What Christian Liberty Looks Like

INTRODUCTION

Freedom is a common word today – everyone likes it. It comes in many, many applications. We talk about economic freedom, free trade, lifting of tariffs. Or the capitalist who desires to be free from central controls or the communist who wants to be free from capitalist exploitation. Free to express ourselves. Freedom to love who I want, whether its vile or not. Political freedom – countries and individuals. Some say they have freedom to abort, others freedom to not get a vaccine. We use freedom all the time today. But Christian liberty is different.

Christian freedom involves a freedom of conscience, no man is truly free until Jesus Christ has rid him of the burden of his guilt. God has called us to freedom and his grace – it is his action not ours.

Paul’s definition of freedom here, is freedom from the awful bondage of having to earn the favor of God; it is not the freedom from all controls.

1. Christian Liberty Doesn’t Feed the Flesh

We’re jumping in the middle of a book here, but now Paul is referring to the Galatian believers and not the false teachers or converts. He’s going to tell them what the Christian Liberty should not be doing. So let’s look first at:

A. The Explanation of Liberty

One commentator says, “Freedom from the law still obligates a proper use of that freedom.”

Liberty – freedom – seen in v. 1. Directly has the idea of freeing a slave.

Vine - the Greeks assigned a kind of legal fiction, according to which the released slave was purchased by a god; as the slave could not provide the money, the master paid it into the temple treasury in the presence of the slave, a document being drawn up containing the words ‘for freedom.’ No one could enslave him again as he was the property of the god. (I Cor. 7:22).

Called to liberty – they are set free from all the powers that formerly enslaved them, the cursing Law, Sin, the elements of the world and now the Lust of the Flesh (v. 16).

B. The Corruption of Liberty

The Meaning of the flesh in verse 13

Specifically in this passage – the corrupt nature of man subject to the base appetites and passions.

Several definitions to include: our body, body of an animal, mankind, but here it’s something different which Paul uses in Romans and also here.

Vine – the weaker element of human nature.

Thayer – the earthly nature of man apart from divine influence.

Romans 7:18 AV

18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.

The Twisting of Liberty by the Flesh

“Occasion” - this is a base of operation from which a war can be waged. Don’t use your freedom as an excuse for indulging your sinful nature.

Use not liberty – the terrible development in which a church congregation allows liberty to be turned into something other than liberty. Liberty easily becomes nothing more than a transfer from one form of slavery to another. Specifically, the Galatians could shed the tyranny of the Law only to become subject to the tyranny of the lust of the Flesh.

The flesh here is our fallen human nature which we inherited from our parents and they from theirs all the way back to Adam. It is twisted self-centeredness and prone to sin. We are not to use our Christian freedom to indulge this flesh – not an excuse for self-indulgence.

It’s like a child saying he is free, and thus wants to eat all the cookies in the house. Not only is that selfishness it’s not true freedom.

Freedom from sin, not to sin.

Going back to serving the desires of the flesh is a worse kind of slavery.

2. The Humility of Christian Liberty

I find that very often we use our liberty, freedom, and rights for prideful assertions of what we want to do or don’t want to do. But I believe that Paul teaches us here that true liberty is especially humble. What are the characteristics of humble Christian liberty?

A. Serving One Another

Here in verse 13 we see a powerful statement made about our liberty. Let’s look at a couple things about this.

What Paul doesn’t say:

Paul didn’t just say control your tendency to immorality. He couldn’t say that because

1) it would have implied that the Flesh is nothing more than immorality, whereas, as Paul has just said, the flesh is a menacing power, and it is destructive to the individual and the church. And

2) it would have credited human beings with the ability to control the flesh. This is impossible and we see that in v. 16.

The paradox of what Paul does say:

Rather through love serve one another – slaves to each other.

Positively – by love serve one another – love between Christians – serve as slaves – seen in Christ serving at the foot washing. The goal of our freedom is mutual service. The nature of true Christian freedom is not in the sense of man being the master of all his decisions, but in terms of the human capacity for serving others through love.

True freedom is refusing our rights in order to minister/serve another.

We are to respect our Christian brothers as persons and give ourselves to serve them – to become each other’s slaves. We are each just one poor slave with many masters. We sacrifice our good for theirs.

It is an incredible paradox – we are free in relation to God, but slaves in relation to each other.

However, we live in a society where the church is to serve me. People should make me comfortable. They should meet my desires, and my expectation.

You come to this church, you should be, “Oh, look at all these people I can serve!”

B. Preserving One Another

Here he says don’t consume each other - or rather preserve each other.

It’s the opposite of v. 15 – malicious talk and action. Biting and devouring each other like wild animals.

Love is much different – patient, kind, faithful, bear burdens.

“To love somebody is not to possess him for myself but to serve him for himself.”

Bickering and fighting will lead to destruction. Probably happening in Galatian churches because of this false teaching.

Do you know that in a church people have different opinions about things? Very often Christians will take a Bible topic or a current event and begin to blast each other over it. Disputes and contentions destroy love and tear each other apart.

People are not to devour each other – we are to help each other run the race.

C. Loving One Another

What it should look like

The Picture of Love (the picture of Christian liberty is truly found in the picture and work of love, here in v. 14)

Single commandment or word – Lev 19:18 -we are to love our neighbors with the same naturalness and enthusiasm with which we love ourselves. We love as Jesus told us in the Good Samaritan (anyone we come across) and even our enemies. But here primarily love within the church family.

One of 2 greatest commands in Matt 22:39. No special attention in Judaism.

Romans 13:8 AV

8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

James 2:8 AV

8 If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well:

John 13:34–35 AV

34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. 35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

1 John 4:7–8 AV

7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

It’s interesting how much importance Christ places on this, how much importance Paul places on this, but how little importance we seem to place on loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Main purpose in this verse is to encourage the kind of selfless loving service to others that is called for in 13.

The paradox of this love (previously we saw the paradox of freedom manifesting as service). Now look at this in relation to the law.

Verse 14 - all the law is fulfilled - made perfect; brought to perfection?

Christ completed what the Law could never complete, fulfill, or bring to perfection. This liberty which Paul refers to in v. 13 is the freedom Christ has won for the Galatians, and this freedom is precisely liberation from the tyranny of the Law. Because Christ has brought the law to completion or perfection, it no longer has enslaving power.

Paul has repeatedly stated that believers are free from the law in 4:31; and in 5:13. And that they should enjoy this freedom and not go back to legal servitude.

But here they are exhorted to serve one another though love, and thus fulfill and complete the law.

Our justification doesn’t depend on the law but on Christ crucified, yet our sanctification consists in the fulfillment of the law.

Romans 8:3–4 AV

3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

CONCLUSION

a) through the redemption of Christ believers have been set free from bondage to the law and are not under obligation to obey its statutes;

b) God’s law is still a valid expression of his will; one being we love our neighbor as ourselves;

c) hence, what the law as a whole requires is satisfied when believers serve one another through love.

The believer who is free from the law is at the same time the one who fulfills the law; not by strict observance of regulations; but by the new way of love generated by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Freedom is not a call to selfishness, but a call to service - serve one another, preserve don’t destroy one another, and love one another.