Galatians 5:16-25: Keep in Step with the Spirit

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Galatians 5:16. This really should be how we live our life. While the rest of the letter to the Galatians hits hard, this provides a good summary of an important point. When we walk by the Spirit, we are walking with Jesus. We are becoming sanctified, learning to be like Him. When I really took the time to process what this meant, it hit me like a ton of bricks. To gratify the desires of the flesh, to give the flesh what it wants, is to not walk in the Spirit. It’s the antithesis of building a life with God and that level of understanding is something I hadn’t thought about before.

While this whole letter has been about the power of what Jesus did and how it released us from the Law, this point right here is so important. Because Jesus did so much for us, we should absolutely live for Him.

This post is part of a series. Click here to start from the beginning!

Walking in Step with the Spirit

That phrase, “walk by the Spirit” gives us both a direction to walk and the power to follow through on it. Plus it reminds us that we literally get to walk with the Holy Spirit. It gives us the ability to make “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.”¹

This isn’t a choice that someone makes once in a while. To walk in the Spirit is to choose a life that honors God. “The Spirit does not operate automatically in a believer’s heart. He waits to be depended on.”² Making the choice to depend on the Holy Spirit means that your life will be one of freedom because He’s the one that makes it possible for you to walk with Him, not your own strength.

A War Between Flesh and Spirit

Does that mean you need to be perfect? Absolutely not. In the following verse, Paul calls that out. He knows that the life of a Christian is one of struggle, “a war between the flesh and the Spirit.”³ The reality is that, because of the sin that Adam and Eve welcomed into the world, everyone has two sides to them: “a sinful nature received at birth, inherited from fallen Adam, and a new nature received at regeneration when said Christian became a participant in the divine nature.”⁴ Both sides have wants, one is the want of the Spirit and the other is the want of the flesh.

This causes conflict and, while we’re on this side of heaven, we will always be at war. The positive side of this is that you’re not doing it alone. “The Holy Spirit blocks, when He is allowed to do so, the evil cravings of the flesh.”⁵

Led by the Spirit

This is what Paul was trying to get them to explain the whole time. They won’t be able to fight that battle alone. They must be “led by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:18). The word “led” is from the Greek verb “ago” which “implies an active, personal involvement by the Holy Spirit in guiding Christians.”⁶ This relationship that was made available, the connection that they’re able to have with the Holy Spirit, shows that they’re no longer under the Law that they so desperately want to follow. “It was important for the Galatians to know that just as justification is not possible by works so sanctification cannot be achieved by human effort.”⁷ All of that is made available to them through their faith in Christ Jesus.

The Works of the Flesh

What I love about Paul is that he left no room for them to wonder what the sins of the flesh were. He “declared that the sins of the flesh are obvious,”⁸ whether done in public or private. They’re the things that we inherently know are wrong. Once again, he left no room for questions. He listed many sins, the first of which are sexual. By the way, the word “fornication” comes from the Greek word “porneia.” That’s where the word “pornography” comes from. “Porneia refers to any and all forms of illicit sexual relationships.”⁹

I have a ton of content on the blog about porn addiction and breaking free from it, so I won’t go on a long rant here. But I will say this as a reminder: the Enemy is unable to create, but he can manipulate. Sex is a beautiful gift from God to have had in marriage. The Enemy twisted it to become something it was never meant to be. “Impurity (akatharsia) is a broad term referring to moral uncleanness in thought, word, and deed (cf. Eph. 5:3–4). Debauchery (aselgeia) connotes an open, shameless, brazen display of these evils.”¹⁰

Idolatry, Sorcery, and Discord

Now that the sexual sins have been laid out, now he goes into the religious ones. Idolatry and socery “are the evidences of a desire to be in touch with the spiritual realm through humanly invented means.”¹¹ This included “the worship of pagan gods by bowing to idols” and witchcraft.¹² I won’t get into this here because that deserves a series all on its own, but what Paul is listing is nothing to play with. Just because the enemy says something is safe or good doesn’t mean it is. In fact, it definitely isn’t.

After that, Paul lists “enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions” in verse 20. Does any of this sound familiar? So much of this is what we’re dealing with in today’s day and age. As much as discord and jealousy are a problem, what really stands out to me is the mention of “fits of anger.” I struggle with anger and have my entire life and to see it called out like that so directly is quite convicting. “When people reject God, they turn in on themselves, and so relationships between human beings are destroyed as well.”¹³

But it doesn’t end there.

No Inheritance in the Kingdom

Galatians 5:21 continues, “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.” Oof, there’s a lot here. Envy is jealousy but deeper. It’s when you desperately want something that someone else has. Envy is at the root of most relationships that fall apart, especially within the church. Now interestingly enough, drunkeness and orgies were listed side by side. This “probably refers to the drunken carousings commonly associated with such things as the worship of Bacchus, the god of wine.”¹⁴ So not only were they acting outside of what God called them to do, but they were likely worshiping another God while doing it.

At the end of verse 21, Paul says that anyone who participates in these things won’t “inherit the kingdom of God.” He isn’t saying that a true believer in Christ will lose their salvation for messing up, “but that a person who lives continually on such a level of moral corruption gives evidence of not being a child of God.”¹⁵ This isn’t about falling into sin one time, but it’s about those who make a habit out of doing so. “The present participle (Gk. prassontes, translated here as “do”) refers to those who “make a practice of doing” such things, as a pattern of life.”¹⁶

The Fruit of the Spirit

Galatians 5:22-23 share the fruits of the Spirit. The Holy 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.”¹⁷ I’ve done a full series on the Fruit of the Spirit here on the blog and on the podcast. So I won’t go into them here.

As a reminder, though: the fruits of the Spirit aren’t things that you try to create in yourself. They are the result of building a relationship with Jesus Christ. As you do get closer to Christ, the more the fruit will appear in your life. Interestingly, in verse 23, Paul says that “against such things there is no law.” This means that these are the things to pursue. As much as the Galatians were pursuing the Law to become righteous, Paul is saying there’s no law against the fruits of the Spirit, those things that would become evident in your life.

Crucified the Flesh

In verse 24 Paul continues, saying that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” As believers in Christ, we can identify with Jesus. This doesn’t mean that we were crucified physically and we should never become desensitized to the weight of the crucifixion. But it does mean that we have died to our flesh, the old way is gone. The only direction left to go is following Him. “This does not mean that their sin nature is then eradicated or even rendered inactive but that it has been judged, a fact believers should reckon to be true. So victory over the sinful nature’s passions and desires has been provided by Christ in His death.”¹⁸

This is a choice that we have to make everyday, to choose to lean on God in faith instead of doing things on our own. It is so easy to get overwhelmed with the world and feel like God isn’t doing what we want Him to and therefore we should just do it all ourselves. I’m the most guilty of this. That’s why I’m so dang grateful for His patience and mercy. We can’t do it on our own, it’s been shown over and over again throughout the history of the world.

Keep in Step with the Spirit

In verses 25-26, “Paul reminded the Galatians that in addition to a divine judgment of the sinful nature there is a divine enablement in the person of the Holy Spirit.”¹⁹ Paul says that we are to “keep in step” with the Holy Spirit. The verb here comes from the Greek word “stoicheo” and means “walk in line behind a leader.”²⁰ We are to let the Holy Spirit guide every area of our lives, we are to follow wherever He leads us. “Step by step one’s Christian walk should conform to the Spirit’s direction and enablement, lest believers become conceited, provoking and envying each other. The latter traits would be true of a walk in the flesh” and may be what was going on in the Galatian church that caused all this division to begin with.²¹

The entirety of our lives should be that of following Christ. It doesn’t mean get it perfect, it means have faith in God that He can guide you, trust that He will speak to you in a way that you will hear. God’s got you in more ways than you’ll ever know. He is just so good.

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Footnotes

1. Crossway Bibles, The ESV Study Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 2254.
2. Donald K. Campbell, “Galatians,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 607.
3. ESV Study Bible, 2254.
4. Campbell, “Galatians,” 607.
5. Ibid.
6. ESV Study Bible, 2254.
7. Campbell, “Galatians,” 607.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. ESV Study Bible, 2254.
12. Campbell, “Galatians,” 608.
13. ESV Study Bible, 2254.
14. Campbell, “Galatians,” 608.
15. Ibid.
16. ESV Study Bible, 2254.
17. Ibid.
18. Campbell, “Galatians,” 609.
19. Ibid.
20. ESV Study Bible, 2255.
21. Campbell, “Galatians,” 609.