What are the ‘works of the flesh’ vs ‘fruit of the Spirit’?
Question 04043
Galatians 5:16-25 contains one of the most practically important passages in Paul’s letters. In a single sustained argument, he sets out two contrasting ways of living: life driven by the flesh, and life shaped by the Spirit. The contrast is not between the irreligious and the religious. It runs through the middle of every believer’s experience. Paul is writing to Christians, describing a conflict that every born-again person knows from the inside.
The Nature of the Conflict
Paul is unambiguous that this is a genuine, ongoing war: “the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Galatians 5:17). The two are not merely different options a person might choose between on a good day. They are actively in opposition. Where the flesh presses one direction, the Spirit presses the other.
What Paul calls “the flesh” is not the physical body as such. The body is not evil in the biblical view. The Greek term sarx (σάρξ) in this context refers to fallen human nature, the inherited orientation toward self that persists even in regenerate believers. It is the impulse that instinctively turns inward, resists God’s authority, and seeks gratification outside of God’s revealed will. Crucially, regeneration does not eradicate the flesh. It creates a new nature within the believer, but the old nature remains active, pressing its claims, and must be continuously put to death (Romans 8:13).
The Works of the Flesh
Paul calls the flesh’s outputs “works” — the Greek is erga (ἔργα), the ordinary word for deeds or actions. This is deliberate. What the flesh produces is the result of its own striving, its own effort in the wrong direction. The list Paul provides in Galatians 5:19-21 covers four broad areas of human life.
Sexual sin heads the list: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality” (5:19). These terms, porneia (πορνεία), akatharsia (ἀκαθαρσία), and aselgeia (ἀσέλγεια), move from the act to the internal condition to the brazen, shameless expression of it. The flesh, left to itself, is not merely drawn toward sexual sin but moves toward an increasingly uninhibited expression of it.
Religious corruption follows: “idolatry, sorcery” (5:20). The flesh does not only produce irreligion. It produces perverted religion — the worship of false gods, the attempt to manipulate spiritual powers. This is a sobering reminder that religious energy generated by the flesh is not spiritually neutral. It is actively opposed to God.
Relational breakdown occupies the middle of the list: “enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy” (5:20-21). The sheer length of this section is striking. The flesh is extraordinarily productive in destroying human relationships. Churches know this from painful experience. What often tears congregations apart is not dramatic doctrinal heresy but the flesh’s relational works, petty in origin and devastating in effect.
The list closes with excess: “drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (5:21). Paul adds that last phrase deliberately, signalling that his list is representative rather than exhaustive. The flesh is inventive. He does not attempt to catalogue every expression of it.
The Fruit of the Spirit
What the Spirit produces, Paul calls fruit, not works. The Greek is karpos (καρπός), and it is significant that the noun is singular. The nine qualities listed are not nine separate fruits, as though a believer might receive some but not others. They form a single, unified harvest. Where the Spirit is genuinely working, something of each is present.
“Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (5:22-23). The ordering is worth noting. Love heads the list, and this is consistent with Paul’s wider argument in both Galatians and 1 Corinthians, where love is the supreme expression of Spirit-shaped life. What follows love in the list are not independent virtues so much as different facets of love’s expression. Joy is love’s response to God’s goodness. Peace is love’s relational atmosphere. Patience is love’s persistence under pressure.
None of these qualities can be manufactured by human effort. This is precisely Paul’s point. “Against such things there is no law” (5:23) — no external code can produce them, and no legal compliance can substitute for them. They are the Spirit’s produce, grown in the believer’s life as the Spirit is given genuine space to work. A believer who is walking by the Spirit will find these qualities emerging, sometimes gradually, sometimes in ways that surprise them, because the Spirit is actively at work in them “both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
The Crucifixion of the Flesh
Paul’s language for the believer’s relationship to the flesh is not gradualist. “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (5:24). The crucifixion of the flesh is decisive and past tense in its foundational reality — it happened at conversion. But crucifixion was not instantaneous. It was a prolonged and painful death. Paul’s point is that the Christian life involves the ongoing outworking of that decisive break, refusing to let the flesh back into the driving seat, refusing to “make provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14).
So, now what?
The works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit are not equal and opposite. The flesh requires no cultivation. It will assert itself without any encouragement. The fruit of the Spirit, however, requires that the Spirit be given genuine room in a person’s life — through Scripture, prayer, honest confession, and genuine community with other believers. Looking at the fruit list and finding it wanting in your experience is not a reason for despair but for honest diagnosis. Where is the Spirit being crowded out? Where is the flesh being fed? Paul’s instruction in verse 25 is pointed: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.” Living and walking are not the same thing. Every believer has the Spirit’s life. The question is whether they are keeping in step with Him, day by day, choice by choice.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23