I’m reasonably sure that, Lord willing, we’ll be starting a new direction of study in our Monday night gatherings, starting this Monday night. I want to take a few weeks and look at Paul’s description of the Christian life in Galatians 5:16-25. Specifically, I think we’ll all benefit by meditating on what the Holy Spirit is indicating about how to live a fruitful Christian life that does not “fulfill the lusts of the flesh” and does bear “the fruit of the Spirit.”
How do these things actually happen? How do they actually work in our lives? What is it like to experience these things and live them out? That’s where I hope to go with you all starting on Monday.
If you want to get ready, I suggest a couple reads through the whole letter. Maybe take a few minutes a couple times this weekend and read straight through in one sitting, a few different times. (That’s the best way to read the New Testament letters.) It would be great if we were all reading up and well acquainted with the letter, and the passage.
You might also try working through the passage yourself. Have you ever diagrammed?
Just to get you started, here’s a word document of a rough diagram I did of the passage, which I’ll start to use to prepare the studies. I just printed it out so I could start drawing all over it.
1 John was great, and I’m excited to see where the Lord’s going to be taking us, together, this year.
Hmmm I was thinking about this, and about how Brian pointed out that Paul wasn’t really trying to condemn them for a list of actions, he was trying to point out that Sin has a nature. What is so bad about anger, immorality, etc., is the nature behind it. So when seeing Jesus having a moment of anger, what was the nature behind it?
Kind of like, we all know murder is wrong, but if a husband killed a man who was about to kill his wife, we would not equate that with a serial killer. There is a very different nature behind the man who killed to save his wife and the man who killed for pleasure.
So I guess then we have to define anger maybe more specifically. For example Rage is “loss of self-control from violence of emotion,” but indignation “stresses righteous anger at what one considers unfair, mean, or shameful” (I looked those up in websters!) Both fall under the term “anger” but are very different types of anger in the nature.
So it seems like Indignation, as described above, is what could be called righteous anger – anger at wrongdoing. This seems to be Jesus’ anger, for Jesus is angered by them making what should have been a house of prayer into a den of theives. Some forms of anger (such as fury as defined above) are wrong, and this is the anger that Jesus spoke out against in Matthew 5:22 “being angry at your brother without cause” – anger that is destructive and unnecessarily demeaning.
Just some thoughts!
I like them thoughts. Got to figure out how to link this to today’s post…