Galatians 5

Freedom in Christ And The Fruit of The Holy Spirit

In this section, Paul continued to remind the Galatians that their faith in the gospel of Jesus was sufficient for justification before God.  They did not need to add any Torah observance to it.  Paul then explained that, if the Galatians would allow their conduct to be directed by God’s Holy Spirit, He would produce in them the “fruit” of love that law-keeping could not.

Christ Set Us Free

Yoke of Slavery

Vs. 1 - For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Paul continued to emphasize here that the Galatians had been liberated from the slavery of what he described, in the previous section, as “weak and worthless elements” (4:9). 

The word "yoke" is used in the Bible in various ways, but it most often refers to a wooden frame placed over the necks of two animals so that they can pull together a plow or cart. In this sense, a yoke represents teamwork and cooperation.

However, the word "yoke" can also be used to symbolize oppression and slavery. For example, in the book of Deuteronomy, God warns the Israelites that if they disobey Him, He will put a "yoke of iron" on their necks (Deuteronomy 28:48). This means that their enemies will enslave them.         - Brannon Deibert

Peter used this same metaphor in his address to the Jerusalem council (Acts 15):

Acts 15:10 - Now then, why are you testing God by putting a yoke on the disciples’ necks that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear?

The Galatian Christians had left the slavery of pagan idols, were set free in Christ, but now are enslaving themselves by turning to the Law of Moses for justification.                - Brent Kercheville

Vs. 3 - Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to do the entire law.

Paul had already argued (Galatians 3) that the observance of a select few components of the Mosaic law accomplished nothing for the Galatians other than bringing them under the obligation of the entire Torah. 

The legalists appear to have been claiming that circumcision was a necessary step in the process by which people become acceptable to God. These steps from their viewpoint were faith in Christ, reception of the Spirit, and circumcision of the flesh. Paul argued that anyone who submits to circumcision to gain acceptance with God really believes in salvation by law-keeping. If one believes in law-keeping for salvation, he must keep the whole Law, not just the requirement of circumcision. That is impossible for sinners to do. Rather than gaining acceptance with God, circumcision would be what separated them from Christ.                    - Thomas Constable

Those who want to keep the law about circumcision must keep the whole law. They cannot choose one command and ignore others to suit themselves. If they try to find salvation through law-keeping, they cut themselves off from the salvation that comes from Christ through God’s grace.           - Don Fleming

Fallen from Grace

Vs. 2 - Take note! I, Paul, am telling you that if you get yourselves circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all.

Vs. 4 - You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace.

Circumcision itself was not the issue here.  Becoming circumcised in order to convert to Judaism and obtain righteousness from God was the alarming issue for Paul.  He emphasized that the Galatians had to choose between grace and legalism, between justification by faith or through Mosaic law-keeping.  To choose the latter would be to abandon grace, to position oneself  “under” the law rather than “in” Christ.  

Faith Expressing Love

Vs. 6 - For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything

On the subject of ways in which many churches have historically lost sight of Paul here, the most dreadful of all is the church's gross historical neglect of the second half of Paul's “neither…nor” pair: “nor uncircumcision.”  The church has constantly forgotten that Paul's vision is of Gentiles as Gentiles and Jews as Jews, united in allegiance to Christ.  Churches have repeatedly demanded that Jews cease Jewish practice if they are to be seen as acknowledging Christ.  The church's aim usually is to eliminate distinctively Jewish identity.  Ironically, the church has typically acted in a way similar to Paul's opponents, seeking to erase difference by merging one community into the other. All that differs is the direction in which the church has sought to do it.                   - Peter Oakes

Vs. 6 (NLT) - What is important is faith expressing itself in love.

Paul's aim seems to have been to eliminate division not diversity.  He did not ask Jews to stop being Jewish.  His concern was that Gentiles were being coerced into Judaism.  What united the Galatians together as a diverse family of Christians was their faith in God that was evidenced by their love for one another.  

Who Disturbed You?

A Little Leaven

Vs. 7 - You were running well. Who prevented you from obeying the truth?

Paul compared the Galatians’ halted progress to that of an athlete whose race had been abruptly interrupted. It’s as though he asked, “You were progressing so well.  Who blocked your path to make you stop running?” 

Vs. 9 - A little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough.

For the Jew leaven nearly always stood for evil influence. What Paul is saying is, "This legalistic movement may not have gone very far yet, but you must root it out before it destroys your whole religion."          - William Barclay

The Offense of The Cross

Vs. 11 - Now brothers and sisters, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished.

The need for Gentile Christians to observe the Mosaic law was never a component of the gospel that Paul had preached to the Galatians.  If it had been, he would not have been experiencing opposition from non-believing Jews (the same kind of persecution he once incited).  

The true gospel was offensive (“the offense of the cross”) in that it abolished divisions of all kinds (ethnic, social, gender, etc.) and included all nations in God’s promise to bless the whole world through Abraham’s offspring (3:29).  

The Law Fulfilled in Love

Purpose of Freedom

Vs. 13 - For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. 

Paul declared the Galatians to be “free.”  In other words, as Christians who had accepted the gospel and received the Holy Spirit, the Galatian believers had now been liberated from any need to merit mercy from God.  They had been forgiven and accepted.  So there was no need for them to enslave themselves to Jewish law.  

So Paul basically said here, “You’re free!  So don’t become slaves to the law.  But rather, become “slaves” to one another.”

Paul made a similar argument to the church in Rome.  He reminded those Christians that they had emerged from the cleansing waters of baptism as a people resurrected to new (different and devoted) life.  

Romans 6:1-4 - What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.

Love Your Neighbor

Vs. 14 - For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself.

If the Galatian Christians should not be concerning themselves with circumcision and calendrical observances and such, then what should they be doing?  How should they be living out their freedom as believers? Paul’s answer: They were free to love one another in the way that they would want to be loved. 

The Galatians should not concern themselves with law-keeping but rather with loving and serving one another.  If they were going to bind themselves to something, it should be to the task of keeping Leviticus 19:18, what Jesus called one of the greatest commandments (Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:27). 

Leviticus 19:18 - Do not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your community, but love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.

Paul’s point: By loving one another, the Galatians would actually be keeping the Mosaic law.  Paul also explained this concept to the Romans:

Romans 13:8-10 - Do not owe anyone anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, Do not commit adultery; do not murder; do not steal; do not covet; and any other commandment, are summed up by this commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law.

Paul can express the law as being encapsulated in a couple of key commands.  In terms of commands for interaction between people, such as those against adultery, murder, theft, and coveting, Paul explains in Romans 13:9 that they are summed up in Leviticus 19:18, cited both there and here in Galatians 5:14. Crucially, he sees the love that is the product of the Spirit-led life as fulfilling this and hence, he believes, the law as a whole.                   - Peter Oakes

Vs. 18 - But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Vs. 23 - The law is not against such things.

The Galatians were not “under” the law but “in” Christ, and God’s Spirit would transform them into people of love and unity, the kind of people who fulfill the law through love. 

The Galatian Christians do not need to adopt Jewish law; their Spirit Led life of Love already fulfills it.                          - Peter Oakes 

Guided by The Holy Spirit 

In this section, Paul explained how God would transform the Galatians by His Spirit.  Rather than living selfishly and divisively, Paul taught how God would guide these Christians to live patiently, gently, and in unity with one another.  

“Walk” in The Spirit

Vs. 16 - I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh.

Vs. 18 - But if you are led by the Spirit…

Vs. 25 - If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

’Walk by the Spirit’ means ’let your conduct be directed by the Spirit.’     - Bruce

Walking is a metaphor used from time to time in Scripture to denote spiritual progress. People in the first century could not travel as fast as we do, with our cars, planes, trains and the like, but even so, for them as for us, walking was the slowest way of going places. But even though walking was slow and unspectacular, walking meant progress. If anyone kept walking, she or he would certainly cover the ground and eventually reach the destination. So for the apostle walking was an apt metaphor. If any believer was walking, that believer was going somewhere.            - Morris

If these Christians desired to live faithful lives of devotion to God, Paul urged them to allow God’s Holy Spirit to gradually transform them into people who live in love and unity with one another.  What the law (and the false gospel tempting them) could not do, the Holy Spirit would accomplish in them. 

Again, Paul explained this concept to the Roman Christians: 

Romans 8:1-5 - Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering,  in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their minds set on the things of the Spirit. 

Up to this point in Galatians, the spirit-flesh contrast has operated as a contrast between a gift of God, resulting from acceptance of Paul's gospel, and law observant life, resulting (for the Galatians) from acceptance of the opponent's message. Now Paul begins a progression toward giving this contrast moral content.

The main thrust of 5:16 is probably that the Galatians should continue to live in the manner of Christian life that they began in, having accepted the gospel from Paul, and that, if they do so, the dire effects of the flesh will be avoided.

The solution is to “walk in the Spirit” (5:16), “be led by the Spirit” (5:18), that is, stay faithful to Paul’s gospel of unity.            - Peter Oakes

The Works of The Flesh

Vs. 19 - Now the works of the flesh are obvious

The common feature in this catalogue of vices seems to reside not in the precise ways in which these fifteen items manifest themselves but in the self-centeredness or egocentricity that underlies all of them.  - Longenecker

In the context of Paul's rhetoric about spirit, flesh, and law, it looks more likely that Paul is implicitly arguing that, since the spirit produces these virtues among the Galatians, the best path is faithfulness to his gospel, rather than turning to the law as a source of virtue that only ends up in “works of the flesh.”      

The list of “works of the flesh" contributes to the letter’s rhetoric on unity. If, as looks likely, there is actual divisiveness among the Galatians as a result of the arrival of Paul's opponents, his warning is effectively seeking to pull the Galatians out of the situation, back into united acceptance of his gospel and, with it, the life of Spirit, which generates a very different produce.           - Peter Oakes

The Fruit of The Spirit

Vs. 22 - But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Paul contrasted his list of selfish “fleshly” behaviors with a list of loving qualities that God’s Holy Spirit produces in the life of a believer.  If the Galatians desired to live holy lives, it would be through gradual growth like that of a fruit-yielding tree. 

He (Paul) is saying, “This, after all, is the behavior which the Spirit produces; can’t you see that you don’t need to impose the Mosaic Law on converts in order to generate people like that?”         -  N.T. Wright

Paul’s argument is that the real purpose of the Law was to produce people of character, and since the Spirit forms the desired character without any need for the Law, the Law is no longer in effect for such people. It’s not repealed so much as fulfilled.                - J.F. Guin