“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”
The problem with taking a single passage like this and doing a series of devotions on it is that it is quite easy to draw too much out of the verse. By that I mean that people can take a passage and read into it doctrine that was never intended by the original writer.
It is a bit like a letter between a boy and a girl, where one party is in love and the other has no interest in anything but a friendship. The smallest word or phrase in the letter could easily be
misinterpreted. Plenty of people have read too much into words and phrases they have read or heard because they didn’t pick up on the overall context and concentrated on only a few words instead.
To avoid this I want to spend a little time covering the context of this passage, so that whatever I have to say about it can be tempered by the context and I won’t read more from this passage than what was intended.
The problem that Paul (the writer of Galatians) is dealing with in this passage is the question of just how “Jewish” Christians should be. It all came down to the question of if Christians should be circumcised as a sign they were sons of Abraham.
The argument that Paul uses is that those who trust in their circumcision must come completely under the Law of Moses. The cross came to do what the Law could not, and set us free from sin. This is an offensive message to the Jews. It seemed to imply that the Law was somehow flawed, and that all those people who obeyed it had been wasting their time (this is not the case, but we will deal with this in a later devotional).
In regards to the Jewish Law, Paul wanted the Galatians to know “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” (Galatians 5 v13)
He then goes on to describe what this kind of life would look like. They would have freedom from the law, but in reality that freedom would cause them not just to obey the law, but to go beyond the places where the law reached, and instead change their hearts so that as well as fully meeting the requirements of the law they would also avoid things which the law did not prohibit (such as hatred, selfish ambition and factions) and do many things that the law did not specifically require like showing joy, kindness and self-control.
We are no longer under the letter of the law, which would allow us to get away with many of the things that cause God the most grief; instead we now have the spirit of the law, which not only take us further than the law, but also gives us the power to actually carry it out.
This is why Paul urges us to walk by the Spirit, not so that we can do whatever we want, but rather so that we can do the things God wants – the very things that because of the desires of our flesh we were unable to do without the spirit, even when we knew what they were! This is the challenge to us, and this is the context behind the devotionals I will write over the next few weeks.
God Bless,
Matt.
