More Joy Ministries
Full Bible Study
Paul tells believers to walk in the Spirit because the flesh continues to oppose Him.
The command assumes an ongoing Christian responsibility. Receiving the Spirit doesn't make every desire, reaction, and habit automatically good.
Galatians 5 names the works of the flesh with uncomfortable specificity. The list includes sexual sin and idolatry alongside hatred, strife, envy, and divisive conduct. A congregation cannot excuse the latter because it loudly condemns the former.
Then Paul describes the Spirit's fruit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.
Those qualities have a setting in the chapter. Believers are called to serve one another in love and warned against biting and devouring each other.
The fruit should therefore be visible in actual relationships. Patience has to survive an interruption. Gentleness has to govern a correction. Temperance has to restrain a desire. Love has to seek another person's good.
Growth doesn't mean every quality becomes perfect at once. It does mean that pride over one apparent strength cannot excuse a settled refusal to address another area.
“If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” Galatians 5:25 KJV.
The next chapter begins with restoring a fallen person in meekness and bearing one another's burdens. Paul carries the teaching straight into the way Christians treat a struggling brother.
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