Galatians 5:19-21 - Homiletics

Classification of the works of the flesh.

The picture here exhibited by the apostle is a frightful abyss into which he asks us to look down. We have sin in its many varieties pictured in many parts of Scripture ( Romans 1:18-32 ; 2 Corinthians 13:2 ), but here we have a most complete account of the works of the flesh.

I. THE WORKS OF THE FLESH . The flesh and the body are not synonymous. The apostle usually speaks of the body in terms of respect—unlike ascetics, who regard it as an enemy, load it with abusive epithets, and try to weaken it with fasts and vigils and penances. He always depreciates and condemns the flesh as a constantly evil tendency in our actual nature. There are sins in this catalogue of an intellectual nature, which cannot be properly ascribed to the body, though they are true works of the flesh. The flesh represents, then, the whole system of corrupt nature, as it breaks forth into seventeen different forms of transgression. They fall naturally under four heads.

1 . Sins of sensual passion. "Fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness:" the first hardly reckoned a sin in pagan countries; the second including unnatural sins, which had a fearful import in the East; the third, the impure propensity indulged without check of reason or shame. All three are grouped together elsewhere ( 2 Corinthians 12:21 ).

2 . Sins of superstition. "Idolatry, sorcery:" the first referring to the worship of false gods and of images, which was familiar to the Galatians in connection with idol-feasts; the second to the occult dealings with the world of spirits, so common in Asia Minor.

3 . Sins of social disorder. "Hatred, strife, envy, outbursts of anger, cavillings, divisions, factions, envyings, murders." It has been remarked that there is a climax in this catalogue of nine evils, for what begins in hatred ends in murder, after it has passed through a whole succession of disturbing and distracting experiences. They are all violations of brotherly love, representing the selfish, unyielding, bitter spirit, which too often enters into reactionary agitations both in Church and state.

4 . Individual excesses. Drunkenness, revellings: having exclusive relation to ourselves, not to others. The two terms refer to scenes of gay and wanton dissipation.

II. THE WORKS OF THE FLESH HAVE AN OVERT CHARACTER . They are "manifest." The flesh, as the sinful principle, breaks out into open acts of transgression, which are manifest alike to God and man, manifest by the light of nature and by the Law of God. We see the history of the flesh in the whole record of man's moral degradation and his resulting misery. These seventeen sins may not all be equally manifest, for some are gross and others more refined; they may not all be equally heinous in the sight either of God or of man; and many of them, hateful in God's sight, carry no brand of social reprobation with man. Yet they are all manifest, open, tangible proofs of a life at enmity with God.

III. THE APOSTOLIC WARNING . "They who practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."

1 . The kingdom of God, founded by Christ, is a holy kingdom, and consists of those who have entered it by regeneration, who are led by the Spirit, who are heirs of the promise, who are "made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light."

2 . Transgressors prove their want of meetness for it; they find no enjoyment in it; it has no attraction for them; for these works of the flesh are altogether inconsistent with the character of the kingdom of God.

IV. THE NECESSITY THAT EXISTS FOR REPEATED WARNINGS AGAINST SIN . "I tell you before, as I have already told you in time past." We need "line upon line, precept upon precept," to deepen the impression of the hatefulness of sin. It is well to convince sinners of their individual sins, that they may be shut up to fly to the Refuge.