The important thing I think for most of us is to understand that spiritual transformation is among other things an achievement. I use that word hoping it will make you uneasy, see? But it is an achievement, and it’s presented in that way in the scriptures, and it is experienced that way in people throughout the history of the church. Now, that means that it’s something that you engage in and if we do not take appropriate action, it will not happen. And so, constantly in the New Testament in the gospels and the book of Acts and the letters and the whole deal, it is presented as something we do, and many people have a very hard time thinking that thought but it’s one we have to think. And then that is where the disciplines come in and the key idea here; we can put in one word, which is “indirection;” indirection—funny word. That means that you achieve by doing something different—something other. [1:31] So, the two typical reactions here are hopelessness and that is to say, people look at the Sermon on the Mount or l Corinthians 13 and they just say, “I can’t do it, and I am a failure and it’s wonderful that I am forgiven and there is grace for my failures” and all of that’s true. All of that’s true. The question is, “Is that where you live?” And so many people just live there and reconcile their lives as Christians to that and they never look at l Corinthians 13, for example, and say, “Well, love suffers long and is kind; how could I do that? It does not envy; how could I do that?” And so, they don’t find ways of getting there and with hopelessness comes another option here—brokenness. [3:00] Brokenness—now, I am going to say something mean, okay? Brokenness is where you come to enjoy hopelessness. Sorry about that because again, brokenness is essential. The question is, “Are you going to live there,” right? Hopelessness is not essential unless you are—the only thing you know is your own strength. Brokenness is essential. Brokenness is where you say, “I am broken; I don’t function; I cannot do it.” But you say you live there, okay? Now, the way out of that is indirection, disciplines, and again, you don’t have to call them that. You don’t have to call them that. The missing word here now that goes with disciplines looks kind of like it—disciples. Disciplines are for disciples—who are disciples? Disciples are students, learners; I like the word “apprentice” because it has an applied idea, you know. You become an apprentice electrician, not a student electrician. A student electrician would have you sitting around reading books about electricity. Apprentice—you get out there and you are doing the wires. You have these possibilities; now, you have to hear a gospel that makes apprentices and that is “Come and live in the Kingdom of God with Jesus.” So, the gospel of the Kingdom moves you out of hopelessness through brokenness to discipleship. And discipleship can lead you through indirection into the character and power of Christ. It will be a progression. [6:03]
Faith is always a matter of more or less and the very instructive words of the poor man with the son who needed help, “I believe, help thou mine unbelief.” That’s the constant posture. We move from faith to faith as Romans 1 says—by experience. You grow in faith by putting into action the faith that you have and actually that’s true of any field of human experience and activity. You grow in faith by putting into practice the faith you have. That’s the essential nature of faith is to relate you to the reality that corresponds to it, see? Faith is not to get acceptance. That’s a trap. You don’t believe something so God will like you. Faith isn’t to make you feel better or function better. It will do that probably. It depends on what you have faith in, but the function of faith is to relate you to reality and when it relates you to reality, then your faith grows. Your faith is ready to act as if something is true and when you act, you find how true it is or for that matter, how false it is and then you get a correction. The function of faith is to integrate you with reality. Actually, many people turn faith into a work. They say, “God will accept you because of your faith.” And they mean by that; because you believe the right things, which, by the way, you probably don’t but that’s another story. We live by faith because it puts us into action and if we have faith in God, we trust him and we act on him and our faith enables us to live. The just person is the person who lives by faith because that faith puts them into touch with reality. You know, this word, “The just shall live by faith” comes out of Habakkuk. It doesn’t come out of Romans or out of Luther. It comes out of Habakkuk and he’s talking about really hard times for people in Israel. His discovery is that you keep living because you have faith in God no matter how hard the times are. You have faith in God. That puts you in touch with the reality and you know that God is your portion, and He is your portion. So, that wonderful passage at the end of Habakkuk just talks about the saw being empty and the vines bearing nothing and no fruit and all of that. No fruit. Says, “yet I have God.” [9:48]
OK, so this is kind of a little picture now and over here, spiritual transformation only happens as each essential dimension of the human being is transformed into Christlikeness under the direction of a regenerate will interacting with constant overtures of grace from God in many forms. Such transformation is not the result of mere human effort and cannot be accomplished by putting pressure on the will. It is not a matter of willpower. If all you’ve got is willpower, you might as well give up early and avoid the rush because it’s not going to work. But, if you use your will to rely upon God—now, God is the one who makes that possible—and that’s the new birth, which by the way, isn’t the new birth; it’s the birth from above. New birth is not in John 3; it’s birth from above and that’s really crucial to understand that. New birth is legitimate New Testament language; it happens in 1 Peter for example. Born again; it’s okay if you know where it comes from. It’s the birth from above and so then that is the process and perhaps one of the greatest mistakes here in spiritual growth, and by the way I should add, in service is to think that the answer is to try harder. That’s especially important for those who are involved in ministry as we say, the answer is not try harder. The answer is actually “get out of God’s way” but that takes some work too. And perhaps next is to think that grace will do it without effort. OK [11:58]
Now, where is the actual movement of the life that is lived in the way we’ve been talking about? Adopting the strategy of accepting Christ, trusting him and that meaning that we are growing in Christlikeness, adopting his overall style of life, putting off the old person and so on, where does that all come out? And the answer is that it comes out in a life that is permeated, undergirded, over-shadowed, and surrounded by what the scripture calls the fruit of the spirit. And this again is progressive, growing; it does not come all at once and I was talking with someone here about what in one denomination came to be known as the “second work of grace” and the second work of grace was treated for a period as an experience. It was also called the “rest of faith” and when you had that experience you were thought to be completed in terms of the fruit of the spirit and in terms of sinless perfection in some places. You just got it by experience, and I think that that’s not true to the scripture, nor true to the experience. Now, you have to add always that when those kinds of things get established, it’s usually because some outstanding individual had experienced something like that and the rest of faith or the second work of grace was something that some individuals experienced and so if it hadn’t done something like that for some people, it would never have caught on. But that’s how these things go, they catch on and then they become something that is generalized and unfortunately, most people cannot live with, and they become performances and so on. [14:50]
So, if you would, please look with me at Galatians 5 and we are going to see the flesh and the spirit at work here. You know the background here of the Galatian churches in the area there. They had received the gospel early on in Paul’s ministry and they had been liberated into love of Christ and they experienced the power of God in their prayers and their life and all of that but then some people came and tried to take them back into dependence upon the law and works of the law; particularly, things like circumcision and so on and Paul is fighting against that in this passage. It is a passage about the power to accomplish righteousness. Verse 13 in Galatians 5, “For you were called to freedom, brethren.” Freedom from what—freedom from observing ritual behaviors as a path to righteousness before God? You are called to freedom and the problem is you can turn that into an opportunity for the flesh. Now, remember that the flesh is the natural human abilities. When they are organized, they are called the world. But the natural human abilities, see, it doesn’t take the work of God to remove a foreskin. A sharp knife and a willingness to cut will be quite enough. You don’t need the divine assistance of the spirit to do that. And there is a temptation to enslave oneself to activities that are only for the flesh. Now Paul shifts it, and says, “The entire law is fulfilled in one saying and that is ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’” Now, if you do that, then you have received spiritual circumcision and whatever else that someone might come down the track and say you ought to have. We just need to stop and pause a moment and ask ourselves. Do we believe that? Do you fulfill the whole law when you love your neighbor as yourself? Now, of course, Paul knew very well that if you didn’t love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, you could never do that. So, if you can do that, you’ve got the whole deal. Because one of the things that happens around us constantly in our context within churches and denominations and outside is the idea, “Well, I can do that. I can do that.” [8:30]
Pretty regularly, I have Christian kids come into my office and sit down and say, “You know, I’ve been here for three months, and these people here are more loving than the people back home in my church.” Well, I always, say, “Well, give ‘em a little time.” And of course, they have identified “loving” with “being nice” and that gets defined in terms of the particular group that they are in. So that’s the whole law; so, forget about all the other stuff Paul is saying and now, he adds on that the danger is that we will not love but that we will tear one another up by following our desires in verse 16, ”Walk in the spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.” OK. Two ways, two sources—the natural energies of the human being and supernatural power directing you in your life helping you walk free from the law of sin and death. You have to cross-reference this to Romans 8. What the law couldn’t do, God sent his Son. “There is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” He is referring back to the dilemma of Romans 7 when he says, “there is therefore now no condemnation,” He is referring to the condemnation that was being referred to in the earlier verses. No condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. That’s the key. So, we are going to see now the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. Notice, in one case its works and the other case, it’s fruit; very different and of course, the writer of this, Paul and the Holy Spirit, knew the difference. Works live at a superficial level—deeds. So, the heart is one level, action is the other. The person who is living in the flesh tries to keep this life at the level of the actions and hide their heart. But the heart is where the person lives. There is constant warfare going on between these two. It isn’t between two things at the same level. It’s between two things at different levels. Now, there is of course, evil in the heart. That’s where the deeds come from but what makes the person who is living by the flesh is their attempt to stay at the level of action and not deal with the heart. So, just quickly, you remember how Jesus does this when he gets ready to illustrate what lies beyond the righteousness of the Scribe and Pharisee in Matthew 5, he begins with, “killing” and “hating.” The old law said “don’t’ kill anyone” but I say unto you—shifts the level and now all of a sudden, he is talking about something else. Right? He is talking about having contempt for people—being angry and so forth. That’s shifting the level; now, that’s why we talk of the fruit of the spirit, which is deed and the deeds of the flesh, which is superficial and there is no peace at that level. It’s just constant warfare because it’s trying to operate in terms of desires and desires are essentially conflictual, not only within the person but between persons and so, at that level, there is just warfare and the flesh sets its desire against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, i.e. they are headed in different directions. What the flesh wants is one thing; what the spirit wants is another. They are in opposition so that you are now torn to pieces, and this is reverting to Romans 7, “You cannot do the things that you please.” See, that’s just reiterating Romans 7 where Paul says, “The things I would that I do not and the things I would not that I do.” That’s the normal condition of the human being and they’re up here at the level of deeds, trying to fight it out and get it all to work and it won’t work. And also, the social level is the same thing. [24:22] But, if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now, you have stepped out of the domain of deeds. The law fundamentally as Paul is understanding it here and as it becomes understood in opposition to grace, the law deals with deeds, and it tries to control what people do or it deals with what people do. Then out of that, you get the deeds of the flesh—immorality, impurity, sensuality, adultery, sorcery, enmities and so forth. What are those? Well, it gets down more into the heart in verse 21, “envying, drunkenness, carousing and things like these. Those who practice or do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.” The Kingdom of God will not be given to them and that is exactly what Jesus means when he says, in Matthew 5:30, “unless you go beyond the righteousness”—beyond the Scribe and the Pharisee—the righteousness of the Scribe and the Pharisee was at the level of deeds—and now then, you shift the emphasis to the level of the heart and interestingly enough, that allows you to deal with people who are living in the flesh. [25:58] This is one of the things that got people so mad at Jesus; that He would sit down and have a good dinner and tell stories with people regarded as wicked. The Pharisees were always over here grumbling. They grumbled a lot. Grumbling goes with living at the level of deeds because you are never going to be happy at that level. One of the marks of living in the light in Phil. 2 is no grumbling. Quit grumbling…grumble, grumble, grumble is a rumble at the level of deeds and if you live at that level, you are always going to have plenty to grumble about. Right? But now, Jesus you know, he didn’t deal with people in that light. And you know He got in trouble for having dinner with the republicans and sinners. And how could he do that? Well, He wasn’t at the deed level. He was at the heart level. And so, He could sit down with anyone, and you know, He was always in trouble over that. [27:15]
Two different levels—now, the fruit of the spirit. Now the fruit of the spirit isn’t the same thing as the spirit. The fruit is not the tree; it’s not the root. The fruit here consists of things that are not actions. They are characteristics of the whole person and that’s important for you to notice when you look at the list of fruit. Fruit, sorry, it’s only one and has many sections but they are properties of the person; they are not properties of actions. So, the spirit is at work here in the life of the individual and we can think the thought possibly that that’s….. where he’s working? Well, where is he working? He’s working with disciples. [28:22] Disciple is the status of the individual who’s going through the process of spiritual transformation. So, he’s working with disciples and they are going through a process of training and the insides—all those dimensions that we put up earlier in the day—the spirit, that is basically the will and the surrender of the will, understanding what that means, how the will works with the mind, how the mind works with the will—so, that’s the process that’s going on and then, out of that process comes the fruit. Now, the fruit will then affect the deeds because given the fruit of the spirit, the deeds will be totally different. Not because you’re trying to make them different, but because you are now a different kind of person or character because we are really talking here about what humans address often very inadequately in terms of character in talking about the condition of the whole person and out of that, then, come deeds and if it’s a bad condition, bad deeds and if it’s a good condition, good deeds. That’s why Jesus said, “A good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit.” Did you know he said that? A bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit. Now, that’s consistent with the fact that occasionally you see a person who is genuinely good who does something bad and a person who is genuinely bad who does something good. But the overall tendency is a bad person brings forth bad fruit—a good person brings forth good fruit. Out of the abundance of the heart—what there’s a lot of in the heart Jesus says –the mouth speaks. So, here it is—love, joy, peace. Those are the main “upfront” parts of the fruit—love, joy, peace. [30:38] Try not to think of those as separate. You don’t really want love that doesn’t have peace, and you don’t really want peace that doesn’t have joy. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, loyalty—I like that way of translating faithfulness is okay, but it means the ability to be loyal–gentleness, self-control. Now, at the end of that list, Paul injects a little wry humor, “against such there is no law” and that’s true, isn’t it? I doubt that you have ever seen a law against self-control. If you control yourself, we will throw you in jail. That’s another way of saying that law is operating in a different level: the level of action. You don’t make laws about these things. So, that’s the fruit of the spirit now and you have to take a moment to just sort of think—these are not people who are trying to be joyful or trying to love—there can be some element of effort in that and some element of conscious choice but now we are talking about people who love without thinking about it—who are joyful without thinking about it because that is what makes up their insides. The spirit of God is dwelling in them and has come to occupy their personality through a process of discipleship and spiritual formation. See, we are talking now about living in the divine conversation and character—this is the character—this is the divine character. This is the character of God, and this is the character that He conveys to us through His fellowship with us in the Kingdom of God. Now, it takes some thinking and some creative imagination to think what that would be like because we are used to handling things in a different way. We don’t know how tough the fruit is; we don’t know how capable of standing for what is good. The fruit is—actually it’s the only way to go if you are going to be tough. If you are going to stand for what is right, this is how you do it. You don’t fight evil with evil; you fight evil with good. Good is what is powerful. The divine conspiracy is God’s plan to overcome evil with good in human history—that’s the divine conspiracy. And He comes to you now and says, “Wouldn’t you like to be a part of this?” [Repeat] And it’s a conspiracy because people don’t know about it generally and they think the way you overcome evil is usually with more evil—not always because you know there is a witness to truth that is public and available to people and it’s wonderful to see how some people—I see this with regularity—some person who has just witnessed the futility of trying to deal with their situation with evil and they just give up on it. See, that’s basic repentance in saying, “this is not the way to go.” And they turn and they say, “I will trust what is good.” They don’t know the name of good is God. They just know there is a good and that it’s the way to go even if they can’t—and this is where you get many people involved in non-violence and other good things—they are just going to serve what is good and they do that and that’s a good thing. But now, this is presented as the answer to all of the stuff that comes out of the failure of the flesh, and you will notice the next verse here says, “Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Crucified. Not dead yet. If you are crucified, you are still alive usually for a while—not dead yet. To crucify means to put them out of control. I do not allow my life to be guided by passion and desire. What that means among other things is, “I don’t do what I feel like doing. I don’t ‘not do’ something because I don’t feel like it, unless it’s something very trivial, you know? [37:01] Like, going to bed at 10:00, something of that sort. So, there are some things where it doesn’t matter one way or the other so much. But, nearly all cases, the great trap is to allow your passions and your feelings (your desires) to govern your life. And that’s what Paul is saying, “If you are going to live over here with the fruit of the spirit, you do not allow your life to be governed by those things.” You have crucified them. Now, of course, crucifying yourself is hard unless you have three hands, I guess. [Laughter] So, we’ve had a little help by the time we get here. That’s like I quoted Romans 8:13 last session—“they who through the spirit do mortify the flesh shall live”—it’s a matter of having some help. We do our part; God does his part—and maybe our part is just to say I am willing and to spread out on the cross. And he’ll take care of the rest. They that are Christ’s have crucified the passions and the desires. [38:32]
Now, we need to go back and look at these different things. I am not going to take love first. I want to come to that last, but I would like to spend some time now on ‘peace.’ I reiterate that you can’t take these things separately. They all come together. They are the fruit. They are not fruits of the spirit. There is one fruit; they all come together. You can’t live without peace; you can’t have peace without love and so on down the line. I mean, you try these out and you try the combinations. Imagine a person who is peaceful but not joyful. Well, that’s better than some other things I can think of, but peace and joy make a beautiful combination. Love, of course, is the moving force in all of it and I really think it’s best to regard all the rest of the things listed as to spelling out what love amounts to and if you go to 1 Cor. 13, fundamentally you get the whole deal, but spelled out in different terms. [40:05]
Peace. What is peace? How would you describe someone who is at peace and by the way, the people in the grave are not at peace. If they are, it’s not because they are in the grave. The grave is not where you rest in peace. That’s the world’s picture that distorts what genuine peace is. Well, I try to give a little language here and let’s just try it out and see how it seems to fit. Peace is essentially rest in goodness. It is rest in goodness. Negatively, no alarm. What is alarm? Alarm is agitation over things that are not good tied to fear. Fear is anticipation of evil. Now, we are told by John, in 1 John 4 is it; “perfect love casts out fear” and whose love would you think that is? Probably not mine. Right? Though it’s working on that. That same passage says, “He that has fear has torment.” That’s not peace. That’s alarm. And the source of this love is of course God’s love and God’s love is perfect love. It leaves no question. Sometimes, we need to test our understanding of the gospel by taking some passages from the scripture and quoting the first part and saying, “How would you finish that?” In 1 John 1:5, John, after his salutation, says, “And this is the message we have heard of him.” How would you finish that verse without looking? What was the message we had heard of him? God is light. God is light. Is that the gospel? Could you preach that as gospel? God is light and in Him is no darkness. Not any. Not any. See, John had become convinced after a lifetime of the centrality and the complete adequacy of love to life of God’s love. Now, that is why I say if you are in the Kingdom of God, this is a perfectly safe place for you to be is because of the love of God. How great is God. Many times, the message we hear preached is one that certainly puts in question whether or not God is love and you will hear people say things like, “How could a God of love send people to hell?” Well, that’s a serious question. It needs a serious answer. And love is not what some people associate with God. Down in southern California, we have an organization called Western Exterminator. It’s a place that goes after bugs and has a picture of a man with a little top hat on and he is looking at a bug down here and he has a hammer behind his back. That’s many people’s picture of God. They think God is like that. And, so, this whole issue of fear and alarm and peace, now; let me give you Isaiah 26:3-4, “The steadfast of mind thou wilt keep in perfect peace because he trusts in Thee; trust in the Lord forever for in God the Lord we have an everlasting rock.”—an everlasting rock. A rock is something that you can sit on. You can count on, and it will be there. Psalms 116:7, “Return to your rest oh my soul for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you for you have rescued my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I shall walk before the Lord in the land of the living. “ See, that’s a picture of the reliability of God. Once you begin to penetrate into the nature of God, you realize that what would be surprising would be if God didn’t love you. That’s what would be surprising. It isn’t like the ones He loves; He sort of makes an exception and says, “OK, I love you. I don’t love everybody.” This is a different picture of God. Now, of course, a lot of that comes from the human tendency to think that if you are going to run something, you have to be tough and being tough probably means that you are not really kind. You are not really gracious—that if you are gracious, you can’t run things because people will take advantage of you and that’s a real problem in the world as we live it because people are used to a certain way of acting and if you are kind—it’s like a dog. You can say the most terrible things you can imagine to a dog and say it in a kind voice, he will wag his tale and lick your hand, right? People are attuned more to tone than they are anything else and you say the sweetest thing to the dog in a violent voice and it will slink off. All right? It’s like that in human affairs, we have to train and re-train people to the behaviors of love and peace and joy so that they will not misunderstand what we are saying. It takes a little time, but we have to be patient with it. We have to stay with people. We associate standing with punishment for example. We think that if we are going to stand for something, we have to make people suffer. I tell this story a lot of times. It’s so illustrative. Many, many years ago, I was counseling couple who were having trouble with their teenage son and I said, “Have you considered when you punish him, don’t do it in anger.” And they were so surprised, they said, “What, just punish him in cold blood?” Yeah! That’s the way to do it. Love enables you to stand for what is right, do what is necessary, move out of that area where fear is the predominating sort of thing like “I’m going to kill you” if you don’t do this or I’ll talk to you that way and we move into a different world where there is no fear. [49:11] And that’s where peace sets in. No fear. Positively, of course, it’s resting in goodness. Now, Jesus’ teaching about rest, “Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Rest. Peace and rest go together. Many times, we can’t sleep because there is an alarm set off in our soul and ministering to people who can’t sleep often is a matter of listening to them, praying with them, identifying the alarm and because very often, they don’t know what it is even though they are experiencing it. And then you have to try to find a way by grace to turn off the alarm so they can go to sleep. We are an alarmed world. We live in an alarmed culture. Noise is so much of what is used to keep us tortured without rest. And so, our disciplines come back into that. Many times, people say to me, “Well if I go into solitude and do nothing, I will go to sleep.” I encourage them to do that. It’ll do them good and try to sleep until they wake up rested and that is a spiritual discipline. Sleep is a spiritual discipline in our world. It enables you to do things you cannot do by direct effort. [50:54]
Joy—I think a pervasive and firmly established sense of well-being. Now, we have a lot of verses—I’ve given you some there—one of my favorites is Romans 14:17. It’s about the Kingdom of God. It’s about a situation where they are fighting in church over what to eat and how to eat it. Can you believe that that would ever be a common issue? And Paul says, “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” In other words, a kind of righteousness or goodness, a kind of peace and a kind of joy that is supernatural. You see, that’s the nature of the fruit—that’s why they are called the fruit of the spirit is because they come from a source. I like Romans 15:13 also. I didn’t include that in your list but it’s a lovely description of God. “Now may the God of hope—that’s another one of our things coming up here—the God of hope. Isn’t that a lovely phrase? God is the God of hope. “….fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” You will be hopeful and full of joy and peace and people will think where did you get that? Well, that’s how God is. God is full of hope and peace and joy and that comes with his love. One of the places in The Divine Conspiracy—the book—that I have received a number of comments on is in the third chapter where I suggest that God is actually happy. And it’s so indicative of what I said earlier about how we think about God. God is mad—everyone is comfortable with that. If you suggest that He is actually happy and enjoys His creation and thinks it’s wonderful and spends a lot of time doing that and He has the faculties for it, well, then people say, “Could that possibly be true?” [53:50] I give you Psalms 16 and John 15 there. I don’t think I’ll turn to those, but you can look at what it says about Jesus for example, giving his joy to his disciples. “My joy I give to you that your joy might be full.” That’s John 15:11. Full joy—now, joy is compatible with sorrow. That’s one of those contradictions that you find in Paul’s description of himself where is it in 2 Corinthians 6, I think it is—sorrowful yet always rejoicing. You remember that? Sorrowful—that was one of the ways that Paul had of describing what he lived through. Sorrowful yet always rejoicing. Joy has a different location than sorrow. Sorrow is directed at specific things. Joy is directed at the general condition of life. That’s why you never want to confuse joy with happiness much less pleasure, right? Joy is a general condition of life that is founded upon the sense of adequacy and well-being, that comes and thank goodness for human beings—this can be done in many ways. For example, our little granddaughter Larissa, gives Jane and I a pervasive sense of well-being just being in her presence. And there is something good about children in that regard. You will remember so many things that Jesus said or so many occasions in his life. [55:59]
OK; peace and joy. Now then you see even with just those two, you are operating out of a different life context. So, when we begin to move into the Kingdom of God and we begin to pick up from Jesus the teachings and the practices, then joy and peace begin to come with that. It’s very interesting to look at people like Peter, John, and Paul as they go on in the book of Acts and later and observe how they change in these regards. Paul’s teaching in Philippians sitting in jail, “Rejoice in the Lord and again I say rejoice.” You see, that’s the right place. You rejoice in the Lord. That’s joy because that takes care of everything. You rejoice in the Lord. You don’t rejoice in your circumstances. He was living in a very bad circumstance at that time, but his teaching is that he himself has joy because he knows how to live in whatever the circumstances there are. “I have learned,” he says, “in whatever circumstance I am, therewith to be content—therewith to be content.” [57:28]
Have you ever thought about the word content? Sometimes we pronounce it “con-tent” don’t we, and it’s related to con-tained. Therewith content. What he is saying is, “I have found sufficiency. I have found sufficiency. I know how to be abased. I know how to be bound and how to abound—all those things he talks about—that’s the passage where he says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Now, you know that you speak those words out of peace and joy. [58:11]
Well, quickly—hope–confident anticipation of good; confidence about the future. Now, worry and deadness fill any area of life that’s not filled by hope, and this is a great challenge. I think one of the greatest parts of the challenge here is to be hopeful for others that you love when they are not in a good place with God. Hope, of course, fears anticipation of evil. Hope is anticipation of good. The blessed hope is a great good. The blessed hope of Christ coming for us, returning to earth, straightening it out, taking care of it. Now, a hopeful person is a very different kind of person than the one who is fearful or without hope. Deadness—sometimes people aren’t fearful—they are just dead, and they don’t have any hope, and they don’t have any fear. Very often, they have just given up. You find people who are afraid to hope. I remember a neighbor once we had who said, she didn’t want to teach her children about life beyond death because she was afraid, they would be disappointed, and you have to kind of think about that. But she was operating on this idea that you ought not to cause people to hope if it might not come true. I don’t know where things like that come from. You stop and say where does that come from. Well, of course there is a legitimate avoidance of what we might call false hopes because of avoiding disappointment or of venturing on a hope that wasn’t realistic and the harm that could come from it. But, in Christ, hope is the natural condition for a person to live in; even for people who are that we love and are out of the way. We should hope for them. Our hope of course is not in them but in God and we should stay with that as long as there’s any staying with it is concerned. [1:01:16]
Now, confidence or faith is also in the list. It comes in various ways, but it’s not listed as a separate thing under that like it is in 1 Corinthians 13 where you have faith, hope, and love as being the three things that remain after the other good things have been gone. Faith is based upon the invisible world. Faith is seeing the invisible and faith is a kind of knowledge. We must talk about this more tomorrow but don’t oppose faith to knowledge please. The Bible never opposes faith to knowledge; it does oppose faith to sight because it is a way of knowing what is invisible. And that of course is a large part of how it supports faith and joy and peace. It is a way of seeing the invisible landscape. It is a sense of reality and on that, I think I really should read the verses from Hebrews that I have listed there because we really want to understand that faith is a way of knowing and dealing with reality. It is not a wild leap into something that is unknown so here we are told—now, your translations betray you—the old translations say “faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen and your modern translations always subjectize that and they turn it into mental states instead of substance. There is no question about the word there; it is substance. It is evidence. Those are not subjective but my wonderful—I use the New American Standard and it’s quite reliable by and large; it just says, now faith is the assurance and puts a little footnote that says substance and its substance. Faith is substance. What is substance? Well, it’s the stuff that holds everything else up. Faith is not a mental state. It involves a mental state, but it actually is substance, and it is what brings into existence things that don’t exist yet. Substance. The substance of things hoped for, assurance of things—conviction and then of course you have a little side note that says evidence. Well, that’s very gracious of them to put those in. The conviction of things not seen for by it the men of old gained approval by faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. Now, by any account, that’s going to be true because if you pursue the writings of the people who mess around with matter, you find out that they’ve gotten it down to stuff that is not visible. They really don’t know what it is; what strings and quirks and colors and all that is. But they are not visible. Now, what are they? Well, the scriptural teaching is they are expressions of the word of God. God says, “Let it be this way.” And that’s the way it is. It’s creative; the opening verses of Hebrews talks about the “son upholding all things by the word of his power.” So, ultimate reality is not a black hole of some kind. It’s personal. And because that person is good, you can be hopeful. And what you want to do is to let your faith enter into that reality of your life and then bring it back into what you do as you live in the kingdom of God. Faith is readiness to act as if the goodness presupposed in hope. I’m sorry you got “home” there. Home is a good place for hope but—that’s hope—presupposed in hope is real and reliable. [1:06:49]
OK, now I put love last on this list though of course you understand it’s first on every list because love is engagement of the will for what is good. That is a part of the fruit of the spirit and because of that nature of love; you are going to need all of these other things to go with it. You love something if you seek its good and by any of the great ethical teachings that have come down through humanity itself, they will tell you that that’s what a good person is. A good person is someone who’s will is set to bring about what is good. And disagreements about a lot of things but that’s fundamentally what everyone understands, and it is the right understanding. A good person is someone who is by disposition poised to bring about what is good in every way that is appropriate and right for them. Usually that’s in their immediate atmosphere; that’s why the Bible never says, “Love everybody.” It never says that. It says love your neighbor. Why? You can do something about your neighbor; you can’t do something about everybody. You don’t even know who they are or what they need. Love is directed towards where it can bring about what is good and then of course, we do that because God loves us, and we have learned how to live in the Kingdom of God to support the efforts of love on the foundation of peace, joy, hope and faith. And of course, we do that in church—“speaking the truth in love, we grow up to a full person in Christ Jesus” as Paul says in Ephesians 4. [1:08:45]
So, now let’s round it off. What are we hoping to achieve as we follow Christ and we want the fruit of the spirit, which was in Him. The fruit of the spirit is a description of Christ’s life…of His soul if you wish. Those are the things that characterized Him. I like to play with that idea and for example, if you had to choose one word to describe Christ, what would it be? You could toy with that and trying out different words are helpful. Well, peace, yeah; joy, yeah, all those things. Putting it into contemporary terms, a word I like to try out on people just to see how it does is relaxed. He was relaxed. Now, obviously He got into some pretty tough battles; especially on the night before his crucifixion when Satan had his last chance to stop Him before He got to the cross. Satan was more interested in keeping Christ from the cross than anyone else because he knew that if that went through, He was dead. It was all over because he sure couldn’t stop Him from resurrection. Christ moved towards the cross. He embraced it. He was at peace. And I will leave it to you to struggle with what was going on in the garden because I don’t want to upset you too much. But Christ was at peace all the way. It took me awhile as a young person…I couldn’t accept the idea that Jesus was afraid of the cross. I don’t think He was afraid of the cross and actually, isn’t that what Hebrews tells you, “For the joy that was set before, He endured the cross despising the shame.” He wasn’t even unwilling to hang up there naked and endure the death of a criminal—despising the shame for the joy that was set before Him.” He endured the cross despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of God. Right? That’s joy. That’s peace. That’s triumph. That’s hope. That’s faith. That’s Jesus. That’s for us and multitudes of people have already gone away with Him. And that’s what’s open for us today—living in the fruit of the spirit.