Galatians 5 1, 13-25 2007
Pentecost 5, July 1, 2007
Galatians 5:1, 13–25
“Freedom has It’s Limits”
Introduction: There is no greater gift under heaven than freedom. We should never take our freedom for granted, both our political freedom and our freedom in Christ Jesus.
Freedom comes in many forms. Radio commentator Paul Harvey once told about a group of scientists who were determined to teach a chimpanzee to write. For fourteen years, the scientists labored diligently and patiently with this chimpanzee, providing things in its cage to enable it to form certain syllables. Finally the day arrived when it seemed that the chimpanzee was actually going to construct a sentence from the symbols it had been learning. Word went out, and other scientists crowded into the room and gathered around the cage. The scientists could hardly contain themselves as they pressed around the cage to read the history-making sentence. This is what the chimpanzee wrote: “Let me out!”[ I want to be free].[i]
Americans often boast that we are the home of the brave and the Land of the free. We boast that we have the freedom and right to make our own choices.” This week we will again celebrate our independence day. This is good. But the guarantee of liberty and celebration of our Independence Day sometimes leads people to focus on their own individual freedoms and personal “rights.” As attractive as this may sound, it can, in fact, result in an undisciplined surrender to whatever impulse is felt to be most urgent. With this kind of freedom people may become slaves to their own desires. In other words, the freedom to choose is a deceptive lie. Why, in this fallen world the natural will of human beings is in bondage to sin. Left to our own devices, our natural inclinations are selfish and self-satisfying. Our quest and shout for individual freedom is just a cloak for our desire and love for ourselves…the big “I”, “Me”, “Myself”, or you may know it better this way…the flesh understand the concept of freedom in the words, me, myself and I. This understanding disregards the needs of the “we”, “us” and “you”. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, tells us that true freedom, according to God’s word, has limitations.
In our text St. Paul warns us just how dangerous it is to live according to the flesh. To live according to the flesh can actually destroy faith and salvation. To live according to the flesh doesn’t just have spiritual consequences, it also has earthly consequences in broken relationships, broken families, broken countries and a broken world. Paul says very clearly, beware of losing your freedom by allowing the flesh to direct your life.
The boast of the flesh and our temporal world is that there is “freedom of choice.” Freedom of choice in this world is an illusion. For most people freedom of choice means freedom from God, and his will in our lives. Independence Day did not happen in the Garden of Eden when the first two humans declared their independence from God. What did Adam and Eve think, “We know what is good and what is evil, and we have the right to make our own choice.” Their own choice? People have been making their own choices ever since in the name of freedom. Even in our present day, choice and freedom have been linked together. Think about the issue of abortion. Those in favor of abortion do not say, “we are in favor of abortion”, rather they say we are in favor of freedom of choice.” That sounds good. But what does it mean. It means that unborn children will die based on the illusion of freedom and choice. This is not God’s will. In this world, freedom of choice often implies freedom from God and his will. To be independent from God is bondage to the impulses and lusts and desires of mind and body and places us under the curse of the law. What are we to do? We’ll, we can do nothing, but God, out of His love for us has given us true freedom.
In Jesus Christ we have true liberty and freedom. He has redeemed us from the curse of the Law (3:13). The judgment of the Law is, “the soul that sins shall die.” But Christians understand that the sentence of death has already been carried out. When Jesus Christ was crucified, the sinner has been executed. Yes, the Son of God became the one and only sinner. For the sins of all people he died, suffering the wrath and judgement of God. As hard as it is for us to understand this is true. The Word of God states, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” What the Law demands, in its judgement of sin, has been fulfilled. Therefore we are free as children of God.
God makes us His children through the gift of faith. The Holy Spirit of God creates faith in us as we hear God’s life giving Word and as His Word is connected to the waters of Baptism. With the Holy Spirit we are given the mind of Christ and the freedom of children who have been recreated anew according to the Spirit. The Spirit is the “Lord and giver of life,” who has made us alive together as we are joined to Jesus Christ through faith in Him. The Lord God transforms us by the renewing of the mind We become God’s new creation, and are given the will to do the will of God (Phil 2:13). So now, in this life, each of us is one person, we are spirit and we are flesh. The spirit is holy and desires the things of God, the flesh is sinful and still desires its self satisfaction. Our flesh and our Spirit are at war with each other to control what we say and do.
Therefore we are not to surrender our freedom by permitting the flesh to have unbridled license to run and rule our lives. We can live by the new and holy Spirit of God in us. Paul gives us a warning. His warning is life of the Spirit can be lost by surrendering to the lusts and impulses of the flesh (v 13). Martin Luther said, “We have met the enemy and he is us,” that is, the flesh, the “old Adam” (Luther, SC, Baptism IV).
We are both flesh and spirit. We are told and we teach, from the “old Adam” a “new man” should come forth (SC, Baptism IV), but in this life these will always be at war. Again, what are we to do. Daily we are decieved by our own fleshly desires. Daily we look out for our own interests. Daily we run after the interests of “Me, Myself and I.” Yet God still loves us and calls us and leads us to follow Him. We do this by daily contrition, that is sorrow over sin, daily repentance, that is confessing our sin, and daily understanding that God, for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, has forgiven our sins and no longer holds any of them against us. This is true freedom. For us, as Christians, everyday is Independence Day. Can I get an Amen!.
This means we need daily renewal. The old Adam should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die. This is one of the “spiritual sacrifices” that we are daily to bring to God (1 Pet 2:5). The Bible says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps 51:17). Like the whole burnt offering of the Old Testament, we are to bring the flesh and its lusts and desires to God and say, “Kill this evil thing!” Our prayer is that we would live by the Spirit of the living God..
The fruit of the flesh is…impurity towards God and towards each other. The fruit of the flesh is self worship and love. According to God’s Word, the fruit of the flesh is, hatred, hostility, quarreling, jealousies, envy, an eagerness that seeks to harm others for the sake of personal advancement, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, self–seeking pursuit of power for the sake of controlling others; conflict with each other. These are the fruits of our flesh and these are the fruit of the Devil, the father of lies that would lead us to follow the path away from God.
We have a new Spirit. The Spirit of God has very different fruits. The fruit of the Spirit is…Then the fruit of the Spirit is produced by such faith: “love, joy, peace, patience” (v 22a). The Spirit also produces kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in our lives (vv 22b–23a). These are fruits, not works. The Holy Spirit produces these in our lives. They are good works, “which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph 2:10). There is no Law against these; they are the evidence of the freedom and liberty of the persons who are God’s free children and heirs together with Christ. We should be sure to understand that these fruits are not something that we should boast about. Martin Luther, as a very wise man wrote, “A stone that lies in the sun does not have to be commanded to become warm.” Nor does the stone take credit for the warnth [me].
Conclusion: We have the liberty and the freedom of being warmed by the Son of God, of knowing God’s love. We have the liberty and freedom of not living by our own sinful, personal choices, by the, Me, Myself, and I”. Rather we have the liberty of living in the freedom of we, us and you. We can care for each other as God cared for us. We can be free to see that other people are important, and that we all, as this church, as this Christian community are important to each other, even as we are important to God who gave His Son to die so that we all can live, his life for our freedom, that is the freedom for which Christ has set us free.[ii]
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[i] 2. D. James Kennedy, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (Nelson, 1994), p. 77.
[ii] Rev. George F. Wollenburg, president of the LCMS Montana District, Billings, Montana