himself is not the one object before my soul, if I cannot say, "For me to live is Christ," if my great concern is not that Christ should be magnified in me whether by life or by death, then I am not yet wholly surrendered to Him. If I cannot say from the heart, "Not my will, but Thine," there is no use in talking about being surrendered to Christ. The surrendered believer is no longer seeking his own but the things which belong to Christ Jesus. That is the man who "walks in the Spirit." "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh."

The conflict is shown in Gal 5:17: "For the flesh lusteth [or desireth] against the Spirit, and the Spirit against [or contrary to] the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other." It is not exactly, "So that ye cannot do the things that ye would," for God has made provision that we might do the things that we would, but it should be rendered, "So that ye may not do the things that ye would." Here is conflict in the believer's breast. The flesh desires one thing, the Spirit another, and as long as there is not a full surrender to the will of God these two are in constant warfare, and therefore the believer may not do the things that he would. I rise in the morning and say, "Today I will not allow that tongue of mine to say one unkind thing, one un-Christlike word." But some unexpected circumstances arise, and almost before I know it I have said something for which I could bite my tongue. The thing I never meant to do I did. And, on the other hand, things I meant to do I did not do. What does that tell me? There is conflict. The Spirit of God has not His complete right of way in my heart and life, and because of this conflict I may not do the things that I would. I am hindered, and my life is not a life of full surrender as God intended it to be. How many of us know this experimentally.

Oh, the defeated lives, the disappointed lives, even of people who are real Christians, who know the blessedness of being saved by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and who long to glorify God, and yet are constantly defeated. Why? Because the Spirit of God does not have His supreme place in their lives.

"But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law." We are not to think that the way of deliverance is by law-keeping. I may say, "From now on I mean to be very careful, I will obey God's law in everything.

That surely will result in my practical sanctification." But no, I am disappointed again. I will find that the will to do good is present with me, but how to perform it is another thing, and so I have to learn that my sanctification is no more through the law than my justification. What then? He tells us, "If ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law." If you yield to the Spirit of God, if He has the control of your life, if you are led by Him, then the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. And in order that we may not misunderstand, he brings before us the lusts of the flesh, that we may be able to drag these things out into the light, that we may see them in all their ugliness, so that if any of them have any place in our hearts and lives we may judge them in the presence of God. We often run across people today who say that they do not believe in the depravity of human life, but these are the things that come from the natural man; and even the believer, if he is not careful, if he is not walking with God as led by the Spirit, may fall into some of them.

"Now the works of the flesh are manifest [they are evident], which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness." Maybe some of you think or say, "I wish he would not use those words; I do not like them; they are nasty words." My dear friends, let me remind you, there is nothing the matter with the words; it is the sins that are expressed in these words that are so nasty. Many people who do not like the words are living in the sins, and God drags things out into the light and calls sin by name. There are people living in the sin of adultery who do not like to hear their wickedness called by name. Take the words of the Lord Jesus, "Whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery" (Matt. 5:32).

There are those who are committing adultery according to that passage, and others who are contemplating it. If you have allowed yourself any unholy love, permitting yourself any unholy familiarity with one with whom you have no right to seek to enter the married relationship, you yourself are guilty in God's sight of the sin that is mentioned here. "Fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness"; that is, vile, filthy thoughts indulged in. You cannot hinder evil thoughts coming into your mind, but you can help indulging in them.

Lasciviousness is indulging in thoughts that are unclean and vile and unholy. People sometimes come to me in great distress and say, "Evil thoughts come to me, even when I am praying, and I wonder sometimes whether I am really converted or not." That is the flesh manifesting itself. These things may come to you, but do you indulge in them? A Welshman said, "I cannot help it if a bird alights on top of my head, but I can help it if he builds his nest in my hair," and so you may not be able to help it if evil thoughts come surging into your mind, but you can help indulging in those thoughts.

Idolatry, putting anything in the place of the true and living God. Witchcraft. "Oh," you say, "that is outmoded. They used to burn witches." But what is witchcraft? It is a word that implies "having to do with the dead," and I think that Chicago has a good many witches in it. Often while passing along the street I see such signs as "Spiritualist medium," or something like that, people pretending to have traffic with the dead. That is witchcraft, and it is an abomination in the sight of God. Hatred. This is a sin which we all have to guard against. Scripture says, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer" (1 John 3:15).

Hatred comes from the old nature. Variance, quarrelsomeness. There are many of us who would shrink from those first sins, but we are not very easy to get along with, we are dreadfully touchy, and this is as truly an evidence of the old nature, as those other "works of the flesh." Emulations, a constant desire to excel other people, to get the admiration of others.

Here is a preacher who has some little gift, and he is upset because some other preacher has greater recognition. Here is one who sings a little, and someone else who also sings excites more admiration, and there is trouble about it. Here is a Sunday school teacher, and some other teacher seems to be preferred before her, and she is in a frenzy and almost ready to quit her work. Trace these things back to their source and you will find they all come from the flesh, and therefore they should be judged in the sight of God.

And then, wrath. That is anger. There is an anger that is holy, but that wrath to which you and I usually give way is very unholy. The only holy anger is anger with sin. "Be ye angry, and sin not" (Eph. 4:26).

The old Puritan said, "I am determined so to be angry as not to sin, therefore to be angry at nothing but sin." And then strife, resulting in "seditions." The two words are intimately linked together. All these things are sinful. Heresies, a school of opinion set up opposed to the truth of God. Envyings. Scripture says, "Be content with such things as ye have" (Heb. 13:5). Someone has a better house than I have, someone else has a better car than mine, and I envy him. The Arab said, "Once I felt bad and I complained because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet." There is not one of us but has far more than he deserves. Why should we envy anyone else? Suppose some people have magnificent mansions and I have only a hut.

A tent or a cottage, why should I care?
They're building a palace for me over there!

"Be content," says the Spirit of God, "with such things as ye have." When you reach that place life will be very much happier for you.

Murders. Think of putting murder with such sins as emulations and envyings! Many a murder has resulted from these very sins, and, you know, murder does not consist in sticking a knife into a man or blowing his brains out with a revolver. You can murder a man by your unkindness. I have known many a person who died of a broken heart because of the unkindness of those from whom they had a right to expect something different. God give us to manifest so much of the love of Christ that we will be a blessing to people instead of a curse to them. Then drunkenness. Surely I do not need to speak of this to Christians. This too is a work of the flesh. Then revelings. The world calls it "having a good time" in a carnal way. "And such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Here he uses the present continuous tense: "That they that are in the habit of doing such things, they whose lives are characterized by such things." If people are characterized by these things, they prove that they are not Christians at all. Real Christians may fall into them, but they are miserable and wretched until they confess them, but unsaved men revel in them and go on without judging them. These things come from the flesh. Now we have the opposite, the fruit of the Spirit. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." You notice the word here is, fruit, for we do not read in the Bible of the "fruits" of the Spirit, but of the "fruit." This ninefold fruit springs from the new nature as one is actuated by the Holy Spirit of God. Love, the very essence of the divine nature. Joy, Scripture says, "The joy of the Lord is your strength" (Neh. 8:10). Peace, that is more than happiness, that is a deep-toned gladness that is unruffled and untroubled by all the trials of earth. Longsuffering, this leads you to endure uncomplainingly. Gentleness, some of us are so gruff and so rough, but the Christian should cultivate the meekness, the gentleness of Christ. Faith, in the sense of confidence in God. Meekness. We are not meek by nature; the natural man is always pushing himself forward. The spiritual man says, "Never mind me, recognize others; I am willing to remain in the background." Wherever you find this pushing spirit you may know that one is still walking in the flesh. When you find the desire to give godly recognition to others you will find one walking in the Spirit. And then, temperance is just "self-control," the whole body held under in subjection to the Spirit of God. "Against such there is no law." You do not need law to control a man thus walking in the Spirit.

"And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts." It does not say, "They that are Christ's [should] crucify the flesh." They have done so when they put their trust in the Lord Jesus.

They trusted in the One crucified on their behalf, and therefore can say, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live" (Gal. 2:20). It is a settled thing. If you have crucified the flesh, if you have recognized the fact that Christ's crucifixion is yours, then do not live in that to which you have died. "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." If we have this new life, if linked up now with our risen Christ, then let Him control our ways, let us be yielded to Him, let us walk in the Spirit, let us not be desirous of fame or glory, let us not seek anything that would lead to empty boasting, provoking one another, saying and doing things that may pain others needlessly, or envying one another.

Some of you may say, "That is a tremendously high standard, and I am afraid I can never attain to it." No, and I can never attain to it in my own strength, but if you and I are yielded to the Holy Spirit of God and allow Him to make these things real in our lives, then we will indeed attain to the ideal set before us here, but it will not be ourselves, it will be Christ living in us manifesting His life, His holy life, in and through the members of our body. God give us to know the reality of it!