Works of the flesh. (5.19-21)

by Kent Leslie ✉️

This paragraph describes human nature. The works of the flesh, unfortunately, is what humans do. We have tons of crazy sex. We’re immoral. We worship anything and everything, and dabble in all kinds of spiritual activity we shouldn’t. We hate each other, are jealous of each other, fight each other, create parties and factions, try to take what each other has. We get drunk and stoned and party.

Just like tribes of chimps will do, from what anthropologists have seen. And plenty of pagans are proud of all this. And none of this has anything to do with God’s kingdom. God didn’t create us for this junk.

I could (and have!) go into tons of detail about this paragraph and the next one, but I’m gonna resist that temptation and save it for another bible study.

I should mention Galatians 5.21 though: Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. There are Christians who claim any of us who dabble in works of the flesh, if we do enough of them, might undo our own salvation, and not inherit God’s kingdom. That’s not what Paul is saying. This isn’t a warning about apostasy. There are warnings about apostasy in the bible; this isn’t one of them. This is just Paul saying, “Look, if this—all of this—is who you are, you need Jesus.”

And if we see a so-called Christian who acts like this, I’m gonna be blunt: They’re not Christian. They might think they are, ’cause they got baptized, or said the sinner’s prayer, or grew up Christian, or go to church every week and doze through the sermons. But when they’re not following the Holy Spirit at all, it’s entirely fair to assume they don’t even have the Spirit.

I’ve heard people excuse fleshly behavior by saying, “Well, she’s a new Christian.” “He’s a baby Christian.” “You can’t expect her to be a mature Christian when she only came to Jesus last year.” And okay, fair; there’s gotta be a grace period for newbies. We can’t expect a toddler to dance ballet.

But if you’ve been Christian 10 years and you’re still acting like an angry monkey, and you don’t have any pangs of conscience; you’re not even trying to produce fruit—let’s get real; the Holy Spirit ain’t in there.

So let’s get him in there! Let’s get these people saved for real.