Serve One Another (2)

13For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

I. Love Frees Us To Serve. (Gal 5:13)

II. Love Fulfills The Law. (Gal 5:14)

III. Love Forbids Dissension. (Gal 5:15)

Bottom-line: Saved people lovingly serve people.

Transcript Lightly Edited

Introduction

It is so good to be back with you this morning. I missed last Sunday. Donna and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary last Sunday. And yes, I’m so grateful that she has endured me for 34 years. Yes. But we also had received news because we were gonna be here but we had received news that our daughter in law, Hannah and our son Josh were expecting and they were going to induce and so we had to get to Jacksonville. And I am proud to say that our first grandchild was born on our anniversary February 2nd at 6:01pm. We’re grateful that Addie was born and doing well and we could not be more proud of of her mom, Hannah, and her dad, Josh. And at the end of our service I’ll be in the foyer, and for a nominal fee I’ll show a picture of her. Hey, we gotta start that college fund.

And so I didn’t expect to be out. I want to thank Josh Goza, our student pastor, for picking up the baton at the last minute saying, I can handle that. Great job in preaching and I’m just so grateful for him. But all of our staff do such a wonderful job. I am a small part of what God is doing here. This team is such an amazing team and I’m grateful for their love, their prayers, their friendship, and the ability to just go and know that things will be done well here.

So he started a series last week for us called “The Power of One Another.” In this series we’re gonna look at some of those scriptures that command us about how we treat one another. And I think he did a great job laying the foundation for all the other expectations of how we interact with other people by talking about the command to love one another as Christ has loved us. We are to love one another. And today I want to build on that and talk to you about the command to serve one another. We’re going to go to Galatians 5:13-15. You may want to open up your copy of God’s Word.

We’ll also put the Scriptures on the screen to make it easier for you to follow along. But there’s just nothing like seeing God’s Word with your own eyes from your own copy of Scripture. And if you don’t have a Bible and need one, please call our office. We’d be more than happy to get you a copy of God’s Word. As you’re turning to Galatians 5:13-15 in the New Testament, I want to ask you about freedom.

What do you think of when you hear the word freedom? You know, as Americans, we love our freedom. We are so grateful for our God given freedom as American citizens, as human beings. We talk about how we live in a free country after all. And we certainly do. We’re familiar with the idea of freedom in a lot of arenas of life. In the economic arena of life we believe in free markets, free trade, and free enterprise. But there’s no free lunch! You need to work and provide. We also believe in personal freedom. People often believe that freedom is the liberty to do whatever they want to do. And I understand where that concept comes from, but that’s really a flawed concept.

You are not free when you do what you always want to do. Ask the alcoholic, are you really free? Ask the drug addict, are you really free? Ask the teenager who continually loses her temper or his temper and breaks relationships and friendships, are you really free? Ask the person who chose to have an affair and destroyed their spouse and their family and another family, are you really free in this moment?

You see, Jesus said, whenever you commit sin, you become a slave to sin (John 8:34). Freedom is not always just doing whatever you want to do.

So what about Christian freedom? As followers of Jesus Christ, we believe in the liberty that Christ has given to us through his own perfect life and his sacrificial death on the cross and his resurrection. We just sang about that.

Did Christ set us free from the penalty of our sin, did he set us free from the condemnation of our sin, did Jesus set us free from the requirements of the Old Testament Law of God in order for us to now just do whatever we want to do? Is that really freedom? Or is Christian freedom the ability to now do what Christ has called us to do? That, my friend, is freedom.

Freedom is not just doing my thing. It’s a paradox. I find true liberty and freedom when I become a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ and I commit my life to him as my Lord, my Master, and I am His Son and his servant. That’s where freedom comes in.

And the Apostle Paul is writing about Christian freedom here in the letter we call the Book of Galatians, the Epistle of Galatians. He’s writing to Christians in the first century, probably somewhere around A.D. 49, 50, somewhere in there, to Christians who were living in the Roman province of Galatia in modern day Turkey. Paul had gone there on his first missionary journey and he had preached the freedom that you can experience by placing your faith in Christ as your Lord and Savior. And these Gentile pagans had turned from their idolatry and had placed their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior.

They received the good news of Christ that what we cannot do for ourselves, live perfectly according to God’s law, Christ did for us. And Christ lived a perfect righteous life fulfilling the law of God, the requirements of God. But not only did Jesus live that perfect life where we could not live it and did not live it, Jesus also took the condemnation of our sinful lives on His own body. He endured the curse of the law for sinners like me and you, and he died for us, and on the third day, He rose from the dead for us. We are given the gift of eternal life through faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone. And these Galatian Christians had believed it and they had embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ. Churches had been planted.

Legalism

But not long after Paul left Galatia, there was an early Christian cult that came on his heels, preaching a different gospel. The gospel they preached said you need Jesus, and faith is certainly important but if you’re going to be right with God, you also have to become a Jew. You need to place yourself under the law of Moses in the Old Testament. You’ve got to keep the ceremonial laws. You’ve got to keep the rituals. Oh, and by the way, men, if you really want to be right with God, you Gentile men have got to get circumcised. Now you think it’s hard enough to get guys to get baptized, you tell them you also got to have surgery now if you want to be right with God. And it was an early Christian cult that tried to add law keeping to the work of Christ on the cross. It was another gospel which was no gospel. That is not good news.

That is trying to earn your salvation through religion. And the Jewish people had demonstrated through the centuries they couldn’t keep the law perfectly. What makes you think you Gentiles can keep it? And so Paul writes this letter - Oh, you foolish Galatians, who, who has so easily bewitched you that you would leave the gospel for another gospel, which is no gospel at all. And he’s telling them, do not put yourself back under the law. That is not freedom. Christ has set you free. Now the Judaizers, that Christian, cult, the Judaizers were forcing legalism on Christians. There’s a list of do’s and don’ts and rituals and ceremonies and holidays and foods that you have to partake of or not partake of in order to be right with God. And Paul rejects legalism.

License

So then the Judaizers say, well, then Paul is saying anything goes, you’re just free to do whatever you want to do as a Christian, and you could just go live a sinful life because “Jesus died for my sin, so I can just do whatever I wanna do now.”

And Paul says, no, I reject that as well. Two extremes. The Gospel rejects legalism, which is rule keeping in order to earn your salvation, and license, which says, as a Christian, you can just do whatever you want to do because sin is no longer serious. He rejects both of those extremes and yet he holds on to Christian liberty.

With that background, I want us to read these three verses and then I want to talk to you about how this has anything to do with serving one another. Galatians, chapter 5. Beginning with verse 13, Paul writes,

Galatians 5:13–15 ESV

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.

May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Let me give you three points to outline Paul’s argument. Point number one.

1. Love frees us to serve.

Love frees us to serve. Paul is rejecting the allegation of the Judaizers that if we aren’t under the law of Moses any longer, then we have the license to just sin and sin and live like we want to live, and live according to the desires of the flesh. And he’s rejecting that. But he begins by saying, no, no, no, no.

Love frees us, liberates us to serve. He talks about this freedom in verse 13. “For you were called to freedom.” Paul declares that when you trust Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are free from the condemnation of the law against sinners. Romans 8:1 declares, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” You don’t have to fear the wrath of God. And how is it that you are no longer condemned? Jesus took your condemnation on the cross of Calvary. Jesus both perfectly lived out the law, and then he took the curse of the law.

For for those of us who have not lived it perfectly, and through Christ’s death, burial and resurrection, we have been given spiritual freedom. Freedom from the penalty of sin, freedom from the weight of guilt and shame and condemnation, free from the fear that I’m never good enough and I can never be sure that I’m right with God, because what if I’m saved today but I lose it tomorrow, free from having to live according to the whims of religious people, free from the torment of not knowing if I’m really right with God. He says, for you were called to freedom, brothers.

Paul would have loved the lyrics of the old African American Spiritual which declared, “Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!”

He’s talking to Christians, “Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.”

That word opportunity he’s referring to is a military term.

It means a staging ground. It means a beachhead, a launching point. And Paul is saying, don’t let your fleshly desires to do what God doesn’t want you to do become the staging ground for a life of selfishness. Don’t let your fleshly desires become that staging ground for you to just do whatever you feel like you’re gonna do. So don’t let your freedom, don’t use your freedom as a launching pad for the flesh.

And when he talks about the flesh, he’s not talking about this material that hangs on your skeleton. He’s talking about your human nature that is still often flawed and opposed to God, that part of you that often longs to do wrong rather than to do what God wants you to do. It’s a battle. And if you’ve been a Christian for five minutes, you know it’s still there.

You have a new nature in Christ, but you also have an old nature that wars against the new nature. You have the flesh, human desire, that wars against the Holy Spirit’s leading in your life. He’s talking about your flesh. Now we don’t have to wonder what Paul means by flesh. He goes on and elucidates what he means in the following verses.

We don’t have time to preach them this morning. One of the beauties of preaching through books of the Bible is you can give the context of the book. Who wrote it? When was it written? To whom was it written? What was the occasion for the writing? What went before this verse? What comes after this verse?

So when we do topical sermons like this, Love last week, serving this week, I just gotta squeeze in a lot of background so we might be here a couple hours. Lol. Okay. Or not. But you don’t have to wonder, what is Paul talking about when he talks about the flesh? Galatians 5:16-24

Well, he goes on in verse 16, and I’ll just read it, he says, “But I say walk by the Spirit,” talking about the Holy Spirit of God, the leading of the Spirit, “walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit [of God] 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. Now the works of the flesh are evident.” And then he starts telling us what your flesh wants to do and what it will do if you let it have its way - “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.” In other words, go watch the news tonight and you’ll see what the flesh is capable of. He says, “as I warned you, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such thing, there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

That’s what he means when he writes in verse 13, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. God did not save you so you can keep sinning. He saved you so you can serve him by serving other people. I

I had a lady on a Sunday morning just boldly say to me as her husband said, “You know,” I mean, think about this- this is a Sunday morning at church, not here, just to be clear. Don’t look around saying, I wonder who he’s talking about. It wasn’t this church. It was another church. I’ve served in my ministry. I’ve served four, so I’ll let you guess. But on a Sunday morning, before the service is about to begin, he walks up to me as I’m talking to his wife, and he says, “Hey, Pastor, you know she climbed out of bed with another man to be here this morning, don’t you? She’s having an affair, and she shows up here this morning.” And I’m just dumbfounded and I said, “Look, this is probably not the time for us to do counseling, but is that true?” And she said, “I’m gonna tell you what I told him. God wants me to be happy!” No, he wants you to be holy. So this is the extreme of someone who’s following the desires of their flesh, saying, I’m saved. I’m a Christian. My sins are forgiven. I can do what I want to do. God wants me to be happy, and this will make me happy. And Paul says, don’t. Don’t let your flesh become the staging ground for a sinful lifestyle. But through love, Serve one another through love.

The Greek word is agape, for love. It’s God’s love. It’s a selfless, sacrificing love. Through love, through that kind of selfless, sacrificing love, serve one another. Now, whenever the Galatians hear this letter read to them in Greek, and that’s their language in the first century under the Roman Empire, they hear serve. We don’t think much about it, but you know what the word they heard?

Slave. Enslave yourself one another. Doulos, the lowest of low of the slaves, become that kind of slave. In serving one another, they probably would have recoiled against the notion of slavery. “We are Roman citizens. That is not for us. We are free people.” And Paul says, enslave yourself to one another in love and you’ll find what true freedom is in Christ. True freedom is not doing what your flesh wants to do. True freedom is doing what Christ wants you to do.

So love frees us to serve.

But as we think about this kind of love, the greatest example of it is not found in Paul’s life. It’s not found in my life. It’s not found in your life. It’s not found in any priest, preacher, pastor, pope, potentate, politicians. I’m looking for all the “p” Words!

The greatest example of this kind of love that frees to serve is found in Jesus Christ. Do you remember the disciples of Jesus were arguing among themselves who would be the greatest in the kingdom? When Jesus established his earthly rule and reign, they were jockeying for positions in the new kingdom that was to come. They wanted power over people, and they argued who was going to be the greatest. And Jesus had to stop on the road to Jerusalem where he is bound to die for their sin.

And he has to say to them, this is not my way. This arguing, this jockeying for position, this desire to want to be served rather than to serve is not of my kingdom. That’s how the Gentiles treat each other. They exercise their authority over you, but it shall not be so among you. But in my kingdom, if you want to be first, be last.

If you want to be the greatest, become the slave of everybody else. And then in Mark 10:45, he said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Christ says, I’m on the way to a cross to die and pay the price for freedom, to ransom, to set sinners free.

Love frees you to serve. If you’re taking notes, there’s a Second point that will help you understand Paul’s argument.

2. Love fulfills the law.

Love frees us to serve, but secondly, love fulfills the law. You want to talk about law, the Judaizers want to talk about law. Paul says, I’ll tell you about law. Love fulfills the law of God. Now here’s how he puts it in verse 14, for the whole law.

He’s talking about the Old Testament law of Moses. “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word,” and now he quotes Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew 19:19, and John 13:34 -He quotes Jesus, who was quoting Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus was asked in Matthew 22:35-40 what was the greatest commandment. He said, “The first is, you love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.” He was quoting from Deuteronomy 6. 5. He says, “this is the first and great commandment.”

Now, he wasn’t asked about the second, but he said, “And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” quoting Leviticus 19:18. And Peter is picking up on this, and he writes, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, love. And here he’s focusing in on loving your neighbor. Because how do we prove to the world that we love God? By how we treat each other.

Jesus said in John 13:34, 35, by this love shall all men know that you’re my disciples. If you love one another like I’ve loved you, that’s how we prove to the world we love God. It is all fluff, smoke and mirrors to proclaim your love for God whom you’ve never seen, the apostle John would write, when you don’t even love your neighbor who you do see? So love fulfills the law. Love is the summary of the law. Love is what God’s trying to show us through the law.

I don’t know if you remember, but in school, many of us had to read that Anglo Saxon poem Beowulf. We were supposed to read it and then do a book report on it, right? I remember that requirement.

And I found Beowulf to be hard reading as a kid. And then a friend of mine said, oh, you’ve never heard there’s a thing called Cliff Notes? Someone else has read that. You don’t have to read it. They explain it.

You can just read Cliff Notes and write your book report. So I bought Cliff Notes for Beowulf, wrote my book report. And then when class time came, my teacher said, “Richard, did you read Beowulf?” And I said, “Well, yeah.” She asked, “Did you read Beowulf, or did you read the Cliff Notes about Beowulf? Because it looks to me from your report that you really didn’t read Beowulf.” I had to confess, “Oh, you’re right.”

Well, Jesus is giving us the Cliff Notes. Old Testament, he says, let me just sum it up for you! Love God supremely. Love your neighbor sincerely. That’s what God’s trying to teach you. And the law of Moses demonstrated that we cannot, and have not done either one of those perfectly. We are sinners.

And if our salvation depends on us keeping the law, we are are doomed. The law was a schoolmaster. The law was a tutor to teach the ancient people of God and us that we cannot in our own flesh, earn our salvation. And when we come to the end of ourselves and we say, “God, I can’t.” God says, “Now here’s some good news. What you can’t do, I can.” And he sent his Son Jesus into the world to perfectly fulfill the law.

And now, as Christians, we are called to love each other, and through loving each other, we fulfill the law not to EARN our salvation, but to EXPRESS it. We’re saved by grace alone, the unmerited favor of God alone, through faith alone, not faith and works, in Christ alone, not Christ and Moses, not Christ and the Southern Baptist Convention. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

And we are set free by love to serve. And love fulfills the demands of the law.

Love is like the password of the Old Testament. You know, in our modern computer age, passwords are very important. Some of you might have a legal pad with all your passwords written on it, or sticky notes all over your computer. According to SplashData’s annual list of the most used passwords for 2024, it is no wonder we are being hacked every day.

The third most used password in 2024 was password.

The second most used password was secret.

It gets worse.

The number one used password in 2024 was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Hackers love us because we want a password that is simple, that is memorable, so we just dumb it down. And Jesus and Peter are dumbing it down for us. You want to know what God’s trying to teach you through the Old Testament law? Love. Love God supremely. Love your neighbor sincerely.

And when you fail to do both of those, you have an advocate with the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, because he did both perfectly. Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament law and its requirements for us by doing both of those perfectly. He’s the only one who has ever Loved the Lord his God with all of his heart, mind, soul and strength.

And he’s the only one who loved his neighbor as himself perfectly when he went to a bloody cross and died for the sin of the world.

And God takes that righteous life and he gives you credit for it when you place your faith in Christ. Because God took the condemnation of your sinful life and paid it through Christ’s voluntary death on the cross.

Love fulfills the law. How does love fulfill the law?

Whenever the Bible gives us the Ten Commandments, for example, there are two tablets. The first four commandments have to do with our relationship with God.

The following six have to do with our relationship with each other. How do we show we love God? By how we treat one another. And love fulfills the law. Love takes the Ten Commandments.

Honor your father and your mother, and love says that’s the requirement of the law. That’s how I show I love God. And that’s how I serve my parents, by honoring them. Young people, it is a command of God that you honor your parents and the role that God has placed in their life. And by the way, when you become a parent, you’ll have a whole lot more respect for yours. The older I got, the smarter my dad became, and my mother.

You shall not murder, because that’s not love. Love doesn’t take another life. Love sacrifices its life for another.

Thou shalt not commit adultery because we see the character of God. He is a promise keeping God. He is faithful to us and he demands us to do the same because it’s a reflection of our love for Him. But it’s also a way we serve another person when we stay faithful to our marriage vows to our spouse. It is the way we show the ultimate love to them so we stay true to them. And it’s how we show love for a neighbor because we don’t break up their home for our fleshly desires.

You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false testimony against your neighbor.

You shall not covet what your neighbor has because that’s not how love treats people. And that’s not how we reflect God’s love.

Love frees us to serve, love fulfills the law, and number three, if you’re taking notes, Paul would argue, love forbids dissensions.

3. Love forbids dissensions.

You’ll see that in Galatians 5:15. “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”

Did you hear those ugly words? Bite, devour, consumed.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite television shows was Wild Kingdom. I’ve always loved nature shows. And one of the programs I remember watching as a little kid was of a predator stalking, chasing, attacking, capturing its prey and then it began to eat it.

Now this was the 1970’s, so they cut away before it got too graphic. In 2025, we zoom in on the gore, get a close up picture of the entrails, you know, but in the ‘70s it was bad enough.

And this is the picture Paul is using of how Christians and churches can sometimes treat each other when they start arguing. In this case, these churches and Christians were arguing over whether or not we should go towards legalism, go back under the law of Moses, including circumcision, or if you don’t do that, then you’re accused of license - just live like you want to live. And they’re arguing about that.

And Paul portrays them as fighting tooth and nail, as we would say, to win the day, to win their argument. To bite means to hurt. It’s a picture of snakes and wild beasts. And to devour speaks of a wild predator that has bitten its prey and now it begins to eat its prey, and consumed means it’s done, the prey has been destroyed.

And the apostle Paul says, that’s exactly what I see the danger among Christians and churches when they start arguing over these matters. Rather than keeping true to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, Christians become combatants when we take our eyes off the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Have you ever heard the word MAD or the acronym mad? I’m not talking about how you are in traffic. I’m talking about the military term that refers to “Mutual Assured Destruction.” It is a nuclear doctrine that says two nations that possess nuclear weapons will not use those weapons because they know to do so would invite mutual assured destruction. If one nation launches nukes, the other nation will do the same. Both nations will be destroyed. By the way, I pray to God that doctrine is true and that it prevents us from ever using them.

But the Apostle Paul says something similar happens in Christian churches when we start getting our eyes off the free gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the sovereign grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we start trying to go back under legalism, or we go forward into license.

In his commentary on these verses, John Calvin pleads with us to remember,

“…when the devil tempts us to disputes, that the disagreement of members within the Church can lead to nothing but the ruin and consumption of the whole body. How unhappy, how mad it is that we who are members of the same body should voluntarily conspire together for mutual destruction.”

He says, don’t be a part of the problem, be a part of the solution by getting your eyes back on Jesus and the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that calls us to serve one another. And when you start serving one another, you will find you are fulfilling the law.

Bottom-Line: Saved people lovingly serve people.

That’s my bottom line today. I think Paul would have us to take away today that saved people serve people. Instead of using freedom as a time for self indulgence and just live like I want to live. My Christian freedom compels me to find ways I can lovingly serve other people.

It is the antidote, it is the immunization, the inoculation of selfishness in my life when I realize that Christ has saved me and and given me a freedom to then love other people like he has loved me.

Your homework this week is to ask this question in your morning prayer time, “Lord, show me someone today I can lovingly serve like you serve me.”

“Lord, show me someone today I can lovingly serve like you serve me.”

Lord, show me someone today I can lovingly serve like you served me. That doesn’t mean you go to a cross for them, but it does mean at times you die to your desire, you die to your plan, you die to your pleasure, you die to your priority, and you live for what is the best thing for them in love.

Can you imagine what would happen in churches around America and the world if Christians prayed every morning, God, would you show me someone today I can lovingly serve like you have served me? And imagine if we went out and did it. If we went out and loved our neighbor like ourselves. And you do remember who your neighbor is, don’t you?

When Jesus was walking this earth, the Jews had so narrowed the definition of neighbor that it was limited to fellow Jews who kept the strict 613 Commandments and traditions of the Old Testament like they thought you should. And if you broke one of them, you’re no longer my neighbor, I’m not obligated to love you. And Jesus blew that notion apart in one story, the story of the Good Samaritan. And Jesus says, your neighbor is anyone whose need you see, whose need you can meet, regardless of their race, their rank, their resources, or their religion.

Your neighbor is anyone whose need you see, whose need you can meet. Go love your neighbor like that. I’m so grateful for this church being a neighbor to neighbors in this community, in our world.

Can you imagine what would happen in your marriage if you woke up every morning convinced that Christ saved you not so you can just live for yourself, but so that you could selflessly and sacrificially live for your spouse?

Can you imagine what would happen, young people, if you woke up in the morning, recognizing Christ died on a cross, rose from the dead and gave you the freedom of salvation, not so that you can rebel against mom and dad, but so that you can lovingly serve them and be a blessing to them.

Can you imagine what would happen if, when we are tempted to sin, to lie, to do things we ought not to do, we would stop and say, Christ has saved me, not so I can live in sin, but so that I can serve in love? And sinning is not a way to serve someone.

Can you imagine what would happen if we started saying saved people lovingly serve people? How can I serve someone today? Is this action or attitude serving this person in love?

My final confession is I can’t do this in my flesh. We’ve read what my flesh and your flesh is capable of. The only way we can do this is through the Spirit of God. The Spirit of Christ living in us.

One of my favorite verses is not just John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Another key verse that has been helpful to me in my Christian walk is Galatians, chapter 2, verse 20, where Paul said, “I’ve been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,” Listen to this, “who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Christ, live your life through me.

Let’s pray together.

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