Commentary on Galatians 5:1, 13-25

If Galatians 3:23–29 talks about baptism as liberation from the binary prison of domination, warfare, and exclusion, chapter 5 starts with a passionate plea to stay within this precious realm of baptismal freedom and to not submit again to a yoke of slavery (5:1). In several iterations our text hammers in Paul’s ethics of liberation as the imperative to preserve the contra-factual reality of freedom by staying in line (stoichōmen; 5:25) with the Spirit rather than the Flesh and its binary law (5:13–15, 16, 18, 24–26). Spirit/pneuma is the matrix of freedom, Flesh/sarx the antagonistic sphere of (re-)enslavement. The political and spiritual, the individual and collective, are inseparably intertwined in this.

What is Flesh then?

The term Flesh is, next to law, one of the most misunderstood words in Paul’s theological vocabulary that needs to be extracted from deeply ingrained patterns of anti-body, anti-women, and anti-Earth interpretations. Paul himself describes the works of the Flesh in his list of “vices” with a clear focus on enmities, feuds, jealousy, anger, selfishness, divisions, et cetera (5:20). He mentions deadly infighting (5:15) and self-centered rivalries and competitive behavior (5:26). The New Revised Standard Version in 5:13 translates Flesh as self-indulgence (although it afterwards unfortunately reverts to “flesh”).

For this is what Flesh means: Not the physical body and its lusts (5:16–17; New King James Version) that all too often are still connected with “lower nature,” female bodies, and sexuality in particular, nor the material world and earthbound existence of humanity in a Platonic-type dualism. Rather, Flesh is the ego-driven impulse, the passions and desires (5:24) of relentless self-promotion and self-interest at the expense of or in disregard of the other/s (5:26). This is what Paul declares the Flesh crucified for those who belong to Christ (5:24; see also 2:19–20).

Closely aligned with the law of a binary hierarchical world order, Flesh as the sin-producing force of selfishness is certainly not more at home in human bodies than in human minds. To distinguish it from flesh as human physicality (or even the flesh of circumcision; for example, 6:8a, 13), I choose to capitalize “Flesh” here, parallel to the Spirit as its antagonist that transforms spirits, souls, and bodies from Flesh-driven egomania and other-obliviousness toward egalitarian community-building across binary borders and boundaries.

How to be free?

Galatians 5:13 takes up the programmatic imperative of 5:1 and reminds the Galatians of their call to freedom that is, in fact, already the new reality of their being one in Christ, together with Jews and Greeks (3:28). But what does liberation mean, if the cages of the binary law are fortified by an ironclad system of imperial control and a law that safeguards freedom as the privilege of the strong, on the backs of the weak destined to be subservient?

Paul’s approach is mind-boggling in its paradoxical power. Freedom defies the uninhibited self-indulgence of the Flesh (5:13). It is not the freedom of the slave masters above that is contingent on mass enslavement below as normalcy of the Roman world; it is not even the act of setting individual slaves free while the system of bondage persists for their less-fortunate fellow slaves. Instead, the messianic transformation in a movement of cruciform “downward mobility” goes to the very root of the binary slave–free by practicing freedom as mutual slave-li service.

“Through love become slaves to one another” (5:13): This upside-down version of freedom is tantamount to a nonviolent rebellion, an abolition movement from within. It subverts the master–slave order in a deep-reaching way from the inside out as it continuously blocks and mocks the selfish impulse that craves superiority and privilege on the back of the other. If the free do service as slaves to slaves, they become slaves and other themselves; if the slaves are served, they are, in fact, free—there then is indeed no more slave and free (3:28).

This movement from oneself to other and other to oneself makes high low and low high in a steady flow of mutuality; it is the “circulation system” of the body of Christ propelled by the Spirit as its life force. As it de-binarizes the polarities and horizontalizes the hierarchies of the existing order, it creates a diverse and dynamic One-an(d)-Otherness that constitutes the baptismal Oneness in Christ (3:28).

The law of love

Paul doesn’t speak explicitly about the political implications of messianic freedom, but his discourse on freedom versus slavery that permeates the entire letter confronts the freedom of the Roman overlords and their law throughout. The law that enables humanity truly to become free is not the metaphysical law of hierarchical binaries, nor its political implementation as the law of Caesar, but the law of a conquered and enslaved nation that was forged on their exodus-way out of another slave-house, namely Egypt (Exodus 20:1–2).

The law of Torah is fulfilled in one single commandment (en heni logo): “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (5:14; see also Leviticus 19:8). This is the ultimate invalidation of the binary law and its polarizing antagonisms between me/self and you/other. It also liberates Torah itself from the binary prison and its abusive slave role as a disciplinarian under Roman rule (3:23–25).

The love of God is not listed separately here (see also Mark 12:28–30) but coincides with the commandment and practice of neighbor-love. The cruciform God is encountered in the human other, far away from the presumptions and arrogance of imperial religion as worship of power, the supreme form of idolatry. Love as the one commandment that fulfills the entire law/Torah (5:14; also Romans 13:8) is thus the first item and common denominator in a list of concrete “ground rules” in 5:22–23 that Paul calls “fruit of the Spirit.” Followed by patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, it is first and foremost love, joy, and peace that define this catalogue of messianic “virtues” and civic code of the kingdom of God (5:21).

The contrast to the divisive and adversarial works of the Flesh in 5:19–21 could not be more obvious. Love as co-dying with Christ to the old binary-addicted self (see also 2:19–20) gives access to a new kind of joy and peace diametrically opposed both to the Roman-provided “fun” and thrill of the arena games and to the “peace” of the Pax Romana based on war and oppression.¹

The last binary

The irresolvable antithesis of Flesh/slavery versus Spirit/freedom and Paul’s polarizing language have often been misread as his reinforcement of the binary law and have kept Pauline interpretation caught in the “binary trap,” Galatians 3:28 notwithstanding. Yet for the time being, the Flesh–Spirit antithesis reflects the unavoidable coexistence and clash between the still powerful old binary world order of domination and the already present trans-binary new creation. This is the last binary that Louis Martyn called the “apocalyptic antinomy” and that eventually is meant to end the rule of the binary altogether.²

Notes

1. For a most insightful reflection on Paul’s cruciform ethics in Galatians, see Roger J. Gench, The Cross Examen: A Spirituality for Activists (Cascade Books, 2020).
2. J. Louis Martyn, ed., Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, 1st ed., The Anchor Bible 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 570–573.