Galatians 5:17

Galatians 5:17

There are three senses in which these words may be taken (1) They may mean generally, There is a spirit in you ruling your whole mind and being; and to the sovereign power of that spirit you are in all things only a passive subject, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would; or (2) we may use them for humiliation and admonition. The nature which still remains in you is too strong to let you live up to all your higher aspirations: "so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." Or (3) if you are a child of God, a Spirit, a Holy Ghost, is in you, and the Spirit is too active and too strong to suffer you to follow your own worst will, so that, though you wish it, you cannot do the things that you would. I believe the last to be the true construing.

I. No one who knows anything of human nature or of his own heart can doubt for a moment that the ninth article of our Church is thoroughly and literally true, and that "the infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated, whereby the lust of the flesh, called in the Greek phronema sarkos , which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire of the flesh, is not subject to the law of God." The process of sanctification is not the extirpation of sin at all; it is the subjugation of sin. The Philistines are yet in the land, in their strongholds, though the land belong to the people of God.

II. The way to subdue sin is to introduce a master power. You will never actually destroy the wrong will; but you must neutralise it by another will. You must bring in and cultivate and enlarge the prohibitive and the preventive forces of the heart, till at last you would come to the state that "ye cannot do the things that ye would."

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 4th series, p. 212.

References: Galatians 5:17 . Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 754; Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 259; Homilist, 2nd series, vol. iii., p. 601; W. Landels, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vii., p. 360. Galatians 5:18 . Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 252.Galatians 5:20 . Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iii., p. 10. Galatians 5:22 . Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 94; vol. iv., p. 124; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii., No. 1582; vol. xxx., No. 1782; Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 313; vol. xxxvi., p. 309; J. N. Norton, The King's Ferry Boat, p. 15.