Chapter 5

Stand fast, and do not let yourselves be caught again in the yoke of slavery.

The word of Paul is your warrant for this; if you are for being circumcised, Christ is of no value to you at all.

Once again I would warn anyone who is accepting circumcision that he thereby engages himself to keep all the precepts of the law.

You who look to the law for your justification have cancelled your bond with Christ, you have forfeited grace.

All our hope of justification lies in the spirit; it rests on our faith;

once we are in Christ, circumcision means nothing, and the want of it means nothing; the faith that finds its expression in love is all that matters.

Till now, you had been shaping your course well; who is it that has come between you and your loyalty to the truth?

Not he who called you; this pressure comes from elsewhere.

It takes but a little leaven to leaven the whole batch.

I am fully confident in the Lord that you will be of the same mind with me, leaving the disturbers of your peace, be they who they may, to answer for it.

As for myself, brethren, if it is true that I preach the need of circumcision, why am I persecuted? If I did, the preaching of the cross would no longer give offence.

I would rather they should lose their own manhood, these authors of your unrest.

Yes, brethren, freedom claimed you when you were called. Only, do not let this freedom give a foothold to corrupt nature; you must be servants still, serving one another in a spirit of charity.

After all, the whole of the law is summed up in one phrase, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;

if you are always backbiting and worrying each other, it is to be feared you will wear each other out in the end.

Let me say this; learn to live and move in the spirit; then there is no danger of your giving way to the impulses of corrupt nature.

The impulses of nature and the impulses of the spirit are at war with one another; either is clean contrary to the other, and that is why you cannot do all that your will approves.

It is by letting the spirit lead you that you free yourselves from the yoke of the law.

It is easy to see what effects proceed from corrupt nature; they are such things as adultery, impurity, incontinence, luxury,

idolatry, witchcraft, feuds, quarrels, jealousies, outbursts of anger, rivalries, dissensions, factions,

spite, murder, drunkenness, and debauchery. I warn you, as I have warned you before, that those who live in such a way will not inherit God’s kingdom.

Whereas the spirit yields a harvest of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, forbearance,

gentleness, faith, courtesy, temperateness, purity.4 No law can touch lives such as these;

those who belong to Christ have crucified nature, with all its passions, all its impulses.

Since we live by the spirit, let the spirit be our rule of life;

we must not indulge vain ambitions, envying one another and provoking one another to envy.