Chuck Larsen

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.

Galatians 5:13 ends with a clear reminder: freedom in Christ is not freedom to sin—it is freedom to love. Paul writes, “through love serve one another,” and in the very next verse he shows what that looks like in action: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14). Paul quotes Leviticus the same way Jesus did—highlighting love as the ultimate fulfillment of God’s moral will. He has spent most of Galatians smashing legalism to pieces, insisting believers are free from the Mosaic Law as a means of righteousness. Yet suddenly he uses the word “serve,” the very word used for slavery. Freedom and servitude? How can both be true? Martin Luther captured the tension perfectly: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” That is not a contradiction—it is a revolution. In Christ, we are freed from earning God’s approval so we can freely give His love to others.

The world thinks freedom means doing whatever we want—following our appetites and chasing self-fulfillment. But that kind of “freedom” always ends in bondage. Paul warns believers not to let the flesh—the old self-centered nature—take over, because when it does, sin reigns like a dictator. What begins as “freedom to indulge” becomes slavery to addiction, lust, selfishness, anger, pride, and eventually despair. True freedom is not the removal of responsibility but the embrace of righteous responsibility. Leroy Lawson quotes historian Edith Hamilton, who observed that when ancient Athens pursued “freedom from responsibility,” it collapsed from within. That is exactly what Paul is saying. When people live only for themselves, they are not free—they are prisoners chained by their own appetites.

Paul gives the grim result of self-centered living in verse 15: “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” When self-interest rules a church, marriage, family, or community, destruction always follows. Love does not bite. Love does not devour. Love does not compete—it serves. Love builds, heals, and blesses. Jon Courson offers great advice to anyone who thinks a life of holiness sounds boring: “If I am not going to party anymore… what am I going to do? Serve one another! Pour yourself into people… You will find that talking to them about eternal issues will be more exciting than anything you have ever done.” He is right. Love is not just the fulfillment of the law. It is the pathway to joy. The world defines freedom as living for yourself. God defines freedom as loving others. One leads to loneliness. The other leads to life.

Paul does not mince words when it comes to legalism. In Galatians 5:12, he drops what may be the most shocking statement in the entire New Testament: “I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!” That line would get a preacher fired from most churches today—and probably banned from Christian radio forever. But Paul is not being crude for shock value. He is deadly serious. Legalism was not just a theological nuisance—it was soul poison. These false teachers were insisting that Gentile believers had to be circumcised in order to be truly saved. Paul’s response? If cutting a little makes you holy, why not go all the way like the pagan priests of Cybele in nearby Phrygia who castrated themselves in religious frenzy? Maxie Dunnam notes that the Galatians knew exactly what Paul was referencing. His sarcasm was not subtle—it was a scalpel, cutting deep to expose the absurdity of salvation by ritual.

Yet, almost as if he realizes how sharp his tone has become, Paul shifts immediately in verse 13. He softens his voice with a pastoral word: “Brothers.” You can almost hear him take a breath. His goal was never to embarrass the Galatians but to rescue them. “You were called to freedom, brothers,” he continues. That is the heart of Galatians—freedom in Christ. But Paul quickly clarifies: freedom is not a license for selfishness. “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh,” he warns, “but through love serve one another.” Legalism enslaves the soul. But libertinism—using grace as a hall pass for sin—corrupts it. Grace frees us from the chains of performance, but not so we can turn around and live like rebels. Real freedom is not the ability to do whatever we want—it is the power to do what pleases God.

Some people panic at the idea of radical grace. “Won’t people just go sin crazy?” they ask. But here is the truth: people sin whether they believe in grace alone or grace plus works. Adding rules never cures the heart; it only hides the disease. Sin does not flow from too much grace; it flows from too little dependence on the Holy Spirit. During our failures, we are not “carried away by grace”—we are carried away by self. That is why Grant Richison wisely says, “The Christian life is freedom from sin, not freedom to sin. If we use grace as an excuse to sin, we do not understand the essence of freedom through grace. God never issues a license to commit sin.” Grace does not make sin safe. Grace makes holiness possible. And that is a truth Paul would defend—even if it took a shocking sentence to get our attention.

In Galatians 5:10, Paul pauses from his intense warnings and offers something surprising—confidence. Not confidence in human nature, not confidence in religious systems, but confidence “in the Lord” that the Galatians would return to the truth of grace and not fall for the trap of salvation by works. He writes, “I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is.” Paul knew exactly what legalism does—it preys on sincere believers and slowly steals their joy. But he also knew that God holds false teachers accountable. The gospel counterfeits who preach “Christ plus works” may look impressive now—respected, disciplined, and polished—but Jesus warned that some very religious people will hear the most terrifying words in eternity: “Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you.” It is not works-based people who know God—it is grace-based people who know God.

In verse eleven, Paul points out why legalists hated his message: he did not preach a politically correct gospel. He preached the cross. “If I still preach circumcision,” he asks, “why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed.” The cross is offensive—not to sinners looking for forgiveness, but to religious people looking for credit. Legalists love ladders—steps to climb, rules to follow, standards to achieve. The cross kicks over the ladder and says, “You cannot climb to God. God came down to you.” That is why legalists persecuted Paul. They were allergic to grace because it shatters the illusion of self-righteousness. The gospel does not flatter human pride; it exposes it.

We often try to compromise to avoid conflict. We tell ourselves that a little mixture of grace and works can keep everyone happy. But mixing grace and works is like mixing gasoline and orange juice—it ruins both. Grant Richison explains it clearly: “Christ’s cross plus anything is legalism.”Christ plus tears, Christ plus communion, Christ plus catechism, Christ plus charity, Christ plus moral effort—all of it is religious math gone wrong. Legalism is not just wrong—it is a direct insult to Christ’s sacrifice. It says His cross was not enough. Legalism is pride wearing religious clothing. Grace, on the other hand, makes no room for pride. It brings us to our knees, empty-handed, where the only thing we can say is, “Jesus paid it all.” The cross will always offend legalism because grace will always offend human pride. But it is at the foot of that offensive cross that sinners find freedom.