With two words Paul exposes the religious sins of those turned away from God: idolatry and sorcery. Idolatry, or literally "service to idols," paints the picture of every form of worship, praise, honor, and glory that is given to man or to the works of man instead of to the true God. Idols are the things to which we attribute greatness apart from God. No idol has ever been so prominent in the world as the idolatry of humanity. From the Tower of Babel to the ivory tower, man glorifies himself and assumes that all the universe revolves around him. Sorcery is the next step. As man, apart from God, seeks to know more than his reason will allow, he turns to the spiritual world and seeks those hidden and hideous things of which the Bible has said, "I want you to be wise in what is good, and simple concerning evil" (1).

Of the fifteen works of the flesh that separate us from God, Paul devotes no less than eight to the nature of our broken human relationships: "hostility, strife, jealousy, anger or rage, selfish ambition, division, factions, envy." Whatever you want to say about humanity, no one can ignore the fleshly frenzy of hatred that permeates every society in the forms of domestic disturbance, racism, persecution, class envy, oppression and so on. From the kitchen table to the United Nations fury and frustration never cease.

In addition Paul mentions drunkenness and carousing. In the end humans living without God, (and unwilling to recognize their self-inflicted pain) will give themselves over to senseless stupor in whatever form it might take from mindless hours in front of the TV to drinking and drugs.

II. The Failure of Morality

The first reaction to the sins of the flesh from the human point of view is morality. "We need more rules around here." "We need to get our act together." "What we need is more discipline." But the Apostle of God warns us that there is no human remedy for the sins of the flesh. This cannot be glossed over with morality. There are no taboos, there is no philosophy, there is no law that anyone can follow to overcome these things. Paul, as a Jew, knew that. No one had more and better laws to follow than those who followed the law of Moses. It just doesn’t work, and it was never intended to be the solution to sin. This is why Paul rebukes some of the Galatians for returning to the "yoke of the law" by being circumcised. They needed to know that in attempting to overcome sin through morality, they needed to keep the entire law. This is impossible.

Have you ever jumped across a puddle to avoid getting your feet wet? Maybe you’ve even jumped across a very big puddle, perhaps even a small stream. But eventually you will reach a limit. I recall horsing around with my sons in a woods in Texas. One of my sons decided he was going to jump a small stream that meandered through the timber. He ran, he jumped, and he was able to clear 90% of that stream. But that last 10% was pretty wet. Man’s first effort to resist the works of the flesh is morality. But morality by itself won’t work. It never does.

III. God’s Answer is the Messiah

God’s ultimate answer to this world and the sins of the flesh is not morality by itself but the Messiah. God could have snuffed out this world sooner than He had planned, but out of His love for His own troubled creation He acted to redeem the sins of the flesh. To "redeem" does not mean that God simply decided to make them all disappear. The sins of the flesh will disappear on judgment day when they will be forever destroyed in hell. To "redeem" means that God took the punishment that these sins deserve. He took that punishment into Himself. This was the purpose of Jesus Christ’s life and death. God told us that Jesus was "born of a woman." He was born into this flesh with all its temptations. But He didn’t sin. He was "born under the law in order to redeem those who are under the law" (2). Jesus lived the morality we couldn’t. He then suffered the punishment we deserved. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, as it is written, ‘cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’" (3). Having this curse lifted from us gives us a new life. Again Paul says, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me" (4).

There is nothing more dehumanizing or demoralizing than guilt. Some may recognize their guilt, others may deny it; but it is still there. It pushes us further and further away from God, and it continually destroys all that is good on this earth and in our lives. I was mowing the lawn yesterday, and my mower quit. It was full of fuel, but it gradually slowed down and quit no matter how high I kicked up the throttle. I started it several times, and finally it wouldn’t start at all. I’ve owned that mower for 13 years. I’ve dutifully changed the oil and air filter. But in thirteen years I had never cleaned the fuel filter. Well after 13 years that mower had had enough. It wasn’t going further no matter how hard I pushed it. After cleaning the filter, it ran fine.

Our lives can run down like that to. Unrepented sins and guilt clog up our lives. I don’t have to go over that list of Paul’s again. You know your sins. The question is, are they just sitting there ruining your life? Or, are you willing to present them to Jesus for forgiveness? You can be cleansed and forgiven. That is exactly what Jesus came to give to us. "For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them" (5).

I can’t say enough about how wonderful it is to be cleansed in heart and soul by faith in Jesus. Paul calls this our "adoption as sons" (6). One of my best friends by the name of Teddy lived in an orphanage when we were in elementary school. I felt so sorry for him. The orphanage was a good place. But nothing could replace the love of a family. One day Teddy told us he was being adopted. What I remember most about that was that his new family had a party—like a birthday party for him. It really was a kind of birthday for Teddy. It was a new life, just as we also have a new life by being adopted into God’s family. All the weak substitutes for love are overwhelmed by the perfect love of God, before whom we never have to be ashamed to poor out our hearts. We can cry out "Abba, Father!" (7)

IV. The Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5.22-26)

Let’s go back to something I said at the beginning of the message: God wants us to avoid two very great problems. One is to think that we don’t sin or that our sins are so insignificant that they don’t really matter. The other is to think that because our sins are forgiven, it doesn’t matter how much we sin.

Michael P. Walther, Copyright, 2001