Galatians
5:22-26
May
21, 2014
William G. Carter
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have
crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also
be guided by the Spirit. Let us
not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.
If you are driving down the street, you might
notice the sign that says, “Under New Management.” I suppose it is meant to
announce a brand new start, a fresh new approach. “Come and visit it us,” the
sign outside a restaurant may declare. “We are under new management.”
I don’t know about you, but when I see such a
sign, I flinch a little bit: “Under New Management”? I suspect the old
management wasn’t working so well. I wonder: will the waiters be better trained
this time” Will the chef has stopped dropping cigarette ashes in my omelet? Has
somebody told the teenager at the cash register to look up from her iPhone when
it’s time to take my credit card?
New management usually takes over for a number
of very good reasons. Whoever used to run the place has stepped aside. Someone
has determined it is still a viable opportunity. And the new person in charge
has made the necessary changes to start over again.
Now, I’m not talking only about a restaurant or
a business or any of that. I’m also about our lives. In our scripture passage,
Paul is discussing the “new management” that takes over our lives as Christians.
There is a shift from being self-directed to Spirit-filled. It is a move from
belonging only to ourselves, or belonging to the devil, to belonging to God and
all that God loves.
Paul says this is the power of the Gospel. It frees
us. Faith comes with liberation. We don’t have to be the person we were,
captive to our natural whims, a slave to our own compulsions. Faith in Jesus
sets us free. Paul says our old self is “crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20). In
its place there is a New Creation. The Risen Christ lives in us.
Every
once in a while, we meet a person who has changed dramatically, for the good.
Something has happened in them, perhaps quickly, perhaps over a long period of
time. We knew what they were like, but now they are different.
I
think of a woman from my high school class. Around the time of graduation, she
didn’t have any plans. Penny seemed to coast along, doing whatever her friends
suggested that she do. She was nice enough, but not particularly focused. When
we met again some thirty years later, she was transformed. There was a sparkle
in her eye. She bubbled confidence. She was clear about her life and her values.
“What are you doing?” I asked. She is a hospice counselor. She gives her life every
day to people who need her, and it never wears her down.
I
wondered out loud, how is that possible? And she began to speak of how she
prays, how she reads the scripture slowly every day, how her walk with God
opens her to fresh insight and deeper hope. I told her she wasn’t the same
person that I remembered from years ago in school. She said, “I certainly hope
not.”
This
is a glimpse of what faith in Jesus Christ can do to us. It replaces the old
management with something new. In
this letter to the Galatians, Paul’s word for the old management is “sarx.” It’s
a word that means “the flesh.” What he’s talking about are the natural
inclinations of every wild animal, the tendency to do whatever we want, to take
what others have, to stir up fights, to live without any boundaries. Paul has
already given a grim recital of what this looks like: jealousy, quarreling,
breaking into factions, giving into our impulses, and so forth and so on. That’s
what he calls “the flesh” (5:19-21). It was the old management that was running
the place into the ground. And there is another way. Thanks be to God, there is
another way.
When
Paul writes to these Gentile Christians in Turkey, he gives them a few lists. Here
is how to treat people in your household, he says. Then he gives them a list of
what destructive behavior looks like. And then, in the text for today, he
presents a list of how you know someone is under the New Management of God’s
Spirit.
So
Paul gives us a list. When he writes to these Gentile people in Turkey, he
loves to make his lists. Here is how the Christian people in your household
ought to treat one another, he will say. Or here are the destructive behaviors
that get us in trouble, and then he presents his list. In our text, he gives
another kind of list, a list of how you know someone is under the New Management
of God’s Spirit.
One
day this week, a volunteer by the name of Jack stood in the door frame of my
study. We were chatting about the Joyful Noise program that he is co-leading
with our children right now. Jack said, “You know, Paul’s letter to the
Galatians is difficult to teach to little kids.” I smiled and thought of a
couple texts that I hope they don’t have time to cover.[1]
But
it occurred to me that every child can perceive when a person has God at the
center of their lives. How do you know God got “into” somebody? By what they
are full of . . . and so Paul gives his list:
Love, joy, peace;
Patience, kindness, generosity;
Faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control.
Do
you notice? We know what each word means. There is no need to look them up –
love, patience, gentleness, we know what they are. And we know they are not specifically
Christian words. When the Buddhist knocks on my door and speaks of peace, I
resonate with her. When the Jew speaks of kindness, I nod in agreement. Anybody
can be filled with peace or act with kindness, for God creates all of us with
that potential.
What
makes this a specifically Christian package is that these attributes are all embodied
in Jesus. Everything we know about him suggests love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is how
he is, and what he models for us. The true Christians are Christ-like. It is a
supernatural transformation. I am talking about the people who are so full of
the same Spirit that fills the Christ that they begin to resemble the Lord that
they serve.
How
remarkable that we should consider such character traits on the day we ordain
our elders and deacons! Those who lead the Lord’s people should resemble the
Lord they serve. And how will we recognize them?
- Love is the
ability to act for the benefit of others
- Joy is the
engine that never runs out of fuel.
- Peace is the
harmony that creates harmony, within and between.
- Patience takes the
long view of God’s eternal kingdom.
- Kindness confronts
the human tendency to be cruel.
- Generosity counters
the natural inclination to be selfish.
- Faithfulness is the
commitment to endure no matter what.
- Gentleness is the velvet
glove on the iron hand.
- Self-control is the
discipline to make room for God’s direction.
This
is what comes if we welcome God to fill our hearts and guide our lives. The world
doesn’t need any more heartless bureaucrats, hostile managers, or passive-aggressive
waitresses. We don’t need any more church leaders that are full of themselves, much
less full of their own opinions. What God’s people need are servants who are
full of God, ordinary people who are so full of God’s Spirit that they begin to
resemble Jesus. They open us to the possibility that there is another way to
live. Their lives reveal that God’s dominion is at hand.
The
weary old world can’t always understand this. To use the apostle Paul’s word,
the world runs by “sarx” – that is, the natural inclinations of the flesh. It
is evident in so many ways, but perhaps the most profound way is how we compete
with one another. We interrupt others when they talk. We scoot around a
slowpoke to beat him to the checkout line. I think of that lady in Texas who
planned to bump off a middle school cheerleader so her daughter could make the
squad. That’s as worldly as a tiger ripping apart a wounded zebra. That’s the
way of the world. But there is another way, the way of God.
Years
ago, the Dutch priest Henri Nouwen took a teaching job at Notre Dame. He was hired
as a professor in a brand-new psychology department. He enjoyed the work, loved
the students, but there was one thing that caused him to grumble: it was the
university’s obsession with football. He didn’t have a problem with the sport,
but he noticed that, in South Bend, at least, the obsession could be more
important than everything else. What’s that all about? And how does it square
with living a holy and compassionate life in the world?
If
we live in Christ, he said, “It is not excelling but serving that makes us
most human. It is not proving ourselves to be better than others but confessing
to be just like others that is the way to healing and reconciliation.
Compassion - to be with others when and where they suffer - is God’s way to
justice and peace among people. Is this possible? Yes, it is, but only when we
dare to live with the radical faith that we do not have to compete for love,
but that love is freely given to us by the One who calls us to compassion.”[2]
Do
you remember the list?
Love, joy, peace;
Patience, kindness, generosity;
Faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control.
These
are the signs that God is at work in our lives. These are the gifts that increase
in our souls as the Spirit of God directs our lives. And needless to say, these
are the blessings that you might offer to the world.
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