Our scripture reading this morning comes from Galatians chapter 5, beginning at verse 16. Please turn with me in your Bibles. Paul writes, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
And from there, we turn to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, beginning at verse 15. Jesus writes, “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray.
Lord, you have given us such a wealth of understanding, of wisdom, of light into holiness because of your word. Help us to hear your word and receive it. Let it fill us so that we can discern between good fruit and bad fruit and open us to follow you and remain planted, rooted in faith in you, as good trees who will bear good fruit for you now and into the kingdom. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Paul, after having admonished the Galatians and us for our wavering, our vacillating between trusting God’s grace and trusting in works of religion, wrote, “For you are called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”
And calling us to live by faith, encouraging us to live by faith working through love, he now defines what walking by the Spirit in faith and what gratifying the desires of the flesh in sin actually looks like. There are only two kinds of people in the world.
First, there are the children of Adam, the spiritual heirs and descendants of the slave woman Hagar, the children of wrath who follow and obey the prince of the power of the air throughout their entire lives. And second, there are the children of God, the spiritual heirs and descendants of the free woman Sarah who inherit all the promises of God. Elect Israel, those who were chosen and covenanted to be redeemed by the Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, back before the foundation of the world.
But how is one to know what kind of person they are? How is one to know what kind of person other people are, especially in a time when all sorts of people claim to be a Christian or even claim that they are a good person without any kind of faith at all?
Jesus bluntly and plainly declared, “Thus you will recognize them by their fruits,” and that “every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.” So Paul now teaches us to discern the difference between the bad fruit and the good fruit; the fruit or works of the flesh versus the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Now both the works of the flesh and the Holy Spirit are parallel expressions referring to the results or consequences of every person’s faith, whatever it is that they believe, describing the characteristics which typify and pervade their lives. Paul presents us with parallel lists of different human vices and Christian virtues. But please remember that while these are not exhaustive lists, they offer broad enough examples for us to recognize and discern between which of our attitudes, practices, and lifestyles are of God and which are not.
So, let’s begin by considering the works of the flesh. Our ESV translation provides an open-ended list with 15 examples of immorality. Yet, if you’re reading in the Old King James, then you’ll notice that that translation actually lists 17 to include adultery and murders, because those examples were found in the few limited newer manuscripts of the Textus Receptus, but which are not found in the majority of older texts.
Their inclusion in that authorized edition is not evidence of any kind of true error or a cause for us to lose confidence in the truth of the text of scripture. Their addition here is considered a scribal amendation, because those two examples are also included in other similar parallel lists found in the New Testament. So the inerrancy of scripture still stands secure.
Now, a list of 15 vices and wicked practices might seem like a lot to the average person, or perhaps far too few to someone who has a better understanding of the depths of mankind’s potential for sin. But this list still effectively covers the wide breadth and scope of human sinfulness.
Now, something intriguing and important to notice here is that each item on the list naturally leads into the next or another following example. Every form of sin will always lead to the next step downward. It is a never-ending cycle of increasing wickedness and worsening depravity. And once a person steps onto that path, they cannot step off or turn around without help, love, and a great deal of support.
Their only hope, our only hope, is the salvation found in Jesus Christ, because we lack the natural strength, the spiritual conviction within ourselves to break our spiraling addiction to sin without the help of the Holy Spirit. In olden days, the Roman Church distinguished between venial and mortal sins, but all sin is truthfully mortal—just not according to their understanding. All sin leads to death, and one sin will lead to another.
So, similar to how our people in our culture used to be so concerned about gateway drugs such as alcohol and marijuana, which they believed and assumed must always lead to using harder drugs like cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine. But then, as they’ve now become accepted and normalized in the world, the fear and concern over them has evaporated.
Even still, one step in sin still always leads to another, into another and another, on and on. So today, due to the vast decriminalization movement and since American society has such a general dependence upon pharmaceuticals, folks can now just dive right in head first into the shallow end of a darkened pool with newer and more dangerous drugs like OxyContin and fentanyl; drugs which are likely to not allow someone to live and regret their mistakes or to repent.
So the sin cycle builds and builds, getting worse and worse, until it can only end in one place, and one manner, without an intervention. So it goes with all the works of the flesh, and the needed intervention is that divine intervention of the cross.
So we’re going to begin with the cycle where Paul starts: with sexual immorality. The Greek word underlying this translation is a very loaded word, porneia. And yes, it is the root for pornography, but its ancient usage was much more broad in scope than how we even define it today.
While the Hebrew or Jewish usage of the word was even more specific in its meaning, it does contain all of the many connotations of every possible form of sexual sin imaginable, applicable to and descriptive of both the ancient Roman world and our modern culture. But to the Jewish mindset, it referred particularly to adultery—spiritual adultery against the Lord—and it’s used that way many times in the Old Testament.
After the spies returned from the land of Canaan and the people refused to trust God, enter in, and take possession of the land, the Lord declared through Moses, “And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, porneia, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness.”
The prophet Hosea was commanded by God to go take yourself a wife of whoredom, porneia, and have children of whoredom, porneia, for the land commits great porneia by forsaking the Lord. The great irony and message there being that his wife Gomer was a cult prostitute and an idolatrous woman.
So the example of their relationship is compared to the relationship between the Lord and the unfaithful people of Israel, who chased after the many foreign gods instead of their God of the covenant, the relationship of the Lamb and his bride, the Church.
Now although the more common Greek word for adultery is absent here, that understanding is still a part of porneia. And so Paul surely begins his list with this, because that truly is the sin which is the starting point for all other sin: faithlessness to the Lord, disobedience to the one true God.
It is against the greatest commandment declared by Jesus: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. For to love God is to obey God.
So then he moves on to impurity—uncleanness—especially ritual uncleanness. Dealing with this uncleanness is what most of the book of Leviticus is spent telling us how to do, how to avoid becoming unclean and how to be made pure once more. Our uncleanness is a spiritual status which further serves as a divide between God’s people and the Lord. It’s our deficiency in personal holiness.
What were the things that made a person temporarily unclean under the old covenant? Things like touching dead bodies, eating foods that were declared unclean, inordinate bleeding, bodily discharges, sexual activity, molds, skin diseases, and all manner of intentional sin and law-breaking against others.
Remaining—choosing to remain in an unclean state or willfully and intentionally entering into such a state—would demonstrate that a person’s heart was far from the Lord, that they were lacking faith because they were proving their lack of desire to come into the Lord’s presence. They clearly did not worship him; so therefore, their worship must have been directed elsewhere, towards the creation themselves and their flesh.
This leads us to the third example: sensuality, lasciviousness, or debauchery. This is hedonism—full-on self-gratification. If it feels good, then it must be good; denying themselves nothing, seeking out pleasure in any and every form, with all things becoming permissible because to this sinful mind, nothing is prohibited.
Then outright idolatry comes next as the fourth, even as it pervades throughout the first three. Now they clearly set out to make God in their own image, to consider themselves fully sovereign over their lives. During ancient times, when they worshiped their idols and statues with sacrifices, those were not acts of true worship; they were transactions made to appease, persuade, coerce, and arrange for their own personal favor and benefit.
It’s at this point of idolatry that the immoral finally become honest about who they are and what they’re doing: seeking greater power and influence over creation. All idol worship, whether of a carved image or of an idea, stems from the eternal, internal desire within the sinner which declares, “I want to be God myself.”
Ancient pagan worship was never about giving honor or glory to mythological figures, but instead it was about subordinating them to man’s will—a most futile task. King Agamemnon in Homer’s Iliad lied to and betrayed his daughter, Eiphigenia, murdering her as a sacrifice to the Grecian goddess Artemis so that his mighty fleet could sail onward and besiege Troy to recover his brother’s wife, Helen.
Even the Nordic deity Odin, already a so-called god, sacrificed an eye in order to increase his power and gain even greater wisdom from another Nordic deity. Truly, all idolatry stems from the intense desire for more self-power and self-improvement, for a sense of control in this life that we lack, or even self-transformation into an ideal designed by the insane synthetic mind. Idolatry is full denial of the sovereignty of God.
And so next, we’re led into sorcery or witchcraft, which became the means of the goals of idolatry. There really was very little of the mystic arts about ancient sorcerers; they were not kindly wizards like Merlin, Gandalf, or Harry Potter, but were more like a medieval alchemist such as Dr. Johann Faust.
The Greek word translated as sorcery is pharmakia—another loaded word, like porneia—from which we get the modern words for pharmacy and pharmacists. Now, before we get upset or worried and start flushing all our medications down the toilet in some reactionary manner, assuming that they’re intrinsically sinful, please understand there are both positive and negative aspects to the ancient understanding and application of this word.
There were three principal uses of it in the ancient world. The first was regarding poison, the second was regarding the practice of magic—which was understood particularly in the mixing of potions and making charms to influence supernatural powers—and the third was medicine. It is the second use in particular, although the first may also be partially in mind, which scripture condemns as being sinful—finding and condemning the practitioners of pharmakia, being listed alongside the magicians of Egypt in Exodus 7:11, the magicians, the enchanters, or astrologers, and the Chaldeans in Daniel 2:2 of ancient and old Babylon.
They were the practitioners of forbidden pagan and unnatural arts and are identified with and by these sins. They’re the ones who are repeatedly condemned throughout scripture, and their grave sin comes from the desire and attempts to command spiritual powers for their own benefit—trying to defy the natural order of things, including murder by poison and the disturbance and alteration of one’s mental state and perception through the use of different drugs.
While the Bible never speaks of pharmakia in a positive manner, such as being medicine, several of the early church fathers did use the word favorably. Saint Ignatius of Antioch, in the early 2nd century, a second-generation Christian like Apollos or Timothy, described the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, as the medicine of immortality or the farmicon of eternal life.
So, it’s within the context of this list Paul is certainly condemning only the negative aspects of the word while still allowing for the common positive meaning and medicinal usage.
So the practices of sorcery—the attempt to subordinate spiritual powers to our authority, or inflicting unnatural harm to others—easily connects to the next four works of the flesh in our list: enmity or hatred, strife or variance, jealousy, and wrath or fits of anger.
What is it that so often leaves people to resort to means like pharmakia? A lack of a sense of control over the particular circumstances of their lives: jealousy of or enmity and hatred towards other people. And what do people do when they hate others and burst into wrath? They try to control or rule over them by any means necessary. They try to harm them; they commit murder in their hearts, hating them, denying them God’s gracious gift of life or even their right to exist.
What is the cause of most forms of strife, of conflict or variance between people? Jealousy and enmity. People want to take what others have, or they spitefully want others to not have whatever little bit that they do have. And lastly, what was the original prompt for our sinful enmity against God? Jealousy.
The serpent told Eve that when she ate at the forbidden tree, then she, or we, would be like God, knowing good and evil—jealously, sinfully desiring that which is rightfully the Lord’s, wanting to be like God. Each of these are related to the others through jealousy, which stems from a full steam zealous nature for one’s own self, one’s own desires, and one’s own perceived good and benefit at the expense of all others—man and God.
Each of these sins culminate under the broad umbrella of the next offense in our list: rivalry, selfish ambition. Way back before our forebears fell in the garden, the Lord gave mankind the dominion mandate: “be fruitful and multiply and fill all the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
But the corruption of sin has turned our good desire for dominion into selfish domination. So selfish ambition becomes the true and ultimate driving motivation for all natural men in their sinfulness, in self-gratification, in idolatry. Every implicit sin will eventually lead to this overt and terrible attitude of pure selfishness.
Selfishness, a sense of self-superiority—whether in status or deservedness—leads to every act of human dissension or sedition against those with authority over us. It leads to all of our sinful divisions of race and ethnicity, nationalism and statism, the blurring and confusion of gender distinctions and roles, and class—rich and poor, slave or free.
Fortunately, those are the sins which are forgiven and restored for the believer by our union in Christ. There’s neither Jew nor Greek, there’s neither slave nor free, there is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
But regarding these divisions, the underlying Greek word here is heresis, translated as heresies—the reason and cause for each and every division and schism between churches over these past two thousand years. The church, little “c,” which is called to be a part of the great united church, capital “C,” has split and fractured because individuals have taught doctrines that are contrary to the words of scripture, often to their own personal or socio-political benefit.
Indulgences were offered and sold to the medieval church, with much of the proceeds being used to build Saint Peter’s Basilica. Jacob Arminius taught that people were inherently good and that we possess the power and ability to choose Jesus independently of the Holy Spirit and so be saved—endeavoring to convince and convert more people to the faith by appealing to their sense of pride and work without requiring a divine conviction of sin.
Legalists try to impose extra rules and regulations upon the lives of believers in order to control them. Antinomians, those who deny the continuing need and applicability of the law, offered to remove all restrictions and restraint from the conscience of believers, permitting and perhaps even promoting full-on license to continue actively sinning without a changed heart or repentance.
The Judaizers, those who plagued the Galatians, sought to remove that church from the sound doctrine of free grace in Christ to instead bring them under their direct influence and authority as the teachers and arbiters of the law of Moses for their own glory.
The sin of the Judaizers may well have originated from their envy—their jealousy of Paul—coveting his followers and his success for themselves. So they tried to reconvert the Galatians into their camp by offering to add that sinful enticement of individual effort and work for one’s salvation, adding it to the free gift of grace found only in the completed work of Jesus and applied solely by the Holy Spirit to their souls. They taught that false gospel.
The final two immoralities in our list can be summarized by the proverb from Lord Acton: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” After sinfully stealing all this power and authority for the glorification of our idolatry of self, we are always led to a state of drunkenness or intoxication—a sinful mental state or attitude—which may likewise be achieved through the effects of excessive and regular consumption of alcohol and drugs.
Miriam-Webster describes this state of intoxication as a condition of having physical or mental control markedly diminished. Impairment from intoxication results in poor decision making, a loss of reason, and a lack of self-control, with the logical consequence being these orgies—better understood as carousing and unseemly revelry.
Paul’s final sinful practice in this list brings to mind images of the pagan Bacchanalia, celebrating the Grecian god Bacchus—a so-called fertility god whose worship was associated with wine and drunkenness. Yet we can also apply this same understanding to the image of the emperor Nero fiddling as Rome burned, or Marie Antoinette saying of the peasants, “Let them eat cake,” and also the sordid actions and affairs of U.S. presidents like JFK, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton.
So this returns us around full circle to the sin of pornea—sexual immorality and adultery, both carnal and spiritual. Do you see how the path of sin and the works of the flesh are a spiral of depravity, descending forever into the darkest depths of the reprobate soul—a journey whose final destination can only be the death and destruction of the body and the eternal condemnation of an unrepentant and sinful soul?
But there’s good news. But there is good news! Even if you are guilty of these sins in the past, whether particularly or similarly, there is still hope for the salvation of your immortal soul. You can be—you will be forgiven if you only turn to Jesus Christ in faith. If you only trust in him in the promises of God, then he will surely wash all of your sins away. You will be made clean. You will stand justified before the throne of the heavenly king.
You must trust in him in love and repent, and then you will find your life changed. No longer will you produce or promote these works of the flesh; instead, you will enjoy the fruits of the Spirit, which are grown from the seeds of Christ’s grace that the Spirit has planted deep in your heart.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
Now I do believe that statement contains the most encouraging portion of Christ’s gospel: “And such were some of you.” We Christians are no longer what or who we once were. We are different. No longer must we sin. We are no longer identified by or with our past sins; they’re all gone, removed and forgotten.
When we stop doing those things, then they are no longer who we are. The psalmist speaks of the Lord’s attitude towards the repentant: “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities; for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”
Does any form of those works of the flesh describe your continuing life? When your life ends and you stand before the judgment seat, are they the harvest you want to have filling your spiritual storehouse? While it is plentiful, it is also corrupted and rotten to the core.
If they do, if you do, then repent in faith and beg the Lord’s mercy, and you will experience the divine sundering of this cycle of sin. If your spirit is convicted, if your heart is burning because the Holy Spirit is shining a bright spotlight into some dark spot of your soul, then respond with repentance and accept Jesus’ intervention on your behalf.
Ask for your will of sinfulness to be broken. Ask that you will be set upon and firmly established on the straight and narrow path of Christ Jesus for all the rest of your life into eternity. Let your brokenness be restored to the wholeness of the Lord’s intent. Believe on Christ and live out your faith, working through love.
Work with the Holy Spirit dwelling inside you to crucify your flesh along with all of its sinful passions and desires. Do not surrender to sin and gratify the flesh, but instead live for the freedom for which you have been saved. Continue to tend the spiritual garden that is being planted and grown within you, and all the world will soon see the wonderful and good fruit which Jesus is bringing forth from the fertile soil of your new heart. Amen.