1 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
2 This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
3 Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?
Introduction
Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. The abundant life is a life of joy, peace, fulfillment, meaning, and victory. However, very few of God’s people experience a quality of life that deserves to be called “abundant.” In fact I would estimate that 90% of the Christian people I know are living defeated, frustrated, and discouraged lives. Why is this true? It is because they are trying to live the Christian life in their own strength? They have been saved by the grace of God. Their sins have been forgiven. They have been adopted into the family of God and they are on their way to heaven. But in the meantime they are trying as hard as they can in their own strength to live the Christian life. This is an impossible situation, so they find themselves defeated and frustrated.
Every disciple faces the danger of trying to grow to maturity by serving Christ in the flesh. The secret of victorious living is implied to us in a series of carefully worded questions that the apostle Paul asked of the churches of Galatia. He asked, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:1-3)
There are three words in the last question that we need to examine to fully understand the Spirit that Paul is talking about. The first is the word perfect. It means “complete, finished, or fulfilled.” The second is flesh. It refers to human nature apart from God. It refers here to the attempting to bring life to its intended good, to completion, or to fulfillment in our own power or strength apart from God. The third word is the word Spirit. You will notice that the word Spirit is spelled with a capital S. That means that it refers to the Holy Spirit. Who is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is God in you. God has revealed himself as three persons. He has revealed himself as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit. We cannot understand the God of the Bible unless we see him as all three of these in one. God is one God, but he has revealed himself in three persons.
The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. I do not understand the Trinity. Someone has said, “If we deny the Trinity we will lose our soul; if we try to explain the Trinity we will lose our mind.” Though I do not understand the Trinity, I do know this: All that there is of God is in the Father, and all that was ever seen of God is in the Son, and all that was ever felt of God is in the Holy Spirit. That’s the Trinity.
Before his ascension into heaven Jesus promised his disciples that when he went away another companion would come from God to walk with them and to be their helper. As Jesus had been the constant companion of the 12 apostles for the past three years—as he had guided them, taught them, encouraged them, and strengthened them, so now the Holy Spirit would come to do those things for them.
He assured them and us that we would not be left alone to face Satan and the world in our own strength. Though he had been with them only a little while, the Holy Spirit would come and abide forever. Though he had walked with them, the Holy Spirit would dwell in them. The Holy Spirit would be to them and to all believers in the future what he had been up until that time (John 14:16-18).
The Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost and he dwells with us and in us even now. Since the Holy Spirit has come, God has not been “up there” some place in heaven or “out there some place in space.” He is “in there” within our hearts and lives. The moment we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit takes up residence within us. If you are a Christian, he is in you now. He is our constant companion, our teacher, and our strength for victorious living. The more we yield our lives to his control, the more we have the power for triumphant Christian living.
Paul’s question again is this, “Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect in the flesh?” We begin the Christian life in the Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who convicts us of sin. It is the Spirit who converts us to Christ. It is the Spirit who adopts us into the family of God. It is the Spirit who guarantees our place in heaven. Wouldn’t it be foolish to begin the Christian life in the power of the Holy Spirit and then attempt to complete it, to finish it, to bring it to its intended goal in our own strength by the flesh?
The obvious implication is that this would be foolish indeed. No person in his right mind would begin the Christian life by trusting in the grace of God through the Holy Spirit and then try to complete the Christian life by trusting in his own strength through the flesh.
Jack Taylor, in his best-selling book The Key to Triumphant Living tells that even as a minister, he came to a point of almost complete exhaustion trying to live the Christian life in his own strength. Jack wrote that after he became a Christian, no one told him about the Holy Spirit. So he thought he had to live the Christian life on his own. His father was a farmer—a very good farmer. Jack reasoned that if his father could become a good farmer by hard work then he could become a good Christian in exactly the same way. So he worked with all of his might, almost to the point of total despair, to be a good Christian and a good minister. The end result was frustration and defeat. That’s when he found the key to triumphant living. That key was and is the power of God’s Spirit living in us.
Many of you have experienced that same frustration. You have tried to minister for Christ and you have failed. You have tried to overcome bad habits and destructive attitudes but have been unable to do so. You are bored, moody, and unhappy. Though you want to change and have promised yourself a thousand times that you would do so, you have been powerless. And you are destined to utter and complete failure as long as you try in your own strength. Don’t be so foolish as to try to bring your salvation to completeness by the flesh. You began the Christian life through the work of the Holy Spirit. Now continue it through that same Holy Spirit and you can know victory.
Zechariah expressed this truth when he said, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit saith the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6). And the apostle John reaffirmed it when he said, “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). If the struggle is you versus Satan, it is no contest. Satan would win every time. But the Holy Spirit versus Satan is a different story. The Holy Spirit dwells in us. And as we yield our lives to him he gives us victory over sin and Satan. He is greater than the one who is in the world.
Why do so many Christians live defeated and frustrated lives? There are at least three possible reasons. Sometimes it is due to ignorance. They simply do not know about the presence of the Holy Spirit within them. Sometimes it is due to sinfulness. They are not walking in obedience after the Lord. And sometimes it is due to unbelief. They do not allow the Holy Spirit to flow through their lives. If your life is not a life of victory, then perhaps it is due to one of these three reasons.
1. Possess what you own.
Many people are living defeated Christian lives simply because they do not know about the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit within them. In Pecos County in West Texas, there is a famous oilfield known as Yates Pool. It was called Yates Pool because the oilfield was discovered on a sheep ranch that was owned by Mr. Ira Yates. During the Depression years Mr. Yates was not making enough money on his ranch to pay the principal or the interest on his mortgage. It looked as though he might lose the ranch. He scarcely had enough money to buy food and clothing for his children, and like so many people in that day he lived off of government relief. Many times he must have wondered where the next meal would come from and how he could continue to exist under those circumstances.
One day a seismograph crew came through Pecos County and asked for permission to drill a wildcat well on his land. Mr. Yates signed the lease, they drilled the well, and at 1,115 feet they struck oil. The first oil well produced 80,000 barrels of oil a day. Then they began to sink more wells, some of them producing twice that much oil. In fact, 30 years later, a government test revealed that one of those wells was still capable of producing 125,000 barrels of oil a day. The amazing thing is that Mr. Yates owned it all–every bit of it. The day he bought the ranch, the oil and mineral rights were his. But he was living on relief. He was a multimillionaire but he was living in poverty, and the reason was that he did not know the oil was there. He owned it, but he did not possess it. He was ignorant of its existence and consequently he lived his life in poverty until he discovered the resources that were available to him.
In exactly the same way there are many Christians who live their lives in spiritual poverty instead of spiritual abundance because they do not know the power and the resources available to them through the Holy Spirit who dwells within them.
But, you ask, “Can a person be a Christian and be indwelled by the Holy Spirit and not know about it?” They certainly can be. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? For ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
Obviously, the Holy Spirit dwelt in those Corinthian Christians. Their body was his temple, but they were not fully aware of it. The Holy Spirit was in them but they were ignorant of that fact, so they lived their lives in the flesh.
In the course of his missionary journeys, the apostle Paul encountered a brilliant Alexandrian Jew by the name of Apollos. Apollos had been touched by the preaching of John the Baptist and was going about preaching and teaching the things of the Lord as he understood them. He had an energetic spirit and a tremendous grasp of the scriptures, and was an eloquent speaker. With great boldness he declared what he knew and believed concerning the Lord.
When Aquilla and Priscilla (fellow missionaries of the apostle Paul) heard Apollos, they not only recognized his tremendous ability, but they also realized his deficiency in knowledge. Apollos did not know that the Savior that John the Baptist had predicted had already come. He did not know that the Lamb of God who had come to take away the sins of the world had already been slain. He did not know that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead. He did not know that the one who would baptize with fire and the Holy Ghost had already done his work. Apollos was living in the New Testament era but he had an Old Testament experience. So Aquilla and Priscilla called him aside and taught him the whole truth concerning God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
I can imagine the response of Apollos as Aquilla and Priscilla explained to him the whole Gospel. He probably said, “What, do you mean that there is more to the Christian life than I have experienced?” And they must have said, “Yes, there is more. Much more” (Acts 18:24-28). Apollos then accepted Jesus as his Savior and Lord, received the Holy Spirit, and began preaching with even greater power. Luke records that he “mightily convinced the Jews, and that he publicly showed by the scriptures that Jesus was Christ” (Acts 18:28).
Apollos now had power for even greater effectiveness in his life. If you live without the Holy Spirit your life may be good, but it can never be miraculous. It is only the power of the Holy Spirit that can enable us to minister, live, and serve triumphantly. The key to triumphant, mighty living for all of us is the Holy Spirit. He is God who came to reside in us and to energize us the moment we became Christians.
2. Confess your sin.
The second reason why many Christians live defeated lives is because of unconfessed and unforsaken sin. They are not walking in obedience to Christ and the Holy Spirit does not control their life. The cleansed life is a prerequisite for a victorious life. God will not use or bless the lives of his people if they continue in their sins. We must repent of our sins, confess those sins, and begin to walk in obedience to the Lord if we want him to use us and to bless us.
There are three kinds of people in the world according to the apostle Paul. There are natural men, spiritual men, or carnal Christians. Everybody is one of these three kinds of people. The natural man (1 Corinthians 2:14) is an unregenerate sinner. He is a man in his natural state spiritually. He has never received Jesus Christ as his Lord; he has never repented of his sins; he is not a Christian. He is lord of his own life. Christ is outside the circle of his experience. He is spiritually dead in sin. He is a man without God.
The spiritual man (1 Corinthians 2:15) is a person who has repented of his sins and received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. His sins are forgiven. He has been adopted into the family of God and heaven is his home. He has voluntarily abdicated the throne of his life and he is allowing Jesus Christ to rule him. He lives his life in conscience fellowship with the Son of God and daily surrenders his life to the lordship of Christ.
The carnal Christian (1 Corinthians 3:3) is a Christian who continues to live his life in the flesh. The word carnal comes from the same word that is translated “flesh” in Galatians 3:3. It refers to human nature apart from God. The carnal Christian then is a person who once repented of his sins, received Jesus as his Savior, and became one of God’s children. But instead of living his life in the power of the Spirit he is once again trying to live in his own strength. His desires, appetites, and practices of the flesh are now characteristics of his life.
When we are saved we do not become puppets in the hands of God. We still have a will of our own. Any time we want, we can take control of our lives again. We can live our life in our own strength, in the flesh, or we can live in the power of the Holy Spirit. The choice is always ours.
The carnal Christian is a Christian who is seeking to live the Christian life in his own strength. He no longer surrenders his life on a day-to-day basis to God. He tries by his own efforts to live the Christian life.
The carnal Christian is the most miserable kind of person there is. He is like the third of the three boys who were going swimming one hot summer day. As they neared the swimming hole, one of them broke into a run, leaped up in the air, grabbed his nose, and hit the water with a splash. He began to swim around joyously. The second young man followed close behind, but instead of jumping into the water he stopped right on the edge of the sand and began to walk around the pond on dry ground. The third boy came to the pond and started to wade very slowly out into the icy water. His teeth chattered and he shivered all over as he inched out into the deeper water.
The first boy was as happy as he could be. He was all the way in. The second boy was happy in a different way. He was all the way out. But the third boy was miserable because he was half in and half out. And the higher the water got, the colder he became and the more miserable he was.
Many Christians today are just like that. They are miserable because they are neither in nor out. They are halfway in between. They are Christians but they do not know the victory that Jesus can give. They may be in church every Sunday, they may teach a Sunday school class, they may sing in the choir, and they may even stand in the pulpit. But their lives are not controlled by God’s Spirit and thus they are miserable, frustrated, and defeated.
Which kind of person are you? Are you a natural man? Are you a spiritual man? Or are you a carnal Christian? There are no other options. If you are not living a victorious Christian life, then in all probability it is because you are either a natural man or a carnal Christian. Yield your life to the Spirit of God today. Begin to obey him and you can know power for victorious living.
3. Don’t quench the Spirit.
The third reason why many Christians are living defeated lives is because of unbelief. Faith is the shaft that we sink deep down into the resources of God. Without faith we can never know God’s power for victorious living. Faith opens the channel of God’s blessings so they can flow into us and through us. Unbelief shuts off God’s power to our lives.
Paul warns, “Quench not the spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19). The word quench means “to extinguish, suppress, or inhibit.” It is possible for us to hinder the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Can you remember a time when you were washing your car and wanted to move the water hose? You did not want to go back to the faucet and cut the water off so you simply bent the hose together and clamped it inside your fist. By this method you hindered or suppressed the flow of water through the hose. In the same way we can quench the flow of the Holy Spirit through our life.
Nothing quenches the work of the Spirit like unbelief. And nothing releases the Spirit like faith. Did you know that you can do almost anything by faith? I mean anything! President Dwight D. Eisenhower once told about the Allied invasion of Europe during World War II, codenamed Operation Overlord. He said, “From the beginning we knew that we were going to win. We didn’t know it factually. We knew it by faith.”
I have heard of doing a lot of things by faith, but I had never heard of winning a military campaign in that way. What did he mean by “we knew it by faith?” He meant that they were so convinced that the victory was theirs that they launched an attack. They believed and therefore they committed the troops to action. They claimed the victory by faith.
You and I claim the victory in the Christian warfare the same way. By faith we believe that Christ is in us. By faith we yield our lives to him. By faith we act. And as we act, God works to accomplish what we believe in the first place. The secret to victorious living is the Spirit of God. Zechariah was right: “It is not by might nor by power but by my Spirit saith the Lord” (Zechariah 4:6). He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world (1 John 4:4).
Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Are you discouraged, defeated, and frustrated to the point of giving up? Then wonderful! Now that you know that you cannot live the Christian life on your own, perhaps you will allow God to do it in you and through you. The secret is to give up. It is to surrender. It is to let the Spirit of God control your life.
Last night I visited a prospect for our church. As we talked I asked him to tell me about the time when he was saved. He said it happened two years ago. He was going through a divorce and a financial crisis and he said, “I just bottomed out. I got down on my knees and said, ‘Lord, I can’t do it. I can’t go on. You’ve got to come in to my life and take over.’” He said when he did that he felt a sense of relief that he had never known before and his whole life began to change.
Do not be so foolish as to begin the Christian life in the Spirit and then try to bring it to completion by the flesh. A disciple is one who daily yields his life to the Holy Spirit so he can bring his Christian experience to completion, to fulfillment, and to its intended end.