Galatians 5

I really like this part of the New Testament. You won't hear a lot of preaching from the first part of the chapter because it is about being free from the slavery of religion. That is not good news for most of the corporate churches because they rely to some degree on keeping adherents conscious of certain traditions, rules and arbitrary behaviors.

As I have said, corporate church today is like the body politic: More concerned about staying in power than in doing what is right.

The message of this section of Scripture if fantastically liberating. Don't be bound by rules; you are free. Don't use freedom as an excuse or license, but rather live by the Spirit in freedom (as opposed to living by rules in legalism).

There is a cool Greek wordplay used verses 7-10. The same Greek root is used to build 3 words that are shown as contrasting points of view:

vs. 7 "obeying" is peithesthai

vs. 8 "persuasion" is peismone

vs. 10 "I am confident" is pepoitha

Lastly, there is an beautiful truth that is contained in the listing of the "fruit of the Spirit" in verses 22 and 23. This listed is recited without thought as the exhaustive list of the fruit of the Spirit as if it were some magical mantra. "Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."

But there is a coolness of the Greek language that is not present in most translations (in fact, none that I have ever seen). The beginning of verse 22 is actually, "The fruit of the Spirit produces . . ." That is different from "The fruit of the Spirit is . . ." Curious difference that tells me the phrase fruit of the Spirit may actually refer to something other than the 9 qualities that are listed.

Also, there is a punctuation issue in the list of 9 qualities. Instead of merely being a list, the Greek places an emphasis on love. So a better English rendering might be this:

"The fruit of the Spirit produces love: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."

Now that is interesting. Love is over all - that point is made clearly in other areas of Scripture (and even earlier in Galatians 5).

So could we really be reading a statement that the fruit of the Spirit produces love, which in turn manifests itself in these qualities.? Are the 8 following qualities really just more tangible or visible expressions of love, which is the mark that the fruit of the Spirit is within us? Is love defined by these 8 qualities?

Sorry to blow-up the traditional mantra . . . but we could use some real thought instead of blind repitition.