SERMON – Fruit of the Spirit. Week 1: Flesh v Spirit and the fruit of love
Today we begin a new sermon series on the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Holy Spirit is listed in chapter 5 of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
The context is Paul’s charge to the Galatian Christians to not gratify the desires of the flesh. Flesh is opposite to spirit, devoid of any spiritual power or wisdom. Paul uses the term ‘the flesh’ to represent everything about our physical, frail and mortal existence from the moment of conception—including the continual compulsion and drive of our inner core to think, say and do what comes naturally. Living by the flesh means following our will and desire as the compass and control centre of one’s life; looking to the self as provider, comforter, and counsellor, and final judge of truth and of what is right and wrong. The flesh includes all the worldviews, patterns of behaving, thinking and reasoning that humans establish by which we live out our life.
Paul is not describing the reality of those who are not Christian, or those who do especially evil things. Paul is describing the reality of all people—living by the flesh is a condition natural to everyone, to a greater or lesser degree, ever since the first people rebelled against, rather than submitting to God’s authority. ‘The flesh’ represents all that it means to live with complete ignorance and absence of God from human vision, reasoning, understanding and behaviour. In one’s natural state of the flesh, people are incapable of knowing God; alienated from him and are his enemies because of their evil behaviour (Colossians 1:21). The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to them, and they are not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14). We see that in today’s Gospel reading: even the so called wise of this world—the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem—didn’t know Jesus and blasphemed against him: “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.” (Mark 3:22).
The flesh means that our will, as Luther put it, is curved in on itself. Like a toddler throwing a tantrum in a toy store in the face of their parents demanding their own way, living by the flesh means rising up against God in rebellion against him, being judge and jury over our Maker—being his counsellor, telling him where he is wrong and needs to change, as we forge ahead on pathways of our own making. In the flesh, all people are devoid of true life, spiritually dead in transgressions and sins, and by nature deserving of wrath.” (Ephesians 2:1-3).
The evil we witness today is not something new. Evil does not emerge in different eras in history. But it emerges from the flesh; from the human heart. Just listen to what Paul said to the church at Galatia: “The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5:19-21).
The way of the flesh is to say that these things are good and engaging in them without restraint is freedom. But since Adam and Eve brought sin into the world, humanity confuses the difference between good and evil, as Isaiah lamented:
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes
and clever in their own sight.” (Isaiah 5:20-21).
Human beings aren’t the authors and origin of whatever is good. That which is good does not spring up from us on earth but comes down as gifts from heaven, because only God is good, and therefore the Giver of good things— “Every good and perfect gift comes from above” (James 1:17).
The greatest gift God has given us from above is his Son, who came down to earth in flesh just like ours, but without sin. This sinless One took our sin upon himself that our old life in the flesh would be crucified with him. He has ransomed us from captivity to our flesh, to the wages of sin; death, and from the kingdom of darkness. He has all authority to overcome evil. In the words of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is the One who has bound the strong man, Satan, and plundered his house, taking the treasures of God’s people with him to freedom.
God has sent another good and perfect gift from above: the gift of the Holy Spirit. He brings to life the freedom Christ won for the world in the lives of all of those whom he washes and renews. In Titus we hear: “[God] saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:5-7).
The gift of the Holy Spirit whom God has poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, renews, empowers and guides us for new life so that we can travel on God’s highway and stay on it. Not only does the Holy Spirit repair the car, as it were, from running off God’s roadway, but the Holy Spirit is now the driver, at work against the desires and direction of our flesh to keep us on God’s highway.
The Spirit goes to work growing his fruit in us. Paul lists the first of the fruits of the Spirit as love—that’s because all of the others are derived from love and are the shape of love. The Spiritual fruit of love is to truly love God, and to love others. In the flesh, people are incapable of truly loving. With our will turned in on itself, we humans justify all kinds of things in the name of love, but don’t even know what love is. So often the love we picture means more about loving ourselves.
Since God is love, all true notions and expressions of love come from his love. We need God to teach us what love is in his word. You might remember from our Lenten series on love from 1 Corinthians 13 that God gives us his guide for how to love not by describing what love is, but by showing what love does: Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous of others, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, but seeks the interests of other people. It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with God’s truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
What is wrong with these things? Absolutely nothing! These are the shape of God’s own love, who loved us first before we were able to love him. For “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8). God’s love for you has no strings attached, no fine print. It is a total, self-giving love. We see God’s perfect love in his Son. Jesus’ love is an enduring love, shown in his suffering on the Cross. In Jesus God’s love is patient and suffering for all people, patient and suffering for everyone gathered here, patient and suffering for you. Because of Jesus, God in love has not counted your wrongs against you, but against Christ. Jesus did not come to boast, but to serve you. He wasn’t proud or arrogant, but gentle and humble, to you. He wasn’t envious, but self-emptying, for you. He wasn’t self-seeking but seeks the lost. He sought you, and found you in baptism, where you have been washed and renewed in the power of the Holy Spirit through water and the word, by which you share in the reality of God’s love.
God teaches us what love is through the Apostle Paul, and shows us what love is through his Son, but we still need God to grow what we are incapable of planting and growing ourselves—his own love in us. So he has poured out his Holy Spirit into our hearts who goes to work through the word to bear the fruit of love in our lives, not for our own sake, but for the sake of others. We have been freed to walk by the Spirit, so that we can begin to love as God himself loves. God always gives his love to you so you can enjoy it and share it with others.
The people to share God’s love with are never far away. We just have to look for them and sometimes we don’t have to look too far. Last week I made a list of all the people who have been engaging with St Paul’s as a new church connection, or any church connection for the first time, just over the past two months alone. That list has 18 names! Some I—and we—haven’t met yet. Others are guests of the community meal day, some of whom have been coming to worship and bible study. Three adults on that list have indicated that they are interested in being baptised.
When the Apostle Paul wrote to the early church, he was completely committed to representing Christ to his people rightly through teaching God’s word purely. He saw how essential good doctrine was for the congregations of the early church in knowing its head and Saviour for a life of true freedom. He corrected many errors in the thinking and practice across the congregations. Some of those who are new connections will need that same clear teaching…don’t we all? But Paul also said: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).
How is God calling us to love one another, and the people he is drawing to his church here at St Paul’s—to love them in the same way as we love ourselves? As children whom God our Father has freed to belong to his Kingdom and receive all his good gifts, may we take up all the opportunities we can to hear and learn God’s word, eat and drink at his table, and daily live out our baptism. For these are the powerful means God goes to work, sending his Spirit continually to you, to war against the flesh rather than indulging in it, that we might keep in step with the Spirit. This struggle is not a sign that your faith is failing, but the very evidence that the Spirit is at work in you as one who has inherited the Kingdom of God through faith in Jesus.
As we follow his directing to serve one another humbly in love, may he always work mightily in us so that there is an abundance of good fruit, and we truly love our neighbour as ourselves. May we love one another as the Spirit leads us to be peacemakers with each other. May he help us to be patient with each other. May he direct us to be kind with each other—to treat each other as kin in the family of God’s dearly loved and holy children. May we listen to Jesus calling us to forgive each other rather than count a record of wrongs against each other and writing each other off. May he grow our faithfulness, to God and to each other, so that we are gentle and honour each other with our time, attention and care. May the Holy Spirit help us exercise self-control—not only over our passions, but over our assumptions, our tongue, our frustrations and anger—so that we do not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. For those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Amen.
