Galatians 5:13-26
How did you get on with discerning your frontline? Don’t worry if you haven’t got it completely sorted yet. We have another 7 weeks of thinking about this. Good if you get some idea as to what your frontline is though as we go through 6 ways we glorify God in this context. The first M is model godly character.
I used to be like a caterpillar. Sometimes I’d wonder what it would be like to fly, but the only way for a caterpillar to fly is on the back of a leaf or in a bird’s beak. I’ve been through a transformation and now I’m a butterfly – and I can fly. What do I mean by this analogy? I mean that I used to muddle through life as best I could. I thought I was doing pretty well though I had a sense that better was possible – I just didn’t know how. But now I have God’s Spirit within me to enable me to live a better life than I could ever imagine before. In Christ we have a new nature. The change is as big as the change from caterpillar to butterfly.
The old nature is a troublesome thing. We try to do the right thing, at least some of the time, and end up doing anything but. We know we aren’t keeping God’s law so we substitute our own rules so as to lower the bar and make it more attainable and hope God will let us qualify on our terms. But the effects of that kind of life are not good. My contemporaries and I were raised with ideas like, “Look after number one.” It’s still around. Such notions don’t work that well and have unpleasant side effects. It involves things listed in verses 21,22 and a bunch of other not so nice things and there are laws against many of them.
The new nature is free. Free from having to obey the law and free from sin. Indeed, free to do what is right. Not only that but we have the Spirit working in us and producing fruit, here focusing on the fruit of good character. (See verses 22,23.) Our good character produces good deeds under the Spirit’s control.
We can live in one of two ways. We can live for ourselves or we can live for God and other people. The list of actions that human nature produces are all actions that flow from a desire to live as the centre of the universe – the desire to control our own lives and destinies. Under that regime we used people for our ends, we manipulated everything we could to get what we wanted and our lives were full of strife.
God wants us to live a life shaped by the Spirit – the fruit of which shows in the way that others benefit from our transformation. The fruit of the Spirit sound to us as self-evidently good, but when Paul was writing that is not how some of his readers would have seen these qualities. Love, patience, humility, self-control have never been valued in contexts where the strongest survive and where people feel that it’s everyone for themselves. I think we live in just such a context. Look and listen and see how much value is given to these qualities in general society – who gives them value and who doesn’t, and why.
Paul set out a vision of a radically different set of community values to what was on offer at the time. Christ’s disciples are to offer to our own cultures, a radically different vision of what it means to be human. We can easily dismiss godly character as so obvious as to be not worthy of consideration. But it is much more than being nice. It is allowing this new way of being human to develop. This is good and it is worth the effort.
This is the work of the Spirit, but it will be tested and developed on our frontlines. The living out of these characteristics is both a fruit of the Spirit in our lives and, to the extent to which we allow this to happen, a mark of the fruitful Christian.
Is it achievable? We may often get to the end of the day and wonder where was my godly character? All sorts of difficult things crowd our days – miscommunication at work, arguments at home, frustrations with friends, challenging situations and people, confrontations that you need to have or that come to you, tedious situations that refuse to resolve, tedious people, and more. I won’t make this tedious by extending the list! All of these are opportunities where godly characteristics are both developed and allowed to shine.
And shine we do. It is often the case that others see in us more of Christ than we see in ourselves. We know our thoughts and how far short of God’s standard they often fall. Others only hear our words and observe our demeanor and how different that is from the people around us who don’t have the help of God’s Spirit. They see our godly character, even if it shows just a little bit, and God is glorified.
I get to do Professional Development Reviews of other ministers. For the review I have a set of questions and I get half a dozen people to comment on the minister. I get the minister to comment also. I often find that the minister is pleasantly surprised by the commendations of his or her team. We tend to give ourselves a lower rating because we’re aware of the struggles we go through. Those around us see the result of our struggles aided by the Holy Spirit. The fruit glorifies God.
I met a friend the other day. My friend was talking with another person so I just said, “Hi!” and kept going. But as I walked on I heard my friend say to the other person, “Owen’s our minister, he’s really kind.” I thank God that this fruit of the Spirit is showing.
I’m going to run a video now and in this film you will see a man talking with humility about how he runs his business as an expression of his faith and how he wants joy to be the signature of all he does.
Video – ‘Yes, I’m the mechanic’ from Christianity Today.
Joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit. George the mechanic is modeling godly character.
We may get to the end of yet another day and feel that little has been done for the sake of the kingdom. In actual fact, the Spirit has been at work in us. The fruit of the Spirit, the outworking of God’s life in us, has been on show for all to see. And all this has happened in the frustrations, joys and challenges of another ordinary day. This is no small thing: we are modelling a character that is being counter-culturally transformed – God’s character, produced by God’s Spirit and bringing glory to God.
This is one of the ways we can glorify God on our frontline.
Questions for reflection:
Can you think of someone who has modeled an aspect of godly character to you?
Might you encourage them by telling them?
Can you think of ways in which you have modeled godly character on your frontline?
Which fruit of the Spirit do you feel in particular need of right now?