Today’s message is from Galatians 5:1-15. The HCSB translators have given today’s passage the title Freedom of the Christian. It’s the same story again—with even more emphasis on the fact that keeping the law won’t save us—that we are only saved by God’s grace through faith.

In last week’s passage, Galatians 4:21-31, Paul used the example of Hagar and Sarah from Genesis allegorically to illustrate the difference between slavery and freedom—the difference between trying to save yourself by meeting God’s standards set forth in the Law of Moses and being saved by grace through faith.

When Abraham lamented to the Lord that he had no son and no heir to carry on his family line, the Lord had told Abraham that he would have a son, and that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Abraham believed the Lord and the Lord counted it as righteousness. Believed is the key word. The Lord considered Abraham to be righteous because he believed him.

However, you may remember, Sarah didn’t think it was possible for her to have children. She had had no children. She was barren—apparently unable to have children—and besides, she was too old. She told Abraham to take her Egyptian slave Hagar as a second wife and that maybe she could have children through Hagar. (Since Hagar was her slave, the children would belong to Sarah.) Abraham agreed and Hagar became pregnant and had Ishmael. Ishmael was the son of the slave woman. But the Lord’s intent was for Abraham’s descendants to be counted through Sarah, not Hagar.

Later, according to the Lord’s promise, Sarah became pregnant and gave birth to Isaac. Isaac is the son of the free woman. Ishmael was born as a result of a human decision, a decision of the flesh. Isaac was born as the result of God’s promise—and incidentally (or not incidentally) is the human ancestor of our Lord Jesus! Eventually, Hagar and Ishmael were sent away from Abraham’s household. Sarah told Abraham, “Drive out this slave with her son, for the son of this slave will not be a co-heir with my son Isaac!” It was something that was hard for Abraham to do because Ishmael was his son. But it was the Lord’s will, so he did it. The apostle Paul finished last week’s passage by saying, “Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave, but of the free woman.” So, we need to throw out being slaves to the law (or to any set of rules or rituals) and be free in Christ. We are the children of the free woman, born according to God’s promise, born into the kingdom of God. According to the apostle Peter (not Paul), we have “a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1 Peter 1:3)

When we read this weeks passage, as always, remember that we are reading the word of God. It’s God speaking to us through the apostle Paul. It’s God speaking to us and telling us things that are absolutely essential for us to know, things that to us are a matter of life and death, things that to us are a matter of eternal life and glory or eternal judgment and condemnation!

¹Christ has liberated us into freedom. Therefore stand firm and don't submit again to a yoke of slavery. ²Take note! I, Paul, tell you that if you get circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all. ³Again I testify to every man who gets circumcised that he is obligated to keep the entire law. ⁴You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace! ⁵For by the Spirit we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness from faith. ⁶For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love.

⁷You were running well. Who prevented you from obeying the truth? ⁸This persuasion did not come from Him who called you. ⁹A little yeast leavens the whole lump of dough. ¹⁰In the Lord I have confidence in you that you will not accept any other view. But whoever it is who is troubling you will pay the penalty. ¹¹Now brothers, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. ¹²I wish those who are disturbing you might also get themselves castrated!

¹³For you are called to freedom, brothers; only don't use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. ¹⁴For the entire law is fulfilled in one statement: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ¹⁵But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another. (Galatians~5:1-15)

Paul, or rather God’s Holy Spirit speaking through Paul, says, “Christ has liberated us into freedom. Therefore stand firm and don't submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (verse 1) What’s the difference between freedom and slavery? With slavery, we are forced to do what someone else wants us to do whether we want to do it or not. In fact, the things we very well might want to do if we were free, we are likely to not want to do if we think we are being forced to do them. And, in fact, I can say from my own experience (and other people have told me the same thing) that if you think you are being forced to do something, even if you are forcing yourself to do it, you start to wish you were doing something that you normally wouldn’t want to do. Did you follow that? Let me say that again. If you think you are being forced to do something, even if you are forcing yourself to do it, you start to wish you were doing something that you normally wouldn’t want to do. I know a man back in the days when we were graduate students (a long time ago) who, when he was making himself study for a scary life-and-death exam, talked about how he longed to be cutting his grass instead. Have you ever experienced anything like that? (Maybe some of you enjoy cutting grass, but I don’t.) Anyway, it seems to be the nature of the flesh.

With freedom, on the other hand, you can do what you want. I looked up “freedom” in my old (1969) dictionary. They gave 16 definitions. They were similar, but the one that seemed to fit best was this: “Freedom is the liberty of personal choice, action and thought.” ...personal choice, action and thought. (Now I know what you’re probably thinking. When I was a kid, I remember a postcard that my mom had stuck up in the kitchen. It had a cartoon character who was lamenting, “Everything I like to do is either illegal, immoral or fattening.” But it’s not like that. Paul has more to say about it.)

Let’s look at verses 2, 3 and 4: “Take note! I, Paul, tell you that if you get circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all. Again I testify to every man who gets circumcised that he is obligated to keep the entire law. You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace!” Apparently, the Galatian Christians had not yet been circumcised, at least some of them. Paul says, “...if you get circumcised...” But the effects of thinking in terms of the law were already beginning to show among them. Remember, “What happened to this blessedness of yours,” from chapter 4? Their blessedness and joy had evaporated.

Christ will be of no benefit to you at all. This is very, very serious. It’s a matter of life and death. It’s a matter of heaven and hell! You are alienated from the only one who can save you. You are on your own. You have fallen from grace. Grace is God’s favor. It’s something he gives to you, not something you can earn. It has already been “earned” by Jesus when he went to the cross. If you try to save yourself by keeping the law, you are rejecting Christ. You are without hope. You are still dead in your trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1).

Let’s look at verse 5: “For by the Spirit we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness from faith.” For by the Spirit... This all has to do with the God’s Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. When you accept God’s salvation—when you accept Jesus—you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Peter said to them when he preached at Pentecost, “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus the Messiah for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts~2:38) It’s the Holy Spirit that makes the difference. It’s through the Holy Spirit that we “eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.” (And remember, “hope” in the Bible is not like “I hope it won’t rain tomorrow—but it probably will.” “Hope” in the Bible is when you firmly expect the thing you are hoping for to happen.) It’s the Holy Spirit who makes us even want righteousness and to hope for it. It’s the Holy Spirit who gave the Galatians their blessedness, their joy, when they first received Paul’s message of salvation. But now their blessedness is gone because they are beginning to choose a salvation of “works” over God’s gift.

Let’s look at verse 6: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love.” Paul said to the Galatians in verse 2 that if they let themselves be circumcised, Christ would be of no value to them at all. It sounds as though those who may have already let themselves be circumcised are done for—they are without hope. But, first of all, just being circumcised doesn’t condemn you. Paul circumcised Timothy so that it wouldn’t be an issue with the Jews in the places he was traveling to. (Acts 16:2) Timothy certainly wasn’t condemned because of it. In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything. It’s your attitude toward it that is important.

Let’s look at verses 7, 8 and 9: “You were running well. Who prevented you from obeying the truth? This persuasion did not come from Him who called you. A little yeast leavens the whole lump of dough.” Yeast, when it’s used figuratively or symbolically in the Bible represents corruption. Yeast grows. A little yeast corrupts the whole batch. According to the Law of Moses, the Israelites were to get rid of all the yeast from their houses when they observed the Passover (Ex. 12:15). They were to eat only unleavened bread for 7 days. And in the New Testament, Jesus told his disciples to be on their guard against the yeast of the Pharisees. When they started to talk about bread, he rebuked them and told them he was talking about the teaching of the Pharisees. He told them that the yeast of the Pharisees was hypocrisy. (Matt. 16:12, Luke 12:1) And the apostle Paul told the Corinthians, “Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast permeates the whole batch of dough?” (1 Cor.~5:6) “Your boasting is not good...” Boasting is the issue here, too.

“A little yeast permeates the whole batch of dough.” False teaching connected with pride spreads. The idea of “We know something that you don’t,” or “We do something that’s better than what you do,” is very appealing. And there’s also the element of fear: “Maybe I was wrong to think that I’m saved by no effort of my own. Maybe I’d better do something in addition to just believing that I’m saved by grace through faith to assure my salvation.” Paul is warning the Galatians (and us, too) about this kind of thinking.

Let’s look at verse 10: “In the Lord I have confidence in you that you will not accept any other view. But whoever it is who is troubling you will pay the penalty.” There will be consequences for the false teachers. But for the Galatian believers, Paul is confident that they will accept what he’s telling them. Why is he confident? Is it because he believes he is a very persuasive writer? No, it’s because they are sealed by the Holy Spirit. When Paul wrote to the Ephesian Christians, he told them that they were sealed by the Holy Spirit—sealed for the day of redemption. (Eph. 1:13, 4:30) The Galatians Christians were sealed by the Holy Spirit, too—and so are we when we believe in Jesus. We are sealed by the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption. (If any of the Galatians died still trying to be righteous by keeping the law, I would have to assume that they were never Christians in the first place—that they were never sealed by the Holy Spirit.)

Let’s look at verse 11: “Now brothers, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished.” Paul was persecuted. He was beaten, he was imprisoned, his life was plotted against, he was stoned and left for dead. Paul was persecuted because the Jews, those who practiced the Jewish religion, were offended at the idea of the cross. They were offended at the idea that they couldn’t save themselves by keeping the law—that they could only be saved by someone else’s sacrifice—by the sacrifice of God’s own son. Again, it’s pride. But, again, Paul was not teaching that following Jewish customs was destructive. What he was teaching was that believing that following the law was necessary for salvation was absolutely destructive!

Let’s look at verses 13 and 14; “For you are called to freedom, brothers; only don't use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. For the entire law is fulfilled in one statement: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” “Don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh...” It’s possible for someone to say, “Now that I am safe in Christ I can be as selfish as I want to. I can freely indulge the flesh. In fact, I can sin freely.” I don’t think anyone who really belongs to Jesus would think that way. We have the Holy Spirit to correct us.

But the entire law is summed up in one command, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s found in Leviticus 19:18. The funny thing is that the Pharisees and the teachers of the law (the hypocrites) knew that and agreed that the entire law was summed up in that command. The two greatest commands are “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength (Deut. 6:5),” and “Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18).” Those two commands sum up the entire law. They are equally important. And really, they are equal. They go together. You can’t have one without the other. If you have one, you automatically have the other. If you don’t have one, you don’t have the other either.

Maybe this verse should go with next week’s passage. It’s more-or-less the opposite of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s also the result of trying to make yourself righteous by keeping the law. We’ll see more of the result of that in next weeks passage.

The first verse in today’s passage says, “Christ has liberated us into freedom. Therefore stand firm and don't submit again to a yoke of slavery.” I asked what the difference was between freedom and slavery. Thinking you have to be justified, make yourself righteous, by keeping the law is slavery.

Let me ask this. Do you think the apostle Paul considered himself to be free or to be a slave? From Galatians, you would have to say that he considered himself to be free. But in Romans 1:1 (and in some other places) he introduces himself as, “Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle...” Was Paul free or was he a slave? He suffered a lot for Christ. There’s a list in 2 Corinthians. I’ve already mentioned a few persecutions. He also suffered from hunger and thirst and had many sleepless nights. He was shipwrecked. He was often cold and without clothes. And he says that he suffered from the pressure of his concern for all the churches. He was a slave of Christ Jesus and yet considered himself to be free.

Paul talked about the things that he had suffered for Christ (anyone would have said that he was a fool)? But Paul says, “For Christ's love compels us, since we have reached this conclusion: if One died for all, then all died. And He died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the One who died for them and was raised.” (2 Cor.~5:14, 15)

This is a matter of what’s in your heart. You know the story of Cain and Abel. It’s in Genesis chapter 4. Abel made an offering to the Lord—some of the first-born of his flock—the fat portions. Cain also made an offering—some of the produce from his land. There was no requirement for either of them to make an offering. There was no Law of Moses. This was around 2400 years before the law was given. The Lord was pleased with Abel’s offering, but not with Cain’s. Abel raised animals; Cain raised crops. Each of them offered some of what they had raised. Why was the Lord pleased with Abel’s offering, but not with Cain’s? It says that Abel offered the first-born and the fat portions. It doesn’t say that Cain offered the best of his produce. But I think that’s only part of the story. I think that Cain’s offering was like our paying taxes. Have you ever run into anyone who loves to pay taxes? (Actually, they seem to love to pay taxes in Worthington. I keep voting against new property taxes, but they keep passing them anyway. But that has to be unusual.) But have you ever run into anyone who pays more taxes than he owes because the love of our government compels him? Neither have I.

Have you ever obeyed someone, not because you have to, or because you felt obligated to, but simply because you wanted to. Do you think it’s possible to want to obey someone that has authority over you, maybe your father or mother when you were a little kid or maybe a school teacher—and not just to keep yourself out of trouble, not even necessarily with the hope of receiving praise or even just being accepted by that person, but simply because it makes you happy to please that person? Have you ever felt like that with anyone? Does it seem like it’s rare? It seems like it’s more likely when we are kids. But here’s when it happens. It happens when we know that we are already accepted by that person. It happens when we know that we are already accepted by that person. It’s the Holy Spirit living within us that lets us know that we are accepted and loved by God. Because we are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” (Gal.~4:6) It’s Christ living in us.