Keep In Step With The Spirit (PT-2)

Galatians 5:21 

"Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, 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." 

   Today we finish the rest of Paul's list of evil words, that if understood will keep us in step with the Spirit. We start with Uncontrolled temper;  the word Paul uses here means bursts of temper. It describes not an anger which lasts but anger which flames out and then dies. Self-seeking; this word has a very illuminating history. It originally meant the work of a hired laborer.  So it came to mean work done for pay. It went on to mean canvassing for political or public office, and it describes the man who wants office, not from any motives of service. but for what he can get out of it. Kinda like our government is today. 
   Dissension; literally the word means a standing apart. Dissension describes a society in which the   members fly apart instead of coming together.  Heretical division; this might be described as crystallized dissension. The word is hairesis (G139), from which comes our word heresy. It was not originally a bad word at all. It comes from a root which means to choose, and it was used for a philosopher's school of followers or for any band of people who shared a common belief. The tragedy of life is that people who hold different views very often finish up by disliking, not each others' views, but each other. It should be possible to differ with a man and yet remain friends. 
   Envy; is a mean word. It has been called  "the greatest of all diseases among men." The essence of it is that it does not describe the spirit which desires, nobly or ignobly, to have what someone else has: it describes the spirit which grudges the fact that the other person has these things at all. It does not so much want the things for itself; it merely wants to take them from the other. 
   Drunkenness; in the ancient world this was not a common vice. The Greeks drank more wine than they did milk; even children drank wine. But they drank it in the proportion of three parts of water to two of wine. Greek and Christian alike would have condemned drunkenness as a thing which turned a man into a beast. Actually we still do today.
   Revellings;  is a wild and fun time, if you enjoy the revelry of  New Year's Eve party, you might pay for parting hard the next day. But because it comes from the french word reveler meaning to rebel, it's tone indicates carousing or noisy partying. My Friend,s When we get to the root meaning of these words, we see that life has not changed so very much. 

Amen!

Reading: Gal. 5:16-21
Ref: HG SB

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry