By Their Fruit You Shall Know Them Series

2. Fruit of the Flesh

vv. 19-21 The acts of the sinful nature 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.

There’s a couple of important points here. First of all note with me the diversity of this list. Most of us do all right with the acts of the sinful nature that really do seem obvious: sexual immorality, debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; fits of rage, and orgies. What becomes more troublesome are those that seem a little more mainstream: impurity, hatred, discord, jealousy, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness. These are more problematic for us, but the message is clear, they are not separated into first tier and second tier, they are woven together and put on the same plane. Drunkenness is no more acceptable than witchcraft, jealousy is no less toxic than sexual immorality. All of these are the works of the flesh, the cargo natural to the life unchanged by grace. These are the desires that Paul says we will not gratify if we are living by the Spirit.

Also note that Paul is quite strong here in his condemnation of all of this type of behavior. Those who live this way, he says WILL NOT inherit the kingdom of God. Play semantic games with what that means all you want, but the bottom line is Paul is saying if you live a life that produces this kind of fruit, you are not saved. Clearly this is the balance to the strong emphasis upon faith and Grace we’ve seen up to this point in his letter to the Galatians. He’s not taking all that back, he’s not turning around now and saying follow these rules to be saved. He’s saying if you are saved you won’t live this way.

And I think the wording is important, he doesn’t say that those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom. He says that those who live this way will not inherit the kingdom. That’s not to give permission for occaisional backsliding, but simply to recognize that the changing grace that works in our lives by the power of the Spirit brings us along gently in a process of grace, molding us into the image of Jesus. God isn’t up there with a stick ready to pound your head at the first mistake, but there clearly is a divine expectation of a changed life in response to and incooperation with God’s Grace.

Finally let’s look at the Good stuff, the desirable cargo of the...

3. Fruit of the Spirit

vv. 22-25 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

The first thing that leaps out at me here is the contrast between the types of thing that Paul lists as being the fruit of the Spirit and those that he lists as fruit of the flesh. The fruits of the flesh he describes as "acts of the sinful nature" and they are just that--actions, behaviors, things people do.