Walking By Means of the Spirit
Galatians 5:16
This morning we are starting a very important passage, in fact, this is, I think perhaps, the most crucial passage in the New Testament for understanding the dynamics of the spiritual life. For that reason we are going to slow down a little bit to make sure we really understand these things. We are doing this for a couple of reasons. One is the importance of the subject and two is that I find that very few people have accurately understood this passage. It is not simply a matter of exegesis, it is a matter of interpretation. That means you have to compare scripture with scripture. We will take some time to look at parallel passages to see how they illuminate the understanding that we need for Galatians 5:16-26.
This morning I want to give some introductory material and issues as we get into this and an overview of the passage.
Let's begin with a little review related to the whole doctrine of sanctification.
We begin with a definition of sanctification. It is one of those words that people do not use frequently, so it is hard for them to understand. Basically it comes from the Greek word hagiosmos, which means to set apart. When most people think about this word they think about the older translation, to become holy. But holy is one of those words in English that has been used so much in religious conversation that most people do not have a clue as to what it means, but they feel good when they use it. So we are going to studiously avoid that old King James word that does not mean a lot to people. Most people want to impart meaning into that word, the idea of moral purity. If we go back to Old Testament understanding of the whole concept of sanctification, the Old Testament word is qadash. If you take that word and add the masculine ending to make it a masculine noun and a feminine ending to make it a feminine noun it refers to temple prostitutes in the worship of the baalim, the Baal god of the Canaanites. Obviously if that is the root meaning, how can it mean moral purity? Good question, it doesn't. It also refers to the inanimate objects in the temple, they were set apart to God, they were sanctified, they were made holy. How can a bowl, a laver, a candlestick have moral purity? It can't be immoral. The root meaning is something that is set apart to the service of God, in the case of the temple prostitutes, they were set apart to the service of their god. The root meaning has the meaning of being set apart to God and the process of sanctification in the spiritual life is the process whereby we are made more and more useful to God as we advance spiritually. So let's take that general definition and get a little more precise.
Sanctification is a technical term which means to be set apart to God for a special purpose. Every church age believer is set apart to God in three ways. Three ways that correspond to the three different phases of salvation that we have been studying in James on Wednesday night. Phase one is at salvation. At the moment of faith alone in Christ alone, when we are saved from the penalty of sin, we are positionally set apart to God. We refer to this as positional sanctification.
In Phase two, as we advance spiritually, as we are saved from the power of sin, this is referred to experiential sanctification, or progressive sanctification.
In Phase three, when we are absent from the body and face to face with the Lord and we are saved from the presence of sin because we are no longer in a mortal body with a sin nature, this is sometimes called perfect, completed, or ultimate sanctification, because we no longer have a sin nature.
So there are three different phases, and the one we are concerned about in this study is experiential or progressive sanctification. In essence this is referring to the dynamics of the Christian life. In other words, how do we grow? That is a very important question. What are the mechanics by which the believer moves from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity?
You would think that after two thousand years of church history, Christian study of the bible, that there would be some clarity in the answer to that question. It is amazing how little clarity there is. There are about six different models of sanctification. What I mean by a model is just a basic overview, a basic methodology of how the believer advances. There is a Wesleyan model, the Methodist view. There is a reformed model that is related to covenant theology. It came out of Calvinism. There is a holiness model that is very similar to the Wesleyan model. And then there is also a Pentecostal model and then there is a mystical model which you will find mostly in Roman Catholic churches.
Then a few years ago there was a very excellent book for understanding sanctification published called Five Views of Sanctification. The writer took a theologian from each camp and they wrote a defense of their view of the spiritual life and it was critiqued by representatives of the other four views. And the final view of that book was called the Augustinian-Dispensational View of Sanctification. It was written by Dr. John Walvoord, now the chancellor of Dallas Theological Seminary. In that he basically articulated the view of the spiritual life that we hold. One of the things he said that set that view apart from all the other views is there was a basis for understanding the difference between morality and spirituality.
One thing that became very clear in evaluating the other models of sanctification is that they tended to identify morality with spirituality. This is a key principle to remember, anything that the unbeliever can do is not spirituality. Because the spiritual life in the church age as it is outlined in Galatians 5, Ephesians 5, and Romans 6-8, is uniquely a product of God the Holy Spirit. That changes the whole dynamic. That means that whatever we do in the spiritual life, we cannot evaluate it simply on the basis of how ethical or moral we are because the sin nature itself can produce a lot of religious activity, it can produce a lot of morality under the category of human good. We have to have a method, some means to distinguish what we are doing in our spiritual life, whether it is the product of the flesh, the sin nature, or it is the product of the Holy Spirit.
You would think that would have occurred to a few over two thousand years, and it is amazing how it hasn't. And it is amazing to me how many pastors and theologians hide behind such vague generalities and simply repeat what the scripture says without really analyzing what the scripture says.
Recently I picked up a computer program which contains six or seven theological journals. In just a matter of seconds you can type in a scripture reference, or a subject like filling of the Spirit, or baptism of the Spirit or indwelling of the Spirit, pick a term, which I did last week, punched a button and within seconds up popped a list with every article in these journals that has that subject, and then you click on that article and it will go directly to the term in that article. So I spent some 25-30 hours last week scanning through these various articles, with every journal covering about 45 years of material, seeing if I could get a little light on the subject. And I was amazed at how little light there was on the subject.
When we come to our verse, let's stop and take a little overview here: Galatians 5:16, So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. If you are interacting at all with what the text says, the first thing you ought to ask is, what exactly does it mean, to walk by the Spirit? And how do you do that? And I am amazed at how few people even ask the question. It is assumed that we know how to do that and that is something related just to morality.
So we need to review some of these things and the role of the Spirit in the believer's life. So as we are looking at the doctrine of sanctification we looked at point one which was the definition.
Sanctification refers to the process of the believer's growth under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit. In the church age this is the process of the believer's growth in phase two under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit.
We must remember that the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in the church age, the age which we live in, is unique. Never before in human history has so much been given to the ordinary believer. Every single believer in this church age is the recipient of different ministries from God the Holy Spirit.
Regeneration and efficacious grace were available in the Old Testament, but the other ministries were not available. They are unique to the New Testament, so that tells us up front that our relationship to God the Holy Spirit is crucial in this church age. It is crucial to our spiritual growth, it is not just learning doctrine, it is not just doing certain overt activities, or even thinking certain thoughts inwardly as much as it is something that is empowered and motivated by a right relationship with God the Holy Spirit.
So we must evaluate this and before we do, we need to review these ministries of God the Holy Spirit to the believer in this age.
The first is efficacious grace, a ministry of God the Holy Spirit to the believer at the moment of salvation, Romans 8: .28-30. Let's read a definition: this is a specific ministry of God the Holy Spirit Who acknowledges the faith of the unbeliever and transforms the faith of that spiritually dead person into something effective for salvation. Remember, we are not saved because of our faith. We are saved through faith. The scripture makes that very clear. In the Greek of Ephesians 2:8 and 9 we read, For by grace you are saved through faith, it is the preposition dia plus the genitive of pistis. The genitive means through. If it were in the accusative case it would mean because. God the Holy Spirit is very precise, we are not saved because we believe, that would put the location of the merit on us, because we were smart enough to believe, we were wise enough to believe.
But when it is through faith, faith is simply the means of appropriating salvation and it puts all of the merit in the object of faith, which is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. We are not saved through faith, we are saved because of faith.
Now every single human being since Adam's fall has been born dichotomous. This means he is composed of two parts. He has a soul and he has a body. The soul is comprised of his self consciousness, mentality, emotion, conscience and volition. He cannot have a relationship with God because he is minus the human spirit.
He lacks the human spirit which is that immaterial part of our nature which allows us to have fellowship and rapport with God and to understand spiritual things. Only in regeneration, or rebirth, do we receive the human spirit.
Adam was created trichotomous: body, soul and spirit. When he disobeyed God and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he died spiritually. When God said you will certainly die at the moment you eat from the fruit he lost his human spirit and was separated from God, could no longer have a relationship with God, so when God came to walk in the garden as He did everyday to teach Adam and the woman about the creation, they ran and hid because they could no longer have a relationship with God.
In regeneration God the Holy Spirit imparts to us a human spirit. Because as an unbeliever we lack that, and we lack the perfect righteousness of God, nothing we do can gain favor with God.
When we exercise faith in the gospel, which is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, at that instant God the Holy Spirit takes that faith and He transforms it into something that is effective, or efficacious for salvation. He makes it possible because what we do has no value in and of itself. That is efficacious grace.
Then there is regeneration, John 3:3-7, Titus 3: 5, which we have already covered to some degree. Simultaneously with His work of efficacious grace, God the Holy Spirit creates and imparts to us a human spirit.
Regeneration is defined as spiritual birth or being born again. At that moment we pass from spiritual death to spiritual life. At that same moment the human spirit is imparted to us, God the Father imparts to it His very own eternal life. We have eternal life as a possession that can never be lost.
The third ministry is baptism by means of the Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12:13. This also occurs at the moment of salvation. And at that instant every believer is identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection. At the moment of faith alone in Christ alone, God the Holy Spirit identifies us, that is the significance of baptism. The literal meaning of baptism is to dip, plunge or immerse, but its significance is identification.
For example, in the 5th Century BC soldiers in Greece, new recruits after boot camp went to graduation ceremonies and they would take their spears and dip them into a bucket of pig blood. This identified the spears, that had never been in combat, with blood and violence because that was their purpose.
The significance of baptism is identification. At the instant of salvation God the Holy Spirit identifies us with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is referred to as positional truth, and we enter into an eternal union with Christ. He places us into Christ, into His body. That is the significance of baptism of the Holy Spirit, and at that instant we are created a new spiritual species. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says: Therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creature. So the believer is placed into permanent union with Christ and this is the basis of our positional sanctification.
The fourth ministry of God the Holy Spirit to us at the moment of salvation is the indwelling. There is a difference between the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit, the baptism of God the Holy Spirit and the filling of God the Holy Spirit. They are distinct words and they are distinct ministries. Unfortunately, especially in the Pentecostal holiness camp, they have used those words as synonyms. They really get confused because they think the filling, indwelling and baptism are all the same thing. But they are three distinct ministries of God the Holy Spirit.
The indwelling of God the Holy Spirit is a permanent possession of every single believer according to the passages of 1Corinthians 3:16 & 19. At the moment of salvation God the Holy Spirit takes up permanent residence in the believer. He transforms our body into a temple for the simultaneous indwelling of Jesus Christ as the Shekinah Glory. Jesus Christ indwells us and the Holy Spirit turns our body into a temple for the simultaneous indwelling of Jesus Christ.
We are indwelt by God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. This has never happened before in human history.
In the Old Testament I describe that ministry under the term enduement. It was a temporary ministry, and it was not for the same purpose as the indwelling today, or the filling today. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit today is related to the indwelling of Christ and the filling of the Holy Spirit is related to living the spiritual life. In the Old Testament the spiritual life was not based on a relationship with God the Holy Spirit because they did not have a relationship with God the Holy Spirit. Only a very few people, less than a hundred in all of the Old Testament were endued by God the Holy Spirit. And it was always related to their job or their function in terms of theocratic leadership. The Old Testament economy, in the age of Israel, they were a theocracy. God was the King of Israel. Even David, when he says in the Psalm: When the Lord said to my Lord, now obviously he is referring to the Trinity, God the Son speaking to God the Father. But when he said, when the Lord said to my Lord, he is indicating he is under an authority. Well, David was the king of Israel, who was he under? The only one he is under is God, Who is the King of Israel. So you had king, prophet, priest and various other administrators who at different times were endued with God the Holy Spirit, and it could be lost. It was a ministry designed to give them wisdom and skill in their arena of leadership. The best illustrations are the temple and tabernacle craftsmen. The goldsmiths, silversmiths, jewelers, carpenters, who were building the furniture for the temple and tabernacle were endued with God the Holy Spirit. It had nothing to do with a spiritual function but to give them wisdom and skill. The same word is used there, the Hebrew word chokmah.