A look at true freedom

Useful information

At various points in my life I have had the opportunity to tutor a few people in High School maths. I did well at Maths and so it was something I enjoyed, but there is a question that invariably gets asked, particularly as you get to the more advanced mathematics - and that is: what’s the point? Why do I need to know how to differentiate x squared? Or why would I ever have need to use the quadratic formula to find the value of x?

It’s actually a very good question. But the answer I generally give is that this sort of background knowledge can help better understand how many things work.

The truth is, a similar thing applies for theology. If you’ve ever studied much theology at depth, you’ll begin to think that it all seems so detached from reality. But like higher order maths that helps you to understand some of the more complicated things of life, having the deeper understanding of theology helps understand much of the world.

Today we come to what is perhaps the more practical part of the book of Galatians. It is going to give us a much clearer picture of what the expectation is for how we should live.

Now sometimes it can be tempting to think that we want to jump over all the boring preamble and just get to the point.

It can be like when you are a young driver, and your mum is trying to tell you to be safe on the road, but in doing so she has to tell you countless stories of things going wrong. As she goes through her lecture, you just want to say, yes I know, get to the point.

Well the truth is, that background information actually is important and so this morning as we come to the action bit of the letter, my aim is to explain what Paul is saying, but also show why this is what should follow naturally from what Paul has just said.

After all, I think we can all see the value in the basic maths taught in primary school. Things like addition, multiplication, and division will have real world significance for all of us, such as building things and buying things.

But unless you are building or designing something very complicated why would you want anything more complicated? The truth is, you actually don’t need to know that advanced maths to get by in life, you can live life quite well without it. But what I tell people who ask the question, is that by training your brain to understand this sort of mathematics, you are actually exercising your mind to being more creative in various problem solving scenarios.

I’ll tell these students that since leaving university where I studied engineering, I don’t think I have ever used calculus, even once, and that includes the nine odd years I worked as an engineer, yet it has provided me with a way of thinking that has helped me on many occasions.

Now, there is something similar that happens in theology. For anyone who has spent some time near a Bible College or has read books that explore theological themes at some depth, you may wonder why these higher order or discussions even need to take place.

As an example, there is something called ordo salutis which academics love to discuss. That’s just a fancy way of saying the order of salvation, which I’m not going to get into now - if you want a discussion on it, I suggest use google.

Now as with the higher order mathematics, the higher order theology can seem a waste of space, and if just kept in these theoretical categories, it essentially is. But like the higher order maths, when we let it shape our minds to see the world from a different angle, the theology can shape our world view in a way that has very important implications.

Structure of Galatians

But if that’s the case, it’s probably worthwhile summarising what has been said in the letter to this point.

After the initial greeting, Paul noted his deep concern about how the church of Galatia had been deserting the true gospel, because the were adding things to it, in particular things like circumcision, and other Jewish things.

Paul however, wanted it to be quite clear that none of these mattered, rather all that mattered was faith in Christ, and this only.

So the first two chapters then, Paul spent considerable time trying to establish his authority, with the point essentially to be that this message of faith only was a reliable one.

As we get into chapter 3, he digs deeper on the argument of why it is only by faith that we are saved, even taking us back to Abraham to show us how this was always the case. The argument continues into chapter 4, where he begins to show that by faith we move out of slavery and into freedom, and so finally moving into chapter 5 we see what freedom truly is, which is what we looked at last week.

In case you weren’t here last week, the quick summary is that the type of freedom Paul is talking about is freedom from the bonds of sin and freedom to live the way God has set before us.

Like in Romans, he describes the theology of sinful humanity being saved by Christ. In Ephesians he describes the reconciliation. In Colossians, he builds a theology of Christ.

And then after he builds his theological case, he then turns to the practical implications.

The reason Paul uses this pattern is because he obviously found it important that his instruction were based on important truths. He could have come straight out and just said things like, live good lives, pray continuously, avoid idolatry. But he understand that when we recognise what God has done for us first, suddenly these commands are not just some onerous condition from an overbearing religion, rather it is the natural response that comes from a truly loving God.

And so, this is exactly what we also find in Galatians. We’ve been in this series of Galatians for some time now, and we’ve gone over and over the fact that salvation comes from faith in Christ alone. You might have thought that the concept didn’t really deserve as many sermons as it got - but the truth is we really need to embed this into our way of thinking, so that when we come to living out the freedom that we find in Christ, we don’t think it’s a lisence to do what we want, but instead understand it in terms of our response to what Christ has done for us.

For those who were here last week when we began chapter 5, we looked at what it means to have freedom in Christ. In case you did miss it, the summary is that our freedom is the freedom from the bonds of sin, and the freedom to live God’s way.

Well, today, as we look at the second half of chapter 5, we get a much deeper picture of what this freedom looks like.

This passage is perhaps best known for two lists. The first being the acts of the flesh, which we’ll see as a list of ungodly behaviour, and the second, the fruit of the Spirit, which is of course how we should be acting.

The important thing to remember though is that living like this comes as a result of what God has done for us. It is displaying characteristics that is in line with who God is and what he has done.

It’s about love

Well, last week, we actually only looked up to verse 12, and so before we get to the real clear picture of what to do and what not to do, we have verses 13 to 18 which I want to suggest give us somewhat of a principle that will help us link the previous part of the letter with what we’re told to live like.

The other thing we will find as we move into the passage is that Paul introduces for us a very important principle right at the start of this passage, so let’s take a look at that now.

You see, in verse 13, Paul gives us a clear warning not to indulge in our freedom, but gives us this principle I just mentioned instead.

In the last half of verse 13, it says: “rather, serve one another humbly in love”.

It is this that I want to suggest is the most important factor in all of this - love.

It is love that connects all the dots together - in fact, I’d even suggest it is love that can provide a common link throughout the entire Bible.

But I say this with a very important clarification. You see, when I say love, I mean the love shown by God, not love like the world generally understands it.

He starts in verse 13 by reminding us of this freedom that he had introduced for us at the start of the chapter - “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free.”

But Paul is well aware of how this freedom can easily be abused and so he adds a warning: “But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh (or sinful nature as some of the other translations have)”.

And this is where the principle to follow comes in, you see he then adds “rather, serve one another humbly in love”.

You see, I’m going to argue that it is this love that is the essential ingredient for freedom.

If you can imagine two hypothetical families. The first which has no love and as a consequence cares nothing for any boundaries, thereby, with a lack of expectation not putting any pressure for anything. The second a family with a lot of love, but with that a lot of expectations.

On the surface the first family with no expectation might seem to be the more free, but I’d suggest it is the family with love where the family members would be much more free to reach their God-given potential.

Now before we continue it is certainly worthwhile clarifying what we mean by love.

Unfortunately the world has to a large degree trashed the true meaning of love.

Love has come to mean this feeling of infatuation to another person which can come and go for any number of reasons. The truth is, this type of ‘love’ is actually self-focussed and can be quite detrimental to society.

The love that we are talking about in this situation is the love that God has shown us.

The Apostle John actually gave us a good definition of love, which we can find in

1 John 4:10 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

1 John 4:7 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

This is the love that Paul has been speaking about right from the start of the letter. In fact if you take that definition from , you’ll see how closely it links with Paul’s opening statement back in when he describes Jesus as the one “who gave himself for our sins to rescue us...”

The whole basis then of the message that we are saved by faith in Christ only, is completely predicated on the fact that God loves us. That nothing can stand in the way.

This is the only way that that makes sense. You see, why would God want to save us when we are utterly useless, when we have done things that are so abhorrent to him? It is only because he loves us.

Nothing in return

But this is where we need the opening chapters. You see it is so easy to fall back into our understanding of love, where we love someone as long as we get something in return. I mean, how much do we see this in marriage breakups - I’ll love my spouse, but only while I feel I’m getting something in return.

But understanding the first half of the book, we realise that the love God shows, does not expect anything in return. This is after all why it is by faith only. If he did expect something in return then it would be faith and something else.

This becomes so important than as we will move on shortly to the lists about how we should and shouldn’t act. It needs to all be on the basis of love expecting nothing in return.

Now before we get into the two lists, I want to highlight verse 15, because this describes what happens when we don’t let this kind of love take control: “If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other”.

It’s the Christian love where we give and expect nothing in return. It is anything but the self-absorbed love that seems to be more prominent today.

Now it seems clear that Paul really wanted to highlight this idea of love being the essence of true freedom because he reminds us that it is through love that we can summarise the whole law.

And in verse 15, just in case there is any doubt, he states it in the negative - “If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other”.

It’s quite clear, and to be honest, quite obvious when you think about it. When you allow your freedom to indulge in your own sinful desires, this is just going to destroy one another. What might seem like freedom initially is anything but.

And so, Paul has set up two contrasting ways, which he refers to as the way of the Spirit and the way of the flesh. While we could explore those two words further, I want to suggest that the guiding principle I mentioned before is sufficient for now - the way of the Spirit has real love, and the way of the flesh does not.

The opposite of living by the flesh though, is living by the Spirit.

This idea of living by the Spirit is given in contrast to the flesh (or sinful nature). It means living the way that God wants us to live, which we will expound upon shortly when we get to the fruit of the spirit.

But whenever we read of Spirit, we are also reminded of the Holy Spirit who God and Jesus sent for us to be our advocate and counselor. The Holy Spirit can guide and help us so that we are not trying to do this on our own.

The way of flesh

So let’s start looking at these lists because it is with these lists that our theology hits the road so to speak.

The first list is the acts of the flesh. Now while some of the list we would find society by-and-large agreeing that it is bad, I think we’d find that much of it, most of society would have little problem with.

Sexual sins

The first three are actually all related to the area of sex. Sex of course is something beautiful that has been given to us by God, but it’s beauty is to be found when it is practiced in the bounds that God intended.

So it starts with sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery. Each word or phrase give a different nuance to sexual immorality, but in each case, what is in picture is when sex is taken outside of those bounds that God intends. When this happens, sex has the ability to be very devastating.

I suspect that most of us here would be familiar with stories quite close to home where the careless use of sex has caused much damage to various relationships.

Religious sins

The next two move into the realm of religion, being idolatry and witchcraft. Again, while the two concepts are quite different, but there is a similarity in that we are replacing God for something else. In the case of idolatry, we are replacing God for something else in our worship, in the case of witchcraft, (or sorcery as some translations have it), we are replacing God with something else, in this case something evil, when it comes to making things happen.

Societal sins

The next lot of the acts of the flesh then move into the realm of society.

Here we get hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy.

This is where the list starts to become a bit harder for us.

While not denying that the struggle is real regarding the list to this point, I think we would have to admit that the part of the list I just read is something we have all had issues with from time to time.

It would also be nice if I could say that these characteristics were absent from the church, but I don’t think you could find a church anywhere where those characteristics were absent.

The real problem is not so much that they are present, although it would be better if we could rid ourselves of it, but the problem is that we minimise these issues and think they don’t really matter. Where we see sexual indiscretions we can easily become outraged, and certainly if we saw any sign of witchcraft we would be taking immediate action, yet when we see the likes of hatred, discord and jealousy it is easy to turn a blind eye.

The truth is, these attitudes can often be just as destructive, only the effects are probably more subtle. You see what is happening is exactly what Paul mentioned in verse 15 - when you bite and devour each other, you will end up being destroyed by one another.

At the end of the day, this is the devils desire. While God is trying to bring us together as a unified body of believers, the devil wants to tear us apart.

Drunkenness

The final two items on this list is drunkenness and orgies, which I’m going to place both in the category of drinking vices.

Now I sometimes get asked the question about my view on alcohol. Personally, my view is that in moderation, alcohol is something that can be enjoyed, but once you begin to lose the ability to stay in full control of your various faculties, that’s when you’ve gone too far.

That being said, we do need to be very mindful that alcohol can very easily become a big problem, and so I have a great deal of respect for those who stay well away from it, both for the sake of their own potential downfall, and the downfall of those they may be drinking with.

When we come to the word translated in the NIV as orgies, this is generally considered to be the various indecent behaviour that accompanies drunkenness.

Summary of acts of the flesh

We could obviously spend much more time exploring each of these acts listed by Paul, but the point I want to make is that each of them begins to tear people apart.

The interesting thing is that as you look through the list, while society would consider some of them bad, they would generally not be considered too bad, and some, like selfish ambition, might actually be considered a virtue.

But because essentially they all boil down to being self-focussed, and therefore not based on the love of others, they are all ultimately destructive.

This is the way of the flesh, but as we look at the alternative, we will see that when you add love, it is completely different.

Do I not inherit the kingdom?

Before we look at that though, the second half of verse 21 could be troubling if not understood correctly. You see, it says that for those who live like this, you will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Now the problem with that is that I’m very confident that everyone of you here today, including myself is guilty of more than one of the things on that list. The truth is that we are probably guilt of some of them on a far greater frequency then we would care to admit.

So does that mean we are excluded from the kingdom of God?

Thankfully the answer is no. Despite us falling short, we are still forgiven. So what is Paul trying to get at?

Well he is saying that anyone living by the Spirit should not have a life characterised by this sort of behaviour.

Now this is where we have to hold two things in tension, and it is part of the reason why it is so important to have the initial teaching of Paul in the first half of the letter.

The two things we hold in tension is, first: we are saved only by the grace of God. And second: we are saved so we can become more like Christ.

The problem is, it’s not easy keeping the tension right. If we overemphasize the grace card, we think nothing matters and we can do what we want. If we overemphasize the expected behaviours, then we can fall into the trap of legalism and being saved by our own works - both of which the first half of the letter addressed to some degree.

So yes, there is an expectation that you avoid these behaviours, but when you fail, remember that God is a God of grace.

Fruit of the Spirit

And so we come to the fruit of the Spirit, where we have a list of nine different Christian graces.

I suspect for most of you, particularly if you have been a Christian for some time, would be quite familiar with the list.

We would do well to dwell on each one, but in the interest of time I’m going to fly through them fairly quick.

It starts with love, and as I mentioned before, I think this is the one that really holds it all together. It’s the principle that we got right back at the start in verse 13, when we were told to serve one another humbly in love.

If you forget all the rest, then I’d suggest if you remember love, you’ll be well on your way.

But remember, as I discussed before, it’s not love like the world thinks of it, which is actually a self-absorbed infuations, but a self-sacrificial love like Jesus showed us.

We then come to joy, which is often overlooked, and certainly when you look at the way Christianity has sometimes been practiced, you may well wonder if people knew that joy was meant to be a part of it. But this joy is what we should be feeling since we’ve been released from the bondage of sin.

Peace comes next, and it is something that should flow naturally from the peace that God provides. It is the peace knowing that God has it all in control. It is peace that in our lives should be expressed as us having peace with God, and also us having peace with others around us - which even means those we don’t get along with. In many ways it really is the opposite of many of the acts of the flesh that we looked at before.

The next one, you might notice that in my translation I read forbearance, but you’ve probably memorised it as patience - certainly I have. In other translations it is long suffering. Like God who is slow to anger, we should endure the suffering given to us, and trust God to look after us.

When we come to kindness, we can think of God’s kindness that he shows, which is even kindness to those who do bad against him.

Goodness can actually have a range of meanings, but it is often thought that in this setting, it’s meaning is closest to generosity.

Faithfulness becomes an interesting one, partly because the word is related to belief, after all, the whole first half of the letter emphasizes that it is by faith that we are saved. But it is often thought that what’s in view, is not so much the saving faith, but rather the ethical quality of being trustworthy.

Gentleness is also another interesting one, because it can have the connotation of weakness. But gentleness, which can also be found in the Beatitudes, is not about weakness, but much more about putting others before yourself.

And finally we have self-control. While this can have the meaning of control to avoid sin in all manner of ways, a study of the Greek language shows that it is generally concerned with control of matters of a sexual nature. In other words avoiding sexual immorality.

As I said before, we would do very well to dwell on each of those things and consider ways in which we could make each of them more abundant in our own lives. In fact, I’d encourage you in your own time to think about which ones you struggle with most, meditate on it and ask God to help you improve that part of your life.

Showing how it fits

So as I draw this message to a close, I just want to come back and see how it all fits together.

You see, the first half of the book is all about faith. It’s about the fact that it is not what we do but about what we believe and accept. And then suddenly Paul tells us how we should and shouldn’t act.

Well, as I’ve tried to explain, this all comes down to the fact of love. God first loved us as demonstrated by Christs saving acts on the cross. He saves us just the way we are, and as a result, we are then led by the spirit in the same sort of love, not as a requirement of salvation, but as a consequence of salvation.

As we begin to grasp the significance of what God has done in saving us, it should just come naturally that we will live like the fruit of the spirit and not like the acts of the flesh.

It is not easy. We are being tempted every step of the way - but we have the Spirit and with God’s help, we will begin to show these fruit and it will be evident to all.

Let’s pray...