Galatians, chapter 5

“With freedom Christ has set us free; so stand firm.” [a]

Did you win your own freedom, that you run back again to the rule you were under before? Someone else redeemed you; someone else paid the ransom for you. See in how many ways he draws them away from the error of Judaism. First, he shows that it was the height of folly for people who had become free instead of slaves to want to become slaves instead of free. Second, that they would be convicted of neglect and ingratitude toward their benefactor, since they despised the one who had set them free and loved the one who had enslaved them. Third, that it was impossible: since someone else has once for all redeemed all of us from the law, the law no longer has any power. And by the words “stand firm” he points to their wavering.

Verse 1: “And do not be caught again in a yoke of slavery.” By the word “yoke” he shows them how burdensome such a course is, and by the word “again” he points out how utterly senseless they are.

If you had never known this burden, you would not deserve so severe a rebuke. But for you, who have learned by experience how galling this yoke is, to put yourselves under it again is rightly beyond pardon. [b]

Verse 2: “Look, I, Paul, tell you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.”

What a threat! It was reasonable, then, that he put even angels under a curse. How, then, will Christ be of no benefit to them? He has not backed this up with argument, but only declared it, as though the trust owed to his authority made up for all further proof. That is why he begins by saying, “Look, I, Paul, tell you,” which is the language of someone confident in what he asserts. We will add what we can ourselves on how Christ will be of no benefit to those who are circumcised.

A man who is circumcised is circumcised out of fear of the law; whoever fears the law distrusts the power of grace; and whoever distrusts can get no benefit from what he distrusts. Or again, put it this way. The man who is circumcised treats the law as still in force. But while he holds it to be in force, he breaks it in its greater part and keeps it in the lesser, and so he puts himself under the curse again. And how can a man be saved who submits himself to the curse and pushes away the freedom that comes by faith? If one may say something that sounds like a paradox, such a man believes neither Christ nor the law, but stands between the two, wanting to profit from both, and he will reap fruit from neither. Having said that Christ will be of no benefit to them, he sets out the proof of it briefly and pointedly:

Verse 3: “Yes, I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is under obligation to do the whole law.” [d]

So that you will not think this is said out of ill will, he says: “I say this not to you alone, but to everyone who receives circumcision: he is under obligation to do the whole law.” The parts of the law are linked to one another. A free man who has signed himself over as a slave no longer does as he pleases, but is bound by all the laws of slavery. So it is with the law: if you take on a small portion of it and submit to the yoke, you bring its entire rule down on yourself. It is the same with an inheritance in this world. Whoever touches no part of it is free of all the obligations that come with being the dead man’s heir; but if he takes a small portion, even though not the whole, by that part he has made himself liable for everything.

And this happens with the law not only in the way I have described, but in another way too, because the observances of the law are linked together. For example, circumcision has sacrifice bound up with it, and the keeping of days. Sacrifice in turn involves keeping both a day and a place. The place brings with it the details of endless purifications, and purifications bring a whole swarm of observances of every kind. For it is against the law for the unclean to offer sacrifice, to enter the holy places, or to do anything else of that sort. So the law brings in many things even through one commandment. If, then, you are circumcised, but not on the eighth day; or on the eighth day, but no sacrifice is offered; or a sacrifice is offered, but not in the prescribed place; or in the prescribed place, but not the customary offerings; or the customary offerings, but you are unclean; or you are clean, but not purified by the proper rules — everything comes to nothing. That is why he says, “he is under obligation to the whole law.”

Carry out not a part but the whole, if the law is in force; but if it is not in force, not even a part. [e]

Verse 4: “You have been severed from Christ, you who would be counted righteous by the law; you have fallen away from grace.”

Having established his point, he now at last declares the danger they are in of the severest punishment. When a man turns back to the law, which cannot save him, and falls from grace, what is left but a punishment nothing can soften, since the law is powerless and grace rejects him?

So, having heightened their alarm, stirred up their minds, and shown them the whole shipwreck they were about to suffer, he opens to them the harbor of grace close at hand. This is always his way. And he shows that on this side salvation is easy and secure, adding the words of verse 5: “For we, through the Spirit, by faith, wait for the hope of righteousness.” He says: “We need none of those observances of the law. Faith is enough to obtain the Spirit for us, and through him righteousness, and many great blessings.”

Verse 6: “For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision is of any use, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love.”

Notice how boldly he now confronts them. He says: “Let whoever has put on Christ no longer worry about such things.”

He said before that circumcision was harmful; how is it that he now treats it as a matter of indifference? It is indifferent for those who had it before they came to the faith, but not for those who are circumcised after the faith was given. Notice, too, the light he puts it in, by setting it beside uncircumcision: it is faith that makes the difference. In choosing wrestlers, it makes no difference to their trial whether they are hook-nosed or flat-nosed, dark or fair; the only thing to look for is that they are strong and skilled. In the same way, none of these bodily features harms a man who is to be enrolled under the new covenant, nor does having them help him.

What does “working through love” mean? Here he deals them a hard blow, showing that this error had crept in because the love of Christ had not taken root in them. For believing is not all that is required; one must also remain in love. It is as if he had said: “If you had loved Christ as you ought, you would not have deserted to slavery, or abandoned the one who redeemed you, or treated with contempt the one who gave you freedom.”

Here he also hints at those who had plotted against them, implying that they would not have dared to do it if they had felt any affection for them. And by these words he also wants to set their way of life right.

Verse 7: “You were running well; who hindered you?”

This is not a question but an expression of perplexity and grief. How has such a race been cut short? Who has been able to do this? You who were ahead of everyone and ranked as teachers have not even stayed in the place of disciples. What has happened? Who could have done this? These are rather the words of someone crying out and lamenting, as he said before, “Who has bewitched you?” (Galatians 3, verse 1).

Verse 8: “This persuasion did not come from the one who calls you.”

The one who called you did not call you to such wavering; he did not lay down a law telling you to live like Jews. Then, so that no one could object, “Why do you make so much of this and blow it up with your words? We have kept only one commandment of the law, and you raise this great outcry!” — listen to how he frightens them, not with what is present but with what is to come, in these words:

Verse 9: “A little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough.” [f]

And so this slight error, he says, if it is not corrected, will have the power, as yeast has with the dough, to lead you into complete Judaism.

Verse 10: “I have confidence toward you in the Lord that you will not think otherwise.”

He does not say, “you do not think otherwise,” but “you will not think otherwise”; that is, you will be set right. And how does he know this? He does not say, “I know,” but: “I trust in God, and as I call on his help for your correction, I have hopes.” And he does not say merely, “I have confidence in the Lord,” but “I have confidence toward you in the Lord.” Everywhere he joins complaint with his praise. Here it is as if he had said: “I know my disciples; I know how ready you are to be set right. I have good hopes, partly because of the Lord, who lets nothing perish, however small, and partly because of you, who will quickly recover yourselves.” At the same time he urges them to be diligent on their own part, since it is not possible to receive help from God unless we contribute our own efforts.

Verse 10: “But the one who troubles you will bear his judgment, whoever he may be.” [g]

He spurs them on not only with words of encouragement but by pronouncing a curse, or a prophecy, against their teachers. And notice that he never mentions the names of these plotters, so that they will not grow more shameless. His meaning is this: the fact that “you will not think otherwise” does not free those who led you astray from punishment. They will be punished, for it is not right that the good conduct of the one should become an encouragement to the evil intent of the other. This is said so that they will not make a second attempt on others. And he does not say simply, “the one who troubles you,” but “whoever he may be,” to make it weigh more heavily.

Verse 11: “But I, brothers and sisters, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted?”

Notice how clearly he clears himself of the charge that everywhere he lived like a Jew and played the hypocrite in his preaching. He calls them as witnesses of this, for he says: “You know that my command to abandon the law was made the pretext for persecuting me. If I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? This is the only charge that those of Jewish birth have to bring against me. If I had let them receive the faith while keeping the customs of their fathers, neither believers nor unbelievers would have laid traps for me, since none of their own customs would have been disturbed.”

What then? Did he not preach circumcision? Did he not circumcise Timothy? Indeed he did. How, then, can he say, “I do not preach it”? Notice his precision here. He does not say, “I do not perform circumcision,” but “I do not preach it”; that is, I do not tell people to believe that way. “So do not take this as any support for your teaching; for though I circumcised, I did not preach circumcision.”

Verse 11: “Then the stumbling block of the cross has been done away with.” [h]

That is, if what you claim is true, the obstacle, the hindrance, is removed. For not even the cross was so great a stumbling block to the Jews as the teaching that the customs of their fathers were not to be obeyed. When they brought Stephen before the council, they did not say, “This man worships the Crucified,” but that he speaks “against this holy place and the law” (Acts 6, verse 13). And it was for this that they accused Jesus: that he broke the law.

That is why Paul says: “If circumcision is granted, the conflict you are caught up in dies down; from then on no hostility remains toward the cross and our preaching. But why do they bring this charge against us and lie in wait day after day to murder us? It is because I brought an uncircumcised man into the temple (Acts 21, verse 29) that they fell on me.”

He says: “Am I, then, so senseless that, after giving up the point of circumcision, I would expose myself to such injuries idly and for nothing, and put such a stumbling block in the way of the cross? For you see that there is nothing they attack us over so violently as circumcision. Am I, then, so senseless as to suffer hardship for nothing at all, and to make others stumble?” He calls it the stumbling block of the cross because it was commanded by the teaching of the cross. And this was what chiefly made the Jews stumble and kept them from accepting the cross: the command to abandon the customs of their fathers.

Verse 12: “I wish that those who unsettle you would even cut themselves off.” [j]

Notice how bitterly he speaks here against those who deceived them. At the start he aimed his charge at those who were deceived, and called them foolish, once and again. Now, having corrected and instructed them enough, he turns to their deceivers. And you should note his wisdom in how he does it: he admonishes and disciplines the deceived as his own children, able to take correction, but he cuts off their deceivers as outsiders, depraved beyond cure. He does this partly when he says, “he will bear his judgment, whoever he may be,” and partly when he pronounces the curse against them: “I wish that those who unsettle you would even cut themselves off.”

And he rightly says, “who unsettle you.” For they had forced them to abandon their own homeland, their freedom, and their heavenly family, and to go looking for one that was foreign and alien to them. They had driven them out of the Jerusalem above, which is free, and forced them to wander off as captives and exiles. For this he curses them, and his meaning is this: “I have no concern for them. ‘Reject a man who is a heretic after a first and a second warning’ (Titus 3, verse 10). If they like, let them not only be circumcised but mutilated.”

Where, then, do those stand who dare to mutilate themselves? They draw the apostle’s curse down on themselves, they find fault with God’s workmanship, and they take the side of the Manichaeans. For the Manichaeans call the body a treacherous thing that comes from the evil principle; and these men, by what they do, lend their support to those wretched teachings, cutting off the member as though it were hostile and treacherous. Should they not much rather put out their eyes, since it is through the eyes that desire enters the soul? But in truth neither the eye nor any other part of us is to blame, only the corrupt will. But if you will not grant this, why do you not mutilate the tongue for blasphemy, the hands for plunder, the feet for running to evil — in short, the whole body?

For the ear, charmed by the sound of a flute, has often made the soul soft and weak; and a sweet perfume, reaching the nostrils, has bewitched the mind and made it frantic for pleasure. Yet that would be the height of wickedness and a satanic madness. The evil spirit, who always delights in slaughter, has led them astray into crushing the instrument, as though its Maker had made a mistake, when all that was needed was to correct the soul’s unruly passion.

But someone may say: “How does it happen, then, that when the body is pampered, its craving is inflamed?” Notice that here too the sin belongs to the soul. To pamper the flesh is not an act of the flesh but of the soul; if the soul chose to subdue it, it would have complete power over it. What you are doing is exactly as if someone saw a man lighting a fire, heaping on fuel, and setting a house alight, and then blamed the fire instead of the man who kindled it, because it had caught the heap of fuel and risen to a great height. Yet the blame would belong not to the fire but to the one who kindled it. For fire was given to cook food, to give light, and for other such services, not to burn houses.

In the same way, desire was planted in us for raising families and carrying on life, not for adultery or sexual immorality or debauchery: so that a man may become a father, not an adulterer; a lawful husband, not a seducer; leaving heirs of his own behind him, not bringing ruin on another man’s. For adultery arises not from nature but from insolence against nature, which prescribes the use, not the misuse.

I have not made these remarks at random. They are a prelude to the dispute, a skirmish against those who say that God’s workmanship is evil — who ignore the laziness of the soul, rail madly against the body, and slander our flesh. Paul speaks of the flesh further on, and there he accuses not the flesh but devilish thoughts.

Verse 13: “For you, brothers and sisters, were called for freedom; only do not use your freedom as an opening for the flesh.” [n]

From here on he seems to turn aside into teaching about how to live, but in a new way, one that does not occur in any other of his letters. All of them are divided into two parts: in the first he discusses doctrine, and in the last the way of life. But here, after entering on the teaching about how to live, he joins the doctrinal part to it again; for this passage bears on doctrine, in the controversy with the Manichaeans.

What does “do not use your freedom as an opening for the flesh” mean? He says: “Christ has set us free from the yoke of slavery. He has left us free to act as we choose — not so that we may use our freedom for evil, but so that we may have grounds for receiving a greater reward, as we advance to a higher philosophy.”

He had called the law, over and over, a yoke of slavery and a bringing on of the curse. So that no one would suspect that his aim in telling them to abandon the law was that they might live lawlessly, he corrects this idea. His aim, he shows, is not that our way of life should be lawless, but that our philosophy should surpass the law. “For the bonds of the law are broken; and I say this not so that our standard may be lowered, but so that it may be raised.”

Both the man who commits sexual immorality and the one who lives a life of virginity pass beyond the bounds of the law, but not in the same direction. The one is carried away to what is worse, the other is lifted up to what is better; the one breaks the law, the other rises above it. So Paul says that Christ has taken the yoke off you, not so that you may prance and kick, but so that, even without the yoke, you may go forward at a steady, measured pace. And next he shows the way this can be done easily. What is that way? He says, still in verse 13: “But through love be servants of one another.”

Here again he hints that quarreling and a factional spirit, love of power and presumption, had been the causes of their error; for the desire to rule is the mother of heresies. By saying, “Be servants of one another,” he shows that the evil had come from this presumptuous and arrogant spirit, and so he applies the matching remedy: “Your divisions came from your desire to lord it over one another; so serve one another, and in this way you will be reconciled again.”

Yet he does not state their fault openly. He openly tells them its cure, so that through the cure they may become aware of the fault — as if someone, instead of telling an immodest person of his immodesty, kept urging him to chastity. Whoever loves his neighbor as he ought does not refuse to serve him more humbly than any servant. As fire brought into contact with wax easily softens it, so the warmth of love melts away all arrogance and presumption more powerfully than fire. That is why he does not say merely, “love one another,” but “be servants of one another,” to show how intense the affection is.

When the yoke of the law was taken off them, another was laid on them, so that they would not frisk off and run away: the yoke of love, stronger than the first, yet far lighter and more pleasant. And to point out the way to obey it, he adds:

Verse 14: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” [o]

Since they made so much of the law, he says: “If you want to fulfill it, do not be circumcised; for it is fulfilled not in circumcision but in love.” Notice how he cannot forget his grief, but keeps touching on what troubled him, even after launching into his teaching on how to live.

Verse 15: “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”

So as not to distress them, he does not state this as a fact, though he knew it was so, but mentions it as a possibility. For he does not say, “Since you are biting one another,” nor does he state in the next clause that they will be consumed by each other, but “watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” This is the language of concern and warning, not of condemnation. And the words he uses are very telling. He does not say merely “you bite,” which someone might do in a fit of anger, but also “you devour,” which shows a settled malice. To bite is to satisfy the feeling of anger, but to devour is proof of the most savage ferocity. The biting and devouring he speaks of are not bodily, but of a far crueler kind. For it is not so great an injury to taste a man’s flesh as to sink one’s fangs into his soul; and the more precious the soul is than the body, the more serious the damage done to it.

“Watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” For those who do injury and lay plots do it in order to destroy others; so he says: “Watch out that this evil does not fall on your own heads.” For quarrels and divisions are the ruin and destruction both of those who welcome them and of those who bring them in, and they eat away at everything worse than a moth.

Verse 16: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the craving of the flesh.” [p]

Here he points out another path, one that makes our duty easy and makes secure what he has already said: a path that gives birth to love and is itself fenced in by love. For nothing — nothing, I say — makes us so ready for love as being spiritual, and nothing so moves the Spirit to remain in us as the strength of love. That is why he says, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the craving of the flesh.” Having spoken of the cause of the disease, he also names the remedy that brings health. And what is this? What else destroys the evils we have spoken of but the life in the Spirit? So he says, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the craving of the flesh.”

Verse 17: “For the flesh has cravings against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do the things you want.”

Here some people bring a charge: that the apostle has divided the human being into two parts, that he makes the substance we are made of to be at war with itself, and that he sets the body in a contest with the soul. But this is certainly not so. By “the flesh” he does not mean the body. If he did, what sense would the very next words make — “for it sets its cravings,” he says, “against the Spirit”? The body does not move; it is moved. It does not act; it is acted upon. How, then, can it crave? Craving belongs to the soul, not to the body. That is why it is said elsewhere, “My soul longs” (Psalm 84, verse 2); and, “Whatever your soul desires, I will do it for you” (First Samuel 20, verse 4); and, “Do not walk according to the desires of your heart”; and, “So my soul pants” (Psalm 42, verse 1). [q]

Why, then, does Paul say, “The flesh sets its cravings against the Spirit”? It is his habit to give the name “flesh” not to the body as nature made it, but to the corrupt will. He does so when he says, “But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit” (Romans 8, verses 8 and 9), and again, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” What then? Is the flesh to be destroyed? Was not the man who said this clothed in flesh himself? Teachings like that do not come from the flesh but from the devil, for “he was a murderer from the beginning” (John 8, verse 44).

What, then, does he mean? It is the earthbound mind, lazy and careless, that he calls “the flesh” here. This is not an accusation against the body but a charge against the lazy soul. The flesh is an instrument, and no one feels disgust and hatred for an instrument, but for the one who misuses it. It is not the iron blade that we hate and punish, but the murderer.

But someone will say: “The very act of calling the soul’s faults by the name of the flesh is itself an accusation against the body.” I grant that the flesh is lower than the soul. Yet it too is good. What is lower than something good can still be good itself; but evil is not lower than good, it is opposed to it. Now if you can prove to me that evil comes from the body, you are free to accuse it. But if you are trying to turn its name into a charge against it, you ought to accuse the soul as well. For the one who is cut off from the truth is called “the unspiritual man” (First Corinthians 2, verse 14), and the race of demons is called “the spirits of wickedness” (Ephesians 6, verse 12).

Again, Scripture regularly gives the name of flesh to the mysteries, and to the whole church, calling them the body of Christ (Colossians 1, verse 24). [t]

Indeed, if you want to be persuaded to call the things that come to us through the flesh blessings, you have only to imagine the senses put out. You will find the soul robbed of all discernment and ignorant of what it knew before. For if God’s power, “since the creation of the world, is clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made” (Romans 1, verse 20), how could we see these things without eyes? And if “faith comes from hearing” (Romans 10, verse 17), how will we hear without ears? Preaching, too, depends on traveling from place to place, and that takes the tongue and the feet: “For how will they preach, unless they are sent?” (Romans 10, verse 15). In the same way, writing is done with the hands. Do you not see that the service the flesh gives brings us a thousand benefits?

When he says, “The flesh sets its cravings against the Spirit,” he means two states of mind. The things opposed to each other are virtue and vice, not the soul and the body. If those two were opposed, they would destroy each other, as fire and water do, and darkness and light. But the soul cares for the body and takes great thought for it; it suffers a thousand things so as not to leave it, and it fights against being separated from it. The body, too, serves the soul, brings it a great deal of knowledge, and is fitted to its workings. If so, how can they be contrary and at war with each other? For my part, I see from what they do that they are not only not contrary, but closely in tune and attached to one another.

So it is not these two that he speaks of as opposed to each other. He is referring to the contest between bad principles and good ones (compare Romans 7, verse 23). To will and not to will belongs to the soul. That is why he says, “These are contrary to one another”: so that you will not let the soul go on in its evil desires. For he says this the way a master and teacher would, as a threat.

Verse 18: “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” [u]

If someone asks how these two things are connected, I answer: closely and plainly. The one who has the Spirit as he should puts out every evil desire by it; and the one who has been set free from these needs no help from the law, but is raised far above its commands. The man who is never angry — what need has he to hear the command, “You shall not kill”? The man who never casts an unchaste look — what need has he of the warning, “You shall not commit adultery”? Who would lecture about the fruits of wickedness to someone who has pulled up the root itself? For anger is the root of murder, and prying stares at faces are the root of adultery. That is why he says, “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”

In saying this, it seems to me, he has paid the law high and striking praise — if, that is, the law, as far as its power went, stood in the Spirit’s place before the Spirit came upon us. But that is no reason for us to stay on with our tutor. Back then we were rightly under the law, so that we might restrain our cravings by fear, since the Spirit had not yet been revealed. But now grace has been given, which does not only command us to keep away from them, but puts them out, and leads us to a higher way of life. What more need is there of the law? The one who has reached a lofty goodness by an impulse from within has no use for a tutor, just as no one who is a philosopher needs a grammar teacher. Why, then, do you lower yourselves like this, listening to the law now, when you have already given yourselves to the Spirit?

Verses 19, 20 and 21: “Now the works of the flesh are plain, and these are they: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, fits of anger, factions, divisions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I warn you about them in advance, as I warned you before, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” [w]

Answer me now, you who accuse your own flesh and suppose that this is said of it as of an enemy and adversary. Let it be granted that adultery and sexual immorality come from the flesh, as you claim. Yet enmities, strife, jealousies, factions, heresies and sorcery arise simply from a corrupt moral choice. And it is the same with the others too; how can they belong to the flesh? You see that he is not speaking here of the flesh, but of earthly thoughts that trail along the ground. That is also why he alarms them by saying that “those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” If these things belonged to nature and not to a bad moral choice, his word “practice” would be the wrong one; he should have said “suffer.” And why would they be shut out of the kingdom? Rewards and punishments have to do not with what comes from nature, but with what comes from choice.

Verse 22: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.” [x]

He does not say “the work of the Spirit,” but “the fruit of the Spirit.” But is the soul, then, superfluous? The flesh and the Spirit are named, but where is the soul? Is he speaking of beings without a soul? For if the things of the flesh are evil and those of the Spirit are good, the soul must be superfluous. By no means! The mastery of the passions belongs to the soul and is its concern. Set between vice and virtue, if it has used the body as it should, it has made the body spiritual; but if it separates itself from the Spirit and gives itself up to evil desires, it makes itself more earthly.

You see that all through this his words have nothing to do with the substance of the flesh, but with the moral choice, whether it is corrupt or not. And why does he say “the fruit of the Spirit”? Because evil works start from ourselves alone, and so he calls them “works”; but good works need not only our own effort but God’s love for humankind. He puts first the root of these good things, and then goes on to list them, in these words: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” For who would lay any command on someone who has everything within himself, and who has love as his accomplished teacher of philosophy? Well-trained horses that do everything of their own accord do not need the whip; in the same way the soul that has reached virtue by the Spirit does not need the warnings of the law. Here too he drives the law out completely and strikingly — not as bad, but as inferior to the philosophy the Spirit gives.

Verse 24: “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and cravings.” [y]

So that they would not object, “And who is such a person as this?” he points, by their works, to those who have reached this perfection, and here again he gives the name “flesh” to evil actions. He does not mean that they had destroyed their flesh; otherwise how were they going to live? What is crucified is dead and does nothing. He is pointing to the perfect way of life. For the desires, troublesome as they are, rage in vain. Since, then, the power of the Spirit is so great, let us live in it and be content with it, as he himself goes on to say.

Verse 25: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit” — being governed by his laws. For this is the force of the words “let us walk”: let us be content with the power of the Spirit, and seek no help from the law. Then, to show that those who were eager to bring in circumcision were driven by love of show, he says:

Verse 26: “Let us not be eager for empty glory” — which is the cause of all evils — “provoking one another” to quarrels and strife, “envying one another.” For from empty glory comes envy, and from envy all these countless evils.