What True Freedom Looks Like

1. Serving through Love (5:13-15)

Uphold the Law (v.13)

Galatians 5:13 ESV

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.

True freedom comes from lovingly enslaving ourselves to each other.

Romans 6:1 ESV

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

Romans 3:27–31 ESV

Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

“We are saved by grace through faith for good works.”

Illustration: works flow from grace/salvation

Application:

(1) Do you having saving faith?

James 2:26 ESV

For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

(2) We see evidence of saving faith by works.

Albeit we are not saved by works, yet the ultimate result of salvation must always be work. The cause of salvation lies in Grace, but the effect of salvation appears in working.

God’s Glory In The Building Up Of Zion, Volume 55, Sermon #3147 - Psalm 102:16

Charles Spurgeon

(3) We, too, do good works although saved by grace

Matthew 7:17–19 ESV

So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

To escape the error of salvation by works we have fallen into the opposite error of salvation without obedience.

A. W. Tozer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “cheap grace” in The Cost of Discipleship: Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

To have true freedom, the flesh must be under control.

The Law Under Grace (v.14-15)

Galatians 5:14–15 ESV

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.

The law under grace looks entirely different; it is a paradigm shift.

2. Walking by the Spirit (5:16-23)

A War (v.16-18)

Galatians 5:16–18 ESV

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Tug of war illustration

Romans 7:14–19 ESV

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

The Flesh (v.19-21)

Galatians 5:19–21 ESV

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Sexual immorality (πορνεία), impurity, sensuality (“licentiousness”) - Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) - “After Freud, sex is definitive of who we are, as individuals, as societies, and as a species” (Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 221). This has had profound influence on how our society understands the goal of life: “The end of human life is no longer something set in the future; rather, it is enclosed within the present. To be satisfied is to be sexually fulfilled here and now. The happiest person is . . . the one who his constantly indulging his or her sexual desires” (CT, TRTMS, 222).

Sex, pornography, etc. is nothing but another drug in the attempt to treat our problems in life and the sense of guilt due to sin.

Sorcery (φαρμακεία)

Enmity - hate, hateful

The Spirit (22-23)

Galatians 5:22–23 ESV

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

“against such things there is no law” - Things to be for, not against.

3. Belonging to Christ (5:24-26)

Deliverance from Sin (v.24)

Galatians 5:24 ESV

And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Illustration: Plato on the passions (charioteer, white horse, black horse) - charioteer (reason) is attempting to mediate between the white horse (goodness) and the black horse (corrupted passions).

“After conversion our will and conscious intent are for God or the spiritual. . . . But the layer upon layer of life experience that is embedded in our bodies, as living organisms born and bred in a world set against or without God, doesn't directly and immediately follow the shift of our conscious will. It largely retains the tendencies in which it has so long lived” (D. Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, 86.)

Spiritual disciplines: “time-tested activities consciously undertaken by us as new men or women to allow our spirit ever-increasing sway over our embodied selves. They help by assisting the ways of God’s Kingdom to take the place of the habits of sin embedded in our bodies.” (D. Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, 86.)

Some of the disciplines (on slide): solitude, fasting, sacrifice, study, worship, service, prayer, fellowship

Submission to the Spirit (v.25-26)

Galatians 5:25–26 ESV

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

v.25 - “If we live by the Spirit, let us be in line/submit to/conform with the Spirit.”