Galatians 5:13-26

2. But this freedom from circumcision, legalism, and ritualism must not pass into license, Galatians 5:13-26.

Now follows a beautiful section on Christian morals. Absolved from old stereotype forms, let your Christian holiness be based on pure and simple right. Yet not natural and economic rectitude merely, but love, under aid of the divine Spirit, will lift you into the region of a divine purity. And then St. Paul draws us, under the contrast of spirit and flesh, two opposing pictures. The one is the summation of Christian virtues, the other of fleshly vices. Look first on this picture and then on that, and see how a true Christian morality in the midst of heathenism is shaped, and how a true Christian life may be lived. Ages may progress, civilization may advance, the same virtues may be variously modified, but the virtues themselves are eternal, and the character formed by them is truly immortal.