Choosing to Live by the Spirit

 

It is easy to be good and pleasant to those we like. But, it is a lot harder to do the same with those who irritate or, worse, anger us. Or, people we frankly just don't like very well. People we disagree with. People we find offensive or situations where our emotions get the best of us. It is easy for our emotions to hijack our "goodness" in all those cases.

We say words that reflect our emotions, which can be harsh and unkind. Think of emails you have written that you wish you could take back. Or words you spoke to a family member or friend that you wish you had never uttered. Angry, unkind or negative words that hurt someone. It may have made us feel good at the moment, but we know they were not words that pleased God.

We can say the same for how we treat people. We can give them the cold shoulder, ignore them or mistreat them. The ultimate way to hurt them is to gossip about them, share negative information or drop subtle hints that it would be good to pray for them because….and we piously suggest what they need prayer for. It is simply another way of sharing negative information and leaving a poor impression.

OK, OK, you say. "I get the picture." Have you ever wondered why we do these things, and every one of us has been guilty? Maybe even in the past day or week. The answer is simple. They are called "acts of the flesh" in the New Testament relating to our natural human nature. It is who we are, having been born into a sinful world with a sinful nature. 

Here is how Paul puts it in Galatians 5:19-21. "The acts of the flesh 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. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God."

 

It's not a list that we are proud of, but every individual since the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden struggles with the flesh or the lower, unredeemed nature. It is why Jesus came to die for us to pay the price of our sinfulness. He came to redeem us from the need to live by the flesh and give us the freedom to live by the Spirit of God. 

Again, Paul in Galatians 5: "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. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you bite and devour each other, watch out, or you will be destroyed by each other."

Did you catch how God wants us to treat one another? He wants us to serve one another in love. As people who God has redeemed, we can resist our lower nature, which is at war with our new spiritual nature. "For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" 

So what does it look like to love your neighbor as yourself or to serve one another in love? Do you remember the description of our lower nature? There is also a description of our spiritual nature which is the result of God's Holy Spirit who lives in our hearts. He takes up residence in us when we give our lives to Jesus. These are called the Fruit of the Holy Spirit because they reflect the character of God. And since we have God resident in our lives, we have access to God's character. 

Here is what God's character looks like, according to Galatians 5:22-26. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things, there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking, and envying each other."

Wow: Think of what relationships would look like if, instead of the way of our flesh, we specialized in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It is the way of the Spirit. Paul says that the other way, the fleshly way, the lower nature way, was crucified or put to death with its passions and desires when we came to Jesus. He nailed that junk to the cross when He died for us. All so we could live by the Spirit and treat others how God treats us.

This is the way of love and the way of God. This is the life we have been called to. As Paul says, "since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." Or, to put it another way, let's live and act and speak like the Spirit who lives in our hearts. 

Think of the people in your life who are the most difficult to love and be kind to. And then ask the question: What would my attitudes, words, and behaviors look like toward them if I lived out the Fruit of the Holy Spirit? If I specialized in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? And then Paul says, "Just do it." You have the ability through the Holy Spirit to live that way. Just do it.

The Christian life is about less of our old sinful nature and more of the Fruit of the Spirit who lives in us. It is less of me and more of Christ. So today, ask God to help you live with less of you and more of Him.

Father, would you help me to be conscious at all times of how I can live with less of my old unredeemed self and far more of you. Please help me reflect your Spirit in my words, attitudes, and how I treat others. Especially those who are hard for me to love. Amen.

The question for today: In what relationships do I need to have less of me and more of the Holy Spirit?

When Christians become the barrier to others hearing the Gospel

 

We live in the age of the "nones" and the "dones." The nones are those who claim no religious affiliation and the dones are those who are fed up and done with the church. Believers rightly decry the secularization of society and the shrinking church but they don't understand that they have directly contributed to both. 

In the early days of the church as recorded in Acts 4:32-35, we see a remarkable picture of healthy relationships among believers. "All the believers were of one heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they  had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put them at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need."

It was the quality of relationships among believers in the early church that attracted the attention of unbelievers. Today, it is the lack of quality in relationships among believers that repel people from the church. As such, believers have become one of the major barriers to people responding the the Gospel. 

This is nowhere more evident than in the public space of social media where as a group, those who call themselves believers display a lack of any Christian love or Fruit of the Spirit in their responses to others they disagree with. Many are despicable in their attitude and content, even demonizing those they disagree with. The interesting thing is that almost no one calls out the disparity between what we profess to believe and how we relate and act. 

In local congregations, it is often no different. After our recent Easter service in the church I serve, a parishioner sent in a comment to staff with profanity around a small issue they didn't like. I responded by telling him that I was very sorry that our staff needed to see his words and that they were not the words of Jesus. If you have been to those hallmarks of the American church, congregational meetings, you know how harsh, unkind and selfish many of the remarks are. And the thing is, all this vile stuff comes from the heart, according to Jesus.  What is inside us will inevitable come out of us. So it begs the question of how much of Jesus is in our hearts!

Why would an unbeliever want to join a group (evangelicals) that is often angry, lacks basic relational decency, is candidly selfish (what's in it for me), participates regularly in gossip, evaluates you by your politics and lacks the love that is supposed to characterize believers who have the Holy Spirit living within them? Many of the dones would say, "I love Jesus but I don't like a lot of Christians. They are mean and churches can be mean." No façade of welcome teams or "great worship" can hide the underlying meanness of many congregations.

As one who has worked with hundreds of church boards I can attest to the same kinds of behaviors at the board level, and these are people who represent Jesus as leaders of the church: Ouch! In many cases, if parishioners knew what happened within the confines of the board room, they too would become dones. 

If this sounds pessimistic, recent studies show that many in our country just don't like Christians. They don't find Christians to be kind and accepting but harsh, unkind and judgmental.  In other words, they don't see Christians as reflecting Jesus. We can be like kids throwing sand in one another's faces in the sandbox and then inviting the kids outside the sandbox to join us. Why would they do that?

All of this points to a failure of discipleship. How we treat one another matters a lot. When we violate not only basic standards of decency in our words and attitudes to say nothing of the much high level we are called to in displaying the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5), we push people away from Christ and we fail to see that our own lives are not reflective of the teaching of Scripture, the example of Christ and the needed transformation of our own minds. As a result, rather than attracting others to our loving family as in Acts 4, we give people every reason not to join our families because they are often not loving at all.

One of the most powerful evangelism strategies any church can enter into is that of developing a church and relational culture that looks like Jesus and reflects His character. Is that easy? No. Culture change is always difficult. Can it be done? Yes, but it involves some hard teaching and a willingness to declare some behaviors illegal in the church because they are not pleasing to God. If we look like Jesus we will attract those who need His love and grace. If we look like something else we won't.

For each of us, it starts with us. Let's evaluate our own relational interactions. Our own words and attitudes and compare them to what we see in Jesus in the Gospels. If we want others to see Jesus in us, we need to become like Jesus.

My fear is that a large segment of the evangelical world today have become Pharisees rather than disciples of Jesus. And the Pharisees didn't attract others but alienated them. Let's develop congregations where the goodness of God is evident. People will respond.