Legalism: Todays World Governments

Christians in Galatia had been bewitched, as we saw back in chapter 3, to be lured into legalism. This is a foolish bewitching that retarded their sanctification. Remember chapter 4, verse 19, Paul says, “‘My children, with whom I am again in labour until Christ is formed in you. You’re not walking as Christ walked. You’re not walking in the Spirit, and it’s a painful thing for me to see.’ In chapter 5 and verse 7, he said, “‘You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? When it all started out, you actually were moving fairly rapidly, and now it’s all slowed down.'” Paul has rejected legalism in this book.

It doesn’t mean he rejects the moral law of God, but he rejects the fact that you, in your own strength, or anybody, can earn salvation by keeping God’s rules. Or that as a Christian, your sanctification is the result of your own ability to obey laws, particularly external laws, rather than laws for the heart. False religion works up an external set of behaviours by which people supposedly are to please God. But as God said, even Israel was near to him externally, but their hearts were far from him. You are free, but no freedom for indulging the flesh, chapter 5, verse 13, as we saw.

And the moral law of God is holy, just, and good. The moral law of God is necessary if you want to honour God. The moral law of God is His will and His word and His command. We are not free to disobey. We are transformed to love. And Romans 5.5 says, the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit. So let’s look back at verse 16. Command, walk by the Spirit. If you walk by the Spirit, you will be sanctified. And it’s expressed this way.

You will not carry out the desire of the flesh. If you walk by the Spirit, if you walk as Christ walked, if you walk in the truth of God as revealed in the Word of God. The Holy Spirit is present in every believer to empower believers to live like Christ. The power is internal. The Holy Spirit is the energizer, the instructor, and the restrainer of evil. Another way to understand that is Ephesians 5.18. In Ephesians 5.18 it says, Don’t be drunk with wine, in which is excess, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.

There were pagan religions where drunkenness and orgiastic behaviour was essentially the way that pagans thought they were communing with deity. They actually thought that if they were completely inebriated, somehow they ascended into transcendent communication with their gods. Paul says, no, don’t be drunk with wine, as if that’s some access to the Holy Spirit. The parallel in Colossians 3.16 is to let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. So when you’re saturated by the Word and it takes richly over your life, that’s the same as walking in the Spirit, because the Spirit’s desire is to conform you to the Word which is to conform you to Christ.

Now let’s look at the rest of the statement. You will not carry out the desire of the flesh. You want to defeat your flesh. Sarcs is the Greek word for flesh. What does it mean? Not just your body, but the complex of sin that still remains until your glorification. You want to overcome that. You want to triumph over that. You want to defeat that, then walk by the Spirit. Desires is the word epithelia, yearnings, longings, and usually referring to evil ones. All those evil impulses and longings that still exist in us, and we’ll see more about that when Paul talks about it verse 17, and we compare it to Romans 7.

There’s a war going on in us. How do we win the war? How do we triumph over the desires of the flesh? Answer, walk in the Spirit. What does it mean again? It means to be like Christ. How is that possible? You have the power in the Holy Spirit and you have the pattern in the Word of God. This is how we are to live, and so we are commanded in Romans 6-12, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts. Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

This is the Christian life. This is the Christian experience, walking in the Spirit. It is not passive, not at all. 1 Corinthians 9, Paul says, I beat my body into submission. Paul talks a lot about the soldier as the model for a Christian at war, chapter 6 of Ephesians, putting on the whole armour of God. He talks about running a race. The end of his life he says, I have fought the good fight. This is a battle. This is a war our whole life long. We are new creations, incarcerated in unredeemed flesh, which still has its desires.

And we know what the desires are, because they’re manifest down in verse 19. Immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing. These are the kind of things that mark those who are not going into the Kingdom. Those same desires still remain in us. Although they have been trampled down, they’re still there, trampled down by the power of God, the transformation of the new birth, and the presence of the Holy Spirit, but still capable to rise up and cause us to sin. So what do we do, passively surrender? No, we fight the battle with all our might by walking in the Spirit.

You can only walk in the Spirit if you know the will of God, the work of God, the Word of God. So we learn the Scriptures. We take in the Scriptures. We think biblically, because that essentially fuels the working of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot move us in a direction in which we’re ignorant. So to be saturated with the Word of God enables the Spirit of God to empower us to triumph over the flesh. Walk by the Spirit. That’s what Jesus did. He’s our model of perfect love, rendering perfect obedience to his father.

And if we abide in him, we ought to walk the way he walked. I guess sometimes Christians think that they’ll just take whatever comes in this life and hold on until they get to heaven and everything is perfect and not worry about the struggle here. That is unacceptable, because that kind of resignation is a dishonour to God. But secondly, it is foolish because it short-circuits your joy. John says, these things are written to you that your joy may be full. If you want full joy, and along with that full usefulness, you have to be a vessel that is purged and cleansed.

You might as well have all the joy you can get in this life, and it comes by walking in the Spirit. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of legalism, today’s world governments. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].