Freedom

Common English Bible Chapter 5

5 1 Christ has set us free for freedom. Therefore, stand firm and don’t submit to the bondage of slavery again.

Common English Bible Chapter 5

13 You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love. 14 All the Law has been fulfilled in a single statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. 15 But if you bite and devour each other, be careful that you don’t get eaten up by each other!

Two different ways of living

16 I say be guided by the Spirit and you won’t carry out your selfish desires. 17 A person’s selfish desires are set against the Spirit, and the Spirit is set against one’s selfish desires. They are opposed to each other, so you shouldn’t do whatever you want to do. 18 But if you are being led by the Spirit, you aren’t under the Law. 19 The actions that are produced by selfish motives are obvious, since they include sexual immorality, moral corruption, doing whatever feels good, 20 idolatry, drug use and casting spells, hate, fighting, obsession, losing your temper, competitive opposition, conflict, selfishness, group rivalry, 21 jealousy, drunkenness, partying, and other things like that. I warn you as I have already warned you, that those who do these kinds of things won’t inherit God’s kingdom.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against things like this. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the self with its passions and its desires.

25 If we live by the Spirit, let’s follow the Spirit. 26 Let’s not become arrogant, make each other angry, or be jealous of each other.

Introduction: Goldfish

There is a style of parenting that was en vogue a while ago that I noticed.

I think they called it “free range parenting.”

Essentially, whatever the child wanted, wherever the child wanted to go, whatever the child wanted to do, they got what they wanted.

There were no rules and no boundaries.

A friend of mine pushed back against that line of thinking with something like this:

(I borrowed this from my kids)

You come to this tank, and you think that it’s really not fair that this goldfish isn’t free.

He can’t go wherever he wants.

He can’t swim freely as his wild brothers and sisters do.

He’s trapped!

So you decide in that moment that you are going to set this goldfish free.

You reach in, grab the goldfish, and set him free on the table.

What happens?

Yeah, it turns out that without some kind of borders and boundaries, freedom is really a whole lot like death.

That’s exactly what Paul is saying in this morning’s scripture lesson.

Bible Breakdown

This is tense!

We have to start in verse one, if only because this is one of my favorite scriptures.

Christ has set us free for freedom.

There’s an old joke that the past, present, and future all went camping together, and it was in tense.

But we have to pay attention to the tense of the verb in this sentence.

Christ has set us free.

This text does not say that Christ will set us free some day.

This text does not say that Christ will set us free if we follow the right rule and regulations.

This text does not say that our freedom is conditional on anything we’ve done.

This text does not say that our freedom is conditional on how frequently we go to church.

No, this is past tense.

Christ has set us free.

Done deal.

Settled matter.

Case closed.

I have been convicted lately that not enough preachers include this in our sermons.

I think too often we’re focused on change, and growth, and moving forward.

And indeed, we kind of assume it’s already a given.

But it needs to be said:

If you are in Christ, you are a new creation.

It does not matter what your past holds.

It does not matter what Legion of demons is lurking beneath the surface.

It does not matter how much you think you do or don’t deserve it.

Christ has set you free.

You are loved by God, right now.

Your neighbor is loved by God, right now.

You will never look in to the eyes of someone who is not loved by God.

This is Paul’s starting point, and it should be ours.

We start with Grace

What you do with freedom: Love your neighbor

Paul is masterful here in predicting the human response.

“I’m free?” Party time!

Let’s do whatever we want!

Let’s eat drink and be merry, and to heck with the consequences because I’m free in Christ.

Paul wants us to pause there.

Don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love.

Look, you weren’t set free so that you could live the happy life you want.

You were set free so that you could love your neighbor.

Paul borrows a bit from Christ here: The whole law is love your neighbor as yourself.

Rules Versus Spirit: I want to err on the side of love

But then Paul goes after a different kind of response:

If there’s danger in me being selfish, then I better set up a whole bunch of rules and regulations so that I don’t fall in to that trap.

Paul isn’t down with this either.

In fact, they tried that before.

The OT law was meant to teach Isreal how to live, and the Pharisees and legal experts masterfully crafted a kind of legalism around that the sucked the joy from every inch of the human experience.

And in fact, there are Christian traditions that keep right on trying this today.

There is a kind of Christianity that I would call Bible-olatry, where we set this book as the highest possible authority in life.

First of all, that too just kind of sucks the joy out of human experience,

But more importantly, that seat of the highest possible authority in life is reserved only for Jesus Christ, the human one.

This book points us in that direction, so we can’t throw it away.

But we tread carefully when we are more interested in following the rules than we are in loving our neighbor.

What Paul says here in verse 16 is both difficult for us, but also wildly liberating.

Follow the Spirit, and you won’t carry out your selfish desires.

Look, if you want to love your neighbor as a goal, you’ll be ok.

Look, if you want to get in with the Holy Spirit and follow close behind, you won’t get too far off track.

Look, if you can learn to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit over and above that selfish voice we all carry around inside, you will be just fine.

Another way I’ve heard this said is that because of the Freedom Christ has given us, I have the freedom to mess up on the side of love.

If I get my approach to poverty wrong because I was trying to love my neighbor, that’s ok.

If I get my views on abortion wrong because I was trying to love those in a different position than me, that’s ok.

God’s grace is there so that I can err on the side of love.

Two bad options:

You could have a Christian who is dedicated to the scriptures, follows the rules and regulations to a T, and is an absolute JERK about it.

Not great.

You could also have a Christian who is so dedicated to love and acceptance and forgiveness that they neglect things like justice and accountability, though admittedly in my experience is rarer.

It’s still out there.

Paul doesn’t want us to go around judging other people.

Jesus had some stuff to say about that anyway.

Instead, Paul gives us this kind of code to hold up to ourselves and see how we’re doing with our freedom.

Bad Fruit

This is a fun list, huh?

Again, don’t hold it up to other people or to your neighbor.

Hold this one up to yourself.

These are the marks of someone who is living a selfish lifestyle:

Sexual Immorality (I hate that it starts here, because most Christians get stuck here and don’t move on)

Moral corruption- How’s your moral compass doing?

Doing whatever feels good- Are there things you do in life just because they bring YOU pleasure and no one else?

Idolatry- Setting something up to be a better god than God.

The Bible

Money

Political Power

Drug Use

Casting Spells- Ok, maybe this doesn’t happen that much.

Hate- Something our culture seems to have an abundance of

Fighting- Don’t open Facebook if you want to avoid this.

Obsession

Losing your temper

Competitive opposition- Say, for instance, two political parties had not policy goals, but just a desire to see the other side lose...

Conflict

Selfishness

Group Rivalry

Jealousy

Drunkeness

Essentially, and this is difficult and we have to get honest with ourselves about this: you can be as right as you’ll ever be about the Law, about the text, about what it means to be a follower of Christ.

But if these things exist in your life, you are not as free as you think you are.

You’re dealing in some bad fruite.

And Paul offers this kind of harsh line: Those who do these kinds of things won’t inherit God’s kingdom.

It’s not that these are somehow unforgivable sins. That’s not how it works.

It means that if you’re in to this, you don’t really understand the Freedom Christ has given you, do you?

You’re wasting it on living a selfish life.

But all is not lost:

Good Fruit

There’s the fruit of the Spirit.

In other words, if you are guided by the Spirit as Paul put it earlier, these are the kinds of things that will be growing in your life:

Love- Who do you love?

Joy- Are you a joyful person? (8:30 is a rough time to ask this question…)

Peace- Does your presence in a situation escalate conflict, or bring it down?

Patience- Are you comfortable when things are out of your control?

Kindness- In this age where we seem to gain points by being cranky, are you kind to your neighbors and the strangers around you?

Goodness- Kind of related to kindness

Faithfulness- Can folks count on you to follow through on what you say?

Gentleness- Are you kind and compassionate and gentle with those who aren’t where you are?

Self-Control- Can you walk past a full freezer of Ben and Jerry’s and not have any? Or maybe better yet, can you resist the temptation to leave that snarky comment?

These people, the people that exhibit these kinds of qualities, they are the ones who get grace.

And I need to be clear: This is not a rubrik to hold up to someone else.

This is the criteria by which we judge ourselves in our own freedom.

It’s not up to me to say whether someone else has bad fruit or not.

It’s up to me to ask if I’m living the right way.

Grace is limitless, but the boundaries are love

So as I was studying this, I realized that we have arrived at a sort of paradox, and I love those!

On the one hand, Grace is limitless.

Christ has set you free!

That’s a done deal!

We know that there’s nothing we have done and nothing we can do that is going to separate us from the love of Christ.

That Grace is unlimited, unrestrained, and boundless.

And...

The boundaries are love.

Yes Grace is unlimited, but if it’s being used for selfish ends then it’s out of bounds.

Yes Christ’s love is unending, but if it’s sparked some kind of hostility toward others than it’s out of bounds.

Yes you are free, but if you abuse that freedom it’s out of bounds.

So what do we do with all of this?

Apprentices

Start with grace

The folks who get things backwards when they’re reading Paul are (most often) the ones who forget that he always starts with grace.

He always starts with a reminder that Christ loves us.

He always starts with a reminder that Grace is free, and unconditional

He always reminds us that we are loved, and it’s not of our own doing.

And so I think we need to start with grace ourselves, in two places.

One, we need to have grace for ourselves.

I can’t tell you how many folks will come by and sit on the couch in my office and tell me how God will never forgive them for what they’ve done.

They tell me that if I only knew what lurked in the past, that I would see how God could never love them.

They tell me that they are not deserving of God’s love.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Christ has set us free.

Whatever you’ve done, it’s forgiven.

Whatever creepy crawlies are living in your past, they are expunged.

And if it is good enough for Christ to forgive you, then maybe it’s time to forgive yourself.

But right along with it, we need to have grace for each other.

My skin crawls when I come across Christians for whom Christ has forgiven a great deal, yet they tell me they’ll never be able to forgive the people who hurt them.

Jesus had a few parables about this too.

That’s not to say it’s easy, and it will indeed take some time.

But we need to offer the same grace Christ gave us to everyone else in our lives.

If we can’t start here, nothing much else is going to make sense.

Watch the culture

Yesterday, I don’t know if you heard, but there was a pretty divisive opinion handed down by the Supreme Court

For our purposes here in the sermon, I don’t really want to debate the substance of that ruling. If you want to do that, buy me a coffee sometime and we can rant a bit in love.

But what I do know is that when I was on Facebook and Twitter yesterday, I saw some stuff in response to that ruling that troubled me greatly.

I saw Christians loudly calling other people names they wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy.

I saw Christians losing their temper in the comments section.

I saw Christians engaged in competitive opposition left right and center.

In other words, I saw some pretty bad fruit.

I think the reason I saw that bad fruit is because our culture rewards it right now.

Our culture rewards hatred.

Our culture rewards owning the libs or owning the magas.

Our culture rewards tough talk and vicious insult.

Our culture rewards bad fruit.

We have to push back and do better.

We have to be people of love instead of hatred, kindness instead of insult, gentleness instead of winning.

We have to be people who carry the fruit of the Spirit.

Use your freedom

Because the joke is that people who follow hatred or tough talk or insults, they think they’re free.

They aren’t.

They might have a kind of temporary freedom to be able to do whatever they want.

But it pales in comparison to the Freedom in the Spirit that we have in Christ Jesus.

That’s why we have to use our Freedom to show others how to be free.

We love our neighbors because Christ loved us, and wants us to share.

We are kind to our neighbors, because it might point in the direction of a liberating Christ.

We put up the walls and boundaries of love because it will help us direct our freedom toward a better world, a kingdom world.

The Grace of Christ is limitless, but the borders are love.

Let us be people of that love.