NOTES for Gal 5:13

For Paul the expression 'spiritual life' has a very concrete meaning. From the beginning, the human being was intended by God for spiritual life. The pledge of this purpose was the 'breath of life' that God 'breathed' into the human being at creation. In every other respect, the human being is the same kind of nature as any other; his physiology and psyche do not differ in principle from those of higher animals, for example from those of primates. But the 'breath of life' changes everything: it is nothing other than God's presence opened to the human being.

And through Christ something still much greater can be opened to the human being: the Kingdom and its breath, which can unite with the 'breath of life.' All this is spiritual life in the proper sense of the word: the action in a person of God's breath and the breath of the Kingdom. But how far the 'breath of life' will determine human life, and whether and how far the breath of the Kingdom will be present in it, depends on the person himself. According to God's plan, all this was meant to prevail in human life, determining its quality, the quality of that stream of existence which in the Bible is called the 'soul.' After the fall, however, the situation changed; in the stream of human life, nature prevailed over spirit.

The main task of all who sought spiritual life after the fall became returning to the state in which God's breath would again determine the course of human life. For a Christian the issue must be not only God's 'breath of life,' but also the breath of the Kingdom, by which every Christian lives, if, of course, he is a Christian not only in name. The Torah serves precisely the attainment of this goal, above all, of course, as the inner Torah, as the spiritual and moral imperative determining human life from within, not as a system of prescriptions regulating it from outside.

That same imperative prompts a person to build relationships with God and with neighbors, relationships of love, the only ones compatible with genuine spiritual life. Then sin becomes simply unthinkable; it can have no place in a person's life if that life is determined by the breath of the Kingdom. Then no religious prescriptions, no external rules, are needed by the person anymore. Otherwise they will not help anyway, because even keeping the most correct prescriptions changes nothing in itself if the person does not change inwardly. This is what the apostle reminds his readers.

Continuing the theme of the Torah, Paul writes to the Galatian Christians that refusing circumcision does not mean refusing the Torah at all. He reminds them of a well-known rabbinic saying, which the Savior Himself quoted more than once: love your neighbor as yourself, and you may consider that you have fulfilled the Torah (v. 14). Freedom in our world, not yet transformed, is only a potential; it can be used for good or for evil. In the Kingdom, however, freedom is not only a possibility but its realization, the embodiment of love that every relationship in the Kingdom becomes, if it truly belongs to the Kingdom. It is no accident that the apostle speaks of love as the only right use of freedom and, for Christians, the only possible use of freedom (v. 13). He calls the Galatian Christians to the simplest and at the same time most difficult thing: to life in the Kingdom, to walking by the Spirit (vv. 16-17).

The apostle reminds the Galatian church of the same thing he had said more than once to other churches: in love is the whole fullness of the Torah. Love is the very foundation of the Kingdom, the substance that permeates everything there, including all the relationships that bind its inhabitants to God and to one another. The Torah ceases to be a fence protecting from sin; its protective function is no longer needed in the Kingdom. Instead another function appears, one almost unused in our world, which has not yet been fully transformed: it becomes the form that allows the love permeating the Kingdom to take shape and quality. Paul does not list the works of the spirit and the works of the flesh in such detail by accident, setting them against each other (vv. 19-28). He wants to remind his readers that the system of relationships among people forms a definite environment, and that environment can be formed either according to the laws of our world, not yet transformed, or according to the laws of the Kingdom. He calls the Galatian Christians to make the formation of an environment living by the laws of the Kingdom their chief task. This, and not playing religious games, is truly spiritual work, work worthy of the inhabitants of the Kingdom.

Usually we think that freedom is something that can be given to a person. One can allow him to be free from one or another requirement of the law, from obligations to behave or think in a certain way. One can allow a person to be as he is. One can give a person liberty to act in his own way. Yet, judging by the words of the apostle Paul read today, this is a human notion that confuses freedom with permissiveness.

"You were called to freedom, brothers," says the apostle. Therefore, for him freedom is an ascetic task to which the Almighty calls us. And this freedom means above all the primacy of the spirit over the flesh. The apostle says that a person's slavery, the condition opposite to freedom, consists in his inability to resist the desires of the flesh. One way of resisting this slavery is the law, but even it does not give a person freedom; it only obliges us to resist the base principle that enslaves us.

But, the apostle continues, if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. A simple logical chain thus brings us to the thought that the essence of freedom is to be led by the Spirit. This is the only thing that always provides us with the possibility of responsible moral choice. And what is at stake here is not permission to make such a choice, but the existence of a real alternative. If you are not led by the Spirit of God, you are not able to choose the truth, and your paths, though paved with good intentions, nevertheless lead to destruction.