THE WORKS OF THE FLESH

STANDING right in front of the list of all the fine qualities of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 is another list which summarises all the very worst that the human character is capable of producing. The list is titled "the works of the flesh". It's a real nasty crop of evil traits, and if one were looking for a suitable collective noun for them, then perhaps 'foulness' might be a good choice: a foulness of works of the flesh!

I'd not intended this originally, but I think we should give some thought to this ghastly list because it so closely relates to the fruit of the Spirit. An understanding of the relationship between the two lists will help us to put the fruit of the Spirit to work in our lives.

The law of mutual exclusion

The two lists are mutually exclusive. When you manifest the works of the flesh, you exclude the fruit of the Spirit. If you produce the fruit, you obliterate the works of the flesh. It's as simple (and as difficult!) as that. In reality it's not quite so black and white, and we are all somewhere in the middle, having produced only a certain amount of the fruit and obliterated only a certain amount of the works.

And there would appear to be a fairly precise ratio here —a law, in fact—that to whatever degree you produce the fruit of the Spirit, to that same degree you will eliminate the works of the flesh. And vice versa: you will have pretty well the same level of works of the flesh in your life as you lack fruit of the Spirit in your character.

An important part of the life's work of a believer is to produce as much fruit as possible and thereby eliminate as much of the works as possible. And we can be helped in doing this by knowing how the fruit and the works interact.

The two lists are not mutually exclusive in a general way. It's not hit and miss, that when you produce a certain aspect of the fruit in your character some totally unrelated work of the flesh is overcome. There is a distinct logical correlation between individual aspects of the fruit and works. For example, when you become more longsuffering you reduce anger, you don't reduce a tendency to lust.

The purpose of adding these chapters on the works of the flesh is to see which aspect of the fruit of the Spirit cancels which work of the flesh. It's useful to know this because it can help us in dealing with our failings—which, let's be honest, sometimes we are at a loss to know how to deal with. Especially when it comes to a besetting sin that we've all but given up on, it would be useful to know which aspect of the fruit we are lacking and need to cultivate to eliminate it.

The spiritual is like the physical: once you identify the right treatment for what's ailing you, you stand a better chance of getting well! I can testify from experience that by using this approach it is possible to overcome specific areas of failure. Though, as I've said many times in these pages, none of us will ever eliminate all sin from our character. All the while we inhabit these mortal bodies perfection will elude us. But almost all of us can be better than we are. A higher spirituality is possible for ninety-nine per cent of believers, maybe more. A number of men and women, made of the same stuff as you and I, have reached uncommon heights of spirituality. There's no reason why you or I can't do the same—except lack of intention, or the misbelief that a higher level is beyond reach. Let's not settle for who we are. Let's always be aiming for our personal Maximum Achievable Spirituality (more about M.A.S. in the final chapter). Let's always be trying, through our devotion to the Word, to eliminate the works of the flesh a little more, and grow the fruit of the Spirit a little more.

As I say, we can help ourselves do this by understanding the relationship between the fruit and the works. This, then, is what a 'foulness' of works of the flesh looks like.

"Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these;

and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" (Gal.5:19-21).

What an ugly brood. When I look at that list in conjunction with the list of the aspects of the fruit of the Spirit I'm reminded of the chapter headings that the translators of the Authorised Version put above many of the chapters of the Proverbs: "Moral virtues and their contrary vices." The fruit has the moral virtues and the works the contrary vices. And there is inescapably a relationship between the two.

The power of love

The first thing one notices about the two lists is, of course, the glaring difference in the sort of things they contain. The next thing one notices is the differing length of the lists. There are twice as many items on the list of vices as there are on the list of virtues! Whatever could that be telling us, I wonder? It suggests a number of things. Maybe it's telling us that we're twice as prone to vice as virtue—a conservative estimate, I should think. Or perhaps it's telling us that vice is more varied than virtue—which rings true; as Ecclesiastes says: "God made man straightforward, but man invents endless subtleties of his own" (Ecc.7:29 NEB). Then again, maybe the Spirit through Paul simply wanted to hammer home the point about how naturally wayward we are by including so many aspects of the works of the flesh. The reason is probably a combination of the three—they're all valid.

But what I see as the overriding reason for there being twice as many works as fruit is something good and positive. It's a reason that should give heart to every believer struggling with the works of the flesh (and who does that leave out?) and it's this: that the fruit of the Spirit is twice as powerful as the works of the flesh. It must be, because our list of nine virtues cancels out the list of seventeen vices! Love's eight aspects will defeat all the many and varied manifestations of the flesh. It will do that for us perfectly when the kingdom of God is here, and it will do it for us to a great extent even now if we apply ourselves seriously to it, delighting and meditating in the Word of God.

Omit adultery and murder?!

While we're on the subject of the number of items on the lists, this is a good place to mention a little problem over how many works of the flesh there are. The list I've chosen is from the Authorised Version and it shows seventeen. Moffat gives sixteen in his version. But the majority of translators go for fifteen. Most of them omit adultery and murder!

The reason they do this is found in a footnote in the Revised Authorised Version. This version gives all seventeen, but against adultery and murder gives the note: "NU-Text omits". The highly regarded Nestle-Aland and United Bible Society Text omits these two items. And as that text is founded upon older and supposedly more reliable manuscripts, most translators now opt for the shorter list. But how remarkable it is to leave out adultery and murder from a list of works of the flesh!

What are we to make of it? Do we keep to the old Authorised or go with the newer versions? Seventeen or fifteen?

It's a conundrum quite in keeping, I believe, with Paul's original intention when he wrote the letter to the Galatians. He prefaced the list like this: "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these...." That phrase which are these could equally be translated 'such as' or 'of which kind are'. And Paul concludes the list with a similar thought: "...and such like." He seems to be going out of his way to make it clear that he is not giving a fixed list. There are dangers inherent in a fixed list: people, being what people are, might assume that anything not on the list is okay. He doesn't mention wife-beating and swearing specifically so they must be all right!

What Paul does is describe some of the more obvious ('manifest') works of the flesh. He disowns the idea that it is an exhaustive list.

So the problem the translators give us of not being able to pin down precisely the number of the works of the flesh is entirely in keeping with Paul's intentions. It's not a fixed list; it's a list representative of the sorts of actions that come under the heading of works of the flesh. And, as it happens, whether we choose seventeen or fifteen makes no difference to the types of works covered on the list.

I'm going to be so bold as to ignore the NU-Text on this occasion and keep with the seventeen of the Authorised Version. Not that I'm an incurable traditionalist, but I have to make a choice, and there's no denying that adultery and murder are works of the flesh. So it's not that difficult a decision. I'm also led to this decision by the thought that the Authorised and Revised Authorised Versions were trans-lated from more full and more closely related manuscripts, whereas the modern translations are 'pick-and-mix' trans-lations, meaning that the translators have picked the bits they preferred from a number of source manuscripts, making their translations more open to the bias of the translators than the older Authorised and its Revised modern counterpart.

There is a problem, though, for Bible numerologists if we can't be sure whether the works of the flesh are fifteen or seventeen. Back in chapter six I said a few words about the eight parts of love signifying the new man in Christ, eight being the number of new beginning. But what about the numbers fifteen or seventeen? If one or the other had particular associations with evil it would help us decide which is correct. But (according to Bullinger at least) both numbers have good connotations.

The number six being the number of man and sin, I was expecting six, or multiples of six to figure in the works of the flesh. But no, all you can say of fifteen is that its components five and one add together to equal six. Which doesn't seem enough proof for fifteen being right. I'm guessing, of course, but perhaps the full and precise number of works is 666, and it wouldn't have been appropriate or convenient for Paul to list them all. Maybe they can be found throughout the Scriptures—and I have to say it isn't convenient for me to look for them all right now either!

Aspects of adultery

An intriguing thought occurs regarding the list of fleshly works. If the fruit of the Spirit is love with eight aspects, then might not the works of the flesh somehow be adultery in sixteen parts? Love and adultery head the two lists, and are direct opposites, the one founded on selfless giving, the other on selfish taking. And adultery is used in the broader figurative sense in the Scriptures. In this sense it describes a desertion from the agape of God to the godless and fleshly ways of the world. The more I think about it, the more possibilities I see in the idea, but to keep this book to an acceptable length I feel I should resist the temptation to explore.

Something we can do with the list of the works of the flesh, and which helps us deal with it in a systematic way, is break it down into four easily identifiable categories: 1 sexual sins, 2 idolatry, 3 strife, 4 excess. The following boxes show how the works can be grouped under these headings.

SEXUAL SINS adultery, fornication uncleanness, lasciviousness

IDOLATRY idolatry, witchcraft

STRIFE hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murder

EXCESS drunkenness, revellings

Remember, Paul uses the phrase 'and such like'. The list is representative of all the works of the flesh. So all the works not specifically mentioned will fit into one of these four categories. Wife-beating and swearing, for instance, will come under strife and excess respectively

Now that we have four categories of works we see that numerically the position has reversed. It's no longer eight aspects of love against a giant seventeen works of the flesh, but eight aspects of love against four categories of works. That's cutting them down to size!

Over the next four chapters, I want to take each of the categories in turn, have a brief look at how each one of them affects us, and then pinpoint which of the fruits are used to defeat it.

Just one thing before we start. It's about our old friends being and doing. You may have noticed that the Spirit produces fruit and the flesh produces works. Though, of course, when we have the fruit we also produce works—good works—but the works are not the goal, as I've said before; they are the by-product of who we have become because of the fruit

The flesh (a term which describes our natural selves without the influence of the Spirit Word) simply produces works. And because these works have not been processed by a truly spiritual heart, they are just works of (or from) the flesh. We must transform our being by generating the fruit of the Spirit, or we will be merely doers: unwilling and unwitting slaves of our natures, instead of free men and women in Christ.

And if life in Christ doesn't seem too much like freedom to you, then remember that even freedom has its obligations. A man released from prison is free but he is not without obligations towards the society he enters. Entering the society of Christ is liberating, but it brings responsibilities. Freedom without responsibility is anarchy, not emancipation.