Sermon for 9/10/23: Fourteenth Sunday After Trinity

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Walking in the Spirit

Galatians 5:16-24

                                                  

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

         The central truth of the Christian faith is that lost and condemned sinners are saved eternally—not by obedience to God’s Law but through faith alone in Jesus Christ, who has won righteousness and eternal life for us by His obedience and death. No book of the Bible speaks of this precious truth more clearly than St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. The apostle pleaded with these Christians to remain in that Gospel they had learned from him. False teachers had invaded their churches, insisting that faith in Christ was not enough to receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Salvation, they said, required obedience to the Law.

But it doesn’t work that way. The teaching that we are saved by our good works does not promote more good works. No, it makes us into hypocrites. It enslaves us. The Law only threatens with death those who don’t obey it. It cannot change our hearts so that we can love God and our neighbor as we should. It can only condemn us for disobedience. The simple truth of the matter is that the pure Gospel of justification by faith alone is the power of the Holy Spirit that enables us to live God-pleasing lives. The Law cannot and will not make us good. The Gospel can, and it does. And so, when St. Paul tells us to walk in the Spirit, he is simply telling you to trust in Jesus Christ our Savior. He is telling you to consider yourself a Christian. Consider who and what you are. You belong to Christ. You are clothed in His righteousness. You have His Spirit living within you. So walk in that Spirit. Fix your eyes and your hearts on the Savior who died for you, and you won’t fulfill those desires of the flesh.

There is a war that rages inside of every Christian. We have the Holy Spirit within us by virtue of our baptism into Christ. But we also have the flesh, the old sinful nature that clings to us until the day we leave this earth behind. That is why St. Paul says, “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” The flesh wants to please itself. It despises God’s Law and hates the Gospel even more. This is something we must understand because, if we don’t, we will be led into a false belief. Our sinful flesh wants exactly the opposite of what the Spirit wants, and it will be that way as long as we live. Now, if you are distressed because you want to do what is right, but you find yourself falling into sin, take heart. This is not a sign that you are not a Christian; it’s a sign that you are, because the Spirit and the flesh cannot tolerate each other!

But if you are perfectly at peace with yourself; if you don’t have any spiritual conflict at all; if you think that you are living the holy life God called you to live, it’s time to take a serious look at yourself. If you think you can live your Christian life here on earth without experiencing any spiritual conflict, you are sorely mistaken. Walking in the Spirit means that we take stock of who we are. We are Christians. Through Holy Baptism, we have been called out of the darkness of sin and death into the light of God’s eternal, saving truth. The Law cannot condemn us, but only because we have Jesus Christ who faced the condemnation of the Law in our place. You are still tempted by the works of the flesh, and you can easily fall into them, for which you repent and renounce your sin. That’s the battle! But here is a very important point. Falling into temptation and sin is one thing; embracing sin and claiming that it is good is something quite different. The Spirit fights against the flesh, and as long as that spiritual warfare continues, faith is alive.

And yet, we fail in all of this, don’t we? The works of the flesh rise up to claim us. The works of the flesh are obvious, the apostle says. They are obviously wrong. But what does the flesh in its arrogance do? That old unregenerate, corrupt, and incorrigible flesh takes what God has established, twists it into perverted forms, and then claims that God is pleased with it. And that is why the road to hell is paved with the works of the flesh. In the end, they are only bitter and hateful things, with no forgiveness from God for the sin with which these works are filled.

We fall into sin. So what do we do then? We reclaim our inheritance in God’s Kingdom by reclaiming the promise of God in our baptism, where we daily drown that old sinful nature, that a new man may arise to live before God in righteousness and purity, as Luther says. There God joined His name to ours and claimed us as His own. There He washed us in the blood of the Lamb. There He joined us to the crucifixion and resurrection of His own dear Son. And that is who we are: forgiven of all sin, walking in the Spirit, rejoicing in the privilege of being children of God. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

          The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.