rucified to Belong to Jesus  
 
Galatians 5:24-26 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
 
TWO words here should help us love God with all of our heart.   
    The first word is “belong”. What does it mean to belong to an organization? You want to learn about the organization’s rules for membership, so you can be a good, responsible member. There is opportunity to meet new people and join with them for the organization’s purpose. Your participation in meetings and events becomes part of your life. If you belong, you accept responsibilities to advance the organization’s effectiveness in the community. To belong means you willingly give part of yourself to the group.
    What happens when you belong to Christ? It’s more than giving part of yourself, isn’t it? To belong to Christ means you didn’t choose to belong. He chose you. The Holy Spirit has said to you, “You no longer belong to the world. You belong to the Son of God. You are set apart to be his disciple.”
    This is not a casual or partial relationship! The Father, Spirit and Son have granted you faith and appointed you a member of his church. Belonging to Jesus is a binding relationship. Your life is a participation in God’s purpose. He has made it so. The life you live in the body, you live by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for you. (from Galatians 2:20) How loving God is to choose you to belong to him.
    The second word that should grow your love for God is crucified. Everyone reading this letter in Paul’s day knew the horrible ravages and torture of crucifixion. It was a long, humiliating, excruciating,  suffocating death. Why do you think Paul choose “crucify” to describe the destruction of the sinful nature and its passions? He said the same thing in Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
    Paul was describing a tortuous change from our sin nature to our salvation. This also emphasizes that this death to sin and its passions is God’s doing. We do not decide to crucify ourselves. The pain and penalty is too severe.
    But this is what God required of his Son. And this kind of death to self is what God requires of us. Our sin nature does not die easily. When God says, “You are mine. You no longer live in sin.” we spiritually submit to the cross as Jesus did. Our lives are not our own. When Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave, he said, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” (John 11:44) In the same manner, the Holy Spirit has ordered your “grave clothes” – your sin nature – to be removed. Your sin is crucified. Your soul is risen from its crucifixion when you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (Galatians 3:27)
    God so loved you, he chose to crucify your sins, so you can belong to him. You have died to sin, and you are born anew into Jesus’ church. Will you love God and his church with all of your heart?   
 
 
 

Galatians 5:15-18 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.
 
THIS is too true, isn’t it? It has been said that the church is the greatest enemy of the church. Many teachings in the epistles admonish people in the churches to put aside differences, so  they can be one body in Christ. Today, while the church voices concerns about enemies in the culture, churches minimize and afflict each other. The sin nature will consume the church if sin is not crucified.
    The solution, of course, is to stop biting and devouring to please the devil and start living in the Spirit to please your Lord. What happens then? Paul says, “You will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” because you are born again (John 3:3) to put on the new self (Ephesians 4:24), so you will be united with Christ (Philippians 2:1). Living in the Spirit is best defined in these five powerful verses:
 
Galatians 5:19-23: The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 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. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
 
    We can understand the power of this “life fruit” when we contrast it with dead flesh. Pause for a minute or two on verses 19-21. This is a tragic and deadly representation of the world’s heart isn’t it? How broken and lost is our world because of the sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery that permeates every element of our society and media?  We idolize individuals and objects. Some of you also deal with blatant witchcraft in your communities. Demon worship is everywhere. The list goes on into the depths of Hell. This is the biting, devouring life.
    That’s why we thank God for the Spirit life. When Paul writes, “But the fruit of the Spirit,” he points you out of Hell and into the Kingdom of God. The Spirit’s fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control is the outward sign of a Spirit-driven heart.
    Note this is not Spirit “fruits”. These are traits that come together to demonstrate the Christian life. Developing each attribute into our life requires the Spirit growing us into maturity over time. As natural fruit needs time and nutrition to grow well, so does our Christian life.
    Then Paul’s concluding sentence adds power to the fruit. When he writes, “Against these things there is no law.” Paul once again directs the Galatians’ minds from the law to faith. The fruit is the Spirit’s fullness of God’s grace to guide you to a sanctified life. It is the strength by which we live. 

Galatians 5:12-13 As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves! 13 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.
 
VERSE 12 is one we’d like to avoid. Paul’s language seems very vengeful, even hateful. But his severe words point to the great challenge of our relationship with God: the law does not cleanse guilt from the human heart.
    With those hard words, Paul was essentially posing a question: “If circumcision is required to be righteous before God, how soon would castration be required?” Such rigorous pursuit of release from one’s guilt was not just a thought. This behavior was a tragic reality among some pagan cults whose priests were eunuchs. To them, the highest level of devotion was marked by this severe mutilation. How else could they completely please their gods? Or could they? They would never be assured would they?
    Accusation is Satan’s main weapon. He wants us to believe we are never acceptable in God’s sight. That’s why restrictive and physically harmful rules in meaningless worship have marked mankind’s disobedience to God throughout history. The worship of Baal and Molech in the Old Testament demanded child sacrifice. Priests of the pagan gods would perform brutal physical rituals on themselves and their subjects in the hope of pleasing their gods. Christian missionaries who have traveled into isolated regions in the world find cultic worship requiring self-mutilation. Some shamans and witch doctors mutilate themselves annually to be deemed worthy.
    And even in church history there are accounts of people who thought they could express their devotion to God with extreme self-abuse and deprivation. The reformer Martin Luther was first a monk who found no satisfaction in confession. He lashed himself for his sins. Then the Holy Spirit revealed God’s grace through Galatians. He learned the guilty heart is only satisfied in Jesus’s redemption.
    The Pharisees, too, had “emasculated” the Jews’ hearts with countless rules and rituals. Instead of pointing the Jews to God, the rules formed a hopeless despair.  
    That’s why Paul confirms to the Galatians, “You, my brothers, were called to be free.” With faith in Jesus’ work on the cross, they are free from self-condemnation. They are free from wondering, “Am I good enough?” The Galatian believers are free of death because Jesus is risen. They are free of vengeful and prideful attitudes. The faithful church is free to love God and love one another because the sin guilt is satisfied.
   Then Paul warned, “But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.” As he wrote earlier, Paul teaches that God’s grace is not a license for sin. Instead, we are free to be as Jesus. Jesus-followers are free to seek his truth. They can walk in his teaching to learn to love as he did. Sin no longer hinders a Christian’s access to the throne of grace. Our High Priest does not require you mutilate your flesh but that you spiritually give him your heart: Hebrews 4:14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. 16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
    Jesus suffered the physical sacrifice. Be assured, your faith in the afflicted Savior will remove your guilt.