Commentary - Galatians 5:16-26

Bird's-eye view

In this section of Galatians, the apostle Paul brings his soaring defense of gospel liberty down to the pavement where we live. Having established that we are saved by grace through faith apart from the works of the law, he now addresses the inevitable and practical question: "So what now?" The Judaizers offered a system of fences and external regulations. The libertine hears "freedom" and thinks it is a hall pass for self-indulgence. Paul rejects both errors with a magnificent simplicity. True freedom is not the liberty to sin, but the liberty from sin. And this liberty is not accomplished by grimly trying to keep a set of rules, but rather by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Paul presents the Christian life as a battlefield within the believer's own heart. There are two warring principles: the flesh and the Spirit. These are not two equal dogs in a fight, where the one you feed is the one that wins. No, the Spirit is the Spirit of the risen Christ, and He is the conquering principle. The flesh is the defeated, yet still thrashing, principle of our fallen Adamic nature. The Christian's responsibility is to "walk by the Spirit," which means to conduct our lives in moment-by-moment reliance upon Him. This walk is characterized by the cultivation of spiritual fruit, not the production of fleshly works. The passage concludes by grounding this entire reality in the finished work of Christ: because we belong to Him, our flesh has already been crucified. The task of sanctification, therefore, is to live out the reality of that execution.

Outline

Walk by the Spirit

16 But I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

Paul begins with a command that is also a promise. The command is to "walk by the Spirit." The Christian life is not a stationary affair; it is a walk, a progression, a way of conducting oneself day by day. This is not a mystical instruction to float a few inches off the ground. To walk by the Spirit is to live in conscious dependence on Him, ordering your steps according to His revealed will in Scripture, and relying on His power to do it. It is the opposite of walking by a checklist of external rules, and it is the opposite of walking according to the impulses of your fallen nature. And here is the promise that is welded to the command: if you do this, you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. It is a glorious certainty. The Spirit is not given as a mere helper to our self-improvement project. He is given as the divine power who guarantees victory over the flesh.

17 For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you do not do the things that you want.

Here Paul explains why the previous command is so crucial. It is because every believer is the location of a spiritual war. The "flesh" here is not our physical body, but rather our unredeemed humanness, the sinful nature we inherited from Adam. It has desires, cravings, and ambitions, all of them hostile to God. On the other side is the Holy Spirit, who has taken up residence in us. He also has desires, and His desires are utterly contrary to the flesh. The two are locked in mortal combat. This is not a peaceful coexistence. They are "in opposition to one another." The result of this internal conflict is that the believer finds himself in a struggle, wanting to do good but hindered by the flesh, and tempted to do evil but restrained by the Spirit. This internal strife is not a sign of spiritual failure; it is the sign of genuine spiritual life. The unbeliever has no such war; his flesh rules unopposed. The war within is evidence that the Spirit has landed and established a beachhead.

18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.

This is a crucial connection. Being "led by the Spirit" is another way of describing the walk of the Spirit. It means you are guided, prompted, and governed by Him. And the consequence of this Spirit-led life is freedom from being "under the Law." This does not mean we are free to disregard God's moral law. Rather, it means we are no longer under the law as a system of earning righteousness, and we are no longer under its curse and condemnation. The law tells you what to do, but gives you no power to do it. The Spirit gives you the desire and the power to fulfill the righteous requirement of the law. The Judaizers wanted to put the Galatians back under the law as a schoolmaster, but Paul says that for those who have the Spirit, that schoolmaster's work is done. We have graduated.

19 Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, 21 envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Paul now gets brutally specific. He provides a representative sample of what a life dominated by the flesh looks like. These are not hidden, esoteric sins; they are "evident." Everyone knows what they are. He groups them loosely. First, you have sins of sexual license: sexual immorality (porneia, a catch-all for illicit sexual activity), impurity, and sensuality (a brazen, shameless flaunting of sin). Second, sins of false worship: idolatry (worshiping anything other than the true God) and sorcery (the Greek is pharmakeia, from which we get 'pharmacy,' referring to the use of drugs in pagan rituals). Third, he lists a whole cluster of sins that destroy relationships: enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envying. This is the flesh tearing society apart from the inside. Finally, he lists sins of excess: drunkenness and carousing. This is not an exhaustive list, as "things like these" indicates. The warning that follows is stark and absolute. Those who practice such things, meaning, those whose lives are characterized by these behaviors without repentance, will not inherit the kingdom of God. This is not to say that a true Christian never stumbles into these sins. But it is to say that a true Christian cannot set up housekeeping in them.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.

The contrast is dramatic. The flesh produces "works," plural, a disjointed and chaotic mess of sinful actions. The Spirit, however, produces "fruit," singular. This suggests that these qualities are a unified whole, a beautiful cluster of graces that grow together. This is the character of Christ being formed in the believer. Love is the foundation, a self-giving commitment to the good of others. Joy is a deep-seated gladness in God that is not dependent on circumstances. Peace is the tranquility of a soul reconciled to God. Patience is long-suffering with difficult people. Kindness is a gracious disposition. Goodness is moral excellence in action. Faithfulness is reliability and trustworthiness. Gentleness is meekness, power under control. And self-control is the mastery of one's desires and passions. Paul's concluding remark is almost understatedly brilliant: "Against such things there is no law." The law exists to restrain wickedness. But these virtues are the very thing the law, in its heart, was aiming for. When the Spirit is producing His fruit in you, you are not breaking the law; you are fulfilling it from the inside out.

24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

This is the theological bedrock for the entire passage. Why can a believer walk by the Spirit? Why does the Spirit produce fruit? Because of a foundational, historical, and spiritual reality. If you belong to Christ Jesus, then at the point of your conversion, you were united to Him in His death. And in that death, your "flesh", that old sinful nature, was crucified. This is not something we are commanded to do; it is something that has been done to us. It is a past-tense, definitive act of God. The flesh was nailed to the cross of Christ. Its power to dominate was broken. Its sentence of death was executed. Now, it still hangs there, thrashing about and making a nuisance of itself, but it is a crucified power. Our task in sanctification is not to try to crucify the flesh, but to live in the reality that it has already been crucified. We are to reckon it dead, to ignore its death-throes, and to refuse its demands.

25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk in step with the Spirit.

Paul now draws a logical conclusion. The "if" here is not an "if" of uncertainty, but an "if" of settled fact. "Since we live by the Spirit..." Our very spiritual life is a gift from and a reality in the Holy Spirit. He is the source of our new life. Given that this is true, the conclusion is inescapable: "let us also walk in step with the Spirit." The verb here is a military term, meaning to line up, to march in formation. Our daily conduct should be in line with the new life we have been given. Our practice should match our position. We have been given life by the Spirit; therefore, we must conduct our lives by the Spirit. The indicative (what is true of us) is the foundation for the imperative (what we must do).

26 Let us not become those with vain glory, challenging one another, envying one another.

He concludes with a practical application that strikes at the heart of the problems in the Galatian church. The works of the flesh included strife, jealousy, selfish ambition, and factions. Here he sums up that relational poison. Vain glory is empty, conceited pride. It is the desire to be seen as superior to others. This pride inevitably leads to two sinful behaviors. The first is "challenging one another," or provoking one another to strife and competition. The second is "envying one another," which is what happens when someone else wins the foolish competition. This is the opposite of walking in step with the Spirit. The Spirit produces love, peace, and gentleness. The flesh produces a culture of proud, competitive rivalry. Paul is calling them, and us, to leave the flesh's pecking order behind and to walk together in the unity of the Spirit.

Application

The central application of this text is to understand that the Christian life is a supernatural life. It cannot be lived by natural strength, willpower, or rule-keeping. It must be lived by the power of the Holy Spirit. This means we must consciously and continually depend on Him. This is not passive; it is an active "walk." It means saturating our minds with the Word of God, which is the Spirit's sword. It means praying for the Spirit's help in every temptation and decision. It means actively starving the flesh and feeding the new man.

Second, we must take the war within us seriously. Do not be surprised or discouraged by the struggle against sin. The struggle is a sign of life. But also, do not be complacent. The flesh has been crucified, but it can still inflict casualties if we are careless. We must be ruthless in putting to death the specific deeds of the flesh that Paul lists, recognizing them as alien to our new identity in Christ.

Finally, we must focus on the fruit. The goal of the Christian life is not simply to not do bad things. The goal is to become like Jesus Christ. The fruit of the Spirit is a portrait of His character. We should pray for this fruit, cultivate this fruit, and look for this fruit in our lives and in the lives of our brothers and sisters. True Christian liberty is the freedom to love, to have joy, to be at peace, to be patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled, all for the glory of God.