Acts of the Flesh
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. Galatians 5:19-21
I was doing some study about the fruits of the spirit and went straight to Galatians 5:22. Many times when I have read that scripture in the past I read over the word “but” and moved straight to the rest of the scripture. This time God had me slow down and focused on the word and to understand why it was there. The verse reads, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
When I took a closer look, Paul was actually telling the reader that the acts of our flesh will keep us from inheriting the kingdom of God. In case we don’t know what those behaviors are, Paul makes it plan by listing them out. We live in a body that is fleshy and wants its own way. As long as we are in this body, those who have accepted Christ as their personal savior will war with the flesh. When we accepted Christ, He came to live inside of us and our spirit was immediately changed, but our flesh is a work in progress.
Satan will use our fleshy desires to try and get us to go against the Word of God. He will sneak words in our mind telling us we are not pleasing God, that we are not walking with Christ. That is a lie! We will be in conflict with our flesh until the day we die. But we get our strength from the Spirit of the Lord, and we know His spirit is greater than anything our flesh can bring up. We are not perfect beings, and we will mess up. Remember Christ died for our sins before we were born. He knew everything we would ever do and yet He still loved us.
Paul warns that we should not use our freedom to walk in the flesh, but to serve one another humbly in love. The only way we can do this is to live by the Spirit, keeping in step with Him. In other words, stay connected to the vine which is Jesus Christ. “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (John 15:4, ESV).
Affirmations: Matthew 10:20; Luke 24:32; Ephesians 6:19, Isaiah 55:11
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