Galatians 5:1-15

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. 

2 Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. 3 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be [try to be] justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. 

7 You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? 8 This persuasion is not from him who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump. 10 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. 11 But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. 12 I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves! 

13 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. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

Last week, Paul compared the system of the Mosaic Law to Jerusalem to Hagar and Ishmael.  Hagar was a slave and Ishmael was born into slavery.  They were pagans even though Ishmael had undergone the same sacrament of circumcision that Isaac would undergo.  The sacrament was the same.  But only Isaac had God’s promise of eternal covenant love.  Ishmael only had God’s promise of temporal, earthly reward.

Ishmael was a child of Abraham’s sincere attempt to achieve God’s promise of an heir by Abraham’s own strength and means.  Sincerity was not the problem, sovereignty was.  God alone would produce a promised seed from Abraham and Sarah only after Abraham became totally impotent and Sarah was far past fertility.  Abraham and Sarah had to crash into the wall of human impossibility before they could begin to grasp the outworking of God’s amazing one-way love.  

Our passage this morning is about freedom in Christ. Paul shows us:  (1) What we are free FROM; and, (2) What we are free FOR.

    1. FREE FROM (5:1-5, 7-12)
  • Freedom! (5:1)
        1. For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. 
        2. Everything Paul has been writing and everything he will write is summed up in this one verse.  The nice men from Jerusalem were teaching that to be genuinely free, the Asian Gauls had to DO certain things.
        3. To receive the full acceptance of God’s approval and affection, one needs to keep the entirety of the Mosaic Law, celebrating the required festivals and male circumcision being two examples Paul mentions.
        4. Imagine the poor, elderly, aching widow working year after year to scrub her house free of yeast before a feast week.  Think of what confusion for the sincere church member about traveling to Jerusalem to make sacrifices at the temple as the Law commanded.  How should he respond to Roman laws in light of all the Mosaic Law’s civil regulations?  How should the good Law-keeping Gaul dress?  What should she eat? Could she attend church during “that time of the month?” Should they have cities of refuge to which a law-breaker could flee?  Did they owe a temple tax on top of their local church giving? Should sincere believers join the Jewish Zealot Party?
        5. How should members of the congregation treat someone who refused to be circumcised? How do they treat pork or shellfish eaters, wearers of mixed material garments, those who don’t do ceremonial washings?
        6. Exactly WHICH laws were changed by the fact of Jesus’ person and work?  How were they changed?  Who determines the changes?  These and thousands more questions were destroying the joy of grace that Paul preached and opinions clashed and sides were drawn up.  
        7. Rule-keeping had turned the Galatians in on themselves.  Preaching and teaching was no longer about Christ but about them.  The nice men taught that the gospel was an INWARD event.  Paul was reminding them that the gospel was OUTSIDE of them.
        8. The Asian Gauls were being told to focus upon the word “Do!”  And that was the yoke of slavery robbing them of their joy and freedom in the word of the Gospel: “Done!”  They had been freed from a grace + works life of slavery.  But life by Law chokes love to death.
        9. You are not what you do, says Paul, you fundamentally are what Jesus has done for you!  You are free!  If you’re in Christ, your identity no longer has anything to do with the Old Adam’s performance; it has everything to do with what the Last Adam has done on your behalf.  
        10. Your redemption, identity, worth, value, approval, affection, and power is in Christ.  Searching for any of those things outside of Christ is slavery to your own loveless agitations, frustrations, and allegations.
        11. Paul is telling us that living under the Mosaic Law as a system and a rule is completely over.  The only thing that survives Calvary is God’s moral, righteous, holy character revealed in His moral law and perfectly displayed in Christ Jesus.
  • Jesus Plus (5:2-5,7-12)
      1. Vv. 2-3, “I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law” [The Message].
      2. If you would ask the average person on the street how they would describe Christianity you would most likely hear something about behavior or social or political rules.  Christianity is about “do this” and “don’t do that.”
      3. That is the crux of Paul’s argument about circumcision.  Christianity is not primarily about the life of the Christian, but about the Christ.  So the external “to do list” religion of the nice men from Jerusalem amounts to nothing.
      4. Luther says, “…it is not a bad thing to receive circumcision; but to look for righteousness in circumcision—for it was for this purpose that they were being circumcised—is godlessness.” It’s easier to recognize false trust in ceremony than in the 10 Commandments, but the principle is the same.  Paul mentions the most obvious issue for Galatian men, but he has in mind the whole of the Law as a scheme of righteousness.
      5. It doesn’t matter what “good” things you are doing if you are taking pride in them and relying upon them as a means to achieve your definition of success, meet your felt needs, and produce your own outcome.
      6.  Circumcision was an issue for the Asian Gauls, but later, in Corinth, “good Christians” spoke in tongues, or had more money, or followed the right preacher, or didn’t eat meat sacrificed to idols, or kept certain feast days, or had allegedly-better spiritual gifts.  It isn’t the thing; it’s the inward-facing Old Adam and his desire for outward glory by checklist righteousness that must die.
      7. It’s the desire to control our destinies and reap our own glory that make us angry and agitated slaves, those things we believe must be done to experience the love of God and achieve a higher life.  It was the Old Adam’s drive to DO that caused him to reject all God had provided for him.  Christ came to undo all that we have done.
      8. Paul says to the Gauls, you have fallen away from grace.  When we hear that expression in church we take it to mean that someone has suffered a big moral failure.  But Paul’s definition is the opposite; falling from grace is trying to achieve approval from God and men by law-keeping!  
      9. They are those that cut themselves off from Christ.  Note the word play between circumcision and cutting off Christ.  A Christian who sins does not fall FROM grace, she falls INTO grace – the grace of a loving God who restores us and assures us that nothing can separate us from His love in Christ Jesus.  David’s song of repentance, Ps. 32, is a picture of a sinner who fell into grace.
      10. We think Christian progress is about getting stronger and morally better every day in every way.  But the Bible shows true Christian growth and progress bring an increasing awareness of our weakness and of Jesus’ strength and provision.  It was at the end of his life, not at conversion, that Paul called himself the chief of sinners.
      11. V. 5, “For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.”  “Faith makes men spiritual; works make them fleshly.  …without grace man can perform the Law only out of fear of punishment or hope of a promised reward. …in either case the action is fleshly and mercenary.”  Wait is a word of trust that renews our strength (Isa. 40:33).
      12. Jesus said, Jn. 15:26, of the Holy Spirit’s work, “He will testify about me.”  The Spirit’s role in our lives is to constantly preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ into our dark corners of distrust.  You must decrease; Jesus must increase.  To showcase your own merit is to fall out of grace.
      13. The Gauls’ drive to showcase their own glory did NOT come from Christ.  It was yeast that puffed up the congregation (vv. 7-10). In fact, if the nice men from Jerusalem really want to DO something worthwhile, Paul says, they should castrate themselves (12).
      14. Paul knows his preaching is true because it ticks off the law-keepers and earns persecution. Isn’t that the exact opposite of how we think?  We think our success rests in making people happy.  But Paul says grace ticks people off.  It brought Paul stoning, beatings, imprisonment, and constant backbiting (11).  Grace exposes inward-facing anger; but also it yields joy and freedom to those who eagerly wait at Calvary for the hope of righteousness.
      15. The joy app does not work on the “Law 1.0” operating system.  But the Spirit of Christ in you is an entirely NEW operating system.  Grace is the perfect OS; but it conflicts with “Law 1.0” In fact, “Law 1.0” is designed to crash.  It cannot bring love, joy, peace, patience or any other fruit of the Spirit.
      16. You are free FROM the obligation to fix yourself, find approval from others, manage your life according to your felt needs, and organize your flesh to accommodate your sin nature.  And you are free FOR trust in Christ that alone brings love of God and neighbor.  
      17. Paul begins to describe here and in the rest of this letter what genuine freedom looks like for Jesus followers – what Christ will do IN us because of His person and work.  These are the things we free to do by instinct from our new nature, not by command to our old nature.
  • FREE FOR (5:6, 13-14)
  • Love as Expression of Trust
        1. V. 6, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.”
        2. “For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.” [The Message].
        3. Dr. Luther says, “when, under the guidance of the Law, you have come to the knowledge of your sins, beware lest before all else you presume henceforth to satisfy the Law as one who intends to live a better life. But despair altogether of your past and future life, and trust boldly in Christ. …Not until then will you be doing good works according to the Law.”
        4. The focus of Christian faith is not the life of the Christian but the Christ.  “Law 1.0” always says, “Yes, grace but….”  It is an inward-focused system demanding self-improvement.
        5. But Paul says, “What matters is …faith expressed in love.”  The Grace OS frees us from inward focus of “Am I doing enough?” We are liberated not to “let go and let God,” but to “trust God and get going.”
        6. You are free from the worry about avoiding failure and insuring success because, “It is for freedom that Christ has set you free!”  We all know the burden of trying to become lovely to get love, trying to be successful to gain admiration, striving for the bliss of perfection.
        7. God did not love us because we were lovely.  He loves us because HE IS love.  “…but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
        8. Isn’t that incredible? It’s so contrary to the transactional world in which we live.  Generally speaking, we don’t get stuff for free.  We pay money and get something back; we give work and get wages.  A “give-to-get” religious system stifles the possibility for biblical love because biblical love is not transactional.
        9. Grace frees us to relate to one another unconditionally and generously because every deep longing we have God has met in Christ Jesus.  We can spend our lives giving to others without expecting anything else in return.
        10. Christ has set you free from “give something to get something.”
  • Love, Not Lust or Legalism (13-15)
      1. 13 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. 
      2. Paul says we are not set free to ignore God’s moral law and live to get for ourselves.  “I’m free from the Mosaic Law so I can go to the Friday night orgy at the temple of Aphrodite.”  Nope.  You are free from the Mosaic Law as a system, but now you are a slave to righteousness because you have been given the Spirit of Christ. 
      3. We are not free to be our own law and do as we please; immorality and moralism are both self-salvation projects.  Moralism is slavery to rule-keeping and immorality slavery to rule-breaking.  Both are inward-facing, “For whatever does not proceed from trust is sin” (Rom. 14:23).
      4. Christ set us free to do what pleases God because as Spirit uses the Word studied, preached, sung, and prayed to show us our sins and to change our affections and to assure us that we truly have all that the Word promises us in Christ. 
      5. Christ kept the moral law perfectly.  And the moral law is a reflection of God’s perfect nature, which never changes.  Paul is trying to get that fact across to the Asian Gauls.  The moral law and the life of the Lord Jesus Christ are one and the same rule of faith.
      6. The phrase “…through love, serve one another” is the same shorthand Jesus used to sum up the second table of the 10 Commandments: love your neighbor as yourself.  I am free from curses of the Mosaic Law that promise banishment or starvation or death by rock.  I am free from trying to earn the Law’s rewards offered for those who can accomplish perfectly its commands.
      7. We don’t get spiritual brownie points for loving God and neighbor.  In Christ our points-book is completely full.  I don’t need “thank you” notes.  I don’t need recognition because the God of the universe has recognized and loved me from before the universe ever existed.
      8. Only the announcement of the gospel can make us that free – free to give everything we have because in Christ we have everything we need.  Luther: “…it is the aim of freedom that now we do what is good, not from compulsion but gladly and with no ulterior motive.”
      9. It is SO exciting to see that kind of freedom being expressed here in our congregation as you fellowship together, serve together, bear one another’s burdens, and stand firm in trusting God’s Word!
      10. But when we define our relationships by what we can GET from God or men, not by what we are free to GIVE, bad things happen.  15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. 
      11. If I slip back from trust in Christ and into the performance mode of “Law 1.0,” I get mad when I don’t hear what I want to hear, get what I want to get, or achieve the outcome I want to achieve.
      12. James teaches this in James 4:1-2, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.”  “You are not giving me what I want and I am entitled to it.  I demand you get with MY program and serve MY needs.”
      13. In Galatia you might have heard, “Titus, your refusal to be circumcised is offensive.  I demand you get circumcised just like I did. Your lifestyle devalues my choices.”  Or you might have heard, “Perseus, you must stop wearing that cotton undershirt with that linen toga.  You are ruining my worship experience with your disregard for God’s Law!”  Or, “I refuse to celebrate the Lord’s supper with Lydia; she refuses ceremonial washings.”
      14. Our offenses always arise from not getting what we want and believe we deserve.  But trusting into God’s announcement that He has given us everything we need, not because we are lovely but because He is loving, frees us from our demands.  We become free to love people that hate us.  We become free from the need even to defend ourselves against complaints and attacks. 

What causes fights and quarrels among you?  They arise out of collapsing in upon ourselves and rebooting the “Law 1.0” operating system.  Wives, what frustrates you about your husbands.  Husbands, what frustrates you about your wives?  What brings conflict with co-workers, neighbors, church members?

Is it not this, say James and Paul, you are giving but you’re not getting back what you want? “Law 1.0” is flashing an error message.

Grace frees you when you trust into all that Jesus has done for you.  You can joyfully spend your life moving to the back of the line, not to the front.  You can peacefully endure oppression and insults and slights when you hang out at the foot of the cross.

When the cross is small and far away, our demands grow; we bite and devour one another because we seek from others what God alone provides.  When the cross is near and large, our hunger is satisfied by the fruits of the Spirit cultivated through the ordinary means of grace.  Compared to that, there is no Law.

 “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live…” (Isa. 55:1-3).