The Freedom That Drives Us

And I always say that every week, but it is one of my favourites. Paul explains that the goal of the cross was freedom. Was freedom. Unbridled liberation. Galatians 5:1.

If you turn to that with me. Galatians 5:1 starts with this amazing statement. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Mark my words, I, Paul, say that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again, I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ. You have fallen away from grace. But by faith, we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.

For in Christ Jesus, circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you.

A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough. I am confident in the Lord that you will not take any other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion will pay the penalty, whoever he may be. Brothers, if I'm still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offence of the cross has been abolished.

As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves. You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature. Rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: Love your neighbour as yourself.

If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So far, our reading. In Galatians 5:1, we find the greatest proclamation you'll ever hear. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. It's like that weed bursting through that crack.

Hallelujah. Praise God. Once we were slaves to a way of thinking that either the religious or the irreligious amongst us were good enough. But in either case, we felt the need to produce our own self worth. Whether we were religiously looking to prove ourselves to God or whether as irreligious people we wanted to prove ourselves to others or to ourselves, we were caught in a downward cycle of sin and conviction and guilt and shame.

Sin and conviction, guilt and shame. And it was a downward spiral. In the previous chapter, Paul talked about the barrenness of our condition. We could not, in and of ourselves, produce anything that got us out of that spiral. We were stuck floating in a stormy sea trying desperately to keep our heads above the water.

But God, in His great mercy, orchestrated a rescue plan. And Jesus Christ was thrown into us as a life rope to rescue us. The mission accomplished status of that rescue mission is stated here. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. You'll notice in that statement that both the verb and the noun are the same word.

The noun and the verb is freedom. You see, freedom is both the means and the end of the Christian life. It is both the means and the end of Christian life. Everything about the good news story of why Jesus came to Earth is summed up by the word freedom. The whole mission of Jesus was an operation of liberation.

Notice how it's stated. The verb translated "has set us free" is, in the Greek, eristhee, which is a past tense. It refers to a single past action that is now completed. He has set us free. Has set us free.

So in the most concrete definitive way, Paul tells us that Christians are free. That's it. Christians are free. But Paul goes on to warn again. He has to keep coming back to this.

He has to get really serious about this, that we have to stand firm in this freedom and not be confused into falling back into a previous slavery, to a previous way of doing things. And again, that word that he uses to stand firm is a military word. It's a military word. It carries with it the connotations of being alert, being strong, being on guard. The South African older generation, the men who were in the army will know about this guard duty, that sort of alertness.

It's sticking together in a sense. There's a resistance, a stubbornness, a caution. In other words, despite the fact that we have already been saved in Christ, we must be continually diligent to remember, to preserve, to rejoice in, and to live according to this freedom. We may not be able to lose our salvation, but we may lose our freedom from the enslavement of fear, the enslavement of guilt. So the Galatians face an either or decision.

They face an either or decision, Paul says. Will they make Christ their treasure in whom they find fulfillment, in whom they find liberation, or will they look to law keeping, more specifically in the context, circumcision? Under circumcision, the Galatians will experience, Paul says, once again, the anxiety, the guilt, and the burden of having to obey the law. They will never ever be sure that they are good enough. Their lives will be as fear based and proud and guilt ridden as they were before.

They'll fall into touchiness, they'll fall into insecurity, into escalations of pride and humiliation, into a trap of weariness of people who are never sure that they have worth. Paul says, in other words, Christ will have no value to you. Christ will have no value to you. And this is the point he wants to stress again. He made it in chapter one.

If you add anything to Christ, you are subtracting from Christ. If you add to Christ, you are subtracting from Him. He is either all of your value or He has no value. If obedience to the law, if obedience of looking a certain way, speaking a certain way, thinking a certain way, doing things in a certain way, if obedience to that law becomes part of your system of Christianity, then it is your only system. You'll be required to obey the whole law.

All of it. The whole of Leviticus. The whole of not cooking a goat in its mother's milk. Not wearing clothing of different fabrics sewn together. All of it.

Paul says in verse four that if you think this way, you will be alienated from Christ, and you will have fallen away from grace. Now reading that, does it mean that real Christians can lose their salvation? Is that what Paul is saying here? Well, if you read verse four, it appears that way. But immediately below in verses five and six, we see that Christians base their whole lives on the assurance and the certainty of their acceptance with God.

They base their whole lives on that. In other words, assurance of salvation is not possible if we must earn or even maintain our salvation by our efforts. Assurance of salvation is not possible if for a fraction of a moment we still feel we must earn our salvation. If we keep ourselves saved by good living, how could we ever be sure that we are good enough to retain God's favour? We cannot hold on to grace if we are living by works.

And so we fall from grace. The Bible makes clear that Christians can know that we are truly saved. In John 6:39, Jesus says, "I shall lose none of all the Father has given me. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life. I will lose none that the Father has given me."

These individuals, in other words, who have returned in the Galatian context, have returned to a works based understanding of faith and religion, prove that they never really trusted in grace. They never got it. They never understood it. That's how they fall away. The Christian's assurance, however, is if we didn't earn salvation by our behaviour, if we didn't earn salvation by our behaviour, then we can't unearn it by our behaviour.

Does that make sense? If we didn't earn salvation, then we can't unearn it. It's either completely free or it's not grace. How do you receive this grace?

Paul says, by faith. Paul says in verse five, by faith, we eagerly await through the Spirit, the righteousness for which we hope. What a huge comfort that is. If we look at our lives, we may think, "Wait a second, my life isn't perfect. My life isn't righteous.

I still struggle from time to time with sin. I still become anxious. I still struggle with lust. I still wrestle with gossip." Though it's not voiced here in verse five, verse five answers the argument: if you were merely to cling to grace, what about our struggles with sin?

Verse five tries to answer that. Three keywords are used here by Paul: faith, righteousness, and hope. Righteousness means a right relationship with God. A right relationship with God.

And He says this righteousness is something that we await for by faith. It's not that we've achieved it just yet. The process of cleansing and purification that the Holy Spirit brings is an ongoing project. We await it. But that righteousness is our hope.

That righteousness is our hope. Now, hope in the New Testament, this is really important. Every time you read hope in the New Testament, you have to remember it's not the same hope we use. It's not the hope of, "Oh, it's looking a bit overcast. I hope it doesn't rain."

Because that hope is unsure. It could rain. I hope it doesn't. Hope in the New Testament is about a future awaiting us. It is about a reality that you don't have just yet, but you know you will have.

That is the hope that Paul talks of here. It means total assurance. The word is powerful. It's not weak like we use hope. We await that righteousness.

We don't strive for it. We don't work for it. We know it's coming. It's on its way. It's as good as done.

We can live today knowing we are loved and we are honoured by God, the creator of the universe. And we are loved now as we will be when we are perfectly righteous in heaven with Him. To eagerly await, to eagerly await, like Paul says, is to long for it with rejoicing, with delight. It's to rejoice in that freedom that Christ has won. Paul is talking about a spiritual discipline here.

He's talking about a spiritual discipline. To eagerly await is the development of the heart with a passionate delight in all we've been given. It means that we need to turn our minds more often than not on what Jesus Christ has done for us, on the freedom we have, on who we are in God's eyes. And we have to do it so often that our hearts are stirred, our hearts are changed. That we start believing it.

And it corrects our behaviour. It changes our realities. It's to know that we will break through that crack of concrete. It's to know that we will break through that crack. We can look forward to that.

We should look forward to that. We should consider that it is as good as done. How good is that? That's why Paul goes on and says in verse six, neither circumcision therefore nor uncircumcision is of any value. It's of no value, either one of those.

Whether you're religious or non-religious, Jew or pagan, it doesn't count toward our right standing with God. Neither of those things. My good performance does not make me right with God nor does my bad performance make me any more lost and hopeless. We all stand equally lost, yet all equally able to be saved. Secondly, neither religion nor non-religion counts when it comes to becoming a better person.

Circumcision or non-circumcision, Paul says, are of no value because the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Notice how he says it. Faith is what energises love. It motivated. It is the engine.

It's the alternator to the engine. We can't be better persons through moralism on the one hand, moralism, or liberal radical licentiousness where everything goes, because both are essentially selfish.

Both are essentially selfish. Selfishness and insecurity cannot produce love. Why? Because love is essentially self-giving. I can tell you that love is tested this week at schoolies when you're tired.

Why is love tested? Because it is self-giving when you have not an ounce of energy. In the gospel, see that Christ has died for us and valued us for our own sakes. He loved us before we loved Him. The Bible says, and this is what frees us for God.

It frees us to serve Him, not for what He can bring us because that is religion. But because we are free to serve God for who He is and what He has done for us already, we can finally love God for who He is rather than what He gives us. So why don't we want to sin now? Not because our hearts break because we have broken the law. We don't want to sin now because we don't want to break God's heart.

Can you understand the difference? The more joy we have in our gracious salvation, the more we are driven to love for the sheer delight of pleasing God. It's our faith and our dependence on God's grace that produces within us a heart that overflows. That Psalm 23 that we sang, a cup that overflows, abundant. We are free. Free to love others, free to seek their good above ours because we have already experienced the goodness of God.

We have already experienced that it is already ours. If we find ourselves struggling, if we find ourselves unloving, finding it difficult to feel free enough for our faith to be expressed through love, the solution is not to try to love better or to try harder. It is to look to Christ who gives us an unlosable, unshakeable love. And as we dwell on that hope, as we meditate on that, we will find that our hearts melt with love. If we meditate on that regularly and eagerly, our hearts will overflow with love, with contagious joy. It's no wonder then that Paul takes a quick diversion here in verses 7 to 12 and says, "You were running a good race.

You were there. You were getting there. Who cut in on you? Who cut you off? Why have you turned from this immense freedom?

Why would you give that up? Those teachers want to get you back to circumcision. I hope they cut their boy bits off trying to show you how. That's how strong he is about this. After this emotionally charged diversion, Paul takes up again the argument that he left in verse six.

While the message of verses one to 12 is don't lose this gospel freedom, the last three verses, verses 13 to 15, warns us, don't abuse this gospel freedom. Verses one to 12, don't lose gospel freedom. 13 to 15, don't abuse gospel freedom. We've seen through Galatians that it is extremely easy to lose the freedom we have in Jesus Christ by slipping back into legalism or works righteousness. But now Paul addresses the condition of the heart that has been freed by grace, and the announcement is that now because we are saved wholly and freely by grace, we are, if anything, more obliged to obey the law.

Why? Because we have more reason than ever to want to please God and to love Him than we ever did before. Love is a result of the gospel. It arises from the faith and the hope we have in Jesus, and it overflows to a loving of our neighbours, a loving of our wives, of our friends, of our colleagues, rather than using them to serve ourselves. And loving our neighbour, loving our nearest, verse 14 says, is the entire law summed up in a single command.

So Christians are freed from the law as a way to win the love of God. Christians are freed from the law as a way to win the love of God, but we are not freed from the law as a way to please God. Because the law is an expression of God's nature. What we see in the law is who God is. Paul says that if you want to know God's love for you in Christ, if you know that God's wisdom, if you know His wisdom, which is shown in Jesus Christ, why would you use your freedom to indulge in the sinful nature?

The gospel, in other words, devours any motivation we might have for sin. It devours it. It completely saps it of its energy. It fades away, and it loses every need and every reason for sin to have in your life. The gospel frees us from the law.

The gospel frees us from the law to live for the law. It doesn't, it does away with our old selfishly motivated and unloving law obedience and motivates us to obey the law out of gratitude and love. We have been set free to love. So this morning, if you are struggling with knowing the freedom you have, the answer is to look to Jesus Christ, to meditate on Him, to meditate on His work, to think carefully on what He has achieved for us on the cross. He crushed.

He absolutely destroyed the bondage of slavery. You do have victory over that. The Spirit is at work in us, and we through faith have that hope of the righteousness, the completeness that we will receive. The good news message is that you are free now to please God. You are in right standing with God as His son, as His daughter, and when He looks at you, when He looks at you, He says, "That's my boy.

That's my girl. Good on you." Now you have the freedom to live healthy, wholesome lives, not because you must, but because you can. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, it is so tempting sometimes. It is so common sometimes for us to wrestle and to struggle with the unrefinement in our lives, the sharp edges, the bad habits, the way we thought life, the feelings that sneak in. Lord, it is so easy to look at those things, to look at our sin, and to forget to worship the Saviour. Because You are Saviour, it means You have saved us from that. And it is a disrespect to You.

It is unworthy of Your name for us to focus on our sin above the freedom we have. Lord, this morning, let us remember the liberation we have received. We are like that little plant through the crack, the austerity, the confinement, the bondage of sin that keeps us from the sun, keeps us from the freedom of the wide open world You have placed us in. But Lord Jesus, through You, we've received that opening. As the Psalmist writes, "Lord, You have set us into open spaces."

And Lord, we want to stand like that plant, and we just want to raise our arms to You, healthy, liberated, whole. Our life has been marked by freedom. It is being the means to our salvation. It is also the end result of our salvation. We have been saved into freedom.

Lord, and in those moments where we falter and when we fall, Lord, help us to realise that we are loved by unquenchable, irresistible love. Help us to understand that through that and through our faith in that, that we will express love. That we will be known as people who love because we are loved. God, give us this spiritual discipline to meditate on this enough. Not just when we're down, not just when we're struggling, but to make it a daily habit of our lives.

Help it to become a deep essential part of us, of our thinking. So, Lord, we wanna dedicate our lives to You again. We want to accept and embrace that freedom we have received in Jesus, and we want to live that out. And we commit ourselves to You in that, through the power of the working of the Spirit, and in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.