Overcoming the Works of the Flesh: Embracing the Fruit of the Spirit

Jay Adams discusses the Fruit of the Spirit from Galatians, emphasizing how the Holy Spirit produces fruit in believers’ lives as they live in obedience to God. Adams encourages Christians to focus on cultivating these spiritual qualities, which reflect God’s character and demonstrate His work within them.

The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.

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We have been going through the book of Galatians now for quite a while, and we’re closing out the fifth chapter of that book and looking at a very interesting section, half of which ought to discourage and dishearten us, the other half of which ought to bring joy and hope and anticipation. We’re dealing with the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit, that these two are obviously set over against one another. In the nineteenth verse, Paul says, “Now the works of flesh are apparent.”

¹⁹ Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, (Galatians 5:19)

Now, because they are apparent, that is, they are so obvious, they are so open, so easy for us to recognize for what they are, I don’t see any sense in me going through each one of these and spending a lot of time with it. I think a simple reading of the list is all we need to hear. We certainly know what’s going on in this world of ours.

All we have to do is to look at the news each evening on the television or read the front page of the newspaper, and you get your own list of the works of the flesh. Paul has a partial list here, more or less as a sampling of the kinds of things that our flesh produces.

He says they are apparent, which are sexual immorality, that includes everything that the Scriptures describe as being forbidden in the area of sex, uncleanness, that describes all the things that lead to it, all those things around the periphery or the edge of sexual relations themselves. filthy joking and that kind of thing, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, rages, selfishness, rivalries, divisions, sectarianism, envy, drunkenness and carousing and things like these. Obviously that last phrase, and things like these, make it clear that Paul has not exhausted the list.

And of course, no way does the list of the flesh get exhausted in these items which are only samples. They seem to be divided into three sections. Verse 19, you have sexual sins. Verse 20, you have what you might call sacred sins, if you want to continue the S’s like some people like to. And verse 21a, you have social sin, which means sins more directly related one to another. But let’s look at what is said about them. First of all, Paul chooses his words very carefully.

He talks about the works of the flesh as over against the fruit of the Spirit. And that was not just some kind of variation in language because Paul decided that it would be nice to use a different word the second time, as we often do when we’re writing papers for school. But the reason that he uses flesh in one place and works in the other is very crucial because it is what your flesh produces that is like this list that I have just read. The Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit is very different.

As we’re going to see, but that’s his fruit. This is your product. This is what you, not the Spirit, but you produce in this world. And it doesn’t even say the works of the devil in us, or the works of some demon in us, or the works of some influence in us, or the works of something else, like some people want to throw off their own responsibility to something else. It doesn’t say that. It says the works of the flesh, and the flesh means your body, you. Flesh in the Bible has two meanings.

It means body simply in terms of meat, you know, just this stuff that we pinch and so on. And then it has the specialized meaning as it does in Paul here, and in Romans 7, and a number of other places, where it’s talking about this body of ours as it has been habituated by our sinful natures so as to do those things which are sinful and wrong. you’re born a sinner, and from the first day that you breathe a breath, you begin to develop patterns.

And those patterns, because of the sinful nature with which you are born, become sinful patterns of living, and particularly those that respond to various areas of life, which we do over and over and over again until this body is habituated in those ways. And our body includes our brains, remember, that’s part of our bodies, which are programmed to use the rest of the body in sinful ways and sinful patterns.

That’s what Paul means by flesh, the lifestyle that we have adopted over the years as we have drifted into it, and our sinful nature has given us these ways of responding to life situations, your old lifestyle. Now, when you’re saved, you get a new nature, and it begins to work on these things, and the Spirit of God who dwells within you begins to work on these patterns and to replace them with new patterns.

But it’s these old patterns, the works of the flesh, something you produce, your body, your hands, your eyes, your mouth, you produce, your works. This is what a man makes of himself. This is what a self-made person looks like.

And it’s interesting, as you look at this, that he goes on to say things like these, “I warn you, just as I previously did.” He means when he wrote to them before or when he was with them; we don’t know which, but in some contact with them in the past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the empire of God. This is not the word “do” as some of your translations have. That’s a simple, straightforward Greek word.

This is a different word that means to do it again and again, and then after you’ve done it once and twice, do it some more, and then after that, continue to do it. It means practice. It means a standard lifestyle that you have adopted and by which you live. The word practice best describes it. And so, he is saying here, those who live in this lifestyle and there’s no change of that lifestyle are not believers. Now, that’s a strong and important warning to understand, and it doesn’t only occur here.

In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, you might note how this lifestyle, describing those who do not belong to Jesus Christ, is once again emphasized.

⁹ Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, ¹⁰ nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, ESV)

And when you go to the book of Revelation and look at what God says about the eternal state, you begin to read similar things there. In Revelation 21:7-8, we read,

⁷ The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. ⁸ But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:7-8, ESV)

And then in 22:14-15, He again says,

¹⁴ Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. ¹⁵ Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. (Revelation 22:14-15, ESV)

As you can see, some of the things that Paul mentioned as the works of the flesh are not mentioned here, but other things are mentioned that he did not mention. And so when he says that things like these, you can see he is only sampling. Liars, gossips, people who are involved in some kind of magic in order to deceive others, not magicians on the stage as we think of them today, but people who were deceiving others religiously through magic, the use of magic. It’s an interesting list. And what troubles us, of course, is that all of us belong somewhere in that list. All of us have those problems.

Not all of us have all the problems, but there’s nobody here today who’s never lied. Anybody here who’s never lied? Let me see your hand. The minute you raise your hand, I’m going to have to say to you that’s a lie. So you have to put it down. You see, we all have done these things, but the grace of Jesus Christ is at work in the life of believers and some change is happening. It doesn’t mean that you’re perfect.

It doesn’t mean that these things are totally eliminated or that all of them are gone immediately when you become a Christian. Obviously not. But it does mean that this is not your continual practice with no growth, no change, no difference. If you are practicing these things, if you see no change, if you see no difference, if you go on and you cannot get rid of these problems, then you need to ask yourself this question, am I really in the faith? Did I make a genuine profession of faith? If this is the practice of your life.

And you do not free and cannot free yourself from it. And so, Paul says, those who practice such things will not inherit the empire of God. Why is this so? It’s so because if there’s no change in your life, that means the Spirit of God isn’t there. the Spirit is called, in Romans 1, the Spirit of holiness. That is, He’s the one who produces holiness. He’s the one who is at work in your life, setting you aside from sin to righteousness, making you more as God wants you to be, changing you.

Where the Spirit of God is, there’s life and there’s growth and there’s change. And if there’s no life and there’s no growth and there’s no change, and there’s no holiness, even though it may be meager at this point in your life, there is no work of the Spirit in your life. It’s only the work of the flesh, only what you are producing. And that’s serious business. Paul calls upon the Galatians and upon you today to do some serious questioning of your lifestyle, whether there is any change occurring.

Are you the same person struggling with the same difficulties, no progress, that you were one year ago? Can you see no discernible difference between your lifestyle now and what it used to be? Can you see no progress? Can you see no change whatsoever? Then you had better consider where you are, whether you’re really in the faith. A lot of people make a profession. They are called. Many are called. They hear the message. They respond initially, even with joy, says the parable of the seed that’s sown on four kinds of ground.

But the first three kinds of ground, though they may look more and more like something is real or not real, it’s only on that fourth kind of ground that it’s for real. Well I don’t at all have the desire to shake anybody’s faith here this morning that is genuine because many of us are like that smoking flax, many of us are like that broken reed which is snapped and just barely hanging there and the faith is weak and so on. But if it’s real faith and you’ve seen some real change, then all right, let’s grow.

I don’t want to shake that kind of faith and I don’t want to snap off that broken reed all the way or put out that smoldering fire, but if there’s no smoke then there’s no fire. The question is, is there any? That’s the issue this morning and it may well be there’s some people here who have gone through many, many years of profession of faith who do not really have it. That’s possible, that’s what Paul says.

The warning then comes, doesn’t mean that you exhibit all the works of the flesh, but it means any one or any combination thereof has you caught in its grasp and there’s no progress, no change. Now God’s Spirit is not like that. The fruit of the Spirit is what we take up joyfully now as we leave behind the works of the flesh, which are apparent to us, obvious to us. We don’t need to go into them, examine them and see what they are. We know when we encounter them.

But the fruit of the Spirit is what we want to see growing in our lives profusely. And this is where we want to spend our time this morning. Paul’s choice of terms again is instructive. Fruit is something you can’t produce. Works is something you can manufacture on your own. But fruit you cannot produce. Try to produce a watermelon. You can’t do it. You don’t know how to put together a watermelon. You can’t even put together a grape, let alone a watermelon. It has to grow.

There are other qualities outside of yourself which are necessary to grow fruit. And people say, well, that’s my personality. I’m just that way. My personality is fixed. That’s just the way I am. If that’s just the way you are, then something’s wrong because this picture’s growth. Fruit means growth. It means that something is happening from the outside and it’s taking place in you and it’s beginning to change you. And you are not the one who’s doing it.

You may plant seeds and you may cultivate the ground and you may pour water on the seed, but it has to grow. There has to be something in the seed that makes it grow. If that seed’s no good, there’s not going to be any growth. I don’t care how much you dig the ground, how much you put fertilizer around it. I don’t care how much you pour water on it. I don’t care how much the sun shines on it. Nothing’s going to happen if the seed’s no good.

But if there’s genuine seed there, if the Spirit of God is there sowing His seed in your life, there will be some fruit. There will be growth. Personality is not fixed. Personality is fluid. your personality is the hunk of stuff that you were born with. your fusus, your nature as it’s called. You were born with that chunk of material, genetic material that makes you you. Gives you your eye color and your nose shape and all the rest of these things.

And your ability to metabolize food properly or like some of the rest of us, we operate on low fat. But that personality, that genetic stuff that you get at birth is something you then do things with. You use it to develop a personality. your personality is not just that genetic stuff. It’s the genetic stuff and what you’ve done with it in life. How you’ve handled life with it. And you’ve developed a whole pattern of living out of that genetic given.

And there were many, many other ways that that genetic stuff could have been used and will be used now as the Spirit gets hold of that and begins to change and make it something. You are not stuck with what you are if you know Christ and you have the Spirit in you. And the interesting thing here is that the word fruit of the Spirit is a singular word, the fruit of the Spirit. I think he’s thinking of a cluster like of grapes when he gives us these things.

He’s not just thinking of one piece hanging here, one piece hanging there, but this kind of comes together, the fruit, the cluster of the spirit’s work. In other words, the Spirit works across the board in all these areas. Maybe one grape grows larger and faster than another, but he’s at work in all these areas. It’s not that the Holy Spirit works in all these areas. works only in one area of your life, but He works in every aspect of life that needs to be changed. And so we have a cluster then.

It’s not fruits of the Spirit, but it’s fruit of the Spirit. And we read the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control. What a wonderful list over against the other. Unlike the words of the flesh, works of the flesh, upon which we don’t need to spend time because they’re apparent, we need to spend a little while this morning on these to understand exactly what it is that He’s talking about.

He begins with love, as Paul always seems to sum up or begin with love, making it the critical and crucial issue. Love really is the sum of all the rest of these things. And at the same time, it’s the source of all the rest of these things. Love.

²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23, ESV)

And love, as we know, is not some emotion, first of all. It may issue in emotion. It eventually may issue in feelings.

But love is the giving of oneself to another, whether it be love for God, in which we give ourselves to Him because He sent His Son and gave Him for us. And we, in response, give ourselves and say, “Lord, here we are. Use us. We want to be used by you.” Or whether it’s love for a neighbor who has a need, and we are outgoing. We give of our time, our energy, our money, and whatever it is the neighbor needs. Love is giving. It’s giving. And then the feelings follow.

But then he talks about joy. Joy. You know, joy is something you don’t hear very much about in the world today. When’s the last time you read the word joy in the newspaper? You read about happiness. You don’t hear the word joy on television. You hear about happiness. But happiness is dependent upon happenings. And it’s superficial and it moves with the face of happenings that come or go from your life, into or from your life. But joy is not like that. Joy is not like the shifting sands of the seashore.

It’s like a sturdy, solid rock against which winds may blow and floods may move and various kinds of pressures may be formed. But the rock stands, sturdy in all of it, as a substratum of life. Joy is not dependent upon other people. People cannot make you joyful. They can make you happy. They can make you sad, perhaps, by what they do as you respond to those actions. But they cannot make you joyful and they can’t take your joy away. Joy is from God. And it’s not dependent, therefore, upon human beings or circumstances.

It’s only dependent upon God. When you look ahead to what He has prepared for you, even in the midst of sorrow and heartache and pain and suffering and affliction, you can still have joy. You can still have joy looking up through tears into the sky and thinking of the day when the Lord Jesus will return to the clouds with His mighty angels and He’ll take vengeance on all those who oppose and He’ll wipe out all sin and He’ll melt down this world and refashion and remold it in such a way that the only thing that is at home in this world is righteousness. That will be the place you’ll live for all eternity with God in a perfect world.

For in the midst of tears or heartache or pain or disappointment or sorrow or sickness or death of a loved one, grief, whatever it is, if you have that kind of an outlook on the future and you know that that’s true, you can still have joy in the midst of sorrow. Sorrow over the immediate circumstance, but joy over the eternal destiny and the eternal outworking of all of it.

You know that the grief and the sorrow and the heartache and the problems and all the rest of it are going to ultimately be looked at as you turn and look back on them from the vantage point of eternity. They’re going to be turned around and you’re going to say, what a blessing. Those things that I cried about, those things that I was upset about, those things I worried about, what a blessing they were to me because God meant them to me for good. You may not see that now, but from eternity’s perspective, you will.

And now you can have joy in the midst of sorrows knowing that that’s true and peace! Peace with God and peace from God. Peace in your soul. Peace in your heart. Think of the great saints out of the history of the church in those early first couple centuries who went to their death by the hundreds of thousands for their faith. They had peace. They were able to walk to the stake where they were tied and where the faggots were put away.

On the ground around them, and where somebody said to them, “All you’ve got to do is to confess the name of Caesar as God. All you’ve got to do is to sacrifice, pour out a little libation to his genius, to his spirit, and we’ll let you go free. You don’t have to denounce your Christianity. We’re not asking that. We’re only asking that you not denounce the cult of Caesar. You can have your Christianity so long as you have the cult of Caesar too. Take them both.”

And they had peace in their hearts as they said no. Old Polycarp, who said, “All these years, I’ve served my Lord, and he’s never let me down. Why should I let him down?” And he went up and flanked. And in England, not so many years ago, not like those early days, but still a good while ago, there was Latimer who, at one stake, said to Ridley, the young man at the other stake, “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man.”

For today we will light such a flame in England as shall never go out. There was peace in their hearts. Even in the midst of death, of the most painful sort, death by fire. Many, many other ways you could die that are a lot more pleasant than the flame being burned to death. And yet these people even had peace because the Spirit was at work in their heart producing peace. They couldn’t produce that kind of peace under those circumstances. They couldn’t do that for themselves, but it was the Spirit of God who was doing it.

This is not the word for endurance; that’s a different word, but this is the word that means long-suffering. It means taking a while to come to a boil. You know how a watchpot never boils. That’s what you need to be, a watchpot. When somebody’s watching, the Spirit of God is watching, God is watching, and you’re not short-fused, which is the opposite, to use a different figure, of slow to coming to a boil.

Some people just touch them, and they’re like stretched material over the edge of a drum that’s been stretched as tight as possible, skin, and you touch them and they go, boom, just by touching. Some people go off like that. Their immediate response. No, the fruit of the Spirit is to make you consider and think, give you patience, long-suffering, take your time in evaluating what has happened.

The Spirit produces that kind of patience to put up with others, to think through the situation, to do good to those people who do evil to you, because it takes sometimes a little bit of time to make the change. your immediate response is, I’ll pop him back. But the Spirit of God checks you and says, now wait a minute, now wait a minute, that fellow needs help. He’s got a problem. He needs help. Why would you pop him? Why would you pop him with your words, or with your hand, or whatever it is?

This fellow needs help. And the Spirit of God enables you to give a little prayer, “Lord, let me help him.” And then maybe your words are spoken in such a way that some help is given to him, something is said that will help him get through his difficulty and through the problem he’s having with you, but your word, build him up rather than tear him down. Patience with people, the ability to not come to a boil immediately. Go to England, it’s entirely different than it is here. Those people love tea.

They really love tea, and they’ve got pots over there, you plug them in the wall, you turn them on, and as soon as you plug them in, you hear that thing boiling. you’ve got 220 current everywhere, I guess, and that’s probably what helps do it, but man, it comes to a boil like that.

Over here, it takes a while for a pot to come to a boil. You go out and look at it, no steam yet; go back and watch some more of the news and television. You go back, and it’s still not boiling, you know, no whistle on the pot, and eventually, you hear it. It takes a good while to come to a boil, and that’s what you ought to be like. You ought not come to that boil when you’re able to consider all the facts, and the Spirit of God works that in His people.

That’s this patient attitude actually brought into being in a given situation, so that you, instead of being severe with the other person, are kind to that person. you’re merciful to him. You don’t give him what he might deserve, but you think, what can I do to be gracious and loving to that other individual? And goodness, goodness, the outgoing action, actual action of that Spirit of God. kindness, which in your heart melts toward the other person and then leads to this good act that you do to him.

And faithfulness, reliability, not talking about faith here in the sense of your initial faith or belief in somebody, but your faithfulness, your reliability, your trustworthiness. How much can we depend upon you? The fruit of the Spirit makes people dependable. When they give their word, they keep it. When they say, I’m going to do something, they do it. Then he says meekness. No way of describing meekness, of defining meekness, it can only be described.

Meekness is a humility of a sort that is not weakness, has great strength involved in it, but it’s a kind of humility that says there, but for the grace of God, go I. That’s what meekness is. It says, I want to help, but I don’t want to be obtrusive. I want to help, but I don’t want to hold it over somebody and be superior or holier than thou. I want to help just because I want to help.

That’s meekness, an attitude that takes yourself out of the picture, puts the other person up front, where you do everything you can for him, not for yourself. And finally, self-control. Oh boy, self-control, self-control, an ability to curb the desires of your life which are wrong, that’s self-control. to say no to the third helping of pie. Self-control. Some people say no to the second helping of pie. Some people to say no to kicking footballs and shoes up onto the roof, the church. You know, acting their age, learning to act your age. Self-control.

How hard it is for all of us to have self-control. Well, he says there’s no law against such things. No law against such things. Of course, there’s no law against things. Laws are written against driving in a dangerous way, not against driving in a peaceful, relaxed, self-controlled, kindly way, observing all the rules. There’s no law against the person who observes all the rules. There are no laws against being a good citizen. There are no laws against being a good citizen of the kingdom of God. Here it is.

The way to keep the law from having any impact on you is to do those things that are everything the law requires, plus. And that’s what the Spirit of God produces in us. Laws are not written against driving safely, but being a good citizen; they’re written against the opposite. And he says, if you are Christ, you have been freed by Christ’s cross and the power of fleshly passion and desire. Those who belong to Christ Jesus, verse 24, have crucified the flesh with its passion and its desire.

This habituated body no longer dominates you. It still gives you trouble, and you still have to fight it by the power of the Spirit, and you still have to replace the old ways with the new, and you still find yourself stumbling from time to time, and you have to confess your sins and the rest of it, but you have crucified in Christ that flesh.

It does not need to dominate, and if we live by the Spirit, if He has given us life so that we can oppose the flesh and we can see the fruit grow in our lives, if we live by the Spirit, if He has given us life, let us also walk by the Spirit. It’s not just that He brings eternal life to us, but He’s the one who gives us our daily walk the way we ought to be walking with God, and so He sums it up.

²⁴ And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵ If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. (Galatians 5:24-26, ESV)

Does this fruit just grow as you sit and watch? No. you’re going to have to cultivate it by prayer. you’re going to have to cultivate it by effort. In Timothy, 1 Timothy 6:11, 2 Timothy 2:22, I haven’t time to turn to them, but many of these very items that are listed as the fruit of the Spirit, and some others that aren’t listed here, He tells us in those two places, pursue these things.

It’s the fruit of the Spirit, but the Spirit doesn’t do it automatically instead of us for us. He does it through enabling us, giving us the desire and the ability to pursue these things in our lives, and the word pursue there is a very interesting term. It’s the word that’s used for a hunter, somebody who tracks down the animal, looking for his tracks, signs of where he is, following those tracks, going through the woods, going great lengths and great periods of time in order to find that animal and track it down until he finds him.

And that’s the Spirit he wants us to have, calling upon the Holy Spirit to give us that desire and that ability to track down these things in our lives so that if we don’t have enough of love or joy or peace or patience or kindness or goodness or faithfulness or meekness or self-control, we say, I want them. Just as that hunter says, I’m going to get that animal, I want these things, I’m going to get this spirit of meekness and kindness and self-control, it has to be cultivated.

There are plenty of muscadine vines around here that grow in the woods that don’t require any cultivation to do so. So the question is, do you walk by the power of the Spirit? And this is not the usual word of verse 25 for walk, but it’s the word that means to walk in a row, to walk in a straight path, to walk without veering to the right, to the left, or going in some wrong direction, or getting the row wiggly or twisty or off on an angle somewhere.

It means to walk straight down the row you should walk, to walk the right path. If the Spirit gave you life, you need to continue to walk in His power, and you won’t be conceited, and you won’t challenge others, and there won’t be any envies of the flesh for you to destroy your home and your congregation or your friendships with, but there’ll be peace and joy and meekness and long-suffering and self-control. Forgive us, Lord, for not pursuing it with a desire that is so strong that we will not let up until we capture what is needed.

O Lord, be with us and help us. If there are any here who over the years have seen no change, even though they have made a profession of faith, no growth whatsoever, O Lord, may they call upon Jesus Christ and find in him that salvation which will enable them to grow, because we are warned strongly that those who go on practicing the same things year in and year out without any change are not part of your kingdom. Help us therefore, Lord, as we consider these matters, for we pray in Jesus’ name and for his sake alone.