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.
