The Conflict of the Christian Life.
Observe:
I. The nature of the conflict. The struggle of the watchful, ever-lusting flesh against the spirit is a matter of the commonest Christian experience. The sense of obligation rouses the spirit of revolt; the knowledge that a thing is forbidden makes us covet it the more. But is it not also a matter of Christian experience that the spirit lusteth against the flesh? Victories that have not been secured by many an hour of thought and watching have been made ours in a flush of enthusiasm. The revolt against command is checked by the passion for submission. They are not altogether sad words in our text, "Ye cannot do the things that ye would," for again and again, when men have resolved upon some wickedness, when they have silenced their scruples and put down conscience, even in the act of executing their sinful purpose, the unquenchable spirit has been known to speak, making them ashamed of their baseness and folly, sending them fleeing from their sin to their Saviour.
II. The purpose of the conflict. Our text is one of those passages on which much light has been thrown by the progress of Greek scholarship since the translation of the Bible into English. Almost all the best commentators are agreed that it should be rendered, not "so that ye cannot," but "in order that ye may not," do the things that ye would. The conjunction is one most forcibly expressive of design; the opposition between the flesh and the spirit is intended by God. He permits the flesh to lust against the spirit; He inspires the lust of the spirit against the flesh, in order that we may not do whatever we may wish, and simply because we wish it. The victory God is giving us is not of reason over natural temperament nor of heart over head; it is the victory of the spirit over the flesh. The new Divine nature, having subdued all lustfulness, reigns supreme by heart and head, by sanctity of thought and impulse, of passion and resolve.
A. Mackennal, Christian World Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 264.
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.