The Essential Need For The Holy Spirit

Galatians 3:1-3 – 1O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, BEFORE WHOSE EYES Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? 2This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?

I. The Holy Spirit Was the Essential Beginning of Our Christian Life

• The Spirit awakens us to our true condition.

Galatians 3:2 – This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

1 Corinthians 2:14 – But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

• The Spirit convicts us and brings us to faith in Christ.

John 16:8 – “And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of

righteousness, and of judgment.”

Galatians 3:2 – Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

John 3:5-6 – Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

II. The Flesh Is Incapable of Maturing the Christian Life

• The flesh cannot finish what it could not start.Galatians 3:3 – Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?

• The flesh is more than sinfulness; it is self-reliance.

• Effort is not the problem. Effort as our source is the problem.

Galatians 3:1 – O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth?

John 15:5 – “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”

III. The Christian Life Only Works Through Continual Dependence on the Holy Spirit

• We never outgrow our need for the Holy Spirit.

Galatians 5:25 – If we live in the Spirit, let us also WALK in the Spirit.

• The Spirit must remain our source from beginning to end.

Galatians 3:3 – Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?