Let us turn, people of God, to the reading of God's Holy Word, Galatians chapter 5, page 1000. 238 in most of the few Bibles. Galatians chapter 5 and we'll be looking at 5 verse 24 through 6 verse 5. the general pattern here is that the Apostle has listed off the works of the flesh in verses 19, 20, and 21, has then worked through the fruit of the Spirit in 22 and 23, and he will now tell us, give us an image of how we are to put off those works of the flesh and an image of how we are to work in the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. And that's how we come to verse 24. So let us read now Galatians 5 verse 24 through 6 verse 5. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each one will have to bear his own load. So far the reading of the word of God Dear congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the New Testament is so often switching back and forth between the I and the we, even as those truths are true in the Old Testament as well. We have real personal responsibilities, and these responsibilities take place within the context of the people of God, the nation of God, the church of God, and also all those who live around us. So before us this morning is one of those many passages that weaves through this reality, the reality of both our personal responsibility and our interpersonal responsibilities. I must live the Christian life. We must live the Christian life together. We are to live the Christian life in the context of one another, as it says at the end of 526. We are to hear these commands as part of the brothers, as it says in 6 verse 1. I am God's child. We are God's children. And we can never separate these truths. We must remember these things together. And so that is even our theme this morning, that we are called to live by the Spirit. in both the personal and the communal duties that come with that calling. And so first let's look at my personal walk. My personal walk. Again, the fruits of the spirit have been listed. The ways of the flesh have been listed. And now the Holy Spirit, inspiring the apostle, tells us how we are to put off the flesh and how we are to put on the Spirit. He gives us images of this, pictures, illustrations of this. The first image is the image of putting off in verse 24 and it's the image here of crucifixion. It's the image of crucifixion. Here we're not talking about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, we're using the image of crucifixion itself and we are to be the executioner and our sins are to be nailed to a cross and crucified. That's the picture, the illustration. Now it is a fitting picture because it flows from the fact that this is what Christ has done for us to pay for our sins. And so the movement is this, people of God. Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross for my sins. I must believe in him, trust in him, and then by his death my sins are covered. From that, I am now called to put my sins to death, walking in sanctification by putting off the desires of the flesh. It is a fitting illustration. It is the Holy Spirit inspired picture for us. It's true in that great sense. It's also true in the details. The first detail of crucifixion that is helpful for us is this. Crucifixion is to be shameful. Crucifixion is reserved for the scum of Roman society. You only put the worst to death in this way. Now, if we are to look back at the list of the works of the flesh, we would see that included in that is idolatry. Now, by definition, idolatry is something that we have elevated above where it belongs to be. So it's going to be difficult when we have the sin of idolatry to see our sin as shameful, as something that is scum, as something that should be put to death. By its very definition, we want to hold on to our idols. We don't want to let them go. We don't want to put them to death. We want to breathe oxygen into them. But people of God, crucifixion is shameful and we must treat all of our sins, including all our idolatrous sins as that which is shameful, which must be put off, which must be put to death. Second, crucifixion is without pity. There was no pity in Roman crucifixion. It is among the cruelest forms of death ever devised by man. It is not a good thing for one man to do to another. But as a picture of how we are to treat our sins, it is absolutely appropriate. We cannot have pity for our sins. We cannot make excuses for our sins. We cannot let our own sinfulness off the hook. No, we keep it on the cross and we keep it nailed there. This is how we must treat our own sins. Hear all believers. There must be no excuse, no mercy or pity. Is it anger and strife? Is it sensuality or immorality? We can have no room for these things. We can have no excuse, they must be put to death. A third detail of crucifixion that makes an appropriate image for putting off sinfulness is that it's gradual but final. It's gradual but final. The executioner would stand there and was not only his duty, it was not only the duty of the Roman soldiers to nail that which must be crucified to the cross. It was also their duty to stay there until they knew the criminal was dead. This is how we treat our sins. This is how we must treat our sins. We must not only nail them to the cross, we must stay there as the executioner until they are dead, until we have rooted them out of our lives. People of God, we can give thanks that though It's going to be so gradual that it's going to be painful. Finally, the Holy Spirit does give even complete victory to believers, not in this life, but in the life to come. Crucifixion is gradual and painful, but it is final. Our sins will finally be put away, even as we must so diligently work to be putting them to death every day that we still linger here. So that's the image in verse 24 of putting off the works, the flesh. But now there's a positive image for putting in, putting on that which came after it, the fruit of the spirit. And for putting on the fruit of the spirit, we have an image of walking. It's not the usual word for walking. We could actually translate this marching. It implies the Greek word here, a walking in a certain line. We might say walking in formation. We are to be marching in the line that the Holy Spirit would lead us in to go. This is a picture of the Christian life. The Spirit is our general. We are the soldiers. We cannot fall out of line. We must take left, right, left, right. We must walk, march in the fruit of the Spirit. This is our calling. This is our duty. This is the call we must, all of us here, individually, repent, believe, kill our sins, walk in the Holy Spirit. But these are not things that we do alone. They are things that we have a responsibility on our own to do, but the text immediately moves on to point out in verse 26 that we don't just do this on an island, we do this in the context of being with, especially, our fellow believers, one another. even as we also do it in the context of the whole world, that we are to love our neighbor. And so Galatians 5, 14 tells us that's how the whole law is fulfilled. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. So we have a personal walk that we must walk together. And that leads us right into our second point, that we have communal responsibilities. Am I my brother's keeper? I think that's something that we like to say. We might even say, aren't these words in scripture? There is a sense in which they sound inspirational. I don't want to be too judgmental. I don't want to be accused of being in someone's business. And indeed, the flip side of saying, am I my brother's keeper, is saying, keep out of my business. These things sound good. We might say they sound inspirational. And indeed, the first phrase, am I my brother's keeper, is found in scripture. But it's one of those words that is, of course, less inspirational when we know the context of who said it. Cain said this in the context of trying to escape from the fact that he had murdered his brother. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we ought to keep our brothers. As the text says in 6 verse 1, we ought to restore him. We ought to be okay with other people being involved in our business especially if that is sinful business. We should be rejoicing when there are those who would be brave enough to step in and guide us to repent, to repent. Sinful mankind wants the easy way. Fallen creatures like to be left in their sins. This is how each one of us operates. We don't want to be bothered with thinking about repentance and thinking about what God Almighty requires of us. Sinful man does not like to be confronted with sins. Sinful man also likes the easy way of not being called to call others to repentance. Indeed, this is one of the One of the first mistakes of the broader evangelical churches is they just exercise zero discipline at all, not starting in the pew, not being carried out into the full Matthew 18 ordering as this passage is speaking about. Discipline in Matthew 18 would be a text that would work out the steps of how that would work within the context of the church. The hard work of restoration is easily neglected. Of course, it is not enough to bring correction. The text also tells us that the correction must come in the right way. High-handed discipline is just as disobedient as no discipline. We must restore in gentleness. We must restore in gentleness. This is a duty for those who are spiritual. Well, who is to be spiritual? Every Christian is to be spiritual. And so just as Matthew 18 lines it out, this begins with whoever knows of the sin, and then only after that might not bear fruit should it then progress to the church and to the leaders of the church. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us be willing to do the hard work of restoration. Let us be ready to hear words of correction that come. All of this without any holier-than-thou attitude. Indeed, one of the ways that we are to keep in the spirit of gentleness is to remember that we ourselves are all sinners. And so verse one ends, keep watch over yourself, lest you also be tempted. Also, our communal duties involve not only the hard work of restoration and discipline, the not so fun work of restoration and discipline, it also involves lifting one another up and carrying one another's burdens. And so once again, we see a movement from the negative to the positive, just as we did in our first point. We are to be quick to give a helping hand. The picture here is especially of those loads which will be too heavy for one person to carry. I think of when I was in high school and we purchased a desk. It was one of these really big desks. We got it because a business was going out of business. It's not the desk you'd normally buy to put in a bedroom. It's too big. And so I couldn't move it. And I needed to have four or five friends over. And all of us together just kind of worked it, wrestled it into my room. And for the rest of high school, amongst us friends, it almost became a joke, like that big old desk. Paul's room and you know, no one's gonna move that by themselves and it kind of became a like a running joke amongst us Well people of God there are burdens in our life that we're not gonna be able to budge by ourselves We're not gonna be able to move them. We're not gonna be able to carry them if We do not go to others for help They're going to stay right there. We're going to Strain our back and all kinds of everything else. I We must remember that we are called to bear one another's burdens, whether that's emotional burdens or physical burdens that can't be lifted by one person. We must be ready both to give the helping hand and to know when we need the helping hand. The Christian should not have an I'll do it myself attitude, rather we must put on the I will do it with you attitude. Now in the broader context of Galatians, this image of burden also has a special meaning here. Because the false teachers have burdened the churches of Galatia with this teaching that You must win salvation through your own works. They have, instead of picking up burdens, they have overburdened the people through false teaching that you must save yourself, you must work it all out on your own. And so the apostle is saying, no, there are many things we are called to do together There is still personal responsibilities that the Apostle comes back to, and this is our third point. My personal responsibilities. People of God, we must know that we are nothing. The Apostle is not exaggerating here. The Apostle also does not exempt himself. This is the same man who says in a different context, I am the chief of sinners. To tie this back to what we have worked through, if I do not realize that I am nothing, if I do not remember that I am a sinner and it's not all about me, I'm going to become conceited. And then I'm going to provoke those who are supposedly not as good as I am. If someone is more spiritual than I, because I think that I should be on the top, I'm going to be envious of that one. Verse 26. If I do not forget that I am nothing, I will not be able to restore in gentleness. and I too will show myself to be tempted and falling into sin myself. We must remember that we are all sinners saved by grace alone. We must then carry Our own burden, now, what's the difference between the load of verse five and the burden of verse two? Because these things seem to, on first reading, perhaps contradict one another. Well, there are a couple of differences. The first difference is that the burden of verse two is a general word which can be describing something that's too heavy to carry by yourself, as we said. Whereas the word for load in verse 5, I could almost wish it had been translated backpack, but they didn't have backpacks back then, so I know why they didn't translate it that way. But it's a word that they use in the Roman world to refer to like a pack or a bag that one person would carry by himself. So the Greek word is different. There's also this difference. Verse two is in the context of loving another, loving one another and carrying that which can be carried together. But in verse three through five, the focus has shifted to the fact that we must all realize our own sinfulness. In other words, the context is no longer burdens of of physical needs and of emotional sorrows, but the burden is now the backpack of my own guilt and sin. People of God, there are some things where we can help one another, where we can seek to comfort and love and build up each other as the body of Christ. When it comes to your guilt, No one else can repent for you. No one else can repent. We can plead that those who do not repent would repent. But when it comes to the backpack of your own guilt, when it comes to the load of sin, We might even say that John Bunyan was thinking of Galatians 6 verse 5 when he spoke about the burden on Pilgrim's back. When it comes to that load, you can't go to anyone else. You can go only to Christ and only at the cross will it be rolled away and taken off. This is a personal responsibility. No one can repent for you. Surely, people of God, there is much that we are called to do and that we are called to do together. We ought not to think that we can go out and live the Christian life on our own. We are called to be in a formation and We're not the only person in the unit. We're called to restore those who are falling out of the formation in gentleness and love. But when it comes to our guilt, only Christ can carry that. Only Christ can forgive our sins and wash us clean. These things are contrary to our world rapidly falling away from ideas of personal accountability, falling into new, not actually that new waves of group thinking and group labeling. Scripture, would strike the proper balance. That we have responsibilities together, but there are things which we are also accountable for on our own. People of God, do you repent? Do you take your backpack of sin before the Lord, knowing that He alone can take that burden? And then do you, as one who repents, seek to walk in the ways of the Lord and to do so not on your own, not on your own, but within the context of faith, surrounded by fellow sinners, all of us needing to restore one another and build one another up and carry one another's burdens. Amen. Let us pray. Lord God Almighty, We thank You for the great truths of Your Word. We pray, O Lord, that we would not fall into the error of thinking that we can be on our own, even as, Lord, we pray that we would see our personal need to