A Warning Against Fleshly Behavior

Galatians 5:19-21

According to the CDC, the symptoms of a stroke are easy to notice. Here’s a list:

• Sudden numbness/weakness in face, arm, or leg, especially on one side of the body.
• Sudden confusion, trouble speaking, or difficulty understanding speech.
• Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes.
• Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance, or lack of coordination.
• Sudden severe headache with no known cause.

If you or anyone you know show any of these symptoms, call 911 immediately. If you don’t, that person may be permanently handicapped or worse.

In Galatians 5:19-23, Paul gives another list which symptoms, but these are symptoms of a spiritual condition. This “vice and virtue list” is part of the practical section of this letter. Without being legalistic, he lists the kind of behaviors that are appropriate and inappropriate for someone who follows Christ.

• The list of “vices” (“works of the flesh”) are symptoms of an unbelieving heart.
• The list of “virtues” (“fruit of the Spirit”) are symptoms of genuine faith in Christ.

Let’s take a closer look at the first half of this section, the list of “vices.” As we do, let’s put the list into perspective with the following background from the teaching of Galatians.

• If you’ve trusted Christ alone as God and Savior, then you’re a child of God.[1]
• Since you’re his child, God has placed the Holy Spirit within you.[2]
• The Spirit guides and enables you to follow godly desires rather than fleshly ones.
• As a result, fleshly behavior is not appropriate for a child of God.
• Furthermore, regular fleshly behavior indicates that you are not a child of God at all.

As we examine this list of vices, we should do so with this key thought in mind:

Our attitudes and behavior reveal our true spiritual condition.

Main Thought

So, this list shows us how to diagnose our spiritual condition before God, not a stroke.

• This list may be a warning to some that you are not a child of God with the Holy Spirit within you. If so, then you need to turn from your sins and religious works and trust in Christ alone as your God and Savior.
• This list may be a warning to others that though you are a child of God, you are not behaving like one. If so, then you need to turn from your old fleshly desires and trust in the Spirit to produce godly virtues instead.

A List of Fleshly Behaviors

Paul opens this section saying, “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are…”

The flesh refers to our inner desires and impulses to do sinful things contrary to God.

• Just as a stroke is an invisible physical reality, the “flesh” is an invisible spiritual reality.
• Just as a stroke has observable symptoms, the “flesh” has observable symptoms, too.

Paul says these symptoms are works – the attitudes and behaviors a person exhibits when he or she is yielding to fleshly desires.

Paul claims these symptoms are evident, which means they’re obvious. We don’t need secret knowledge, special enlightenment, or extensive laws to know what they are.

Paul gives at least 15 examples of fleshly behavior and arranges them in four categories, which are a fleshly approach to (1) morality, (2) worship, (3) relationships, and (4) alcohol.

Category 1 – A Fleshly Approach to Morality

These behaviors focus on wrong moral and sexual behavior and desires.

“adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness…”

• We can group adultery and fornication together as sexual immorality. Some translations name both, others just fornication (which includes adultery). This behavior especially pertains to various forms of prostitution, which were socially acceptable in Roman society within certain parameters. This behavior applies to all inappropriate activity between a man and woman apart from marriage, from pornography to affairs.
• Uncleanness (“impurity”) describes the mental, emotional, and spiritual state of inner defilement and filthiness that sexual sin brings to our lives.
• Lewdness (“licentiousness”) refers to wrong sexual behavior that’s overpowering – unrestrained behavior that even the unsaved world views as grotesque and repulsive. It portrays someone who behaves more like an animal than a human, with no decency.

Category 2 – A Fleshly Approach to Worship

These behaviors focus on a wrong approach and attitude towards God.

“idolatry, sorcery”

• Idolatry is worshiping idols or participating in idol worship activities. It is also worshiping any other god or any other thing as a god rather than worshiping God.
• Sorcery refers to drugs or black magic as a means of manipulating circumstances and controlling people (even poisoning them). It does not refer to the proper use of medicine to meet health needs but does include the use of drugs to induce an abortion.

Both idolatry and sorcery exhibit a refusal to acknowledge God as God by seeking help, guidance, and satisfaction from other powers rather than God himself.

Category 3 – A Fleshly Approach to Relationships

This larger group of behaviors focus on wrong attitudes and actions to other people.

“hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders”

• Hatred (“hostility”) refers to a subtle, seething hatred of other people underlying other feelings and behavior. It’s a natural tendency that refuses to like or love other people.
• Contention (“quarreling”) refers to actual tension and frustration that goes beyond feelings to facial expressions, sarcastic comments, arguments, and debates.
• Jealousy refers to a strong (but wrong) desire to have and experience what another person owns and enjoys.This word can mean “a strong desire or zeal for the right thing,” but here it means “a strong desire or zeal for the wrong thing.”
• Outbursts of wrath (“rage”) are what happens when hatred, contention, and jealousy boil over. We call this “blowing a gasket,” “flying off the handle,” or “losing our temper.”

Can you see a progression, like a pot of water simmering, bubbling, then boiling over?

• Selfish ambition (“selfishness”) describes an aggressive drive to promote yourself at the expense of others. This behavior pushes other people down to get ahead.
• Dissension (“disagreement”) is driving a wedge into families, churches, and other groups through sinful choices or petty, divisive ideas, preferences, and opinions.
• Heresy (“divisions”) also drives a wedge into families, churches, and other groups around a sense of exclusivity or superiority, often due to legalistic or heretical doctrine.
• Envy is similar to jealousy but seems to emphasize the deep resentment we feel when we hear of another person’s success which we ourselves have not also experienced.
• Murder (taking a person’s life in cold blood) is the result of the previous attitudes and behaviors if unchecked. Some translations omit it, but it should probably be included.

Category 4 – A Fleshly Approach to Alcohol

This group focuses on the wrong use of alcohol.

“drunkenness, revelries”

• Drunkenness refers to “getting drunk.” Inebriation or intoxication occurs when we drink too much alcohol, to the point that we lose control of our mind, speech, and body.
• Revelries (“carousing, orgies, wild parties”) expands drunkenness to a larger social setting. While drunkenness may occur privately (though it’s wrong even in private), when it occurs in public, it often leads to wild, reckless behavior – whether in a pagan festival, a frat house, or a local bar. Such behavior is never appropriate for a Christian.

This is not a comprehensive list.

Before moving on to his warning, Paul ends this list of vices with “and the like.” This means “and things like these” or “anything else of the same kind or nature.” If you’re legalistic, this may bother you because you want a complete list of what’s right and wrong, yet we know what fleshly behavior is like even without a list. It’s obvious, remember?

Here are some other fleshly behaviors not included in this list. Can you think of more?

• Murder (if it’s not in the original list)
• Dishonesty
• Stealing
• Vulgar language

Let’s remind ourselves of the main thought in this passage: our attitudes and behavior reveal our true spiritual condition. Since that’s the case, then what is your spiritual condition today? If you are exhibiting fleshly behaviors, then what does that mean?

A Warning about these Behaviors

After giving a list of fleshly behaviors that are contrary to the Spirit, Paul gives a warning, much like how you should call 911 if you see or experience the symptoms of a stroke.

• “of which I tell you beforehand” means Paul is telling them something ahead of time, giving believers a chance to correct the problem if these vices are showing symptoms in their lives before it’s too late.
• “just as I also told you in time past” means this isn’t the first time Paul has given them this warning. In his early ministry to these churches, when he had reached these people for Christ and mentored them, he had said the same thing. They’d been saved out of a pagan, fleshly lifestyle so they knew what these behaviors were like. Though Paul was correcting the influence of legalism in their churches, he wanted to ensure that this didn’t give them a license to go back to their former fleshly lifestyles either.

The Subjects of this Warning: “Those Who Practice Such Things”

Though fleshly attitudes and behavior are always wrong and always indicate that we are not depending on and yielding to the Spirit at the moment, Paul focus here on something more than momentary failures which we all experience from time to time.

“Those who practice such things” describes people who do these things with no meaningful desire to change or progress towards change. He is speaking about behavior that is regular and habitual, not occasional.

• Douglas Moo: “A consistent preoccupation with these sins resulting in a life marked by them rather than by the fruit of the Spirit reveals.”[3]
• Timothy George: “Those who habitually indulge in such immoral, idolatrous, impure, unjust, or intemperate acts, will be excluded from the … kingdom of God.”[4]

This warning is for anyone who rejects legalism but embraces habitual and unrestrained fleshly living instead. Justification by faith alone is no justification for fleshly living.

The Content of this Warning: “They Will Not Inherit the Kingdom of God”

Paul attached a similar warning to similar lists of ungodly behavior in later NT letters.

• Corinthians: “Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Cor 6:9-11)
• Ephesians: “For this you know that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” (Eph 5:5)

This warning makes sure we understand that anyone who exhibits fleshly behavior in a regular, habitual way has no place in God’s family or kingdom, either now or in the future.

Ongoing, unrepentant fleshly behavior does not cancel or remove your salvation, but it is the symptom of a person who’s never been justified by faith in Christ at all. That’s what I mean when I say, “Our attitudes and behavior reveal our true spiritual condition.”

Again, Paul’s logic in Galatians is as follows:

• If you’ve trusted Christ alone as God and Savior, then you’re a child of God.
• Since you’re his child, God has placed the Holy Spirit within you.
• The Spirit guides and enables you to follow godly desires rather than fleshly ones.
• As a result, fleshly behavior is not appropriate for a child of God.
• Furthermore, regular fleshly behavior indicates that you are not a child of God at all.

Key Takeaways

When a prisoner is released from prison, he is not freed to do whatever he wants to do, and he is certainly not freed to resume the crimes that put him in jail in the first place.

Justification by faith in Christ alone is not a free pass to do whatever your flesh wants to do either – no matter what fleshly desires they may be, whether they’re on this list or not.

If you’re a true child of God, depend on the Spirit to take steps towards change.

If you’re a true child of God, his Spirit dwells within you permanently. He gives you godly desires and empowers you to live in a godly way. You will grow out of your old fleshly behaviors, one step at a time, and show more and more of the fruit of the Spirit.

When you lapse back to fleshly behavior, you must take Paul’s warning to heart. Confess your sin, take serious steps towards change, and resume depending on the Spirit with greater humility and tenacity to exhibit the virtues the Spirit produces in our lives.

If you exhibit habitual fleshly behavior, then turn to Christ completely for salvation.

Habitual fleshly behavior indicates you’ve never believed on Christ for salvation, even if you prayed a prayer or thought you did. No number of resolutions and reformation in your own strength can overcome these behaviors either. You need the Holy Spirit to transform your desires from within and you can only receive the Spirit by turning to Christ for salvation from sin to begin this new relationship with God.

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[1] Gal 3:26; 4:5-6

[2] Gal 3:2-3, 5,14; 4:6; 5:5

[3] Moo, Galatians, 363.

[4] George, Galatians, 398.