Led by the Spirit
The Holy Spirit and Christian Lifestyle (Galatians 5:16-26)
“Led by the Spirit” - the myth
One of the problems that we have when we read in the Bible about subjects like the Holy Spirit is that we are never able to come to the Scriptures with a mind like a blank slate, ready to learn whatever God has to teach us. Instead, we come with a whole lot of ideas and assumptions that we’ve picked up from all sorts of places, and some of them are true, and others are actually myths. And so when we come to the Bible we not only have to learn the positive things that it has to teach us; we also have to unlearn some of those myths that we’ve always believed.
When it comes to this topic of being led by the Spirit, there are plenty of myths; all kinds of ways that this issue has been misunderstood by Christians over the years. But the big myth is this: that the ‘leading of the Spirit’ has to do with the inward promptings of the Holy Spirit, apart from the Word of God; and that the main things that the Holy Spirit wants to lead us in relation to are the decisions that we make in life where we feel that the Bible doesn’t tell us which way to go. And there have been plenty of Christians over the years who have got incredibly tangled up and confused because they have taken that approach to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
J.I. Packer, in his book, Knowing God, tells the true story of a woman earlier this century who, every morning, having consecrated the day to the Lord as she woke, ‘would then ask Him whether she was to get up or not’, and would not stir till ‘the voice’ told her to dress. ‘As she put on each article she asked the Lord whether she was to put it on, and very often the Lord would tell her to put on the right shoe and leave off the other; sometimes she was to put on both stockings and no shoes; and sometimes both shoes and no stockings; and it was the same with all the articles of dress.’
It’s easy to smile when we hear those kinds of stories, because they’re so manifestly absurd. But sometimes I think we are not very different, when we think of the leading of God’s spirit as being all about whether we should marry this person or that person; whether we should live in Lewisham or Summer Hill; whether we should be missionaries in Argentina or Brazil. I grew up in a church culture where people were constantly talking about the importance of ‘listening to God’ for the ‘leading of the Spirit’ on these kinds of issues. And I think it actually became a great distraction from the heart of what the leading of the Holy Spirit is about.
Led by the Spirit - the reality
So if that is the myth, what is the reality of what it means to be led by the Spirit? There are two New Testament passages - just two - that teach about what it means to be ‘led by the Spirit’, and they are Romans chapter 8, and the passage we read just a moment ago from Galatians 5. And both of them are very similar. We’ll refer briefly to Romans 8 at a couple of points, but I want us to focus mainly on this passage here from Galatians chapter 5, to learn what it has to teach us about being led by the Spirit.
- Led into holiness (v.16)
The first thing, and the most crucial thing that this passage has to teach us, is about where the Spirit leads us. And what we learn is that to be led by the Spirit is to be led into holiness. That shouldn’t surprise us, really - because we’re talking about the Holy Spirit. But we often get so concerned about the need we feel to be led into the right job, or led into the right relationship, or led into the right place to live, that we forget that the main concern of the Holy Spirit is to lead us into holiness of life.
That is to say, the main concern of God for your life is not so much whether you make the right decision about whether to be a bus-driver or a truck-driver - it’s that you are a godly truck-driver or a godly bus-driver. The thing that matters to God is not so much whether you end up renting the house in Summer Hill or Lewisham, but that you live a holy life wherever you are.
Now obviously when we make those kinds of choices in life there are going to be all kinds of principles and priorities that God teaches us in his word that will have a major impact on the decision that we make - how close it is to the church that we go to; how much time we’re going to have to spend commuting to work; whether we should be paying that much money in rent - but when we have weighed all those things up, if it still comes down to a choice between Summer Hill and Lewisham, we shouldn’t think that God is up there in heaven agonising over whether we’ll get it right, whispering ‘Summer Hill, Summer Hill,’ leaving cryptic clues encoded into our circumstances, and trying desperately to get our attention. The great desire of God for us is not that we end up in the right suburb, but that we live a holy life that glorifies him.
So Paul says, verse 16: “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” The issue at stake is about whether we are living a life that is all about satisfying the desires of the sinful nature, or a life that is dedicated to pleasing God.
The NIV translation has ‘live by the spirit’, but the original is actually something more like ‘walk by the Spirit’. The picture is of the Holy Spirit leading and guiding us in the direction that we follow in our lives. We walk according to the direction of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit leads us not into the desires of the sinful nature but into a life of holiness.
- Led into conflict (v.17)
Having said that, secondly, we need to add immediately that if the Spirit is leading us into holiness, then we are also being led into conflict. Verse 17: “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want to.”
That phrase ‘the sinful nature’ is literally ‘the flesh’, but it doesn’t mean our physical bodies - not here, anyway. It means who we are as fallen human beings, apart from the grace of God. It means the kind of fallen, sinful humanity that we are born into, and that we continue in, unless the Holy Spirit does his work in our hearts.
And Paul says here, the work of the Spirit, leading us into holiness, brings us into an inevitable conflict, an inevitable struggle against the desires of the flesh, of the sinful nature. We no longer ‘do as we please’, just gratifying the desire to do whatever makes us feel good at the time. It is a hard and painful struggle to live a godly life, and as long as we are in this world and in this body, it will be like that. We pray to God that we will make progress, and over time we do, but we can never expect it to be easy progress.
I was talking earlier this week with a Christian man about his struggle with pornography, and it reminded me of a similar conversation I had a few years ago. I remember on that occasion sitting in the guy’s living room talking with him about it, and he said to me: “I’ve only really had this struggle since I became a Christian.” So I asked him: “What was it that happened when you were converted that made you start using pornography?” And he said: “Oh I didn’t mean that! I always used pornography, long before I became a Christian; but there was never a struggle. I guess I knew it was wrong, but I just went and did it anyway. But when I became a Christian, all that changed.”
When we find ourselves battling with sin, we can be thankful to God that there is a struggle going on. The times when we find ourselves battling with sin are very often the times when we are growing in the Christian life. And the times when we are coasting or going backward are often the times when there is no struggle at all, because we don’t care enough about the sin in our lives to do anything about it. If we are led by the Spirit, we are led into holiness; and therefore we are led into conflict with the sinful nature.
- The Spirit and the Law (vv. 18, 23, 13-15)
But Paul hurries on in verse 18 to make a distinction between the conflict that those who are in the Spirit have with the sinful nature, and the conflict that those who are under the law have with it. Verse 18: “But if you are led by the Spirit,” Paul says, “you are not under law.” The struggle between the flesh and the Spirit is not the same as the struggle between the flesh and the law.
The struggle between the flesh and the law is a story that is all about hopelessness and defeat. It is a miserable situation to know the law of God, but to be utterly incapable of pleasing God, because you are captive to sin and an enemy of God. Paul says in Romans 8: “the flesh - that is, the sinful nature - is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the flesh - by the sinful nature - cannot please God.” But he goes on, verse 9: “You however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.”
And so as Christians we still do battle with the flesh; with the sinful nature. But we go into battle with the Spirit of God on our side; not under law - knowing the will of God but never able to do it from our hearts, trapped in guilt and sin; but instead led by the Spirit, as a new creation in Christ - given a new heart that wants to please God; no longer slaves to fear, but instead the sons and daughters of God.
The Spirit and the Flesh
Which leaves us with a decision between two ways to live - as the Bible always does - a decision between the Spirit and the flesh. On the one hand, verses 19-21, there is the way of the flesh, the way of the sinful nature. Verse 19: “the acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like.”
That is the way of the flesh - the way of our fallen human nature apart from God; the way we that we live if we just do what comes naturally. The way of the Spirit is diametrically different. What is the fruit of the Spirit? “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” It’s like stepping out of a dungeon into a sunny spring day. And being led by the Spirit is about being led out of the first list into the second. Every day; in every facet of your life; more and more, the longer you know Jesus.
So I want to ask you tonight: How is that process going in your life at the moment? Which of those fruits has the Holy Spirit been particularly working on in you over the last few weeks and months? Are you keeping in step with the Spirit? Are you consciously asking God to grow these things in your character and to put to death the old ways, the ways of the flesh? “If we live by the Spirit”, Paul says, verse 25 - let us also walk by the Spirit” - let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Wisdom, decision-making and the mind of Christ
I said a moment ago that this means we have a decision to make - a decision between two ways of living; a decision between the way of the flesh and the way of the Spirit. The reality of course is that we have lots of decisions to make - including those decisions we spoke about at the start, like which job to do and who to marry and which suburb to live in - those decisions where there is not a clear, direct word from the Bible speaking precisely to that issue - those decisions that are not black and white moral issues but wisdom issues, if you like.
And I said at the start that the leading of the Spirit is not about God whispering private messages to us in some quiet inner voice telling us case by case about what to do in those decisions.
But I want to come back to that question as we finish, because I don’t want to send you home with the impression that that Spirit is therefore irrelevant from those kinds of decisions - that we make them with our own rationalistic, pragmatic human wisdom - that if something is not a matter of black and white, godliness versus ungodliness, then God is not interested.
I want to say as I draw toward a close, I want to say that God is profoundly interested in the wisdom decisions; I want to say that there ought to be something distinctively Christian about the wisdom with which we make them, and I want to say that God does not leave us to our own resources when we have to decide. What does God do? He doesn’t promise us that he will tell us case by case, issue by issue, the decisions that we ought to make in each situation. He expects us to make real decisions, to take responsibility for them and not to wait for some supernatural guidance telling us what to do. He expects us to learn wisdom.
But he also promises to give that wisdom to us as we ask him for it; he promises us something much better than a kind of divine ‘phone a friend’ option when we don’t know which way to turn. He promises us what the Bible calls ‘the mind of Christ’- he promises us a a whole new way of seeing the world; a whole new set of values; a whole new framework for making those wisdom decisions, based on the Scriptures and centred on the Cross. And he promises to keep growing that wisdom in us as we ask him for us.
So I want to finish by reminding us of a couple of the places in the Bible where he tells us that Spirit-given, cross-centred wisdom of God - first in 1 Corinthians 1 and the across in the book of James.
1 Cor 1:18 - “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” 20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
Chapter 2 verse 1: When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power. 6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”— 10 but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” Verse 14: “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment: 16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
And then across in James - JAmes 1 verse 5: “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” And then down in chapter 3 - James 3 verse 13: “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. 14 But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15 Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. 16 For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. 17 But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. 18 Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.”