Sunday message · Wrestling with Love series
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Message Summary
In the second week of Wrestling with Love, Pastor Phillip Santillan continues in Galatians 5:16–23, where Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit as the byproducts of a life defined by love. This week’s fruit is joy and peace, which, Phil admits, no one can produce alone. So if following Jesus and living a life of love leads to joy and peace, why do they seem so elusive?
One reason is false assumptions. Americans have grown up on the pursuit of happiness named in the Declaration of Independence, and we assume joy and peace mean freedom from pain. But in John 16:33 Jesus promises his disciples peace in him, while warning that on earth they will have many trials and sorrows; they can take heart because he has overcome the world. Jesus never promised health and wealth. That standard would exclude Jesus himself, who was born poor, spent his ministry broke and homeless, and was abandoned by friends and betrayed by Judas.
A second reason is that we treat joy and peace as the result of our doing rather than of believing the gospel. In Romans 15 Paul prays that God will fill believers with joy and peace because they trust in him. Phil shares a passage from Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts making the point that joy overflows only as we learn to trust a Father who does not weigh his children down with shame. Fruit that does not look like the Spirit’s reveals faith placed in something other than the gospel.
Phil returns to four questions Clarity uses to explain the gospel: Who is God? What has he done? Who am I in light of that? What does God want me to do? Worry and anxiety can be traced backward through them. Anxiety reveals a belief that we should be in control, and beneath it, that God has let us down, abandoned us or lost control, making him absent, unloving or powerless. Believers would never say that, but the fruit exposes the root. Simply telling ourselves to cheer up does not work; the answer is to repent of worshiping a false god, in this case ourselves, and turn to the true God revealed in Jesus.
The gospel answers each lie. God is loving, because while we were still sinners Jesus died for us, and if he loved us as enemies, he loves us now as his children. He is powerful, as the resurrection shows. He was in control even while Jesus lay in the tomb, so he is not out of control in our circumstances. And he is present by his Spirit. So we are deeply loved, more than conquerors (Romans 8:31–38) and never alone. As this truth takes hold, the Spirit’s joy and peace begin to flow in place of anxiety.
The fruit of the Spirit, Phil concludes, “is not about your being. It’s about your belief.” Anyone who wants joy and peace finds them by believing the gospel, and anyone unsure what that means is invited to ask someone to walk them through it.