One Body, One Boast

A Few Thoughts to Consider

Do you struggle to get along with other Christians?

In Galatians 5, the Apostle Paul is facing an issue of disunity among the believers. He is approaching the end of his admonitions to a church that has fallen prey to a works-based theology. They were a church on the verge of jumping off of the back of Christ and entering under the Mosaic Covenant that Christ had come to fulfill.

In Verse 1, Paul pleads with his readers not to enter back into this yoke of slavery. He reinforces in Verse 13 that they are called to freedom. He then repeats the teaching of Jesus in verse 14 by stating, “For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself.” He then makes this statement in Verse 15 that summarizes the tension at stake. Paul states, “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.”

Paul realizes the seriousness of this situation. He understands the real issue at play is not between different groups but a battle between the flesh and the Spirit. This issue is so serious that it threatens to undo all of the work he and the other apostles had sought to accomplish in the churches of Galatia. It is out of this concern that Paul outlines a solution to unity in the body of Christ. He wants to give his readers the secret to living a life in unity with other believers.

What is this secret? Paul gives it to us in verses 16-18 when he says, ¹⁶ “I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. ¹⁷ For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”

While the word translated flesh (sarx) “was originally used by Greeks to refer to the soft, fleshy parts of the body,”^[1] the meaning changed and came to mean the “material part of a person.”^[2] Thus, as Everett Harris notes, flesh “came to mean all the evil that man is and is capable of apart from the intervention of God’s grace in his life.”[3]

The word Spirit (pneuma) generally refers to wind, air, breath, or life. Harris adds, “The Spirit, in many characteristic passages, is thus the presence of God in the man, through which fellowship with God is made possible and power given for winning the warfare against sin in the soul.”^[4]  

Even though Paul is addressing believers, he acknowledges they must put off the desires of the flesh. There is this constant pull on their lives to act out on fleshly lusts. This temptation never goes away. But the solution to this tension is not found in trying harder. It is found in walking and being led by the Spirit.