Walk by the Spirit

A few weeks back, I asked “If you were free, truly and totally free, what would that look like for you?” Three top answers? doing very little, travelling the world - and farming! Yep, we a bunch of farmer wannabes - who knew?

We’re continuing our journey through one of the letters in the Bible called Galatians - called that because it was written to churches in an area called Galatia - modern day Turkey. We’re going to look at just a very short section each week for the next few weeks because there’s so much to think and talk about in each line.

We’re into the part of the letter where our writer, having explained a bunch of theology, is talking about how followers of Jesus should live as a result - how they should conduct themselves in life. And this section starts with these words:

Galatians 5:1 (NIV)

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

so if you wanted to put one banner over how it is that Christians should be living, it’d make sense for that banner to have the word “freedom” written on it in huge all-caps. Very Scotland, right?

But we’ve got some thinking to do before we jump to conclusions here, and all take up farming or yachting or lazing. What does true freedom really look like? If we were to pull a truly free human into a lab somewhere and analyse them, observe their behaviour, what would we see?

Well, have you heard of the experiment where they put a child in a room with a tasty yummy marshmallow on the table in front of them, and tell them if they can hold off eating it for a while, they can have two instead?

I think that’s a bit cruel, really - Just staring at it, tummy rumbling away. Now those researchers are looking at delayed gratification, seeing what’s associated with that sort of willpower that leaves the marshmallow untouched on the table - but I think this has something powerful to tell us about freedom, too.

Think about this here marshmallow: [marshmallow prop] let your eyes settle on it and - if you’re the marshmallow type - your mouth begins to water and you start to imagine the taste, the sensation of chewing it up. And you want it more .. and more .. and more .. and that desire within you just to reach out and grab it is growing and growing.

Here’s my question: Are you more free if you grab it and stuff it into your mouth? Or are you more free if you resist that desire and exert control over yourself? Or .. would you be more free if you didn’t even feel that powerful draw?

Are we free when we indulge our desires? Or is that actually giving up freedom, and we’re only truly free if we’re freed from those desires?

who wants the marshmallow? it’s free! Sorry viewers at home - no chance for you

What does true freedom really look like? Could you and I ever really be free? Remember, “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”

Let’s read today’s short section together and then we’ll think some more about this. We’re reading from the short letter to the Galatians which is towards the back of the bible. If you have one of these blue church bibles, we’re on page 1172 - Galatians chapter 5 and we’re starting at verse 13. Page 1172 and look for the heading “Life by the Spirit”. Galatians chapter 5, verse 13. Page 1172. And Cameron’s reading for us this morning.

Galatians 5:13–15 NIV

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

Thanks, Cameron. So, freedom is the banner over the Christian life - see that there again in the first verse we read: we were called to be free. You know how we use the word “vocation” to talk about work: vocational qualifications and the like? Or talk about the job we were made for or designed for: “what’s your vocation?” That word, vocation, comes from the Latin vocare “to call”. It comes from the idea that we have a job to do because someone, because God, calls us to do it. That’s what makes something a vocation rather than a job - you’ve been called to do it.

Well, the vocation of every Christian is freedom. If you’d call yourself a Christian here today, you were called - called by God - to be free. But that gets us right back to where we started: what does freedom, true freedom, really look like?

There are two sides, two faces to freedom as we’re reading and thinking about it here in Galatians. First, there’s freedom-from. This freedom we’re called into, our new vocation, is first of all about being released from something - that’s what a lot of the letter so far has been focused on as we’ve worked our way through it together.

If you’ve been with us these past months, hopefully you’ll understand that we’re freed from the Jewish Law, the Torah, which told them how to live in vast detail. We’re freed from trying to get into God’s good books by keeping those rules. A good thing particularly for the boys if you know what circumcision is.

But there’s more we’re freed from, too. Perhaps you’ll remember us talking about what this letter describes as the “basic principles of this world”, the idea that’s woven into our world which tells us we need to perform, to measure up. That we have to tick the boxes and make the grade in order to be “in” - most importantly, to be “in” with God. Whether that’s talking a certain way, or acting a certain way; doing certain things or not doing them.

The bible, and this letter, Galatians, in particular, tells us we are free from needing to measure up, free from trying to justify ourselves - free because of Jesus. Because he took all the penalty, all the punishment, that our failures deserve - so every way that we have - or we ever will - fail to measure up has been dealt with, put to rest. Nothing is hanging over us any more.

So we’re free. Released. Free-from. That’s the first side. But there’s another side to this coin: there’s also freedom-for. This freedom we’re called into, our new vocation, isn’t just about being released from something, but also being released for something.

And this is where we come back to what we started with. What is true freedom at bottom? I’ve talked before about the idea of freedom fundamentally meaning we’re free to be who we were made to be, to do what we were made to do, to live out the nature that’s within us. Remember the dolphin jumping from the wave - freedom? Or the cactus growing steadily towards the sun?

So the big question becomes what are we humans made to be? What are we made to do? Because that’s where freedom will take us.

At one end of the spectrum you have the evolutionary, Darwinian answer: we are simply gene-propagating machines. Our design, our nature, our purpose is just passing on our genetic material. If freedom is being who we were made to be, doing what we were made to do, and this is what we’re made to be and do… if this is our purpose and freedom means accomplishing this purpose - what would freedom look like? A world where the only thing that mattered for anyone was whether their genes made it into the next generation or not. Can you imagine that “free” world? Where that purpose ruled, totally unrestrained?

If that really is our nature, our purpose, then freedom is not something we should wish for, not something which should even be allowed, let alone celebrated.

At the other end of the spectrum you have the Christian answer to that question, what were we made to be? what were we made to do? We were made in the image of God, made to be like him, to reflect his nature and character. We were made to live out this nature and character in the world he created.

And the Bible tells us we see God’s character revealed and lived out most fully and perfectly when He enters into His own world as a human, in Jesus. The bible describes Jesus as “the image of the invisible God”, “the radiance of God’s glory,” “the exact representation of his being”. You want to see what we were made to be, made to do? The Christian’s answer is to look to Jesus - and his life of love which you can read about in the bible.

If freedom is being who we were made to be, doing what we were made to do, and we take the Christian answer, that Jesus is the template, the pattern, the picture - then imagine a world filled with that sort of freedom realised! That’s a freedom we can wish for, we can long for.

Now there’s a problem. Right at the beginning of the bible, just after we’re told humankind is created in the image of God, to be like him, to reflect his character, things go terribly wrong. Rather than using our freedom to live out that character and purpose, our first parents doubted God’s goodness, questioned his ways, and choose to go their own way. In that moment our whole species was corrupted, twisted, tainted - we “fell” is the way the bible describes it.

Our very nature was corrupted - I think that helps explain the mess our world is in today. We find ourselves in this place where freedom - telling people they are “free to do what they want any old time” - wouldn’t produce the heaven we long for, but a living hell. That’s why we have laws and prisons and taxes and armies - because we can’t simply be free. A world of freedom, where we all live out our nature together is an impossible dream for our corrupted species - we’d destroy each other.

But remember where we started, this morning? Gal 5:1 “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” - freedom is to be the banner over every Christian’s life, the goal for it, the intent for us. How can that be true in the light of this corruption that’s made our world the broken place we all know it to be even when our freedom’s checked and limited by laws? Well, there’s more to the freedom that Jesus has won for us, the bible tells us.

Jesus himself describes the twisting and corruption of humanity as a form of slavery: Jn 8:34

John 8:34 NIV

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

it’s like a trap we’re stuck in, a master we can’t disobey. But he follows up this bad news with the good news: he has come to set us free. And in Jn 8:36, he tells us

John 8:36 NIV

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Jesus frees us not just from the impossible pressure of measuring up, but also from the trap of our twisted desires, from this slavery to sin. Remember that marshmallow, and the power of our desires, how they warp our freedom? Jesus breaks that power within us that bends our desires towards evil and gives us true freedom.

Good news! The marshmallow is safe on the table forever now!

Well, it’s not quite that simple. Jesus gives us freedom - freedom from slavery to these wrong desires. But in this earthly life, we’re not free from the wrong desires themselves. We still feel their pull, their gravity. The marshmallow still calls to us.

If anyone told you that you just had to become a Christian and the struggle was over, it’d be plain sailing from them on: automatic right choices, no pull in wrong directions, easy wins every time - then I’m sorry to say that you were sold a lie. One of the tricky things to get your head around in the bible is this big truth that while we’re free from this slavery to sin, slavery to wrong desires, we’re not free from the desires themselves - not yet, at least. We’re on the road there. That destination is ahead. We are making progress and we’re sure our ship will one day come in. But until that day, there’s a choice to be made, a battle to be won - or, as we talked about two weeks back, a race to run. Effort to put in. Hard decisions to make.

That’s why we read in our passage this morning Gal 5:13

Galatians 5:13 NIV

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.

Christians, we have freedom - true freedom. The question now is how we will use it. Will we use it to serve ourselves? Or to serve others? That’s the only two options here, the only two routes we can take. Only two routes because if we will not serve others, we have chosen to serve ourselves.

I still hear the call of the marshmallow. I still feel the draw of power, of applause, of comfort, of pride. But how am I going to use my freedom? Am I going to indulge those wrong desires and choose to serve myself? Or am I going to say no to them, and instead choose to serve others? That’s the challenge here.

Now you might be thinking “but if I have to use my freedom in a particular way, to choose a particular path, how is that really freedom at all?” And if you’re not thinking that way yet, this passage is so strongly worded, perhaps you should be! See, when it says “serve one another humbly” here in our English translation, what’s underneath that in the original Greek is literally a command to be a slave to others. Don’t use your freedom to indulge yourself - rather use your freedom to be a slave to others.

How can freedom, true freedom, lead us to be slaves? Lead us to so totally let go of ourselves that we can truly focus on others? Imagine a free person choosing to live as a slave, a servant - what would possess someone to give up their freedom like that?

Well, let me tell you a story from the Bible - it’s a famous one:

Philippians 2:6–8 (NIV)

[Jesus], being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

Think about this: Jesus is both fully God and fully human - fully what every human should have been. He shows us what we were made for, what were meant to be, what our true purpose and true nature is. He shows us what, if we were truly free, our freedom would lead to. Here’s the amazing truth: redeemed human nature - true human nature - leads us to freely serve one another humbly in love. To love our neighbour as our self.

This is the goal, the purpose, the end of the Law as it’s talked about in the passage we read - meaning this is what the Jewish law was aiming at, finally realised, finally fulfilled: a life truly free, living out love, just as we were designed to. Just as Jesus, our model for true freedom, does! He came to fulfil the law he says, and that’s what he means: to see it’s purpose and goal finally accomplished.

And here’s the hard truth: there’s no true, lasting freedom outside of this. If we try and use our freedom to serve ourselves rather than to serve others, we end up with a world like our world today: a world bound up in biting and devouring one another, fighting selfishly over the scraps of life in a zero-sum game. That use of freedom can’t last - it only ever leads to being destroyed by each other in the end - just like our passage says. There is no lasting freedom outside of this.

The call and the challenge to serve others rather than to serve ourselves is the call to walk in true freedom just as Jesus did. He’s our model for humanity - it’s the only truly human expression of freedom.

We’re called to be free - that is, to humbly serve one another in love. To serve just as Jesus did, our master and our model. Listen to Jesus:

John 15:9–14 NIV

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.