Galatians 5:18

‘But if you are being led by the Spirit you are not under the Law'.

This is the crux of the matter. Those who submit to the Spirit's prompting, with the help of the Spirit's power, will live positive lives of Christian love, for they are ‘being led by the Spirit', a continual process which includes His empowering. They do not constantly check a list to see whether they have attained the standard. They do not struggle to keep the Law so as to be acceptable to God, and live in dread of breaking it. They are not tied down by rules and regulations. They rather recognise that they are acceptable to God through the crucified One and so they gladly seek to keep His commandments as led and empowered by the Spirit. They constantly continue submitting themselves to the control of the Spirit. They constantly allow Christ to live through them. And this is something that in their inner hearts they want to do. And the more that they come to know Christ, the more they will want to be like Him.

It is true that the flesh may sometimes pull them down, but in the end they rise again and finally overcome, because they want to please their Father. Such people are ‘not under the Law', for they have died to the Law and live to God, and the life that they now live in the flesh they live by faith in the Son of God Who loved them and gave Himself for them (Galatians 2:20). They are aware of sorrow for sin, but not of condemnation from the Law, because that has been borne by Christ, and they rather use the Law as a guide to the mind of God.

And it this leading which is evidence that they are sons of God. ‘For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God (Romans 8:14).'