But if you be led of the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Read Chapter 5
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
He did not say “Walk in the Spirit so that you will not have desires of the flesh” but “so that you will not gratify them.” Not to have them at all, indeed, is not the struggle but the prize of struggle, if we shall have obtained the victory by perseverance under grace. For it is only the transformation of the body into an immortal state that will no longer have desires of the flesh.
A person is “under the law” when he is conscious of abstaining from works of sin through fear of the torments threatened by the law rather than by love of righteousness. He is not yet free, not yet a stranger to the will to sin. For he does wrong by his very willing, since he would prefer if it were possible that there should be nothing for the will to fear, so that he might do freely what he secretly desires…. By the law which he has used to instill fear [God] has not imparted love. Godly love is suffused in our hearts not through the letter of the law but through the Holy Spirit, which is given to us.
But if ye are led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. This anticipates a possible objection of the Galatians that they had apparently only exchanged one yoke for another heavier one, under which they had constantly to fight a tedious and irksome battle. The Apostle replies to this that if they were led by the Spirit they were not the slaves of concupiscence but its masters, and so were not under the law, inasmuch as they kept its provisions not from fear, but by spontaneously doing what it bade, and restraining the motions of concupiscence forbidden by it.
The Galatians were not, says S. Paul, under the law as a compelling force, still less under it as accusing and condemning, but they were under it as binding the conscience. Even Song of Solomon , however, they kept the law of their own accord, and so might be said to be outside the law, or above the law; not under it, but rather under the Spirit. This is why, after enumerating the fruits of the Spirit, he adds, Against such the...
The holy prophets and Moses, walking in the Spirit and living in the Spirit, were not under the law. But they lived as if under the law, so that they appeared indeed to be under the law, but only in order to benefit those who were under the law and spur them on from the lowliness of the letter toward the heights of the Spirit. .
If it be asked in what way are these two connected, I answer, closely and plainly; for he that has the Spirit as he ought, quenches thereby every evil desire, and he that is released from these needs no help from the Law, but is exalted far above its precepts. He who is never angry, what need has he to hear the command, You shall not kill? He who never casts unchaste looks, what need has he of the admonition, You shall not commit adultery? Who would discourse about the fruits of wickedness with him who had plucked up the root itself? For anger is the root of murder, and of adultery the inquisitive gazing into faces. Hence he says, If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law; wherein he appears to me to have pronounced a high and striking eulogy of the Law, if, at least, the Law stood, according to its power, in the place of the Spirit before the Spirit's coming upon us. But we are not on that account obliged to continue apart with our schoolmaster. Then we were justly subje...
Yet it seems to me that here he has pronounced a great and remarkable eulogy on the law. For the power of the law was such as to put it in the place of the office of the Spirit before the Spirit came to us. That is not to say that one should therefore cleave to this custodian. For then we were properly under the law, so that by fear we might restrain our desires, the Spirit not yet having appeared. But what need is there now of the law when the Spirit has been given? This grace does not merely bid us to abstain from the commands of the old covenant but also quenches them and leads us on to a higher rule of life.
