Freedom in Christ | Galatians 5:1-15
Brian Hedges | November 19, 2017
In 1787, the very early years of our nation’s founding, a number of men gathered together for what was called the Constitutional Convention, and they were working hard to put together the documents that would be the basis of the government of our nation. There were anxious citizens, gathered outside of Independence Hall, wondering how the proceedings would turn out, wondering what was going on behind closed doors.
When everything was finally done and they walked out, a woman named Mrs. Powell asked Benjamin Franklin this question: “Well, Doctor, what have we got; a monarchy or a republic?” And he answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Franklin’s statement I think truly indicates the freedom is something that has to be fought for. Freedom is something that comes hard-won. Freedom is something that can be lost, and that’s of course true on the political level, but it’s also true in the spiritual realm.
We have freedom in Christ. That’s perhaps the dominant theme in the book of Galatians. We have freedom in Christ, but the letter to the Galatians shows us, if no other place in Scripture would, the letter to the Galatians does, shows us that freedom must be fought for, that freedom can be threatened, that freedom can be lost. It can be abused. So Paul writes this letter to urge us to hold onto our freedom in Christ, and we see that especially in the passage before us this morning, Galatians chapter 5, verses 1 through 15.
This passage is somewhat bookended by references to freedom in Christ; you see it in verse 1, “For freedom Christ has set us free,” and then again in verse 13, “For you were called to freedom, brothers.” So Christ came to give us freedom, and the book of Galatians shows us how we must fight for it, this passage especially.
Let’s read this passage together, Galatians 5, verses 1 through 15, and then notice three aspects of our freedom in Christ. Verse 1:
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves! For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”
This is God’s word.
So, three things I want you to see in this passage about our freedom in Christ. Freedom in Christ is:
I. Freedom from the Law
II. Freedom in the Spirit
III. Freedom to Love
All three of those things are vitally important if we are to understand just what Paul has in mind when he talks about our freedom in Christ. We see in verse one that he says that Christ has set us free for this purpose, for freedom. We saw that last week; this verse is somewhat of a transition point looking both backwards and forwards, backwards to what Paul has already said and forwards to this new section of the letter.
And then follows not the very first, but only about the second or third imperative (that is, command) in this entire letter to the Galatians. We’ve mainly been dealing with Paul’s exposition of the gospel, Paul’s argument that we are justified by faith and not by the law. But then in verse 1 of chapter 5 Paul gives a command, and I think it’s the second imperative in the letter, where he says, “Stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
I. Freedom from the Law
"Stand firm in freedom and do not submit to a yoke of slavery." This introduces us to our first aspects of our freedom in Christ; freedom from the law. You see this in verses 1 through 4, and then again in verses 7 through 12. Verse 1 states this basic principle and this basic command.
The principle is that we are free in Christ, free from the law, and the command is to stand firm in the freedom and not submit to the yoke. The yoke was a common Hebrew or Jewish metaphor for the law. The rabbis would often talk about taking on the yoke of Moses. Well, in contrast to that Paul says we are not to submit again to this yoke, and he calls it a yoke of slavery.
Then in verses 2 through 4 Paul basically restates this warning in three different ways, bringing in these three verses different nuances to this warning. Notice what he says in verse 2. He addresses the issue of circumcision, actually for the first time directly in the letter. In verse 2 he says, “Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision Christ will be of no advantage to you.”
Now that’s a really stark statement. Circumcision was, of course, the presenting issue among the false teachers in the churches of the Galatians. False teachers were coming in and were saying, “You must keep the Mosaic law in order to be saved. If you’re Gentiles you must be circumcised.”
It’s in that context that Paul then says, “Listen; if you submit to this, if you accept circumcision, Christ is of no advantage.” Now, he doesn’t, of course, mean that anyone who has been circumcised can be outside of Christ. Paul himself tells us in Philippians three that he was circumcised on the eighth day. He thought it appropriate to circumcise Timothy, who had a Jewish mother. The issue is if anyone trusts in circumcision, these marks of Jewishness; if anyone trusts in that, they’re trusting in the law, they’re trusting in their works, they’re trusting in themselves. If they trust in that, then Christ is of no advantage to them. The issue is this trust in works of the law versus faith in Christ.
That that is the issue is clear in verse 3. He says, “I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.” So here’s the issue (I think this is implicit to Paul’s whole argument), that circumcision is of no value to us in our justification, because circumcision obligates us to keep the entire law, to keep the whole law, and we are unable to do so. Paul has already said in chapter 3, verse 10 that “those who rely on works of the law are under a curse.”
Why are they under a curse? Because the law says, “Cursed is everyone who continues not in all things written in the book of the law, to do them.” In other words, if you rely on the law, only by completely and absolutely in perfection fulfilling the law could you be justified by the law. But none of us can do that. We don’t actually keep the whole law. We break the law, and because we are law-breakers rather than law-keepers we are under the curse of the law.
So Paul is arguing here that it is absolutely ridiculous, it is ludicrous, it’s insane to go to the law for justification, trust in circumcision, because there’s no way that you could keep the law.
Verse 4 states it even more starkly. He says, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.” I think Paul right there is making it about as clear as it can be. There’s only one of two ways to go. There’s only one of two ways to seek salvation: you either seek salvation through the law, or you seek salvation through grace. It’s either by faith in what Christ has done for us (that’s the way of grace) or it’s self-reliance. And self-reliance will always end in condemnation, for there is no grace outside of Christ. I think that’s what he means.
“You who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace. You are severed from Christ.” If you trust in the law, then you’re cut off from Christ and you’re cut off from grace. That shows us, doesn’t it, that there is no grace outside of Christ. Grace isn’t something you can get through some other avenue, some other means. Grace comes to us only in and through Christ.
Then, in verses 7 through 12 (I’ll come back to verses 5 and 6 in just a moment) Paul continues with this theme of freedom from the law by addressing directly the issue of the false teachers and the Galatians. He really says five things about the false teachers in these verses, and I can just point them out quickly.
First of all, he says that they are hindering the Galatians. Look at verse 7. He says, “You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?” He pictures the Galatians as runners in a race, a marathon. He says, “You were running well,” but now someone has thrown obstacles in their way; they’ve hindered them. Who are these, who have hindered them? Well, it’s the false teachers, verses eight and nine.
Paul says, “This persuasion is not from him who calls you,” in other words, the hindrance does not come from God, but then verse 9, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” This shows us that the false teachers have this deadly influence. Just as a little bit of yeast will cause the whole lump of dough to rise, so just a little bit of false teaching infecting the church has a deadly, pernicious influence in the church.
In verse 10, Paul characterizes these false teachers as “troublers.” He says, “I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is.” I think that statement gives us Paul’s twofold approach to this issue of the false teachers and the Galatians. On the one hand, he’s affirming the Galatians. He has confidence in them, that they’re actually going to accept the truth, that they’re actually going to hold onto the gospel, and he also has confidence that those who have troubled them will be punished for it; they will bear the penalty.
In verse 11 Paul characterizes the false teachers as persecutors. He says, “But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted?” You remember last week we saw that Ishmael, the son of the slave woman, persecuted Isaac, who was the son of promise, the one who was born according to the Spirit, and that seems to be part of the issue that was going on in this letter. Those who were zealous for the law were actually persecuting those who were Christians who were not submitting to the Mosaic law.
And then in verse 12 Paul says perhaps the most drastic thing, the most shocking thing that he ever says in any of his letters. He characterizes the false teachers as those who unsettle the church, and the way they unsettle the church is by pushing this circumcision agenda, and Paul says, essentially, “I wish they’d just go all the way and emasculate themselves!” It’s shocking, his language. Paul is unequivocal in his condemnation of the false teachers, even as he argues for the integrity of the gospel for the Galatian believers.
His whole point here is that in Christ we are free from the law. That means that we are free from the law as a law covenant. We are free from the obligation to keep the law in order to be justified. We are free from the attempt of saving ourselves through the keeping of the law, and in fact the only way to be saved, the only way to be justified, is through Christ, through the grace that is in Christ. It all boils down to that, doesn’t it? It’s either by grace or it’s by works; it’s either through faith in Christ or it’s through works of the law.
I love the way an old hymn-writer named James Proctor put it in these lines. He said,
“Weary, working, burdened one,
Wherefore toil you so?
Cease your doing; all was done
Long, long ago.”
There you have the two ways; the way of doing or the way of done. The law is all about doing; the gospel is about done: what Christ has done for us. Proctor continues,
“’Til to Jesus’ work you cling
By a simple faith,
Doing is a deadly thing - ”
Doing ends in death. So we have to ask ourselves that question, don’t we? What are we clinging to? Are we clinging to Jesus’ work or are we clinging to our own doing? Doing is a deadly thing, Proctor says. And then in this stanza (perhaps you’ve heard this one before) he says,
“Cast your deadly doing down,
Down at Jesus’ feet.
Stand in him, in him alone
Gloriously complete.”
Let me ask you this morning, what are you trusting in? Are you free from the law because you’re trusting in Christ, or are you trusting in your deadly doing? If so, cast it down.
II. Freedom in the Spirit
So Paul says that our freedom from Christ is a freedom from the law, but then he also says that this freedom is freedom in the Spirit, and this is vital for understanding just what Paul means by freedom. It is freedom in the Spirit; it is freedom that we have because of our union with Christ and because of Christ’s gift of the Spirit to us, and this life in the Spirit is then characterized in a certain kind of way. There are certain things that are true of the person who is free from the law and free in the Spirit, and we need to see just what that life looks like, in verses 5 and 6.
Paul says, “For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.”
Notice, first of all, just that initial phrase, “For through the Spirit.” Through the Spirit. This is so important to the letter to the Galatians. We’ve already seen it in chapter 3, where Paul in a similar kind of exhortation addresses the Galatians. “O foolish Galatians!” he says. “Who has bewitched you?” Remember? And then he asks in this question, in verse two, chapter three; he says, “Let me ask you only this: did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Or are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” And then in verse four, “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?”
The argument here is that they have already received the Spirit, but they received the Spirit not by their works; they received the Spirit through faith. Now he returns to this theme of the Spirit. They’ve received this promise, the promise of the Spirit, because of Christ’s redeeming work, chapter 3, verses 13 and 14. And now he returns to the Spirit and he characterizes their lives as one of faith, but as faith exercised through the Spirit. “We through the Spirit, by faith, wait for the hope of righteousness.”
And of course, this is hinting at what will come in the rest of this letter, where the Spirit plays an even more prominent role. So in the rest of chapter 5, and then in chapter 6, Paul will talk about walking in the Spirit, verse 16. He will talk about being led by the Spirit, and he says, “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law,” and it is only those who are led by the Spirit who are not under the law. That’s verse 18.
Then in verses 22 and 23 he will describe the lifestyle that results from walking in the Spirit, what he calls the fruit of the Spirit, this nine-fold fruit, a character description of the Christian. In verse 25 he says, “If we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
Then in chapter 6 he addresses those who are spiritual, that is, those who are led by the Spirit, those who keep in the step with the Spirit. He addresses the spiritual and says, “Those of you who are spiritual are to help the brother who is caught in transgression, to restore him.” And then in chapter 6, verse 8 he says that the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
So you can see the Spirit is really important to Paul’s argument, and here he says that our life of freedom is life in the Spirit; it is freedom in the Spirit, characterized as life in the Spirit. And it’s characterized by faith. This freedom in the Spirit is a freedom that we exercise, that we enjoy, that is expressed in the life of faith, and I want you to see two things that Paul says about faith here in these two verses.
He says, first of all, that faith waits, and then secondly that faith works. First of all, in verse 5, “For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.” So, properly speaking, we are the ones who wait, but we wait by faith. So faith is how we wait; faith is the mode of our waiting.
That word “wait” is an important word. It carries the idea of looking forward to something with eager anticipation. You might think of a child who waits eagerly for Christmas morning. Well, Paul uses this kind of language of waiting over and again in his letters, and it always has in view waiting for something to come at the very end, something to come in the consummation.
So, for example, in 1 Corinthians 1:7 he says, “We wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We’re waiting for him! We’re waiting for Christ to come back, for his glory to be revealed.
In chapter 8 of Romans he talks about the creation that’s waiting with eager longing. He pictures the creation as standing on tiptoe waiting for something, and he says that “we ourselves also eagerly wait for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” He’s talking here about our glorification; he’s talking about final resurrection; he’s talking about the consummation of our redemption.
In Philippians chapter 3 he says that our citizenship is in heaven, and from it (that is, from heaven) “we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly bodies and make them like his glorious body.” So again, it seems that these two things always go hand in hand. We are waiting for Christ, and we are waiting for what Christ will do when he comes back. We’re looking to the second coming, and we are eagerly anticipating the fullness of salvation that will come on that day.
That’s also true here. “For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.” The hope of righteousness. What does he mean by the hope of righteousness? There are a number of different ways to construe this. He might mean the expectation of future life and hope that comes on the basis of our justification, the basis of the righteousness we have already received. So, essentially, that would mean waiting for eternal life that is ours because of righteousness. So in that case righteousness would be the source of the hope. That’s John Stott’s view.
I think probably a better view is that Paul is looking forward to the final judgment, and that on the day of final judgment Paul knows there will be a public verdict uttered, public verdict declared over all of God’s people. That verdict will be “righteous.” We’ll stand before God on the day of judgment and we will be declared, if we are believers in Christ, we will be declared righteous. I think Paul’s looking forward to that. He’s looking forward to this future, eschatological, public verdict of righteousness, but notice again how he states it. It’s not that this verdict is uncertain. He says, “We eagerly wait for this.” We eagerly wait; and again, this is a positive kind of waiting.
You know, a child eagerly waits for Christmas morning. Not so finals! You know, you don’t eagerly wait for finals at the end of a semester. That’s not something you’re really looking forward to; you’re anticipating it, but you can’t really say you’re eagerly waiting for that. But you’re eagerly waiting for Christmas morning.
This is something the believer eagerly waits for. We eager wait for the day of judgment. Why can we wait eagerly for the day of judgment? Because the verdict has already been pronounced. For everyone who is in Christ Jesus, the verdict is “righteous,” the verdict is “justified.” So I think that’s what Paul means. I think he has this future judgment in mind, but it’s something that we’re hopeful about. And hope in Scripture is not a wish, it’s a confident expectation of something that is to come.
So Paul says that faith eagerly waits for the hope of righteousness, and then secondly, in verse 6, Paul says faith works through love. You see this in verse six: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.”
Again, I think it’s important to just emphasize the various phrases. “In Christ Jesus,” parallel to “through the Spirit,” in verse 5. To be in Christ is to be a person who has the Spirit; to be a person who is Spirit-dwelt is to be in Christ. To be a believer is to be both. To be a believer is to someone who is united to Christ and has been given the Holy Spirit. This is how Paul characterizes us, as in Christ Jesus.
He tells us that in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts. In other words, if you’re in Christ it doesn’t really matter whether you’re Jew or Gentile. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve kept the law of Moses or not. That just doesn’t count! It’s not a decisive matter. Instead, what counts if faith in Christ. “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” Faith in Christ.
There’s a parallel statement similar to this in chapter 6, verse 15, where Paul again says, “For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” A new creation. I think when you put those two things together you can see that, characteristic of the new creation that we are in Christ, because of our union with Christ, characteristic is faith.
And then he tells us what this faith does. It is faith that works through love, and the word “working” here is the Greek word from which we get our word “energize,” or “energy.” Now, of course, Paul isn’t writing with any kind of modern notions of energy such as we would have; this was pre-technological, pre-industrial age, but still, the idea, I think, is helpful, that faith has this energizing force. Faith is empowering something. What is it empowering? What is it working? What is it energizing? It is energizing through love, energizing our lives through love.
This phrase is a helpful phrase reminding us of the basic position of the Reformers. When they talked about justification by faith, they would often say things like this: we are justified by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. In fact, this verse was a hotly contested verse between Roman Catholics and the Protestants. The Catholic position on this was that we were justified by faith, but it was faith formed by love, and so love constituted part of the basis of our justification.
But, essentially, what that did, and continues to do, is turn justification into something based on our performance, based on what we do, because love is something we do. The Reformers’ position was that it was faith alone that justifies, faith alone which trusts in Christ, and it’s faith as looking to Christ that justifies, but that faith has alongside of it love. It’s interesting that Scriptures, as far as I know, never describe us as being justified by love. We’re not justified by love; we’re justified by faith. But the kind of faith that justifies is an energetic faith, it’s an active faith, it’s a faith that works. It produces fruit, and it does so through love.
Even Luther, with all of his emphasis on justification by faith, also emphasized this working, active nature of faith.
“Oh, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith,” Luther said, “and so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly. It does not ask whether there are good works to do, but before the question rises it has already done them and is always at the doing of them. He who does not these works is a faithless man. And this is the work of the Holy Spirit in faith; hence, a man is ready and glad, without compulsion, to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything in love and praise to God, who has shown him this grace, and thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate burning and shining from fire.”
This forces us to ask the question, doesn’t it: do we have this kind of faith? Do we have a faith that trusts in Christ alone, yes, but also a faith which works through love, a faith which produces the fruit of faith? Again, we’re not justified by the fruit; we’re justified by faith, but a genuine faith is a faith which produces fruit; it is faith which works through love.
III. Freedom to Love
That leads us to the third aspect of our freedom in Christ, which is freedom not only from something, but it is freedom to something. It is freedom from the law, freedom in the Spirit, and freedom to love. Notice just how Paul expresses this in verses 13 through 15; let me just read, first of all, verses 13 and 14.
He says, “For you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Those verses are really important. Those verses serve as a corrective to those who would take the doctrine of justification by faith and use it as a license for sin; for those who would say, “Well, if I’m saved by grace through faith alone, it doesn’t really matter how I live. I’m not saved by my works anyway! I’m not looking to my works, I’m not saved by my performance, so I’ll just live according to the dictates of my flesh. I’ll indulge every desire, I’ll live for myself. It doesn’t matter if I obey God at all.” It serves as a corrective to easy believism, which reduces faith to simple mental assent to a set of facts rather than to a living trust in Jesus Christ as a person.
You know, Luther said that the church was like a drunken peasant, who climbs up on one side of the horse and then falls off, and then he climbs on and he falls off the other side of the horse. That’s really true. If you look through church history it seems like the church is either going one way or the other. The church is either veering into legalism or it’s veering into worldliness and license.
Something that probably all of us should ask ourselves from time to time is whether we have more of a tendency towards legalism or whether we have more of a tendency towards license. Whichever direction we tend to most indicates which texts we’re probably avoiding.
It may be that some of us, in this series, have really been helped by the teaching of justification of faith alone, because some of us, perhaps, have a tendency to trust in ourselves, to rely upon ourselves; to look at our works, to look at what we do to assess our standing with God on the basis of how well we’re doing in the Christian life. We’re always riddled with guilt, we’re always doubting our salvation, we’re always struggling with assurance, and what we need is this free gospel of grace, saved by faith in Christ alone; look to him, don’t look to yourself. “Cast your deadly doing down.”
But there are some of us who probably have heard that all of our lives and show apathetic concern for holiness, are lazy when it comes to spiritual disciplines, who are indifferent to God’s commands, who just don’t really care that much. “After all, I’m saved by grace.” It’s just made us into lazy Christians, and what we’ve really accepted is not real grace but what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace, not the real thing.
If that’s where we are, we need this verse. “You were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.” Don’t make freedom into a license. Don’t abuse it. Don’t misuse it.
Instead, we are to use our freedom for love. “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” And then verse 14 gives the reason for this command: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
This is pretty brilliant on Paul’s part. He’s been arguing this entire letter that the Christian is not under the law. Now, the objection might come, “Well, if the Christian is not the under the law, if the Christian is not to live under the law, if he’s not obligated to keep the law, then certainly your doctrine, Paul, is going to lead to lawlessness; it’s just going to lead to all kinds of sin and indifference. It’s going to destroy the community!” Paul argues, “No, that’s not the case, because what you’re saved for, the freedom you’re given, is given for love; it’s given for the sake of love. And if you live in love, you’re going to fulfill the law.”
Now, notice what Paul is not saying and what he is saying. He is not saying here that you are under the law after all. That’s not what he says. He doesn’t smuggle the law back in. He is saying, rather, that love, which will be the first in his list of the fruit of the Spirit in verse 22 - again, we’re still talking about something that’s Spirit-generated, and he’s already said that it’s faith that works through love, so it’s also faith-generated; so he’s saying that a life of love driven by the Spirit, driven by faith, actually fulfills what the law intended all along, which is love for neighbor, loving your neighbor as yourself. That’s what the law intended, and love fulfills the law as we live in the Spirit and by faith.
I think you get a parallel idea in Romans chapter 8, verses 3 and 4, where Paul says that “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 for sin he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk according to the Spirit, not according to the flesh.” So again, the idea here is that it’s life in the Spirit, characterized by faith and love, that actually fulfills the law in the end.
Let me back up here and give a couple of illustrations. You might think of it this way: a Christian who is living life in the Spirit, who’s living by faith and who loves other people, is going to look externally a lot like a law-keeping Jew in his moral, ethical life. Not the ceremonial aspects, not submitting to circumcision and Sabbath and all that, but he’s going to be loving his neighbor just as a law-keeping Jew, as a Jew who’s trying to keep the law is going to live. But the motivations are going to be entirely different.
On one hand, the legalist is keeping the law looking fearfully towards God in order to try to be justified by his law-keeping, whereas the Christian is not really thinking about the law at all. The Christian is looking to Christ in faith, and his heart, filled with the Spirit, overflows in love, and out of love for others he just acts and meets needs and serves people and does things that inadvertently fulfill the law.
You might think of it this way: you think about two people up on stage. It would have been funny if I had done this as kind of a live demonstration (I’m not going to do that!), but just imagine! Pick two people in the congregation, put them in this illustration. Two people up on stage. One person has an iPhone with earbuds and is listening to music, completely oblivious to everybody else, and is dancing to the beat. The other person has no music playing, but is watching the other person and is trying to copy and follow the moves, and is dancing rather awkwardly.
The motivations are entirely different! Externally, they seem to be doing the same thing, but one’s doing it without any grace (there’s no music!). The other person is just moving with the beat, you know. Completely different motivation. The Christian life, as opposed to a merely religious life, is like that. The merely religious person is externally trying to copy all the moves, trying to do all the right things, but he doesn’t hear the music of the gospel playing. But the Christian has put his trust in Christ, he’s faithfully looked to Christ and Christ alone; he’s received the Spirit from Christ. He is so filled with the Spirit of Christ that love overflows, and the most natural thing in the world is to love others.
That’s the idea. That’s what Paul, I believe, is getting at.
Here’s one other illustration. Imagine a man who is a bachelor and he lives alone, and he’s, perhaps, unusual as a bachelor, he’s actually very tidy, he wants his house kept in a certain way, and he has hired several housekeepers who come in and work for pay, and they follow a list of prescribed rules for, “This is how the house is to be cleaned.”
When they come and they serve this bachelor, they work for him. They’re doing what he says to do and they’re doing it in order to get a paycheck. But let’s just say that he gets to know one of these women who are coming to clean his house and over time he falls in love with her. He builds a relationship with her, and eventually he marries her.
She wants to serve him; I mean, now she wants to help keep the house tidy, but she’s not doing it for a paycheck anymore. She’s not an employee. Her relationship to him is completely different, and yet she’s doing many of the same things that she’s done before, but she’s not following a list of rules, they throw out the list of rules. She’s acting naturally according to the relationship she now has with her husband.
That’s also the idea. The idea is that we serve God in faith and out of love, and not out of fear. Not fear of judgment; not all. “Love casts out fear,” as John says. But love leads us to live a life of service to others that inadvertently, without even looking so much at the law, ends up fulfilling the law. Life in the Spirit. The motivations are completely different. It’s love for God and love for others, and the focus is then external to one’s self, not so much a focus on, “What must I do in order to be saved”; that’s secure in Christ, but a focus on, “How can I love my fellow man?” So the focus becomes this life of one anothers.
You see those one anothers in verse 13 and then again in verse 15: “Do not use your freedom as opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” Then verse 15, the opposite: “If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” That’s the opposite of love. What Paul is arguing for, and we’ll return to over and again through the rest of this letter, is a life of love oriented towards the good of another.
So, we are free in Christ. We are free from the law, we are free in the Spirit, and we are free to love.
Let me end in this way: Martin Luther understood this. He got this, and I think he got it right, in his little tract The Freedom of the Christian. So just a little plug here: before the 500th anniversary of the Reformation is over and 2017 is finished, why don’t you read something about the Reformation, and maybe read Luther’s The Freedom of the Christian? It’s short, it’s sweet; it’s really good.
Here’s what Luther says. This is his basic proposition, stated early in the treatise. He says, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none; a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” And he states this and says, “I know this looks like a paradox,” and then he spends the rest of his little treatise showing how we are absolutely free in one respect, and we are absolutely in service to others in another respect.
In respect to our inner man and our relationship to God, in justification, we’re absolutely free, because faith trusts in Christ, and through union with Christ - remember the marriage metaphor or analogy that Luther uses; we’re like these poor peasant maidens and we marry a rich king, and now all that the king has belongs to us. We’re free in Christ, we’re rich in Christ, we’re wealthy in Christ, justified freely by grace. But, in regards to our fellow man, because we’re so free in Christ, we now have the motivation to love others and to live for our neighbors. This becomes the impetus, the motivation for everything we do in the realm of good works.
So Luther says this near the end; he says, “We conclude, therefore, that a Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbor. Otherwise, he is not a Christian. He lives in Christ through faith, in his neighbor through love. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God, by love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor.”
You see, the whole thing is that a Christian is taken outside of himself. A Christian trusts in something external to himself when he trusts Christ, and a Christian loves something outside of himself when he loves his neighbor. So a true Christian is then characterized by these two very basic things: faith and love. Faith energizing love, faith working through love.
Is that true of you this morning? Have you placed your faith and your trust in Christ alone for salvation so that you know you are free in Christ, free from the law, free from the burden of law-keeping, free from the burden of trying to earn your own salvation? But has that freedom in Christ brought about in your life the kind of transformation by the Spirit that the overflow of your heart is to love your neighbor as yourself? Do you do good works, not to earn anything, but simply to pour out from your own heart and life the grace that has given you?
Let’s pray.
Gracious Father, we thank you for the freedom that is ours in Christ. We thank you for what you have done for us by sending your Son and by sending your Spirit. You’ve sent your Son to bear our penalty, to live the life we should have lived, to die the death we should have died. You’ve raised him from the dead, you’ve declared him vindicated and triumphant over all of the powers that assail us, and through faith we are united to him, victorious in him. You’ve sent your Spirit into our hearts to change us, to transform us, to bring us into the living, vital experience of your grace. You’ve poured out your Spirit in our hearts, as Paul says; you’ve shed abroad the love of God in our hearts by your Spirit, and the overflow of that is love for one another. May that be true of us, may it be true increasingly, in every aspect of our lives together.
This morning, would you examine our hearts for both true faith and faith working through love? Would you help us, Lord, to understand this, to grasp it, and to live it out? May we be like the people in this silly little illustration, the people who actually hear the music of grace playing and then move in accordance with that grace.
As we come to the table this morning, we come remembering that it is a table of grace. It’s not a table that we bring something to. We don’t come setting our achievements on this table; we take. We take from what you have done for us, as Christ said, “Take and eat; this is my body.” So as we come to take, to receive what Christ has done for us, may we do so with hearts of faith, may we do so trusting in Christ himself, and may we do it in enjoyment of your Spirit, drawing us into fellowship with him. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
