Chapter 5

¹This is the freedom with which Christ has freed us. So stand firm in it, and do not get under a yoke of slavery again.

²Why, I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ can do nothing for you. ³I insist again to any man who lets himself be circumcised, that he is under obligation to obey the whole Law. ⁴You people who propose to be made upright by law have finished with Christ; you have lost your hold upon God’s favor. ⁵But we, by the Spirit, through faith wait for the uprightness we hope for. ⁶For in union with Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor the want of it counts for anything, but only faith acting through love.

⁷You were making such progress! Who has stopped your obeying the truth? ⁸That kind of persuasion never came from him who called you! ⁹A little yeast will make all the dough rise. ¹⁰I am confident in the Lord that you will not take a different view. The man who is unsettling you will have to pay the penalty for it, no matter who he is. ¹¹And I, brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? If that is the case, the cross has ceased to be an obstacle, I suppose! ¹²I wish the people who are upsetting you would go on, and have themselves emasculated!

¹³For you, brothers, have been called to freedom; only do not make your freedom an excuse for the physical, but in love be slaves to one another. ¹⁴For the whole Law is summed up in one saying: “You must love your neighbor as you do yourself.” ¹⁵But if you bite one another and eat one another, take care, or you will be destroyed by one another.

¹⁶I mean this: Live by the Spirit, and then you will not indulge your physical cravings. ¹⁷For the physical cravings are against the Spirit, and the cravings of the Spirit are against the physical; the two are in opposition, so that you cannot do anything you please. ¹⁸But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not subject to law. ¹⁹The things our physical nature does are clear enough—immorality, impurity, licentiousness, ²⁰idolatry, sorcery, enmity, quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party-spirit, ²¹envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you as I did before that people who do such things will have no share in the Kingdom of God. ²²But what the Spirit produces is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, self-control. There is no law against such things! ²⁴Those who belong to Jesus the Christ have crucified the physical nature with its propensities and cravings.

²⁵If we live by the Spirit, let us be guided by the Spirit. ²⁶Let us not in our vanity challenge one another or envy one another.