Called to Freedom
(5:13-15)

For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, take care lest you be consumed by one another. (5:13-15)

Ours is a day that cries for liberation. Men, women, and even children are demanding more freedom to do as they please. In the name of personal rights, authority is flouted and restrictions are resisted. Like the Israelites in the days of the judges, sinful people want to do what is right in their own eyes (see Judg. 17:6; 21:25; cf. Deut. 12:8).

But ours is also a day of addiction, not only to alcohol and drugs but also to sexual passions, violence, and many other forms of bondage in which a person eventually becomes powerless to escape. When people choose to persist in a sin, they develop less and less control over it until eventually they forfeit any choice entirely. Except for the extremity of their situations, debilitated addicts are no different from most of unsaved humanity. “Truly, truly,” Jesus said, “everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34). Fallen man is a slave to his sinful nature, an addict who cannot successfully control his sinful thoughts and actions even when he may want to. And ironically, the more he asserts his self-centered freedom, the more he becomes enslaved to sin.

In the passage just quoted, Jesus gives the prescription for true freedom: “If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (v. 36). That is the great manifesto of Christianity and the theme of the Galatian letter: freedom in Jesus Christ. Christianity is liberation.

Paul has already spoken of the “liberty which we have in Christ Jesus” (2:4) and presented an analogy illustrating the believer’s spiritual descent from Abraham’s wife Sarah, a “free woman” (4:21-31). He has declared that “it was for freedom that Christ set us free” (5:1).

But because the idea of Christian freedom is so easily misinterpreted and misapplied, Paul knew the importance of understanding its true significance. In Galatians 5:13-15 he briefly explains freedom’s basic nature and purpose, and in verse 16 explains how God makes provision for believers to live in it.

The apostle makes clear again (see 5:1) that freedom is at the very heart of the gospel and of godly living. It is not a side benefit or an adjunct to the Christian life. God has called all believers to freedom. His calls to particular areas of ministry and service vary from believer to believer, but His call to freedom is universal.

In the book of Galatians the primary freedom to which Paul refers is freedom from being bound to law as a system of government regulating daily life, including the Old Testament ceremonies, back into which—along with the rabbinic traditions—the Judaizers wanted to drag believers. He speaks about freedom from the frustrating, oppressive, condemning tyranny of a legal system that was impossible to keep. It is the freedom of knowing that one is accepted by God because of Christ’s sufficient merit rather than of knowing that one’s own insufficient merit is never enough to please Him. It is the freedom of a total cleansing that even the most godly Old Testament saints never fully understood. Their consciences were never completely clear, because they knew they could not totally and finally satisfy God’s demands in the law and because the rituals and ceremonies were but outward temporary acts symbolic of a reality they never experienced permanently. Not until the work of Christ did believers have the sense of complete righteousness imputed to them, once and forever making them right with God.

For Christians to submit to Old Testament rituals and regulations, represented for the Jews by circumcision, was to go back to spiritual bondage (4:9), to exchange the new and glorious internal reality for the old and oppressive external shadows.

Because the traditions and the revering of God’s law ran so deep in their minds, Paul’s relentless proclamation of Christian freedom was a stumbling block even to some sincere believing Jews. And it was total scandal to the hypocritical Judaizers who merely professed to believe in Christ. Jews believed the law was the only restraint that kept sin from running rampant and bringing God’s destruction of the earth. And apart from divine provision that was true. In light of man’s natural inclination to sin, the only way to prevent him from totally unleashing his worst passions was to establish a system of laws that set boundaries on behavior and that carried penalties severe enough to promote conformity out of fear.

The Judaizers, and some of the immature Jewish believers, considered Paul to be antinomian, a lawless libertine. They did not realize that becoming a Christian involves having Christ’s own nature and Spirit in personal residence and that motivation to obey the commands and restrictions of the New Testament is therefore not external. The Christian has the glorious privilege of living under the internal guidance, restraint, and power of the Holy Spirit, who energizes him to obey the will of God.

Because the opposite extremes of legalism and antinomianism are both man-centered, they have always been attractive to sinners. The legalist satisfies himself, and presumably God, by adhering to a strict external code of do’s and don’ts, which he imagines demonstrate his self-righteous suitability for heaven. The antinomian, on the other hand, satisfies himself by rejecting all codes and living completely according to his personal lusts and desires.

Someone has pictured legalism and libertinism as two parallel streams that run between earth and heaven. The stream of legalism is clear, sparkling, and pure; but its waters run so deep and furiously that no one can enter it without being drowned or smashed on the rocks of its harsh demands. The stream of libertinism, by contrast, is relatively quiet and still, and crossing it seems easy and attractive. But its waters are so contaminated with poisons and pollutants that to try to cross it is also certain death. Both streams are uncrossable and deadly, one because of impossible moral and spiritual demands, the other because of moral and spiritual filth.

But spanning those two deadly streams is the bridge of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the only passage from earth to heaven. The two streams lead to death because they are man’s ways. The gospel leads to life because it is God’s way.

The Old Testament governmental law was abolished altogether in Christ. The purpose of that form of the law was to set the Jews apart as God’s distinctive chosen people and to picture the sacrifice of the coming Messiah, the Christ. When Christ came, the symbols of His sacrifice ceased to be necessary, because the completed and final sacrifice itself was fully and eternally made.

As Paul mentions in verse 14, and explains in detail in other epistles, the work of Jesus Christ does not alter God’s moral nature or His desire for man’s holiness. Rather it enables the believer to fulfill them internally as well as externally, because of His indwelling and empowering Holy Spirit (v. 16). The motive for obedience is not bondage to a governmental system of laws but is based solely on love. Even though Old Testament saints also loved God and obeyed Him because of that love, they were still obligated to the whole system of law In Christ that obligation is removed, and only love remains. It is the love and respect for God’s holiness that puts reverent fear in our hearts. That is the glorious spiritual freedom into which God has called everyone who trusts in His Son.

In Galatians 5:13b-15, Paul gives four purposes of God’s call to the freedom of loving Him: to oppose the flesh, to serve others, to fulfill His moral law, and to avoid harming others.

TO OPPOSE THE FLESH

only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, (5:13b)

Perhaps partly as a response to the Judaizers’ charges that he was a libertine, and as a warning to believers who were tempted to abuse their Christian liberty, Paul makes clear that the freedom of the gospel is not tolerance of self-indulgence. It is not a means for satisfying the desires of the flesh but for opposing them.

Aphorm (opportunity) was often used to indicate a central base from which all operations of a military campaign originated. In this context flesh does not refer to the physical body but to the sinful inclination of fallen mankind, the old self, whose supreme desire is to do its own will and to satisfy its sinful appetites. It is a synonym for sinful self-will. Paul’s declaration is that Christian freedom is not a base of operations from which the flesh is given opportunity to carry on its campaigns of sin freely and without consequence.

Christ does not give freedom to believers so they can do what they want but so they can, for the first time, do what God wants, because of love for Him. Within the bounds of their particular situations and abilities, even the most ungodly unbelievers are already free to do what they themselves want to do. They have more than ample opportunity to indulge the desires of the flesh, and it was hardly necessary for Christ to provide that sort of liberty.

But Paul’s point is immeasurably more important than that obvious truth. The great reality he declares here is that it is from sin, represented by the flesh, that the gospel saves believers. Whatever Christian freedom is, it is clearly not the right of believers to return to that from which Christ paid with His own life to save them. “Act as free men,” Peter admonishes, “and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God” (1 Pet. 2:16).

Under the cloak of Christian liberty, some professed Christians claim they are free to get drunk, enjoy worldly amusements, feed their minds on smutty books, magazines, and movies, and live in almost unrestrained self-indulgence. But such a person gives strong evidence that he is not a Christian at all. Although a true believer may fall into serious sin, his renewed conscience and Christ’s own indwelling Spirit will not allow him to enjoy it for long. And he surely will not continually try to justify sin as a legitimate expression of Christian freedom. The new nature hates sin and loves the righteousness of God (see Rom. 7:14-25).

Teaching Christian freedom as an opportunity for the flesh is the lure of many popular false teachers. Mimicking the world’s popular philosophy of situation ethics, they claim a believer is freed by Christ to express himself in virtually any way he wants as long as it seems right to him. Though that appeals to sinners, Peter rebukes such teachers for,

speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them. (2 Pet. 2:18-21)

Jude refers to false teachers as “certain persons [who] have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4). To advocate licentiousness in the name of Christian liberty is to deny the Lord Jesus Christ, who gives freedom from sin, not freedom to sin. “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts,” Paul wrote to the church at Rome (Rom. 13:14). To legitimately carry the name of Christ and to make provision for the flesh are contradictory and mutually exclusive.

One of the most amazing characteristics of Jesus was that, though He was God incarnate, He “did not please Himself” (Rom. 15:3). Those who receive Him as Lord and Savior also receive His selfless nature, and He calls on His followers to express that nature with the same love for God that motivated Him.

TO SERVE OTHERS

but through love serve one another. (5:13c)

Second, Christian freedom takes believers to an even higher level than simply opposing the flesh. Positively, Christ frees His followers through love to serve one another. His freedom is the paradoxical freedom of loving subservience.

Again Jesus is our great example. When the disciples bickered among themselves “as to which one of them was regarded to be greatest,” Jesus said, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called ‘Benefactors.’ But not so with you, but let him who is the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as the servant. For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table, or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves” (Luke 22:24-27).

“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,” Paul said, “who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant” (Phil. 2:5-7). When Christ incarnates Himself in believers, He endows them with the same nature of servanthood He exemplified when, as the Son of God and Son of Man, He lived on earth as the Servant of God and the Servant of man.

TO FULFILL GOD’S MORAL LAW

For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (5:14)

Third, Paul explains that Christian freedom is not license to ignore God’s desire for our holiness but is rather the opportunity to fulfill it. God’s nature has never changed, and neither have His standards of right and wrong. The ethical truths of the Old Testament Law are exactly the same as those of the New Testament gospel.

Jesus echoed the greatest Old Testament principle when He declared that “the great commandment in the Law” was,” ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 22:36-40; compare with Deut. 6:5; Lev 19:18). God had always called His people to serve and obey Him because they love Him.

Paul echoes and expands on that truth in his letter to the Romans: “He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law For this, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law” (Rom. 13:8-10).

Although he is not bound under the system of law as were Old Testament saints, when a Christian genuinely loves others he fulfills all the moral elements of the Mosaic law

The first ordinance given through Moses after the Ten Commandments is a beautiful picture of serving the Lord out of love rather than mere duty. The ordinance stipulated that if one Hebrew bought another Hebrew as a slave, the slave had to be freed after serving his master for six years. “But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master,. . . I will not go out as a free man,’ then his master shall bring him to God, then he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him permanently” (Ex. 21:2-6).

The purpose of Christian freedom is for believers to do exactly as the Hebrew slave did who permanently surrendered his freedom to the master he loved. They willingly give up the freedom to serve themselves, which is freedom to serve the sinful flesh, in order to become slaves of God. “Having been freed from sin,” they willingly begin the joyous privilege of becoming “enslaved to God” (Rom. 6:22).

Even under the Old Covenant of law, God demanded heart service, not mere lip service (Deut. 11:13; Josh. 24:23; 1 Kings 8:58; cf. Isa. 29:13). The inner motive of love has always been the only acceptable motivation for serving God or others. As Paul emphasizes in the remainder of the chapter (Gal. 5:16-26), the Christian has the indwelling Holy Spirit not only to rightly motivate his service to God and others but to empower it as well.

In the preceding three principles Paul deals with Christian freedom in regard to self, others, and God. True liberty in loving produces self-control, service to others, and obedience to God. Every relationship is harmonized in Christian freedom.

TO AVOID HARMING OTHERS

But if you bite and devour one another, take care lest you be consumed by one another. (5:15)

The fourth purpose of Christian freedom is the reverse side of the second. Reemphasizing the need for Christians to use their freedom to serve each other (see v 13), Paul here stresses the negative side of that truth—in the form of a warning about what happens when believers do not love and serve each other. They become destructive and bite and devour one another. Those two words speak of wild animals engaged in the fury of a deadly struggle.

Even the world knows that personal freedom cannot be unlimited. The most libertarian societies of history have been forced to recognize that they could not survive if each individual had the right to run roughshod over others while gratifying his own whims and fulfilling his own ambitions. Anarchy is obviously destructive, and one person’s rights are necessarily restricted by the rights of others.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul counsels believers who are spiritually strong to avoid such conflict and to “accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions. One man has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only. Let not him who eats regard with contempt him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats, for God has accepted him” (Rom. 14:1-3).

Many early Christians, both Jewish and Gentile, were so contemptuous and fearful of idolatry that they abstained from eating any meat at all, lest they inadvertently eat some that had been offered in a pagan ceremony and then sold in the pagan priests’ market. Because pork was ritually unclean under the Mosaic law, many Jewish believers could not bring themselves to eat it no matter what its market source.

More mature believers realized with Paul that “in the Lord Jesus . . . nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean” (Rom. 14:14). The issue is not a matter of intrinsic evil but of conscience. A believer should never go against his conscience, even if it is immature; and other believers should never encourage him to do so or criticize him for his convictions. Likewise, the immature believer should not self-righteously condemn those who feel free to eat any food they desire. In either case, “if because of food your brother is hurt, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died” (v. 15).

As Paul has already explained (Gal. 5:6,13), the ruling principle of Christian freedom is always love. The believer with an unnecessarily strict conscience and the one with a freed conscience are to lovingly accept and serve one another in Christ. Otherwise, they will be just like the most ungodly, self-centered pagans who bite and devour one another and end up being consumed by one another. Lovelessness is utterly destructive.

So we are called to freedom, the freedom of love that walks the bridge over legalism and license.