5 Christ has made us really free. So, stay free! Do not let yourselves be made slaves again.

² I, Paul, say to you again that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ is no help to you at all.

³ Again I say to every man who is circumcised, he must obey all the law.

⁴ Some of you are trying to obey the law, so that God will call you good. If you do this, you have been cut off from Christ. You have lost the blessing of God.

⁵ But we hope to be made right by believing in Christ. The Spirit helps us to do this.

⁶ So if a man belongs to Christ Jesus, it does not matter if he is circumcised or not. He must show by his love that he believes.

⁷ You were doing well. Who stopped you from doing what is right?

⁸ God calls you but he is not the one who made you change your minds.

⁹ Even a little yeast makes all the bread rise.

¹⁰ The Lord makes me sure that you will not think any other way. But the teacher who is troubling your minds will be punished. It does not matter who he is.

¹¹ My brothers, am I still telling people to be circumcised? If I am, why are people still troubling me? If it were true, the cross of Christ, which they do not like, has lost its power.

¹² These teachers are troubling your minds. How I wish they would cut themselves off!

¹³ You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not take that to mean that you can do as you please. But work for each other because you love each other.

¹⁴ This one law is the whole law: `Love your neighbour as you love yourself.'

¹⁵ But if you bite and chew each other, be careful, or you will be killed by each other.

¹⁶ So I say, let the Spirit tell you what you should do. Then you will not do the wrong things you yourselves want to do.

¹⁷ People want to do wrong things that the Spirit does not want them to do. And the Spirit wants people to do things they do not want to do. The Spirit and the wrong things you want to do are against each other, so that you do not do what you yourself want to do.

¹⁸ If you do what the Spirit wants you to do, then you will be free from the law.

¹⁹ It is easy to see the wrong things people want to do. Both married people and those who are not married commit adultery. People make themselves unclean because of their wrong use of sex. They do things they should be ashamed of doing.

²⁰ They worship idols. They use witch-power. They hate. They quarrel. They are jealous. They get angry. They want their own way. They do not agree together and they join different groups against each other.

²¹ They want what other people have. They even kill. They drink too much strong drink. They like to take part in loud drinking and dancing. They do other things like these. I have told you before and I tell you again. Those who do these things will not be in the kingdom of God. 22,

²² But these are the things which the Spirit wants you to show: love, joy, peace, patience, being kind, being good, being true, being gentle, and keeping the body under control. There is no law that says, `These things are wrong.'

²³ Those who belong to Christ Jesus have stopped doing the wrong things they want to do. They have stopped them just as if they were killed on a cross. And they have even stopped wanting to do them.

²⁴ The Spirit gives us life. And so we should do what the Spirit wants us to do.

²⁵ We must not be proud of ourselves. We must not make one another angry. We must not want what other people have.