Power to Change (part 1) by Dr. Bill Senyard on 09/01/13

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Power2Change 1 (Gal 5:13-18)

Gal 5:13-18  You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. 14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. 16 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17 For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

Slide 1

We celebrated the 50^th year of the Washington DC speech of Dr. Martin Luther King this week.  It was about freedom for all—not just some.  It resonated with all Americans.  We worship freedom.  It is not distinct to us as a people here in Denver.  But it is our motto.  People from all over the world come here to be free… to be able to live their lives in the way that they would choose…. to be able to do what they want to do without restraints— without controls.  It is true for our pioneer fathers and mothers who came here to carve for themselves a new life in the wilderness without the encroachment of society…. Young men and women searching for their fortune in gold, silver, mining, natural resources.  I think it was the heart of the Native Americans before them.  We are the land of freedom, clean air… space to move..  Freedom!

 

No wonder pot legalization is so important.  We are so hesitant to give up our so-called freedoms.

 

We define “freedom” as the ability to do whatever I want to do.  Well, within reason… As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else or break the law.  Right?

 

The pinnacle of such a freedom is to have a life independent of any commitment or restraint. Then I am really free to choose among many options.  No barriers to do whatever I want.   “Are you seeing anyone?”  “Oh no, I am free.”  “I don’t have to ask anyone if I can go out with the guys….. I don’t have to come home… I don’t have to call.  I’m not tied down!”

 

The tragedy is that this freedom is really not freedom at all.  In fact, I would argue that we all know this.  Tim Keller is very helpful here.  Let’s look at the issue externally and internally.

Slide 2

Externally–

In spite of the fact that I give lip service to the notion that it is OK that my freedom is limited by other’s freedom.  It is a limit!  I can’t go anywhere I want, I can’t do anything I want.  This gripes me.  I can live up the hill or down the hill but still I need to curb my freedom.  There are still neighbors, family, government-regs, HOA parking rules.  I try to enjoy my bounded freedom.  I am not really free.

 

Internally–

I have also got internal problems.  I have a hard time doing what I seem to want to do because often I want conflicting things.  I can’t do everything that I want… because I want schizo things.  I want to live a long and healthy life, but I like Burger King sausage and egg biscuits.  I want to be thin, but I like to eat.  I want to be educated but I don’t want to study.

 

Sometimes our want-to’s are harmful to our desire for freedom.  Someone may want free sex… but there is the fear of disease, or having unwanted pregnancies.  Others may want to party, but then we have to work.

 

I want to be free of relational constraints… free of hindering commitments—  ‘Easy-Rider’.  But I don’t want to be lonely.  I want to belong…. as long as it doesn’t affect my freedom.  Do you hear the inconsistencies?

Slide 3

It is even truer for Christians.  Believers have the Holy Spirit resident within them.  More conflict.  Paul—by the way, the mature Paul at the end of his ministry–wrestles with these same freedom issues.

Rom7:15  I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who does it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do– this I keep on doing….. 24 What a wretched man I am! (NIV)

 

Paul sounds more like a conflicted man versus a free-man.  What he wants to do, he does not do.  What he doesn’t want to do, he does.  This is not freedom according to anyone’s definition.  Paul argues that he is not ‘free’ to do good. In fact, there is a battle raging within.  This is where counselors make their money.  Helping us figure out why I don’t feel free.  He is a slave to his ‘flesh’.

Slide 4

“The Spirit and Flesh constitute an apocalyptic antinomy in the sense that they are two opposed orbs of power, actively at war with one another since the apocalyptic advent of Christ and His Spirit.  The space in which human beings now live is a newly invaded space, and that means that its structures cannot remain unchanged.”  (Fung citing Martyn, ‘Antinomies’, fn. 37, p 249). 

Slide 5

Either way man’s ‘free will’ chooses he is up against a powerful force.  “Does the man choose evil, the Spirit opposes him; does he choose good, the flesh hinders him.” (Fung citing Burton, p. 250). 

 

It is impossible for a neutral ‘free will.” Try it sometimes.  Do only good things for 24 hours.  You see even if we used the world’s understood meaning of freedom…. I am not free.  I am in conflict… an ongoing struggle.  I am a slave.  I am a stumbling fool… unable to find joy, rest, freedom.  The rabbis had a word for “the inclination or tendency within us that drives us to do evil.” They called it “yeser,” the flesh. The flesh since the fall has gone sour.  It is corrupt and self-centered.  The flesh can’t have a real notion of freedom, though it uses the term all the time.

 

Does anyone rememner the 1964 classic movie, Dr. Strangelove?  Peter Sellers plays an insane military expert who just about destroys the world in the cold war.  He suffered from “alien arm syndrome’.  Do you remember, his right arm had a mind of its own.  It would move his wheelchair by itself, it did a Nazi salute whenever it wanted to, it even tried to strangle him.  This is actually a real syndrome.  Experts call it “alien arm syndrome.”

Slide 6

So good news, Christian, you have ‘alien heart syndrome.” It has a mind of its own and does what it wants to do.  And you probably knew it before I said it.  Cheer up, you are less free and independent than you thought.

“Paul rips the masks off propagandizing phrases like ‘self-expression,’ ‘freedom to be yourself,’ ‘doing your own thing’, and uncovers the deceptions that promise liberation but do not fulfill it.  Sin never admits its true character.”(Peterson, Traveling Light, p. 154)

 

In one sense, this doesn’t seem like too good of news. But, when I was an unbeliever, I wasn’t free either… but I thought I was.  Ignorance is bliss to some degree.  But now?  Now I am enveloped in an even larger huge internal battle.  You know you are a Christian when you sense this battle raging within you. Show me a dynamic Christian, I will show you someone who to one degree or another is miserable.

Slide 7- So how are we set free biblically?

It begins when a believer understands that their experiential freedom is dependent upon a living, breathing, on-going relationship with the Holy Spirit.

16 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

 

It’s an imperative—do this.  And there will be a result.

 

So Q: what is the thing that you and I are being commanded by Paul to do? 

Often we do it backwards.  We command that you not live according to the desires of the sinful nature.  We make the wrong end of the equation the imperative.

 

Paul provocatively says, “So you want to know what to do?  So that your spiritual life just takes off—and you experience a less and less desire to gratify the desires of the sinful flesh—well—live by the Spirit.”

 

The idea is to “conduct your life” dependent upon the Spirit’s power, not yours, the Spirit’s love, not yours, the Spirit’s motivations, not yours—and guess what, your selfish fleshly desires will diminish in their power over you.  His will not your free will.  We must use our will to choose to submit to the Holy Spirit’s will—all the while your flesh is fighting against it with all of its might.  It is a moment-by-moment direction, control, and guidance of the Spirit—it happens when I repent of self-management and my less-than-free will, and submit to the Spirit, I choose today to give up my freedom by faith to the Spirit’s lead.  This is the only thing that works.

 

Are you addicted to porn?  To reputation?  To your own success?  Are you driven to have relationships that are inappropriate?  Are you critical?  Are you depressed? Are you feeling like a failure?  Right, all of these are pretty common to humanity; they are the desires of the sinful nature.  You want freedom from the powers that now drive you?  One way.  Submit, by faith to the Holy Spirit’s control. Easy right?  If you do that, you will have a new power, a new motivation.  It will be wildly noticeable.[i]

 

The truth of the matter is that the Galatians were not falling short because they were ignorant of the law, or undisciplined with regard to the law… they were not walking by faith in the Spirit.

Slide 8

Freedom from my sinful nature’s desires comes when I see my need of an active relationship with the Spirit.  I do not intrinsically have the power to do ‘good.’ Spirit is the necessary counterpart to the flesh in Christians.

“Man cannot by a simple decision of his own reverse his own egocentricity.  His attempts to do so issue in the many man-centered forms of religious and philosophical thought.” (Barrett) [ii]

Slide 9

Law [rules] is not helpful

“The Spirit is the only remedy….. [We are] self-centered people filled with the Spirit, able to choose which path to go down.  After frustration after frustration trying to live in the Spirit, laws kind of sound like a good idea.  I, knowing my flesh, would logically think that the law is the corrective for my flesh.  But it is not.  My flesh feeds on the law.  It will quickly become legalism and a powerbase from which to control.  Loopholes will be found and abused.  Self-deception will flourish.  I will die.  Though it seems like a huge bungy jump, the Spirit is the only enemy with power against the flesh.” (Barrett)

 

So trying real hard to do good, to do the rules, to do law is like swimming in a pool of sharks and cutting yourself—it will start a feeding frenzy in your being.

Slide 10- We are not fatalist and passive in the process.

18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

Q: Why does Paul do this? 

NB- Here Paul does one of his magical shifts.  We would expect to hear that if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the flesh—- but he says, you are not under law— thus provocatively equating somehow, flesh and law

 

This conditional sentence clearly shows that Paul does not regard the believer simply as a helpless spectator or an unwilling pawn in the fierce battle between flesh and the Spirit; the assumption is rather that the Christian can be freed from an enslavement to the power that is the flesh within us is by choosing over and over to actively-presently submit to the Spirit’s lead and empowerment.  Thomas Chalmers suggests that we need the “expulsive power of new affections.”  I can access such new affection power by asking for it from God’s celestial stores.  This takes real work, a concerted effort, daily!   There is an ongoing war inside of you.  You are submitting to one or the other right now.  Which one?

 

 

Free to do What????  To do whatever I want? 

Yes and no!  We link freedom and independence together.  Its American, its our roots.  But biblically, freedom is linked with dependence.  It turns out that independence is a pipe dream actually. I am not really independent.  I have this power with in me that drives me, overwhelms me, demands to be fed and stroked.  I am a slave to my flesh.  To the degree that I am, I am sub-human.  Doesn’t this make sense that we are not really free?

 

There is good news.  I can run to the Holy Spirit and say, “HELP!  Make me dependent upon you and your motivations, your powers.  Make me feel loved.  Make me feel love for others.  Make me desire others well-being.  Make me sacrificial.  Go for it.  Make me submit.  It all sounds so un-American.

Slide 11

It turns out that this submission to the will of the Spirit is what we were designed for.  In that relationship alone can we experience real humanity including higher purpose, glorious identity, wholeness, so much better than freedom.  You have probably heard the metaphor of the birds and fishes.  We have tons of little hummingbirds demanding to be fed at our place.  Glorious birds… the picture of freedom.  Is the hummingbird really free?  Can they soar to outer space?  Can they swim in the water?  Can they walk freely on freeways?  They are what they are and they thrive in that context.  They are slaves to their contexts, dependent.  They just don’t seem to have bought the lie that they were meant for so much more.  “Desire to swim, hummingbird.”  Ridiculous!

 

Where are we free?  Where do we flourish, grow, and achieve our potentials?  Hold on to your hats.  We are designed to flourish and grow and ‘fly’ in the context of submitting to God.  Wait?  Do you mean commitment?  Giving up my control?? That is so binding.  Biblically, freedom is a function of dependence.  Biblically, freedom and independence do not mix.  We had it all wrong before.  God’s ways are distinctly different from my ways.

 

The Spirit not only sets me free to submit, He empowers and miraculously changes my motivation to want to submit.  This submission is intrinsically related to love: loving and being loved.  Such higher love is a fruit of the Spirit—it is in no other place in the universe Love is a characteristic of God, only accessible to us because of the Spirit’s presence with in us.  We can only experience such love as we submit to His will.  It is not our love at all.  No room for pride or judgment here.  If I love, believe me you can credit God.  And when as an act of newly accessed submission, I love, I am fulfilling the law.

Slide 12

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. (Gal 5:13 NIV)

 

Unbelievers –those who are free from God, who do not submit, will not submit–cannot love…. not this love.

Q: Pushback?

This Biblical freedom is a function of willing ongoing submission to the Spirit.

 

Such Biblical Freedom (which is a function of active submission) is no peripheral concern for Paul; it is central.  It cannot be taken for granted; it must be vigorously guarded.  It is not something that can be put in a bank vault and kept safe.  It is not a privilege conferred, like an academic degree that certifies access to privileges and honors.  Each day we must take up the stance of submitting again.  If we fail to stand deliberately and consciously, the freedom that comes from such submission will be lost.

 

Were you driven by the desires of the flesh this week?  Do you want to be free?  If you just try hard to not do the desires of the flesh, you will fail big time.  Instead, submit your dysfunctional will, repent of its motivations, and by faith walk in the Spirit.  There you will finally know glimpses of freedom.  This is our focus for Sept and Oct.  How do we “walk in the Spirit?”

 

How will you know?  You will love others— God and man– in ways you have never dreamed of.   There you will know a wonderful, “scary freedom.”  You will see that what you have been striving for is a pathetic parody of freedom… really just another work of the flesh, that is only a projection… not real.  More like a temporary virtual reality.