Chuck Larsen

Paul spends most of Galatians celebrating God’s grace—how Christ set us free, how His love replaces law, and how faith works through love. But in chapter six, Paul moves from theology to relationships. He begins addressing what love actually does in real life. You want to know if someone truly walks in the Spirit? Watch how they treat people who fall. Galatians 6:1 says, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.” That verse separates the spiritually mature from the spiritually obnoxious. Some believers treat fallen Christians like predators treat wounded antelope on the Discovery Channel—easy prey to criticize, condemn, and devour. But not Paul. For him, restoration—not humiliation—is the goal. The word he uses for restore was used in medical terms for mending a broken bone. You do that carefully, gently, and with compassion—not with a sledgehammer and duct tape.

Many say Paul is talking about restoring someone who slipped into some moral sin listed among the “works of the flesh” earlier in chapter five. But I wonder if he also has the Judaizers in mind—those legalists who had thrown the Galatians off track with their “Jesus-plus” gospel. Maybe the ones causing the problem are also the ones who need restoration. Whether it is moral failure or doctrinal confusion, Paul says the response must be the same: go get them and bring them home. Gently. He does not say, “Ignore them,” or “Tweet about them,” or “Use them as a sermon illustration.” He says restore them. And notice—he says “you who are spiritual.” Translation: Not everyone should volunteer for this assignment. The proud, harsh, and hypercritical need not apply. My wife always tells me, “If I agreed with everything you said, I would not be needed.” That reminds me God gives us people who challenge, correct, and restore us—not people who flatter our egos.

Paul adds a warning: “Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.” Nothing produces gentleness faster than remembering that you, too, are a member of the Sinner’s Club, fully capable of failure. John Butler tells the story of a pastor who needed to visit a fallen church member and asked each deacon if he could ever fall into such a sin. Most said, “Absolutely not!” But one replied, “I cannot be sure. Under the same circumstances, I might have done the same thing.” The pastor chose that man and said, “You are the one who must go with me—because you are the only one humble enough to help.” Paul would have smiled at that.

The “works of the flesh” are plural because they show up in endless forms—lust, anger, envy, pride, greed, and a dozen other expressions of the same disease: self-centeredness. That is the condition we are all born into. We do not have to learn selfishness; it comes factory-installed. But something dramatic happens when the love of God enters a human life. Christ on the cross is God’s love displayed at full strength. When we receive Christ, we do not just receive forgiveness—we receive His love poured into our hearts. And when God first loves us, something awakens in us—we begin to love Him in return, and only then do we truly learn how to love others. Love does what no rule, ritual, or self-help program can do—it transforms us from the inside out. That is why Paul says in Galatians 5:24, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” The cross is not only the place where Jesus died—it is also the place where our old life died. His crucifixion was for us, but it is also meant to be in us. Love puts the flesh to death and raises us into new life.

God’s love is not a sentimental emotion; it is a force. It teaches us, corrects us, comforts us, and restrains us when necessary. Love pulls us away from self-worship and into Spirit-led living. That is why Paul continues in verse 25: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.” Notice—this is not automatic. We must choose to keep step, like soldiers marching in rhythm behind their commander. When we follow the Spirit’s lead, love becomes visible in how we treat others. So Paul concludes with a relational warning in verse 26: “Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.” These attitudes—pride, competitiveness, comparison—are signs that the flesh is trying to climb off the cross. When love is present, we stop stepping on each other and start walking with each other.

Leroy Lawson tells a powerful story that illustrates how this transformation happens. During World War II, retreating Italian forces sabotaged the harbor of Eritrea by sinking massive concrete-filled barges to block Allied ships. The Allies could not possibly lift the barges by raw strength. So their engineers turned to a different power. They sealed enormous fuel tanks, floated them above the submerged barges, chained them together at low tide—and waited. When the tide rose, the tanks lifted the barges effortlessly and cleared the harbor. Human strength could not do it—only the rising tide could. Lawson says this is how spiritual transformation works. We cannot lift ourselves above the pull of sin by willpower. But when we are filled with the Spirit, God lifts us. He does in us what we could never do alone. That is how love takes over. That is how freedom begins—not by striving harder, but by rising higher through the power of the Spirit.

When the lawyers and religious experts questioned Jesus, they often asked the same anxious question: “What must I do to inherit the kingdom of God?” They were looking for a checklist—some spiritual formula for earning eternal life. But in Galatians 5:21, Paul crushes any hope that sinful human effort can produce kingdom life. After listing the “works of the flesh,” he warns, “Those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Why? Because the kingdom of God is a place of purity, truth, love, and holiness—none of which can coexist with a life dominated by the flesh. The problem is not that sinners are barred from the kingdom; the problem is that sin itself is incompatible with the kingdom. Those who cling to a life of selfishness and rebellion are simply not suited for the world to come.

But the story does not end with exclusion. There is another way to live. It does not begin with self-improvement or religious achievement. It begins where the prodigal son began—in humble confession. When he finally faced himself honestly, he said, “I am no longer worthy.” That is the turning point. Christ uses God’s law to strip away our illusions of self-righteousness. The law does not save—it exposes. It shows us our condition, then drives us to grace. And grace is what God freely offers at the cross. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God did not wait for us to climb up to Him—He came down to us. That is why salvation is not achieved by works of the flesh. It is received by faith in Christ alone.

Once faith opens the door of the heart, something supernatural happens—the Spirit moves in. A new life begins, not fueled by human effort but empowered by divine presence. Paul contrasts this new life with the old in Galatians 5:22–23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” Notice the contrast—works of the flesh versus fruit of the Spirit. Works are manufactured; fruit grows. Works are human; fruit is divine. Paul uses “fruit” in the singular, not plural. He is not listing nine separate fruits. It is one fruit with many expressions—love being the root from which the others blossom. Love is the mark of true spiritual life because God Himself is love. Jesus said that all of God’s law rests on one command: love God and love others. Paul shows how that love unfolds—joy replaces empty pleasure, peace silences conflict, patience conquers irritation, kindness heals hurts, goodness defeats corruption, faithfulness withstands trials, gentleness breaks cycles of violence, and self-control ends the tyranny of self. The flesh produces chaos. The Spirit produces character. That is the difference between those who will not inherit the kingdom—and those in whom the kingdom has already begun.

Paul continues his diagnosis of human nature in Galatians 5:21 by finishing his list of the “works of the flesh” with a final wave of painful honesty: “…envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.” Just in case anyone thought they escaped the earlier list in verses 19–20, Paul widens the net. He knew how slippery the human heart can be when it comes to admitting sin—we always want to downgrade our faults or compare downward: Sure, I have issues, but at least I’m not as bad as so-and-so. Then Paul drops the word envy right next to drunkenness and orgies and closes the escape hatch. Envy? Really? That little internal grudge I carry when someone else succeeds? Yes—because sin is not measured by public scandal but by inward corruption. Jesus taught the same truth. You may never fire a gun in anger, but hatred pulls the same trigger in the heart. You may never commit adultery physically, but lust writes the script internally. Sin is not merely what we do—it is what we are without Christ: selfish, inward, and bent toward self-gratification.

Galatians 5:21 comes with a sober warning: “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” At first glance, this sounds terrifying—like Paul is saying, “If you ever commit one of these sins, you lose your salvation.” Many preachers have used this verse like a spiritual cattle prod—motivating through fear. But that interpretation would directly contradict everything Paul has been teaching in Galatians. If inheriting the kingdom depended on avoiding these sins, salvation would depend on our behavior rather than Christ’s finished work. That would mean the Judaizers were right after all—that salvation really is “Jesus plus good behavior.” Charles Spurgeon saw through that confusion when he wrote:

“If ever it should come to pass
That sheep of Christ might fall away,
My fickle, feeble soul, alas!
Would fall a thousand times a day.”

Paul is not threatening loss of salvation—he is warning about rejecting salvation by grace. To choose a life ruled by the flesh is to turn away from the transforming power of the Spirit. It is to refuse God’s love, resist God’s Spirit, and rely instead on self-righteousness or self-indulgence—two sides of the same fleshly coin. The law can expose sin, but it cannot produce love. It can restrain behavior, but it cannot change hearts. Only grace does that. Only faith in Christ brings us into the kingdom—and keeps us there. Paul has not changed subjects in this passage. He is still confronting the Galatians for drifting from grace back to law, from the Spirit back to self, from Christ’s righteousness back to their own. His warning is clear: do not go back. Do not trust the flesh. Trust Christ alone.

In the book of Galatians, Paul lays out a dramatic contrast between two ways of living: the way of the flesh and the way of the Spirit. The “flesh” is not skin and bones—it is our self-centered, sinful nature. Every human being is born with it, even if modern culture prefers to believe in the “basic goodness” of humanity. Jesus never bought that illusion. When religious people boasted about their moral performance, Jesus held up the mirror of God’s true standard. “You have heard it said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’” He reminded them—but then He pointed out that even a lustful thought breaks that law. Later He said, “You have heard it said, ‘Do not murder.’” But hatred in the heart carries the same guilt before God. That changes the conversation, does it not? Suddenly we are not comparing ourselves with others—we are standing guilty before God. The flesh does not just break rules—it breaks relationships, beginning with our relationship with God.

Paul pulls no punches in Galatians 5:19-20. He says, “The works of the flesh are evident.” You do not need a seminary degree to identify them. They parade openly in human life: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery,” and if you think you dodged those, Paul keeps going: “enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions…” Somewhere in that list, every honest person sees themselves. Maybe you have never practiced sorcery—but have you ever lost your temper or harbored jealousy? The law does not grade on a curve. Paul reminds us earlier that breaking one commandment makes us guilty of all (James says the same in James 2:10). Whoever thinks they are naturally righteous has not looked long enough in God’s mirror. The real problem is not that we occasionally sin; the real problem is that sin lives in us.

Earlier in Galatians chapter three, I used the illustration of a dentist’s mirror. That tiny stainless steel mirror helps the dentist see the decay—but it cannot remove the decay. No matter how polished it is, it has no power to heal. Its job is exposure, not transformation. That is exactly how the law functions. It reveals sin—it cannot remove it. It diagnoses the disease—it cannot deliver the cure. Paul’s list of the works of the flesh does not cleanse a single heart; it only proves we all need cleansing. Thankfully, Paul does not leave us in that chair staring helplessly at decay. At the end of verse 21, he shifts direction and invites us into another way to live—no longer by the works of the flesh but by the fruit (singular) of the Spirit. And that list begins with the most powerful word in the Christian life—love.

Living “in the Spirit” is not a mystical slogan—it is the only way to break free from the tyranny of self. Paul writes in Galatians 5:16, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” The “flesh” is not just the body, and it is not limited to sensual sins. In Paul’s vocabulary, “the flesh” is the self-centered nature we were all born with—the inner voice that constantly asks, “What do I want? What do I feel? What do I deserve?” It is life turned inward. Steven Lawson describes it well: “The flesh refers to man limited by his physical constitution, his culture, his moment in history, the impulses of biology, stimuli of the senses, instinct for self-preservation, drive for power, and lusts for self-satisfaction.” In other words, the flesh is what makes life all about me—my appetites, my cravings, my ego. Left unchecked, it always pushes us toward selfishness and destruction. It is like gravity—it never stops pulling down.

And that is why human discipline alone will never conquer the flesh. We have laws. We have therapy. We have self-help seminars, motivational posters, New Year’s resolutions, and apps that track our progress. None of them can produce real freedom from self. They may reshape behavior temporarily, but they cannot change the heart. Lawson points out that human philosophies come up empty. Freud said we are prisoners of our subconscious drives. Marx said we are controlled by economic systems. Skinner said we are conditioned by our environment. The Eagles tell us in Hotel California that we are all prisoners of our own devices. Paul respectfully steps forward with a divine rebuttal: You can be free—but only by the power of the Holy Spirit. Apart from the Spirit, freedom is an illusion. With the Spirit, freedom is a promise.

Paul explains the battle clearly in Galatians 5:17–18: “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh… to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” Every Christian knows what that means. There is a battle inside us that we did not have before we were saved. The flesh pulls us toward selfishness; the Spirit pulls us toward love. The flesh says, “me first”; the Spirit says, “serve others.” The flesh craves control; the Spirit invites surrender. The flesh produces guilt and frustration; the Spirit produces freedom. “But if you are led by the Spirit,” Paul concludes, “you are not under the law.” That is the key—not stronger rules, but a stronger relationship. We do not break free through willpower—we break free through the Spirit’s power. Or as Lawson beautifully states: “What is needed is freedom from myself—the freedom that love expresses and the Spirit grants.” When the Spirit leads, self loses its grip—and love becomes our new way of life.