As soon as I saw that they were not walking uprightly in the spirit of the Good News, I said to Peter, before them all, "If you, though you are a Jew, live as a Gentile does, and not as a Jew, how can you make the Gentiles follow Jewish customs?

Answer me this one question, "Is it on the ground of your obedience to the Law that you received the Spirit, or is it because, when you heard, you believed?"

Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now going to reach perfection through what is external?

He who gives you His Spirit and works miracles among you--does He do so on the ground of your obedience to the Law, or is it the result of your having heard and believed:

Our freedom has been thus purchased in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing belonging to Abraham may come upon the nations, so that through faith we may receive the promised Spirit.

And because you are sons, God has sent out the Spirit of His Son to enter your hearts and cry "Abba! our Father!"

Yet just as, at that time, the child born in the common course of nature persecuted the one whose birth was due to the power of the Spirit, so it is now.

*We* have not, for through the Spirit we wait with longing hope for an acceptance with God which is to come through faith.

You however, brethren, were called to freedom. Only do not turn your freedom into an excuse for giving way to your lower natures; but become bondservants to one another in a spirit of love.

This then is what I mean. Let your lives be guided by the Spirit, and then you will certainly not indulge the cravings of your lower natures.

For the cravings of the lower nature are opposed to those of the Spirit, and the cravings of the Spirit are opposed to those of the lower nature; because these are antagonistic to each other, so that you cannot do everything to which you are inclined.

But if the Spirit is leading you, you are not subject to Law.

The Spirit, on the other hand, brings a harvest of love, joy, peace; patience towards others, kindness, benevolence;

If we are living by the Spirit's power, let our conduct also be governed by the Spirit's power.

Brethren, if anybody be detected in any misconduct, you who are spiritual should restore such a one in a spirit of meekness. And let each of you keep watch over himself, lest he also fall into temptation.

He who sows in the field of his lower nature, will from that nature reap destruction; but he who sows to serve the Spirit will from the Spirit reap the Life of the Ages.