Grow up and be free.

Steve Brown:
Grow up and be free. Let’s talk about it on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
It’s for freedom that Christ set us free and Key Life is here to bring you Biblical teaching that encourages you to never give into slavery again. Our teacher on Key Life is Steve Brown. He’s an author, broadcaster and seminary professor who is sick of phony religion.

Steve Brown:
If you in with us the, this week, we’ve been talking about what freedom isn’t and if, if you don’t get grace, it sounds kind of like I have changed my views, and I haven’t. But it’s important that these things be said, and we took the time to say them, because Paul did. We’ve seen that freedom is not license or independence or disobedience or indulgence. It’s not easy and it’s not legalism. We started this teaching by the way, with a definition of freedom, a working definition as follows.

Freedom is that state in which a child of God is accepted by God forever on the basis, the sole basis of Christ’s finish work on the Cross. It is always accompanied by God’s Spirit in the life of the child of God, whereby the fear of failure is replaced by the desire to succeed in an obedient and godly life.

We have two daughters and, we did some things wrong, we did some things right. And it worked out fine. They’re covenant children, and they’re both walking with Christ. And I’m proud of them as I am of our granddaughters who are walking with Christ and, it could have gone the other way. And I know for some of you, who are parents, that it has. But you haven’t heard the rest of the story yet, but at any rate. Let me tell you what we did and we were criticized for it. I may have told you this before. We were criticized for it a lot. We removed rules intentionally every year of their lives. And you say you did what? We took away rules intentionally every day of their life. Every year they got older, we would tell them that there were rules, they had to obey before, but they no longer had to obey. And by the, by the time they were seniors in high school, there weren’t any, you say that’s crazy? Well, it did feel crazy and I wasn’t sure we were doing the right thing, but turned down. It was really the right thing. During that time, in high school when adolescents are rebellious, our kids didn’t have anything to rebel against. I mean, they could read anything they wanted to do, go wherever they wanted to go. We did tell them that, we did tell them that they needed to let us know what they did. If they read things that we didn’t like, we had to discuss it. If they went to a movie that we didn’t think they should go to, we had to sit down and discuss it. And we did that, but they didn’t have the rules. They decided on the clothes that they were going to wear. And sometimes we winced. They, were free that senior year in high school, they made their own decisions. I remember one time when, Robin asked her mother about something she was gonna do. And, Anna said to her, she said, is this right? And Anna said, what do you think? And then she said, honey, next year, you’re going to be in college. And who are you going to ask? And we didn’t want that to happen. All of a sudden to go from parents to freedom without any testing, when we could be there to pick up the pieces, if wrong decisions were made, you know, God has kind of done that too. You know, he begins to build and do us certain principles, the way we built into our daughters. He begins to teach us that there’s right and wrong. And this is what the Bible says is right. And this is what the Bible says is wrong. He puts it in our heart. He begins to say to us, this is the road and it’s a better road, walk that road. And then he says, go to it. But it doesn’t change the principles. And that’s what I’ve been saying this week. Don’t write me letters, cause I’m too old to change. Now let’s go to another focus of the same text. And that’s the second part of that text that we’re looking

But I say,

this is the beginning of the 16th verse

walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit. And the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to prevent for you from doing what you would.

What does that mean? What you really want to do, but if you’re led by the Spirit, you’re not under the law.

Now, the works of the flesh are plain, immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things

and he means who are defined by those things

shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Because they’re not Christians.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and its desires.

Now, next week, we’re going to spend a good deal of time detailing some of the teaching in that, but let me go down one side road and it’s a really important side road in this text. And it’s this, note the contrast. Paul gives between the fruit of the spirit and the works of the flesh, Galatians 5:19-21. Now, the first thing you need to know about that list, it is not the only list that Paul gives in his letters. Romans 1:18-32, Romans 13:13, I Corinthians 5:9, I Corinthians 6:9, II Corinthians 12:23, Ephesians 4:19, Ephesians 5:3-5. Well, you get the idea. It’s all over the place, where Paul draws a contrast between good and evil. And we live in a time, where that contrast is not so clear anymore. It’s not so clear in what’s taught in our public schools. It’s not so clear in what’s taught in entertainment. It’s not so clear in what friends say. In fact, sometimes you get the feeling that we’re wrong and they’re right. And you can’t do that, because the Bible has been very clear. This is good. This is bad. Hatred is bad. Love is good. And God has made that so clear, that it’s one of the gifts that we as Christians have to do with each other. During the civil rights movement in the South, during the sixties, one of the things that really bothered me, were my friends in Boston who came south and spent a couple of weeks in the South, in the marches and then went back to the North and spoke at women’s society meetings and collected honorariums for their trip to the South. But you see, I had friends in the South who were facing the battle head on. I had friends who were preaching reconciliation. Not in the suburbs of Boston or New York, but in the suburbs of Montgomery and Selma, they were saints of God and their faithfulness is the faithfulness that made the difference. In other words, they knew right from wrong, and they refused to compromise on that. They weren’t pains or jerks about it, but they said, look, this is what God says. And we’ve, we cannot lose the standard, because the standard is what makes a culture, a good culture, a nation, a good nation. And we must speak up. We must be clear and we must not compromise those kinds of things. I know that. And we live in the scary times. You know, there was a time when, as Christians, we were in the majority, when we had the power, political power and economic power, we had the PR, you know, everybody, you couldn’t be elected in America as a politician, unless you nodded in the direction of the church. Folks, that’s no longer true. We are in the minority and we’ve got to begin to be aware of that and know that sometimes it costs, when you stand for what’s right. That sometimes people will dismiss you. Sometimes you will be canceled by our culture, but do it anyway, because God has been so clear about the difference. And if nobody talks about that difference, then the darkness that we’re experiencing right now, will be dark indeed. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Thank you Steve. Of course. If you missed anything from Steve this week, make sure you drop by keylife.org where you can listen to any episode, anytime for free. Steve, will be back tomorrow, joined by our friend, Pete Alwinson for Friday Q&A. Always a fun and eye opening time. Don’t miss it. So let me ask you something. How you doing? Good, not good. Maybe something well past just not good. When we have all experienced that, someone you love is sick, your child is in trouble, you lost your job, maybe your spouse left you. In short, you’re suffering. And while Jesus told us that would happen, he also promised he would be with his people in their suffering. Well, Steve wrote about his own struggles with suffering in a mini-book called When Life Falls Apart. He shares those challenges in a very honest way, but also shares the hope he found in the presence of Christ. If you’re going through it, please get this mini-book today by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also email [email protected] and ask for the mini-book. If you’d like to mail your request, send it to

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