What Does Galatians 5:16 Mean?
And I say, walk in the breath, and you will not complete the craving of the flesh.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.THE KEY
The Greek word translated “Spirit” also means breath and wind, so the verse places the direction of your steps in the breath that animates life.
THE MEANING
When you walk in the breath, fleshly desire does not have to complete itself through your actions. Desire may be present without determining the path you take.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that desire is destiny: what you desire does not have to become what you enact.
THE ROOT
πνεύματι
pneumati
GROWS FROM
πνέω
pneō
To breathe or blow.
English separates “Spirit” from breath, while this Greek word family holds breath, wind, and spirit together. The verse describes a life moving by the breath, so fleshly desire need not determine its actions.
ALSO GROWS
pneuma: Breath, wind, spirit.
πνεῦμα
This is the noun in the verse; its range holds together what English renders as separate ideas.
pnoē: Breath, blast.
πνοή
This related word for breath makes the family’s connection to breathing explicit.
THE PATTERN
A life moving by the Spirit is not compelled to enact the desires of the flesh.
And I will set my breath within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will guard my judgments and do them.It is the breath that gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you, they are breath, and they are life.So that the alignment of the instruction might be filled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the breath.THE THREAD
So that the alignment of the instruction might be filled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the breath.Romans uses the same Greek words for Spirit, pneuma, and flesh, sarx, and places them in the same contrast of walking. It opens this verse further by showing the breath and the flesh as two different paths shaping a life.
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