Galatians 5:13-24

13My Christian friends, God has chosen you to serve him as free people. But you are still weak and human. So you are not free to do anything that you might want to do. Instead, you must serve one another, because you love each other.

14One rule brings together all the rules in God's Law. That one rule says: ‘Love other people as much as you love yourself.’

15So you must not live like wild animals. Wild animals fight and they eat each other. If you live like that, be very careful! You may destroy one another completely.

16So this is what I say: Let God's Spirit show you how to live in a good way. Then you will not do the wrong things that you may want to do, as people who are weak and human.

17The things that you want to do as a weak person are opposite to the things that God's Spirit wants. The things that God's Spirit wants are the opposite of what we want as weak people. Our own thoughts fight against what God's Spirit wants us to do. As a result, you are not free to do the things that you really want to do.

18But if God's Spirit leads you, then the rules of God's Law have no authority over you.

19Everyone knows the kinds of bad things that weak people want to do. They have sex with people that they are not married to. They do things that are bad and disgusting.

20They worship idols. They do magic to hurt people. They become enemies and they fight one another. They are jealous of other people. They become very angry. They want to please themselves and to be important. They cause trouble. They make people belong to different groups.

21They want things that belong to other people. They are drunks. They have wild parties. And they like to do many other bad things like those. So I warn you again, as I have already warned you before. People who continue to do any of those bad things will not receive good things from God. God has prepared those good things for the people who belong to his kingdom.

22But God's Spirit causes us to live in a different way. We love other people. We are happy and we have peace in our minds. We are patient, kind and good. People can trust us to do what is right.

23We respect other people and we rule ourselves properly. God's Spirit helps us to live in that way. There is no law that says these things are wrong.

24We belong to Christ. As a result, we no longer obey our wrong human thoughts. We stop doing the bad things that our thoughts want us to do. It is like we have killed those thoughts on the cross.