day no. 13,183: the sword of the Spirit or the scalpel of men?‏

Galatians 5:1

Christ has liberated us to be free. Stand firm then and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Do everything you can to resist the urge to go back to proving your worth and value by doing something great for God. God values you as much as He does Jesus if you have faith in Him. That’s it. If you are willing to be simple and have faith, you will have to value what God values instead of valuing what you strive so hard for outside of Jesus. If this was once or currently is you, be on guard against reverting being that way again on this side of the Cross of Jesus. Be careful to root out and kill any part of you that seeks now to earn what you have been already been given by faith.

Galatians 5:5

For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

We came to Jesus and were adopted into the family of God by our faith in Jesus and the Spirit’s work in us to believe Him alone.

Galatians 5:12

I wish those who are disturbing you might also get themselves castrated!

It’s not every day an apostle tosses out a statement like this, eh?

Paul is running out the heretical argument to its logical conclusion: if cutting some of your penis off makes you more holy, would not cutting the whole thing off make you even holier. If circumcision is JV, castration is varsity.

Clearly not. We are made right with God by our faith in Jesus, not through works of the flesh (here represented quite literally as a work of literal flesh)

Galatians 5:13

For you were called to be free, brothers; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love.

So one might conclude from his strong words earlier that it doesn’t matter then what we do as long as we have faith in Jesus because nothing else matters.

Hit pause on that.

Paul didn’t say that everything else doesn’t matter, he just clarified that nothing else saves except the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Christ did not set us free from sin so that we could serve ourselves.

Galatians 5:25

Since we live by the Spirit, we must also follow the Spirit.

We declare that by the Spirit alone do we have life.

Since the Spirit is the source of our lives, should not He also be the Ruler, Guide and Comforter of our livelihood?

That’s what they call rhetorical my friends.