Galatians 5:22-26

CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

Galatians 5:22. The fruit of the Spirit.—The singular fruit, as compared with the plural works, suggests that the effect of the Spirit’s inworking is one harmonious whole, while carnality tends to multitudinousness, distraction, chaos. We are not to look for a rigorous logical classification in either catalogue. Generally, the fruit of the Spirit may be arranged as: I. Inward graces—“love, joy, peace.” II. Graces towards man—“longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith.” III. A more generic form of inward graces—“meekness, temperance.”

Galatians 5:23. Against such there is no law.—So far from being against love, law commands it.

Galatians 5:24. Have crucified the flesh.—Not human nature, but depraved human nature. With the affections and lusts.—Affections refer to the general frame of mind; the lusts to special proclivities or habits.

Galatians 5:26. Not be desirous of vainglory, provoking [challenging], envying one another.—Vaingloriousness provokes contention; contention produces envy.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Galatians 5:22

The Fruit of the Spirit—

I. Is evident in manifold Christian virtues.—

1. Virtues describing a general state of heart. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace” (Galatians 5:22). Love is foremost of the group of Christian graces, and gives a nameless charm to all the rest, for there is an element of love in all true goodness. Love derives its power from being in the first place love to God. When the soul centres its affection in God through Christ all its outgoings are influenced and regulated accordingly. Joy is the product of love. A philosophy or religion which has no room for the joy and pleasure of man is as little conversant with the wants of man as with the will of God. “Joy in the Lord quickens and elevates, while it cleanses all other emotions. It gives a new glow to life. It sheds a diviner meaning, a brighter aspect, over the common face of earth and sky. Joy is the beaming countenance, the elastic step, the singing voice, of Christian goodness.” Peace is the holy calm breathed into the soul by a pardoning God. It is the gift of Christ, giving rest to the soul in the midst of external agitations. “It is a settled quiet of the heart, a deep, brooding mystery that ‘passeth all understanding,’ the stillness of eternity entering the spirit, the Sabbath of God. It is the calm, unruffled brow, the poised and even temper which Christian goodness wears.”

2. Virtues exercised in the Christian’s intercourse with his neighbour.—“Longsuffering, gentleness, goodness.” Charity suffereth long. The heart at peace with God has patience with men. Longsuffering is the patient magnanimity of Christian goodness, the broad shoulders on which it “beareth all things.” Gentleness (or kindness, as the word is more frequently and better rendered) resembles longsuffering in finding its chief objects in the evil and unthankful. But while the latter is passive and self-contained, kindness is an active, busy virtue. It is the thoughtful insight, the delicate tact, the gentle ministering hand of charity. Linked with kindness comes goodness, which is its other self, differing from it as only twin sisters may, each fairer for the beauty of the other. Goodness is perhaps more affluent, more catholic in its bounty; kindness more delicate and discriminating. Goodness is the honest, generous face, the open hand of charity (Findlay).

3. Virtues indicating the principles which regulate the Christian’s life.—“Faith [honesty, trustworthiness], meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22). The faith that unites man to God in turn joins man to his fellows. Faith in the divine Fatherhood becomes trust in the human brotherhood. He who doubts every one is even more deceived than the man who blindly confides in every one. Trustfulness is the warm, firm clasp of friendship, the generous and loyal homage which goodness ever pays to goodness. Meekness is the other side of faith. It is not tameness and want of spirit; it comports with the highest courage and activity, and is a qualification for public leadership. It is the content and quiet mien, the willing self-effacement, that is the mark of Christ-like goodness. Temperance, or self-control, is the third of Plato’s cardinal virtues. Temperance is a practised mastery of self. It covers the whole range of moral discipline, and concerns every sense and passion of our nature. It is the guarded step, the sober, measured walk in which Christian goodness keeps the way of life, and makes straight paths for stumbling and straying feet (Ibid.).

II. Violates no law.—“Against such there is no law” (Galatians 5:23; comp. Galatians 5:18). The fruit of the Spirit is love; and the law, so far from being against love, commands it (Galatians 5:14). The practice of love and all its works is the fulfilling of the law and disarms it of all terror. The expression, “Against such there is no law,” so far from being more than superfluous, as Hofmann asserts, is intended to make evident how it is that, by virtue of this, their moral frame, those who are led by the Spirit are not subject to the Mosaic law. For whosoever is so constituted that a law is not against him, over such a one the law has no power.

III. Indicates the reality of a great spiritual change.—

1. The old self-hood is crucified. “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh” (Galatians 5:24). This well expresses how sin must, little by little, be disabled and slain, for the crucified man did not die at once. He was first made fast with nails to the cross, and then kept there, till through hunger and thirst and loss of blood he became weaker and weaker, and finally died. We are to be executioners, dealing cruelly with the body of sin which caused the acting of all cruelties on the body of Christ.

2. A new law now regulates the life.—“If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). The life is governed, not by the law of the flesh, but of the Spirit. The electrician can demagnetise and remagnetise a bar of iron, but the biologist cannot devitalise a plant or an animal and revivify it again. Spiritual life is not a visit from a force, but a resident tenant in the soul. The Spirit who created the life within sustains it and directs all its outgoings.

3. Everything provocative of strife and envy is carefully avoided.—“Let us not be desirous of vainglory, provoking one another, envying one another” (Galatians 5:26). Vaingloriousness was a weakness of the Galatic temperament; and is not unknown in modern Christian life. Superiority, or fancied superiority, in talents or status is apt to proudly display itself. It is indeed a pitiable exhibition when even spiritual gifts are made matter of ostentation, exciting the jealousy of inferior brethren, and creating discontent and envy. The cultivation of the fruit of the Spirit is the best remedy against all bitterness and strife.

Lessons.—

1. The fruit of the Spirit a suggestive contrast to the works of the flesh.

2. Consistency of life is the test of genuine religion.

3. The operations of the Spirit are in harmony with the highest law.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

Galatians 5:22. The Fruit of the Spirit.

I. Love.—

1. The love of God.
(1) Shown in a desire of fellowship with God.
(2) To love the word of God above all earthly treasure, and to tread our own will underfoot.
(3) The love of them that love God and Christ.
2. The love of our neighbour. This is love indeed, to show love and to do good to them that wrong and abuse us.

II. Joy.—

1. To rejoice in the true acknowledgment of God.
2. To rejoice in the work of our regeneration.
3. To rejoice in the hope of eternal glory.

III. Peace.—To maintain peace and concord:

1. Neither take offence nor give offence.
2. Seek to edify one another; either do good or take good.

IV. Longsuffering.—To moderate our anger and desire of revenge when many and great wrongs are done us. Set and sow this plant in the furrows of your heart, and consider:

1. The goodness of God, who forgives more to us than we can forgive.
2. It is the duty of love to suffer and forbear.
3. It is a point of injustice to revenge ourselves, for then we take to ourselves the honour of God, and against all equity—we are the parties and judge and witness and all.
4. We are often ignorant of the mind of men in their actions, and of the true circumstances thereof, and so may easily be deceived.

V. Gentleness.—Right courtesy is with an honest heart to bless when we are wronged.

VI. Goodness.—The virtue whereby we communicate to others good things, for their good and benefit.

VII. Faith.—Faith towards man, which means:

1. To speak the truth from the heart.
2. To be faithful and just in the keeping of our honest promise and word. This faith a rare virtue in these days. The common fashion of them that live by bargaining is to use glorying, facing, soothing, lying, dissembling, and all manner of shifts. They that deal with chapmen shall hardly know what is truth, they have so many words and so many shifts.

VIII. Meekness.—The same in effect with longsuffering. The difference is that meekness is more general, and longsuffering the highest degree of meekness.

IX. Temperance.—The moderation of lust and appetite in the use of the gifts and creatures of God.

1. We must use moderation in meats and drinks. That measure of meat and drink which serves to refresh nature and make us fit for the service of God and man is allowed us of God and no more.
2. We must use moderation in the getting of goods.
3. In the spending of our goods—contrary to the fashion of many who spend their substance in feasting and company, and keep their wives and children bare at home.
4. In our apparel. To apparel ourselves according to our sex, according to the received fashion of our country, according to our place and degree, and according to our ability.

X. Against such virtues there is no law.—

1. No law to condemn.
2. No law to compel obedience. Spiritual men freely obey God, as if there were no law; they are a voluntary and free people, serving God without restraint.—Perkins.

Galatians 5:22. Love an Attendant of Regeneration.—

1. Love is a delight in happiness.
2. Is universal.
3. Is just.
4. Is disinterested.
5. Is an active principle.
6. Is the only voluntary cause of happiness.
7. Is the only equitable spirit towards God and our fellow-creatures.
8. Is the only disposition which can be approved or loved by God.—Dr. Dwight.

The Powers of Love.—If these be the fruit of the Spirit, they cannot be mere matters of temperament. When philosophy gives an account of the human soul it can find only constitutional propensities and voluntary acquisitions. When we interrogate Christianity we are told besides of communicated sanctities, states of mind which inheritance cannot give or resolution command, which need some touch of God to wake them up, which are above us and yet ours, and seem to lie on the borderland of communion between the finite and the infinite Spirit.

I. There is humane love, which constitutes the humblest and most frequent form of unselfish feeling. It finds its objects among the miserable, and attaches itself to them in proportion to their woes. In human pity there is a strange combination of repulsion and attraction, which it is the paradox of philosophy to state, and the mercy of God to ordain; it cannot endure the sight of wretchedness, and yet can never leave it. But there is a work ordained for us which this impulse will not suffice to do. Fastening itself on suffering alone, it sees nothing else. Yet beneath the smooth and glossy surface of easy life there may hide itself many an inward disease which the mere glance of pity does not discern. Flourishing iniquity that gives no seeming pain it lets alone; invisible corruption may spread without arrest.

II. There is imaginative or æsthetic love, which attaches itself to objects in proportion as they are beautiful, kindles the enthusiasm of art, and completes itself in the worship of genius. Yet is this affection very barren until thrown into the midst of others to harmonise and glorify them. No reciprocal sympathy is requisite to this sentiment; that which is admired as beautiful does not admire in return. And above all there is a direct tendency to turn with indifference or even merciless repugnance from what is unlovely.

III. There is moral love, which has reference to persons only, not to things, which attaches itself to them in proportion as they are good, judges them by the standard of an internal law, and expresses itself in tones, not of tenderness as in pity, or of admiration as in the trance of beauty, but of grave and earnest approval. Even this moral love is not without imperfections. Its characteristic sentiment of approbation has always in it a certain patronising air not welcome to the mercy of a true heart, and more like the rigour of a Zeno than the grace of Christ.

IV. There is a divine love, directed first upon God Himself, and thence drawn into the likeness of His own love, and going forth upon other natures in proportion to their worth and claims. This is the crowning and calming term of all prior affections, presupposing them, and lifting them up from clashing and unrest to harmony and peace. The humane, the beautiful, the right, remain only scattered elements of good till they are gathered into the divine and blended into one by the combining love of God.—Dr. Martineau.

Love the Perfection of Character.—The fruit of the true vine has been analysed, and in the best specimens nine ingredients are found. In poor samples there is a deficiency of one or other of these elements. A dry and diminutive sort is lacking in peace and joy. A tart kind, which sets the teeth on edge, owes its austerity to its scanty infusion of gentleness, goodness, and meekness. There is a watery, deliquescent sort which, for the want of longsuffering, is not easily preserved; and there is a flat variety which, having no body of faith or temperance, answers few useful purposes. Love is the essential principle which is in no case entirely absent, and by the glistening fulness and rich aroma which its plentiful presence creates you can recognise the freshest and most generous clusters, whilst the predominance of some other element gives to each its distinguishing flavour, and marks the growth of Eshcol, Sibmah, or Lebanon.—Dr. James Hamilton.

The Power of Meekness and Affection.—Once in Holland a person of high rank invited Tersteegen to be his guest. This individual imagined himself to have attained to a state of peculiar inward peace, and took occasion during dinner to criticise Tersteegen for being too active, and for not sufficiently knowing the ground on which he wrought. Tersteegen attended meekly and silently to all that was said; and when dinner was over he offered up a fervent prayer in which he commended his host to the Lord in terms of such affection and compassion that this great and warm-tempered man was so much struck and affected by it that his feelings overpowered him, and he fell upon the neck of his guest and begged his forgiveness.

Who are the Meek?—A missionary in Jamaica was once questioning the little black boys on the meaning of Matthew 5:5, and asked, “Who are the meek?” A boy answered, “Those who give soft answers to rough questions.”

The Grace of Gentleness.

I. It is not a gift, but a grace.—It is not a natural demeanour, amiable and courteous, a soft, feminine compliance, but a grace of the Spirit which takes into it the strength of the divine. You may have the instinct of delicacy, a natural tenderness and affability, yet not have this grace of the Spirit which impels you for Christ’s sake to deal gently and save men. It is the underlying motive which determines whether grace or nature reigns. How is it when your ideas and methods of doing good are thwarted? Moses seems to have in Zipporah what Socrates had in Xantippe, yet her abuse had no more abiding effect on him than the spray which angry waves toss against the rock. Calvin hearing of Luther’s in said, “Let him hate me and call me a devil a thousand times; I will love him and call him a precious servant of God.”

II. The cultivation of this grace will cost you many a struggle.—You are to get the better of your temper on your knees. No minstrel as in the case of Saul can do the work. We must forgive in our heart those who offend us.

III. The grace of gentleness is a queen with a train of virtues.—It ennobles our whole nature. An English nobleman could not be bound to keep the peace, for it was supposed that peace always kept him. So we should suppose that every professed Christian would have this grace; but if you should put your ear to the door of some Christian homes, it would be like listening to a volcano. If you did not behold a sulphurous flame bursting out, you might hear a continual grumbling. A man said to me once, “When I see Mr. So-and-so my passion is bigger than myself, and I long to make him feel it.” The Spirit of Christ leads us to pray for those who despitefully use us. Only as His temper prevails in us shall we be able to illustrate the beauty of divine greatness.—Homiletic Monthly.

Constant Joy.—Father Taylor, the Boston sailor-preacher, when going out to make a call, said to his host on the doorstep, “Laugh till I get back.”

Galatians 5:24. Crucifying the Flesh.

I. What is meant by being Christ’s.—It is to accept of and have an interest in Christ in His prophetic, kingly, and sacerdotal offices. By His prophetic office we come to know His will; by His kingly office, ruling and governing us, we come to yield obedience to that will; and by His sacerdotal or priestly office we come to receive the fruit of that obedience in our justification.

II. What is meant by the flesh.—The whole entire body of sin and corruption; that inbred proneness in our nature to all evil, expressed by concupiscence.

1. It is called flesh because of its situation and place, which is principally in the flesh.

2. Because of its close, inseparable nearness to the soul.

3. Because of its dearness to us. Sin is our darling, our Delilah, the queen-regent of our affections; it fills all our thoughts, engrosses our desires, and challenges the service of all our actions. This reveals:

(1) The deplorable state of fallen man.
(2) The great difficulty of the duty of mortification.
(3) The mean and sordid employment of every sinner—he serves the flesh.

III. What is imported by the crucifixion of the flesh.—

1. The death of it. He that will crucify his sin must pursue it to the very death.

2. A violent death. Sin never dies of age. The conquest need be glorious, for it will be found by sharp experience that the combat will be dangerous.

3. A painful, bitter, and vexatious death.

4. A shameful and cursed death.

IV. The duty of crucifying the flesh.—

1. A constant and pertinacious denying it in all its cravings for satisfaction.

2. Encounter it by actions of the opposite virtue.—Robert South.

Galatians 5:25. Life and Walk in the Spirit.—Life relates to what is inward, walk to what is outward.

I. To live in the Spirit.—

1. The Spirit begins the life of God in the soul.
2. The Spirit gives new desires and changes all the motives of life.
3. The Spirit lives in us.

II. To walk in the Spirit.—

1. The walk will follow from the life, for every kind of life is after its own kind and development.
2. Every outward manifestation will correspond to the inward principle of life, and will be marked by love to God and love to man.
3. Reputation will correspond to character and conduct to life.

III. To be led by the Spirit.—

1. The Christian’s life is a growth, his walk a progress; but he is led and guided by the Spirit.
2. No new revelation is made by the Spirit. He leads and guides by what is written in the word.

IV. Learn our relations to the Spirit.—

1. We live under the Spirit’s dispensation.
2. He is the Spirit of God, and so of life, truth, and authority,
3. He is the Spirit of Christ, and so unites us to Him.
4. If we live by the Spirit, let conversation and conduct be answerable thereunto.—Homiletic Monthly.

Walking in the Spirit.—

I. Is to savour the things of the Spirit.—To subject a man’s soul to the law of God in all the faculties and powers of the soul. The things revealed in the law are the things of the Spirit, which Spirit must at no hand be severed from the word.

II. To walk in the path of righteousness without offence to God or man.

III. To walk not stragglingly, but orderly by rule, by line and measure.—To order ourselves according to the rule and line of the word of God. The life of a man will discover to the world what he is.—Perkins.

Galatians 5:26. Vaingloriousness.

I. The exciting cause of many quarrels.

II. A source of envy and disappointment.

III. Unbecoming the dignity and aims of the Christian life.

The Vice of Vainglory and its Cure.

I. Vainglory is a branch of pride, wherein men principally refer all their studies, counsels, endeavours, and gifts to the honouring and advancing of themselves. They who have received good gifts of God are often most vainglorious. Whereas all other vices feed upon that which is evil, this vice of vainglory feeds upon good things. A man will sometimes be proud even because he is not proud.

II. The cure of vainglory.—

1. Meditation.

(1) God resisteth all proud persons and gives grace to the humble, because the vainglorious man, seeking himself and not God, robs God of His honour.
(2) It is the work of the devil to puff up the mind with self-liking and conceit, that thereby he may work man’s perdition.
(3) There is no religion in that heart that is wholly bent to seek the praise of men. The man who desires to be talked of and admired by others gives notice to the world that his heart is not sound in the sight of God.
2. Practice.

(1) Endeavour to acknowledge the great majesty of God, and our own baseness before Him.
(2) We ought to ascribe all good things we have or can do to God alone, and nothing to ourselves.
(3) In all actions and duties of religion we must first endeavour to approve ourselves to God, and the next place is to be given to man.
(4) When we are reviled we must rest content; when we are praised take heed. Temptations on the right hand are far more dangerous than those on the left.
(5) Men who are ambitious, if they be crossed, grow contentious; if they prosper, they are envied by others. Abhor and detest vainglory; seek to preserve and maintain love.—Perkins.