Galatians 5
Galatians 5 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
Galatians 5 is where Paul's whole argument comes to a point. For four chapters he has insisted that Christians are not saved by keeping the law of Moses but by trusting Christ. Now he answers the obvious next question: if the law no longer binds us, what stops us from doing whatever we want? His answer turns on two hinges.
The first hinge is verse 13. Paul tells the Galatians they "were called for freedom" — but freedom with a purpose. It is not a license to indulge the flesh; it is the freedom to "be servants to one another" through love. In other words, Christian liberty points outward, toward the neighbor, not inward toward the self. This was not a hypothetical worry. As William Barclay notes, some early Christians reasoned that if the law was ended, there were no laws at all, confusing liberty with license — exactly the misreading Paul heads off here.
The second hinge is the list of "works of the flesh" in verses 19–21. Modern readers tend to hear "flesh" and think only of sexual sin. But look at Paul's actual list: alongside immorality and drunkenness stand enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, and envy. The majority of these are not private bodily sins at all — they are the sins that wreck communities.
Against all that, Paul sets the "fruit of the Spirit": love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Notice that these, too, are mostly relational. The chapter is not finally about rule-keeping versus rule-breaking. It is about two ways of living together — one driven by self-assertion that tears a church apart, and one grown by the Spirit that holds it together.
What scholars say
In the first excerpt, Barclay answers a question modern readers rarely think to ask — whether "sins of the flesh" means only sexual sin — by pointing to the breadth of Paul's list in Galatians 5:19–21; in the second, he describes early Christians who twisted "the law is ended" into an excuse for self-indulgence, the very distortion Paul warns against in Galatians 5:13.
“T HE basic commandment in this passage is that Christians should abstain from fleshly desires. It is of the greatest importance that we should see what Peter means by this. The phrases sins of the flesh and fleshly desires have acquired a much narrower meaning in modern usage. For us, they usually mean sexual sin; but in the New Testament sins of the flesh are understood in a much wider sense than that. Paul’s list of the sins of the flesh in Galatians 5:19–21 includes ‘fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these’. There are far more than bodily sins here.”
“They were almost certainly people who argued on these lines. (1) The law is ended; therefore, there are no laws, and we are entitled to do what we like. They confused Christian liberty with un-Christian licence. They were the very kind of people whom Paul urged not to use their liberty as an opportunity for self-indulgence (Galatians 5:13). (2) They probably argued that the body is evil anyway and that people could do what they liked with their bodies because it did not matter. (3) They probably argued that Christians were so completely defended by grace that they could do anything and come to no harm.”
What it means for you
Galatians 5 resists a comfortable, private reading. It is easy to check ourselves against the obvious vices and feel safe. But Paul's list puts quarreling, jealousy, factionalism, and resentment in the same column as drunkenness and immorality — which means the sharp word here, the grudge nursed there, and the appetite for taking sides are all "works of the flesh." The honest question this chapter asks is not only "What am I doing in private?" but "What is my presence doing to my community?" Freedom in Christ is measured by whether it makes us servants of the people around us — at home, at work, and in church.
Galatians 5 in context
Galatians is Paul's most urgent letter, written to churches being pressured to add law-keeping (especially circumcision) to faith in Christ. Chapters 1–4 defend the gospel of grace and Paul's authority to preach it. Chapter 5 opens with the summons to stand firm in freedom (5:1), warns against returning to the law (5:2–12), then pivots at 5:13 to how freedom should actually be used. The contrast between the works of the flesh (5:19–21) and the fruit of the Spirit (5:22–23) sets up chapter 6, where Paul applies it all: bear one another's burdens.
Passages we cover in this chapter