Living by the Spirit

Betty Stroud

Year C 2025 Pentecost 3

In our reading today from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, chapter five, he writes “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence,” but “Live by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.” What does he mean by this?

Paul has previously stated in his letter that if you live in Christ you are not bound by the old laws. Now … while Paul was not willing to go back to a law code which was driven by a God who punished people if they break that law, he recognised the dangers freedom poses when he said: “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence.” I think here, Paul is recognising that freedom can be misused. If you tell people they are absolutely free, some will respond by loving their neighbours wholeheartedly, but others may respond in the opposite direction: in other words, doing whatever they want. So Paul was warning the Galatians not to misunderstand and misuse their freedom …. and, as a Christian community some two thousand years down the track, we too are being warned not to make the same mistake.

In verse thirteen Paul makes it very clear that freedom is not just release from something – in this case the demands of the Law. It is also freedom for something, namely a relationship with the God who loves. If we enter into a relationship with the God who loves us then that means that we too will engage in such loving. When this happens we are more than fulfilling the requirements of the Law. This new lifestyle which has its foundations rooted in the God of compassion and goodness results in good living.

But Christians, says Paul, still need to make love their focus.

You know, it is possible to enter a relationship with God, and then abandon God’s priorities and follow selfish impulses at the expense of others – to gratify our own needs and live ‘according to the flesh’ rather than living in ways that seek wholeness, restoration and love – not only for ourselves, but for those we come in contact with on a daily basis.

When Paul spoke about living ‘according to the flesh’, he understood that we, human beings, can so easily be led astray.

This doesn’t mean that our normal human impulses, whether sexual or for food or anything else, are wrong. But they become wrong when they are handled in such a way that we do harm to others – and to ourselves. Paul gives a list of the things that might lead to undesirable consequences. This list probably matched many such lists of his day.

Sexual immorality tops the agenda – partly because it was a constant theme in describing the evils of the pagan world. Mind you, it has been a constant theme right down through history. Sexual immorality has topped the list of many congregations and churches. I saw it when I was a teenager, and the church in which I grew up forbade dancing on the church premises because it was seen as gratifying the flesh and might lead to consequences such as unwanted pregnancies. I saw it growing up when one of my aunts painted her nails bright red and wore bright red lipstick. She was seen by some people to be flaunting her sexuality. In fact she was one of the kindest and most generous people I have ever met. We have seen its influence in the debate about LGBTQI rights and the shame, hatred and despair that that has caused over the years.
But Paul goes beyond sexual immorality and beyond sins related directly to physical desires, to include themes which are more directly relational or spiritual. These include idolatry, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions.

Take a moment to think about the effects these things have on our personal relationships, our communal relationships and relationships on a wider scale. When we make money, or possessions first and foremost in our lives then that’s all we can think about and relationships can suffer. In my ministry I have on a number of occasions seen families break up because one of the partners – usually the Dad, works and works and works in order to give his family the best, only to spend so little time with his family that it is all to no avail. Or, as on one occasion, one couple who each had high-powered jobs, put their jobs before their relationship and ended up divorcing.
We see anger, quarrels, dissension and factions play out on a daily basis – in families, in governments in relationships between countries and, even in churches. Why else has Christianity become so fractured?

Sure there are theological reasons but, more often than not, people just can’t seem to get along with one another and, instead of working at relationship building, they take the easier option of just leaving and starting another church. In one town I’ve lived in there were four Baptist churches – I asked one of the ministers who attended the Ministers’ Association why this was so. His answer: they’re breakaways. When certain people have found that issues can’t be resolved they’ve just broken away and formed another Baptist church.

That’s no way to resolve issues or dissent. Unless we are prepared to sit down and listen to each other with respect and a willingness to learn from each other, then I think we are being totally being self-indulgent.

Paul says that people who live in this way are not heading for the kingdom of God. I’m not sure what Paul understood by the kingdom of God, but I don’t think he understood it to mean some far away heavenly kingdom. Jesus certainly didn’t understand it in that way. Jesus’ understanding of God’s kingdom was living in it in the present. Through Jesus’ life God’s kingdom came near for people. God’s kingdom was in the here and now.

For us today, it is only as we follow Jesus’ example of love, of compassion, of understanding, of acceptance, of justice and of servanthood that we learn to live freely in God’s kingdom.

How do we do this? How are we able to live in this way?

Well Paul tells us in the concluding verses of the chapter. We are to live and be guided by the Spirit. And he gives us a wonderful image when he says: The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.’

This is an image which is the total opposite to what happens when we live ‘by the flesh’.

An image which is, perhaps, deliberately chosen. For Paul is not wanting people to keep rules of goodness (such as we find in the biblical law). He wants people to change in themselves through their new relationship with God – to be clothed with Christ, with the result that goodness is a consequence of their being. Paul wanted people to see that what he is talking about is something which goes beneath biblical laws to the very essence of who we are – people made in God’s image – people who choose to respond to God’s offer of a relationship of love and thus turn their backs on the way of self-indulgence. This is what Paul was urging the Galatians to do.

And through our reading of his words today, he is urging us to maintain our focus on building our relationship with God rather than taking the way of self-indulgence. The more we do, the more our lives will reflect the love, goodness and generosity we celebrate as followers of Christ. We will not be loving because we know we ought to be loving, but because our being is undergoing change. Goodness as it develops within, generates goodness without. Love generates love.

A lifestyle lived on the basis of God’s love declared in Christ will produce behaviours which flow from that relationship. A lifestyle paying attention to God’s Spirit moving within, amongst and around us, will produce the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Fruits that will change our lives and the lives of those around us.