Big Idea: You are free in Christ — not to walk in sin, but to walk in the Spirit.

When we moved out to the country, we inherited something I knew nothing about: cows. And what I’ve learned quickly is that cows need fences. One morning I discovered one of ours had gotten out through a downed section we hadn’t noticed. I spent the whole morning taking the rest of it down just to get her back across, then repairing it. And the whole time I kept thinking — that cow is not happier out there. She was lost, screaming for her mother, with no food, no water, and a county road nearby that could have killed her. The fence wasn’t there to trap her. It was there to protect her and keep her exactly where she had everything she needed.

A lot of us think about freedom the same way that cow thought about that fence. No boundaries. No limits. Go wherever you want, whenever you want, do whatever you want. But Paul has a question for anyone who thinks that way: is that actually freedom? Or is that just a cow standing in the middle of a road telling herself she’s never been more free in her life?

A Warning About Freedom (Galatians 5:13-15)

Last week Paul told the Galatians that for freedom Christ has set them free. Now, in the very next breath, he gives a warning about it. The freedom God called you into is real — but don’t use it as an opportunity for the flesh. Spurgeon said it plainly: liberty from sin is not liberty to sin. Legalism demands responsibility without freedom; license grants freedom without responsibility. Both miss the point entirely.

I got my driver’s license and felt the rush of that freedom immediately. Leaving church one Sunday morning I gunned it to 55 mph before I ever hit the main road — right past a cop who was sitting there specifically to clock people leaving the parking lot. He pulled me over. Every single person from that church drove by and saw me. And the last car to pass was my parents’. My dad got out, walked right past the officer, came to my window, and held out his hand for the keys. I had liberty. I did not have a license to do whatever I wanted with it.

Paul says the right use of Christian freedom is to serve one another through love — and he uses the word for slave. You have been set free from sin so that you can freely bind yourself to one another in love. Martin Luther captured it perfectly: a Christian is perfectly free, subject to none — and a perfectly dutiful servant of all. That is not a contradiction. That is the gospel at work. When we stop living that way, Paul warns, we bite and devour one another — and he isn’t being poetic. He means it.

The War Within (Galatians 5:16-21)

So how do we actually do this? Paul’s answer is not a longer list of rules. It is a person. Walk by the Spirit. And notice — verse 16 is one command and one promise, not two commands. The command is: walk with the Spirit. The promise is: and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Your job is not to defeat sin. Your job is to walk. When you walk with Him, He handles what you never could on your own.

That walking looks like a young son following his father everywhere — studying how he moves, imitating every step, until years later he looks just like him. That is what walking in the Spirit is: staying in step with the Holy Spirit, letting Him lead and direct, growing slowly to look more like the Father we are following.

The alternative is the works of the flesh, and Paul lists seventeen examples. What is striking is that the longest category on the list is not sexual sin — it’s relational sin. Enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy. Almost half the list. That is not an accident. Paul just told them to love one another, and here is what it looks like when they don’t. And he closes with a sobering line: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Every one of us deserves that verdict. Which is exactly why the next two words matter so much.

But God.

That is the whole gospel in two words. God, rich in mercy, even when we were dead in our sin, made us alive together with Christ by grace. The weight of verse 21 is real — and the grace of God is bigger.

The Way of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-26)

Paul lists the works of the flesh in the plural. But when he turns to the Spirit, he uses the singular: the fruit of the Spirit. One fruit, not nine. This is not a spiritual gift that gets distributed differently to different people. It is a single, unified reality that the Spirit produces in every believer who walks with Him — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You do not get to claim patience and opt out of kindness. The Spirit grows all of it, together, in you, as you walk with Him.

The Puritan John Owen said it as plainly as it can be said: be killing sin, or it will be killing you. That is exactly verse 24. Those who belong to Christ are presently and continuously crucifying the flesh. Sin never fully dies on this side of heaven — it will raise its ugly head again no matter how long you have been walking with Jesus. When it does, you do not give it CPR. You crush it.

Applying It

How is your love going toward others? Jesus said the world will know we are His disciples by our love for one another. Take inventory. Is there a name that came to mind as you read this — someone you have been short-tempered with, someone whose calls you are not returning, someone your heart is not warm toward? That name is not a coincidence. That may be the Spirit showing you exactly where He wants to grow fruit. The solution is not to try harder. It is to walk closer — to stop and ask God to fill you with what you cannot manufacture on your own.

How is your sin-killing going? Most of us do not lose the fight to sin in public. We lose it in private, when we tell ourselves the oldest lie in the book — no one will ever know. Name your sin out loud to another believer this week. Not to be shamed, but because a sin you only ever confess in private has a way of looking dead for a while and then coming right back. Bring it into the light and let someone help you keep a boot on that serpent’s head.

Have you had a “but God” moment? If not — if you are still hustling and hoping, still trying to be good enough — you can walk out of today resting in the finished work of Jesus Christ. He bore the weight of God’s wrath for your sin, so that you could receive what you do not deserve, because He took what He did not deserve. Turn from your sin. Confess Jesus as Lord and Savior. And follow Him.

You are free in Christ. Not to do whatever you want. Free to walk with the One who is making you into something you could never become on your own.