People will have to stand before God. [Paul's] point here is clear: since we will stand before God, we must live now before God, and that means living in the Spirit. Put differently, we must do good to all people, especially to the church, which may well have been neglected by those caught up in the divisions at Galatia.

That the antithesis of flesh and Spirit has been in Paul’s mind since he began these injunctions at verse 1 becomes clear with verse 8. What we envision here is a divisiveness that was leading to shunning sinning brothers and sisters, to arrogant leadership, to comparing one’s righteousness with another’s, and to outright ugly treatment of teachers. Such kinds of behavior are “works of the flesh” (5:19–21).

So Paul enters with the strongest foundation that one can perceive: God is the Judge, and people cannot sneer at him. Paul knows that “moral indifference would be an imperfection in God, not a perfection.” If a person lives to the flesh, that person will “reap destruction” (condemnation); if a person lives “in the Spirit,” that person will “reap eternal life.” What Paul is saying is what I have said on numerous occasions in this book: while works do not save us, no one is saved without works. Why? Very simply, because works are the sure indicators of a person’s heart, orientation, and status before God. Every judgment in the Bible is a judgment according to works (cf. Matt. 7:13–27; 16:27; 22:1–14; 25:1–46; 2 Cor. 5:10; Rev. 20:11–15). A person’s final standing before God will be determined by that person’s relationship to Jesus Christ as revealed in his or her works. While it is absolutely true that our grounds of acceptance is the sacrifice Jesus Christ made on our behalf, our connection to that sacrifice is by way of a faith that works itself out in the many good works in a person’s life.

So Paul speaks of “doing good,” because doing good is what it means to sow “to please the Spirit.” We should not become weary in doing good because, he repeats, our judgment is based on this (“we will reap a harvest if we do not give up”; v. 9). Paul then argues that the Christian is to do good “to all people,” regardless of their culture, nation, or sex (3:28). But the Christian’s deeds of mercy are especially (though not exclusively) to be directed toward “the family of believers.”

In sum, Paul interweaves two highly fundamental ideas for Christian ethics: mutual accountability and personal responsibility. Indeed, John Barclay sees the alternation between two themes as the structural impulse behind our section. He uses the terms in a reverse direction (personal accountability to God and corporate responsibility to others), and I shall change them to my terms to ease understanding. His structure (changed in terms only) is as follows: