Hey, everybody. It's Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible Bible Hour podcast, and we're doing something weird this week.

We're working on a challenging high stakes for you and me passage in Galatians 5, specifically it's Galatians 516, which says, so I say live by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

Other translations say indulge the flesh. And I got my buddy

Jeff here working it through with me all week. So we're just going to pick up where we left off

yesterday. Yeah, let me break down what I mean. I think before the new life by faith in Christ,

under the old covenant, before we have the Holy Spirit in dwelling,

and we're still under the law and slaves to sin, we don't have free will. We cannot please God.

But with the Spirit and the new identity in Christ, the life of Christ in us, that is a gift from God.

Now we can choose to obey in ways we couldn't before.

I think free will happens now for the followers of Christ in ways it couldn't happen before.

And I think the Galatians have way more free will than they

did before Paul first brought them the gospel. And he's leaning into that saying, you don't have to

do that anymore. And because of the spirit, you can now follow the spirit. Yes, explicitly saying

that. Uh-huh. Again, if we have an old nature that will never lead us to choosing to obey, that means

that the work of Christ wasn't sufficient, that there's still more we have to do.

Whereas if no, we have a new identity.

Our old is crucified with Christ.

Yeah. Now we actually have a free will. Our old is crucified with Christ. Yeah.

Now we actually have a free will we didn't have before.

And sometimes in that freedom, we use it to indulge ourselves instead of to love our neighbor.

And so somebody like Paul comes along and says, stop it.

You don't have to do that anymore.

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