Berksblog

I do not always use my freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but somehow the flesh finds me anyway. It is not that I lack love for the Lord. It is that I live inside a frame, and the struggle with it comes back every day. I have had moments when two minds differed on a matter of judgment. In those moments the shift from being led by the Spirit toward the flesh tipped the difference into disagreement, the kind that, if not addressed quickly, could lead to something more serious. That is walking by the flesh and not by the Spirit.

Against that frame, Paul sets a single command: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). It asks something of us on every ordinary day we spend in Christ. Paul’s word means to walk in line, and that image helps us see what he asks: a line of walkers moves together only when each one sets the next foot where the line is going. The “if” is not a doubt. It assumes we already live by the Spirit, and it asks that our steps agree with the life we have been given. The pronoun is worth a second look. Paul does not say “you.” He says “us.” The apostle who wrote the command puts himself in the line with the people who first read it. He had already told those same people how they came to be in Christ: “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:26–27).

Paul’s route to this command matters. He reaches it by way of freedom rather than struggle. “For freedom Christ has set us free,” he writes, and he tells the Galatians to stand firm and not submit again to a yoke of slavery (Galatians 5:1). For most of the letter he has been guarding that freedom against those who would hand it back to the law. Then he turns and guards it from the other side, reminding them that they were called to freedom: “Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (5:13). Freedom can be lost in two directions. It can be surrendered to a yoke of slavery, or it can be spent on the flesh. Paul allows neither, because the freedom Christ gives is meant to be spent in love that serves.

He is honest about what stands in the way, and he is honest about where it stands. “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” (5:17). That was written to Christians. The opposition is not something we leave behind by belonging to Christ, because Paul describes it in people who belong to him.

Before he describes the conflict, Paul gives the promise: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (5:16). The word “gratify” keeps catching me, because at times it sounds to me like “satisfy.” Paul’s word is plainer than that. It means to carry a thing through to its end, which is why some translations read “carry out” or “fulfill.” The promise is not that the desire will never be felt, because the next verse says it will be. The promise is that the one who walks by the Spirit will not carry it through.

Then Paul names the works of the flesh, and the list is not the one most of us would have written. “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (5:19–21). We expect the sins of the body to be on the list, and they are. What we may not expect is that eight of the fifteen are sins against one another. Enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, and envy need no dark street or hidden room. They can take root in a congregation that never misses an assembly. Most of the works on Paul’s list are not sins of the body, and he will not let any of us blame the body for the flesh. When I read Paul’s list, I do not see fifteen separate temptations so much as a congregation of influences that aim to take us away from the freedom to be led by the Spirit.

Paul has bracketed the whole passage with that danger. On one side stands the warning, “if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (5:15). On the other stands the chapter’s last word, “Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (5:26). Between them, Paul places the verdict: “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (5:21).

From that list Paul turns to another. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (5:22–23). The fruit belongs to the Spirit. No law stands against a life like that, and it is hard to imagine a statute that ever needed to forbid patience.

Then Paul sets the ground beneath the command: “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (5:24). Earlier in the letter he told them that if they are Christ’s, they are Abraham’s offspring and heirs of the promise (3:29). The order matters. Paul describes those who belong to Christ before he tells them to keep in step, so the command rests on what is already true of them. Belonging to Christ has meant a death, and the flesh with its passions has been crucified. That lies behind those who are his.

What lies ahead is the daily work, and in Romans Paul holds both agencies in one sentence: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13). We do the putting to death, and we do it by the Spirit.

When one of us falls out of step, Paul does not leave him behind: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted” (Galatians 6:1). That is a command to the church, and it shapes how the warning of 5:21 is heard inside the family. The warning stands at full strength. The one caught is to be restored, and the one restoring him is to watch his own feet.

Paul tells the church what to do with a brother who is caught. John tells each of us what to do with the sin itself, and he writes from inside the “we.” He warns first that to claim fellowship with God while walking in darkness is a lie, and he does not make that warning light. Then he says that when we walk in the light, as God is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:6–7). Paul tells us to walk by the Spirit, and John writes of those who walk in the light. Then John gives the promise: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1:8–9).

John is writing to believers, people he calls his little children, and he does not pretend they will never sin. To deny our sin is self-deception, and to confess it is to find God faithful. He names the one who stands with us when we do sin: “if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins” (2:1–2). John writes so that we may not sin, and he still provides for the day we do. Forgiveness is not God looking away from what we have done. It comes through Jesus Christ the righteous, who is our advocate with the Father. So when a disagreement tips and we lose the step, the way back begins with confession. The Father is faithful to forgive, and the Son speaks for us before him.

Being led is what the Spirit does in us: “if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:18). Keeping step is what Paul asks us to do, and it asks something of our feet. To follow, we have to keep up, and keeping up takes diligence. Paul never pictures that diligence alone. After the restoring of the one who is caught, he gives a charge to all of us: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (6:2). He is just as clear that no one else can walk for us: “For each will have to bear his own load” (6:5). The others do not take our steps for us; walking with them is part of how we keep up. Togetherness is underrated.

So we end where Paul does. We are to “keep in step with the Spirit,” and we are not to “become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (5:25–26). In that picture, the line is already moving, and Paul has taken his place in it. We take the next step beside him, in step with the Spirit.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2025. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Developed with the assistance of AI writing tools, under the author’s full theological review and final editorial control.

I was led to Jesus by my father, my mother, and a church family in a small farm town in Kansas called Mulvane. I could still give you their names.

My father preached. I sat under him for years, and I could not give you one of those sermons back now. What stayed was the invitation. Every time, at the end: the problem, the solution, the steps. I can still see it on the overhead, the fan running under the light. That is nearly all I kept from those years. It may be the only part that was built to be carried out the door.

My mother never stood behind a pulpit, and what she handed me was harder to point at and went in deeper. She was calm when things went wrong. She believed God held what she could not hold, and she lived that way in front of her children, which is a different thing than hearing it from your mother when you’re an anxious child. Whatever peace I have in following Jesus, I first saw it on her face before I could have explained a word of it.

Discipleship came after the water. I was baptized first. Then somebody put me on the list to lead a prayer, and I stood up and prayed out loud in front of people I had only just met. We were new to Texas. They barely knew my name and they put me up front anyway. That was one congregation, and it was years behind me by the time I signed up to teach a class of teenagers. I wanted to shape them the way I had been shaped. Three churches, counting Mulvane. Different states, different decades, nobody comparing notes. Neither of them was recruiting me. I already belonged to God when they started handing me things, and what they were doing was building up somebody who was already leading.

None of them were building anything for themselves. It’s rare to see someone build a following out of a Wednesday night Bible class.

Every one of them I really listened to shaped me. I can tell you now which ones stayed with me, and it was never the ones I admired most. It was the ones where I forgot who was talking. Nothing he gave me came from him. What reached me was Scripture, and God speaking in it.

They led and I followed, and sometimes I followed in the wrong direction — never because a man taught me something false, but because I had my eyes on the brilliance of how he was speaking so powerfully. That is the whole danger, and I was inside it before I could name it.

On his way to Jerusalem, Paul stopped at a coastal town called Miletus and sent for the elders of the church at Ephesus. It is the only sermon in Acts to Christians that Luke gives us any of, and he knew it was the last time he would stand in front of them. He told them plainly they would not see his face again. Then he gave them their charge.

“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” (Acts 20:28, ESV)

Look at what he does to those men in one sentence. He hands them the flock and tells them in the same breath that it is not theirs. The Spirit set them there; they did not set themselves there. The church belongs to God, and the price of it was blood, and it was not their blood. Everything else he says that day rests on it. A man who believes that is already out of the middle, and he never had to work at humility to get there. He was simply told whose the church was, and he took it.

Paul said that to elders. He did not say it to me. But a man does not have to hold that office to be standing in the middle of something, whether it is a class, a song service, or a house. The charge belongs to elders. The danger in it reaches anybody people look at.

Then the warning.

“I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.” (Acts 20:29–30, ESV)

After them.

Notice where they come from. The wolves come in among you. These men arise from among your own selves. That is the harder thing, because he is already in the room and he is one of theirs.

And notice what the twisting is for. Not the error by itself. The pull, men drawing disciples after themselves. The teaching is the road and the men are where it ends, because a man who wants to be followed will eventually find something to teach that requires him. Often the error exists to justify the pull.

Not sparing the flock. That is who pays for it. A man can want to be followed and never think of it as costing anybody anything. Paul says the sheep are what it costs.

So Paul does the opposite in front of them.

“And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” (Acts 20:32, ESV)

Able. Paul is not the one who can do that, and he says so out loud while they are still looking at him. He hands them to God and to the word, and he names the two things they will need once he is out of reach: something that can build them up, and something that can give them the inheritance when he is not there to hand it over. He had given those men three years. He taught them in public and from house to house. He called for elders, plural, and there were elders there to call.

He had already worked this out somewhere else, with a church that was coming apart over which preacher belonged to whom.

“What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:5–7, ESV)

He does not rank himself above Apollos or beneath him. He takes both names off the table. Neither man is anything, and both of them knew it.

I want to slow down here, because this argument runs off the road easily and I have seen it run off.

In (Acts 20:29–30, ESV), Paul says flock. He did not invent that word for the occasion, and it runs back through the whole Old Testament. Moses used it at the end of his own life, when he asked God for one last thing.

“Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the LORD may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.” (Numbers 27:16–17, ESV)

Forty years he carried those people, and his request is not that they remember him. It is that they not be left standing there without somebody to go out in front of them. He asked God to replace him. God did, and Israel crossed a river Moses never crossed.

God gave elders. God gave teachers. He said so through Paul, and he meant it to be a gift. Sheep are not independent animals, and the New Testament does not treat them as if they were. The question was never whether people would depend on somebody. They will. The question is what they are depending on, and whether the man standing in the middle of it is content to be a hand passing something along, or has started to enjoy being what people come for. Most men do not decide to make that turn. They notice it late, if at all. A man can make it while doing everything right on the outside, and the first sign is usually not false doctrine. It is quieter than that. Ask what the room does when he is not in it.

That is the test, and it is hard because it does not measure your gifts at all. Men who are good at this fail it. Gather people, teach well, solve what needs solving, carry what nobody else will carry, do every bit of it, and still leave behind a room that cannot move without you.

Ask it plainly. If you were gone this month, what would be standing.

Paul said something close to this to a different church, and it belongs next to the other.

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” (Philippians 2:12, ESV)

He is not saying he would rather be gone. He is saying their obedience never ran on his supervision, and he did not want them finding that out the first time he was not there.

My father is still living. He still preaches. He is still giving that same invitation. Whatever preacher there is in me came from watching him do it plainly, out of the word, with nothing added to make it land. A man who preaches that way has already decided the sermon is not going to be about him. He is not at the center of anything, and I have watched him long enough to know that was on purpose. My mother’s steadiness never needed an audience either. Those congregations have scattered or died or grown old, and what they built is still standing, and I am standing in it. It never required any of them to stay.

Which leaves the question where I would rather not leave it. Not with them. With me, and with any man reading this who has a room he is responsible for. If the honest answer is that things would come apart, that is not a verdict on you. It is a place to start, and the work in it can start this week.

The flock was bought with blood that was not yours. Commend them to God and to the word of his grace, and get out from in front of Jesus.

HEB

This devotional was developed using AI-assisted writing tools. The theological direction, governing observations, personal territory, text selections, and editorial judgments are the author’s. AI contributed structural framing, connective prose, and iterative refinement under the author’s direction. The final piece reflects the author’s voice, convictions, and relationship to the text.