DAILY DEVOTIONAL
June 14 — Against such things there is no law
A spoken reading of this is being recorded — it will appear here soon.
June 14 — Against Such Things There Is No Law
"Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." — Galatians 5:23 (KJV)
After listing the nine fruits, Paul drops a strange line. Against such things there is no law. It reads almost like an afterthought. It is not. It is the punchline.
The first-century world Paul wrote into was a world of laws. Roman laws. Jewish laws. The household codes. The rules of the synagogue. The rules of the marketplace. Paul has just listed nine things — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control — and he says, no law touches these. No law forbids them. No law can produce them. They sit outside the system of laws entirely. They are the marks of a life shaped by the Spirit, not by code.
The reason this matters in 2026 is that we live, again, inside many codes. Algorithm codes. Platform codes. The unwritten codes of the social feed. Each one tries to shape us. Some are well-meaning. Most have a different end in mind than our flourishing. None of them can produce the nine fruits Paul names. The Spirit can.
This is the freedom of the Christian life. We are not trying to optimize ourselves against the metrics the codes hand us. We are being slowly grown into the likeness of Christ by the Spirit. The growth is happening on a clock the platforms do not run.
Today, when you feel the pressure of a metric — a streak, a view count, a notification badge — say one quiet sentence. I am not measured by this. Then return to the actual life around you.
May the Lord bless you and keep you.