Galatians 5
Salvation to Glorification Infographic
Summary
Many of Paul’s letters begin with an explanation of the Gospel, descriptions of who we are in Christ as opposed to who we used to be, and reminders of where our identity is rooted.
Then there is usually a shift he makes and moves to living out the Christian life in light of our identity in Christ. We see this shift at the beginning of chapter 5.
1 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Christ has set us free from Jewish ceremonial laws and regulations, but not from obedience to God’s moral standards, which He is about to write about
2 Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.
·The Galatians may have thought that requiring circumcision would not make much difference, but Paul knows that if they require obedience to any one part of the Mosaic law for justification, then they are committed to obeying all of it perfectly for their justification, something none of them can do
Pairing the cross with our good works devalues what Jesus did to accomplish it, in fact, it invalidates grace
3 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.
To require circumcision and other Mosaic ceremonies such as dietary laws and Jewish holidays as a supplement to faith is to fall back from the realm of grace, faith, and freedom, and to come under the whole law and its curse, since comprehensive observance of the law is impossible.
4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.
Severed
Fallen away from grace.
Paul is not discussing here the question of whether a genuine believer can lose his or her salvation.
He is only saying that people who may once have made a profession of faith, if they now are truly seeking to be justified by the law, must not really have a relationship with Christ and have fallen away from the grace that was offered and available to them.
This is about a genuineness of relationship with Christ
5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.
Eagerly wait
Christians do not attempt to produce perfect righteousness in their lives by their own efforts (as Paul’s opponents were futilely trying to do), for their hope is not in themselves; instead, they wait for God to complete righteousness in them
An alternative explanation is that “the hope of righteousness” refers to the believer’s hope and expectation that God will declare that the believer is in fact going to be judged righteous at the final judgment.
Because of our faith in Christ, we can wait in anticipation for the day we meet Jesus, not in fear as some will because of not being saved
6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.
Paul is not advocating for love as a requirement for justification by faith
7 You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?
Paul would often use the analogy of running a race or sports to bring a view of spiritual discipline
Hebrews 12:1-2, I Corinthians 9:24-26, II Timothy 4:7
8 This persuasion is not from him who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
In baking, even the smallest amount of yeast will cause the bread to rise and ruin the entire recipe
False teaching must not be ignored or taken lightly as it has the opportunity to ruin the body of believers
10 I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is.
Paul is confident that these false teachers will not win out in their efforts to harm the Galatians walk with God and will receive their penalty for trying to do so
11 But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed.
If Paul was still preaching that people had to be circumcised, then the offense of the cross would be removed because human pride in human effort would return.
In other words, there would be no “offense” to humble us by declaring that no work of ours can make us righteous before God.
12 I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!
At first this seems a bit outrageous, but there is a couple of thoughts that Paul is probably thinking with this
First, from the physical sense, if you’re going to require circumcision, when you do it, could you be a bit careless and have the knife slipped a bit and take all of it off?
From a spiritual sense, in the Mosaic law, eunuchs were not allowed in the temple (Deuteronomy 23:1), so Paul may be using a hyperbole to say that those who require circumcision shouldn’t be allowed in the church
13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
Don’t go out and run wild because you’re not bound to this law for salvation
It does not mean that Christians can do whatever they feel like doing (which itself is just another form of slavery).
Rather, serving and loving others is the route to escaping bondage and fulfilling the ultimate content of the law.
To use our liberty as an occasion to sin is to live in direct opposition to the freedom brought by Jesus through His blood.
14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
We belong to God who loves us. And our response to His love should be to exhibit that love to others
15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
The Galatians’ legalistic way of Christian living produced fighting, pride, and jealously of each other
16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Once we come to faith in Christ, we realize that we are at war with the person we used to be
Though we are found free in Christ, we still fight against our sinful desires everyday
The only way to conquer the flesh is to yield to the Spirit.
Walk by the Spirit implies both direction and empowerment; that is, making decisions and choices according to the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and acting with the spiritual power that the Spirit supplies.
To “walk” in Scripture regularly represents the pattern of conduct of all of one’s life.
The Greek definition is “to walk around” or literally to walk while being led
The desires of the flesh would mean not just bodily cravings but all of the ordinary desires of fallen human nature
The Holy Spirit is our teacher, guide, and helper, and enables us to put our sin to death
17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
Paul acknowledges that the Christian life is a struggle—a war between the flesh and the Spirit
Ephesians 6:10-18
If, in this equation of a battle between the flesh and Holy Spirit, there was no Holy Spirit, we’d be at war with the flesh by ourselves and not able to overcome
18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Led by the Spirit
The verb (Gk. agō) implies an active, personal involvement by the Holy Spirit in guiding Christians, and the present tense (“if you are being led …”) indicates his ongoing activity.
Not under the law
The Spirit’s active presence in believers’ lives shows that they are no longer under the pre-Christian system (cf. 3:2, 5, 14; 4:6).
19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Works of the flesh
It means actions flowing out of fallen human nature and its desires.
Apart from the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, these are the actions toward which sinful humans instinctively gravitate.
These works listed fall into four categories
Sexual Sins
Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality
Devotional Sins of Worship
Idolatry, sorcery
Relational Sins
Enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions
Sins of Excess
Envy, drunkenness, orgies
If we have been made new in Christ, we will seek, by walking with the Spirit, to reject the former ways of living
Not inherit the Kingdom of God
It’s one thing to wrestle with sin and fight against it, it’s a whole other thing to give into the sin and practice the sin with no remorse or repentance
When we build our life around a regular practice of sin, with no repentance and fight against it, we will not inherit the Kingdom of God
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.
Pertaining to God
Love, joy, peace are grown in contentment in God alone
Pertaining to others
Patience, kindness, goodness grows from one’s treatment of others
Pertaining to self
Faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control develop from the heart of a believer with restraint and steadfastness
The Spirit fights against sin not merely in defense but also in attack by producing in Christians the positive attributes of godly character, all of which are evident in Jesus in the Gospels.
Love appears first because it is the greatest quality (1 Cor. 13:1–13; 2 Pet. 1:5–7) in that it most clearly reflects the character of God.
Joy comes in at a close second, for in rejoicing in God’s salvation Christians show that their affections are rightly placed in God’s will and his purpose (see John 15:11; 16:24; Rom. 15:13; 1 Pet. 1:8; Jude 24; etc.).
Peace is the product of God having reconciled sinners to himself, so that they are no longer his enemies, which should result in confidence and freedom in approaching God (Rom. 5:1–2; Heb. 4:16).
Patience shows that Christians are following God’s plan and timetable rather than their own and that they have abandoned their own ideas about how the world should work.
Kindness means showing goodness, generosity, and sympathy toward others, which likewise is an attribute of God (Rom. 2:4).
Goodness means working for the benefit of others, not oneself; Paul mentions it again in Gal. 6:10.
Faithfulness is another divine characteristic; it means consistently doing what one says one will do.
Gentleness is a quality Jesus attributes to himself in Matt. 11:29; it enables people to find rest in him and to encourage and strengthen others.
Self-control is the discipline given by the Holy Spirit that allows Christians to resist the power of the flesh (cf. Gal. 5:17).
Against such things there is no law
Therefore those who manifest them are fulfilling the law—more than those who insist on Jewish ceremonies, and likewise more than those who follow the works of the flesh surveyed in vv. 19–21.
24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Died with Christ to sin (see 6:14; Rom. 6:4–6).
Now that the old order of things has passed away for believers, their old sinful selves that belonged to that order have crumbled as well—so they should pay no attention to them.
“Flesh” here should not be understood to mean physical bodies but rather fallen, sinful human nature with all its desires.
The Spirit applies union with the crucified Christ to give struggle believers the victory
25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
Keep in step with the Spirit
A different verb than in v. 16, meaning “walk in line behind a leader” (Gk. stoicheō).
Let us not become
Paul is probably referring specifically to attitudes that seem to have become a problem in the Galatian churches (see v. 15).
But these sinful attitudes and actions obviously extend beyond one Roman province: Paul has just mentioned enmity, strife, jealousy, and envy as “works of the flesh” in general (vv. 19–21).