• Adultery. Unfaithfulness in a number of applications. Maritally, spiritually. Turning from your vows and promises to something else that your carnal nature likes better (5:19).
• Fornication. All sorts of sexual immorality from straight to gay and everything surrounding them (5:19).
• Uncleanness. Physical or moral impurity. This takes us into the thought life, the speech, the intake of this or that into an otherwise healthy body or mind. Poisoning the well (5:19).
• Lewdness. Licentious behavior. Anything goes. Filthiness. Incontinence (5:19).
• Idolatry. Anything that comes before God in our thoughts or actions or energy or time (5:20).
• Sorcery. Originally, a medication or potion given by a sorcerer or magician to induce an altered state. Note it is called a work of the flesh because it starts in the body and invites the spirit world. Drugs. Hallucinations. Trips. Still very much with us. Referred to as witchcraft in the KJV for this was one of the works of a spiritist (5:20).

Ironside says here, “I think that Chicago has a good many witches in it. Often while passing along the street I see such signs as “Spiritualist medium” … people pretending to have traffic with the dead. That is witchcraft and it is an abomination in the sight of God.”

(Henry Ironside was pastor at Chicago’s Moody Church from 1930-1948. Witches have been among us for a long time.)

• Hatred. Suddenly the list gets a little more personal. Hatred is the anteroom of anger and therefore murder (5:20).
• Contentions. Variance in the KJV. Originally, wrangling or quarreling. Strife (5:20).
• Jealousies. Emulations. You want something of someone else. Someone's position, attention, stuff (5:20).
• Wrath, as in outbursts of. Comes from word meaning breathing. Passion. Fierce indignation. Not righteous indignation... (5:20).
• Selfish ambitions. Strife. Intrigue, faction, contention. Related to contentions (above). In that earlier word it seems to be the argument for the argument's sake. Here it is the desire to divide and conquer within a group setting. Not just a hot-head who later apologizes, but a man with a mission, who fights to win converts to himself (5:20).
• Dissensions. Seditions. Disunion. Division. Overlapping to be sure, but here, the outcome is in focus, as opposed to the method one might take to achieve it. Disunity is a work of the carnal nature. When two born again believers cannot walk in unity, one or both of them is sinning. There are times, though, as with Paul and Barnabas, where two different ministries clash and demand separation (5:20).
• Heresies. Not just the teaching, but the party or disunion that comes from it. Again, some overlap, to be sure everything is covered (5:20).
• Envy. Jealousy, as above. Also, ill-will. Spite. The feelings that come as a result of or leading to the disunions in a body. Division is often blamed on doctrine, when in fact the carnal nature comes into play also as merely human dislikes for other humans could be the culprit (5:21).
• Murders.
• Drunkenness. No definition is given, but there is a universal understanding of what drunk means. InTOXICation. Poison. And it is a work of the flesh (5:21).
• Revelries. Added to drunkenness and followed by "the like", any number of wild parties, a "letting loose”, in the Greek. Carousing. Orgies... (5:21).

He adds, at the end of the list, another one of his sobering and startling statements: A person who is regularly practicing this sort of behavior, any item on the list, has no place in God's Kingdom. This new life in Christ excludes evil behavior, not on the basis of the Law, but on the basis of the new life in Christ. One either has Christ or he doesn’t.

Luther: “There were many hypocrites among the Galatians, as there are also among us, who pretend to be Christians and talk much about the Spirit, but they walk not according to the Spirit; rather according to the flesh. Paul is out to show them that they are not as holy as they like to have others think they are.”

What is the fruit of the Holy Spirit?

When the Holy Spirit is in a man, He produces things that the flesh cannot produce. A man walking in and filled with the Holy Spirit simply cannot do the works of the flesh. Nine manifestations of that fruit:

• Love. First and foremost. The highest form of Spirit living in all apostolic writings.
• Joy. The joy of the Lord is our strength. For the joy set before Him of bringing us to glory, Jesus endured the cross and despised the shame.
• Peace. “You will keep Him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You.”
• Longsuffering. Patience. Waiting on God. Waiting for men. Waiting for yourself.
• Kindness. Called gentleness in the KJV. "Useful" in original Greek. "Employed" for moral purposes. Moral excellence. Overlaps with next fruit, goodness.
• Goodness. Virtue. The inner quality, perhaps, as opposed to the outer working of the prior fruit.
• Faithfulness. From the Greek pistis which nearly always means "faith" as in the KJV list, though sometimes taken to mean "constancy" in belief. The Spirit produces God-faith in His people, that they might believe for more.
• Gentleness. KJV, meekness. Humility. Lowliness of mind and heart.
• Self-control. KJV, temperance. The KJV word is so related in people's minds to alcoholic beverages, that it is better today to use the general term, "self-controlled." The Greek bears this out. Strong mentions control in appetite, and continence, the latter of which influenced the Catholic reading, "chastity". The basic meaning is "strong" and sums up what the Spirit will make us, against those constant cravings of our flesh (5:22-23).

His after-comment on this list takes us back to the whole discussion of the Law, which is the subject of Galatians throughout. The Law cannot keep me from sin, the Law cannot produce holy things, yet the Law is in no way opposed to the things which the Spirit produces. Indeed, far from the Law being opposed to the Spirit, a man walking in the Spirit keeps the Law of God by his new nature. That which the flesh could not accomplish, the Spirit does.