START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
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OBSERVE:
One of the keys to Christian doctrine and practice is balance. Here in Galatians Paul balances grace and the moral law of love.
Paul has reprimanded the Galatians for submitting to a yoke of slavery by giving in to the Judaizers who required strict obedience to the ritual and ceremonial law. He is especially concerned that the Judaizers have subverted the gospel of grace by demanding that these new Gentile Christians be circumcised.
Paul insists that Christ has fulfilled the requirements of the law, and therefore Christians stand by grace. Christians are free from works righteousness and legalism.
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Here, however, he makes clear that freedom doesn’t mean libertarianism, or even antinomianism:
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.
His whole premise for the Christian life is that when a person is in Christ by faith, Christ lives in them and fulfills the law of love through them:
For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
Paul makes very clear that the Spirit and the desires of the flesh are diametrically opposed to one another. Freedom doesn’t mean that the Christian has an excuse to live for their own pleasure and self-indulgence. To be filled with the Spirit is to belong to God and to live for God:
Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.
Interestingly, when a person is filled with God’s Spirit, their lifestyle of love does avoid certain behavior that is prohibited by the moral law; and also embraces certain behavior that is advocated by the moral law. The distinction is that the motivation comes from a different source. Paul says it this way in Romans 8:2-5.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
The furthest thing from Paul’s mind is that freedom means “doing your own thing” without any moral accountability. There are behaviors that are so inconsistent with the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that they result in separation from God:
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
By the same token, there are attitudes and behaviors that flow organically from a connection with God that is so close it is like fruit growing on a vine:
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.
Finally, Paul returns to the image that he introduced in Galatians 2:19-20, concerning crucifixion with Christ. In today’s passage, he says that to be a Christian is to die to sin and be raised to new life with Christ:
And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
APPLY:
Freedom in contemporary culture seems to mean “I can do anything I like, I can live how I choose, I am not bound by any moral restraints.”
But the Christian understands that the so-called “freedom to sin” actually equals bondage. The deeper we enter into sin, the more chains we wrap around ourselves.
Christian freedom means freedom from sin and its bondage.
Sin is anything that takes us further away from God. Surely we can see that anything that takes us away from God is bondage.
So the question may be raised, why does the Christian serve, sacrifice, care for others and refrain from certain behavior? And how is that any different than the person who lives by the law?
An analogy may be helpful. Suppose a woman marries a harsh, demanding man who requires that his dinner be on the table at a certain time, criticizes her housework, and is generally unpleasant. She does all that he requires out of a sense of duty, but it is bitter to her.
Suppose that he dies, and she meets another man and falls in love. They marry. And then it dawns on her that she is cooking and cleaning and running the household — the same tasks she had done for her first husband! Only now they are not bitter duties — she does all that she does with a sense of joy.
What’s the difference? She loves her new husband, and he loves her. The spring of her action is no longer duty, but love.
In the same way, we as Christians avoid sin not because of fear but because we love God; and we develop the fruits of the Spirit because as we love God we become more like him.
RESPOND:
Christians believe radically in freedom. But our understanding of freedom means that we are free from sin, and we are free to love as Christ has loved us.
Sin is anything that takes us farther away from God; grace is that which brings us closer to God.
I wish that the NRSV Bible used the correct translation of verse 16. Instead of saying:
Live by the Spirit
I wish they translated the original Greek:
I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. (MEV)
This helps me understand that the Christian life is a dynamic process — that faith is what you do, not merely what you believe in your head.
Walking in the Spirit means that we are walking toward God — and walking in the flesh means that we are walking away from God. So the lists that Paul gives are simply examples of behavior that either take us away from God or that demonstrate a more intimate relationship with God.
Walking away from God results in certain behavior that estranges us from God:
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
And when we are walking toward God, by faith working through love (Galatians 5:6), then there are certain characteristics we begin to develop:
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Our Lord, thank you for the freedom that you have given me — a freedom from the bondage of sin, a freedom from trying to rely on my own weak efforts to save myself. Your freedom liberates me to trust you and to love as you love. May your Spirit so fill me that all of the fruits of the Spirit are manifested in my life. Amen.
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