Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Galatians · About this commentary
Walk by the Spirit
Galatians 5:16-18
16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh. · WEB
The command is a direction of travel rather than a program, and the conflict described is real enough that neither side simply wins.
Walk by the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. The verb is the ordinary word for going about one's daily life, and the instruction is positive: the flesh is not defeated by being attacked directly but by walking somewhere.
Verse 17 describes the conflict honestly, and it is worth not softening. The flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another. Two active parties, each set against the other, in the same person.
The result clause is the difficult part: that you may not do the things that you desire. Whichever desire is meant — the sentence allows both — the effect is frustration. Nothing here promises that the walk is easy or the pull stops, and that realism is what makes the letter's optimism credible elsewhere.
Verse 18 states the consequence, and it repeats a phrase the letter has used of custody: if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
The preposition is the same as in the custodian passage — under a guardian, under the law Galatians 3:25. What is denied is the relation of a minor to his escort, not the validity of the standard, and the sentence sits five verses from a quotation of Leviticus as the law's fulfillment Galatians 5:14 and six from the observation that against the Spirit's fruit there is no law Galatians 5:23. A man led by the Spirit is not being escorted, because he is going the right way of his own accord.
settled What this mark means