Linguistic reversal

Galatians 5-6 turns a number of Pauline terms inside out. After spending most of the letter polemicizing against seeking justification form the “works of the law,” Paul rehabilitates both “work” (5:6) and “law” (5:14; 6:2). After announcing that in Christ we have been freed from the Egypt of Judaic managers and tutors, he instructs us to use our freedom to become slaves to one another (5:13). He doesn’t quite rehabilitate flesh, though he has told us early on that life in the flesh can be life by faith in the Son of God, that is, life in the flesh can be lived out as life in the Spirit (2:20).

He even rehabilitates the stoicheia . “If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit also let us stoichomen ” (5:25). The NASB translates this as “walk,” but it’s a different verb than 5:16 ( peripateo ). “Keep in step” is better. However it is translated, it is a deliberate play on the “elementary principles” from which Paul says we have been freed (as is the related verb sustoichei in 4:25).

Paul is showing us that the entire old covenant is resurrected in the new. It is not the same; law is no longer the Mosaic law, work is the working of love and of the Spirit, slavery is willing service, the stoicheic pattern is now set by the Spirit and not by under-guardians. It’s not the same but it’s all there, dead and risen in Christ Jesus and his body.