For Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free! (Galatians 5:1)
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore,
and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1, English Standard
Version).
We are in the home stretch of our study of Galatians. Chapters 5 and 6 comprise the practical
application and exhortation section of the letter. Paul has spent four chapters expounding
doctrine and theology, and now wants to draw the application to our daily
lives. This is common in almost all of
Paul’s letters: Doctrine first, then
life application. I know many of us
(myself included) are thinking, “Look Paul, we know you’re fired up about
theology, but can you just boil all of this down into a nice package of do’s
and don’ts?” Well, we all need to be fired
up about theology. Not to the point
where we all decide to go to seminary, but we all need to know what we
believe. We can’t behave right
unless we believe right. Right
action always flows from right belief.
So, with that being said, let’s look at
the text. There are five points I want
to draw from this text in regard to our freedom in Christ (which is the main
theme in Galatians): 1) The purpose; 2) the author; 3) the action; 4) the
exhortation; and 5) the warning.
1.
The Purpose (“For freedom”). One of the main
purposes for that radical thing Christ did on the cross was to secure our
freedom. Well you say, “I live in the
2.
The Author (“Christ”). Christ is the author of
our freedom. As I said earlier, he did
the work that secured our freedom. In
Acts 13:38-39, Luke (the author of Acts) tells us that through Christ we have
forgiveness, and through our faith we are freed from everything (“Let it
be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins
is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything
from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.”). Furthermore, what Christ did is something the
Law of Moses could not do (sound familiar?).
No other person could do what Christ did. Not Abraham, Moses, nor Elijah; not
Confucius, Buddha, nor Mohammed; not Joseph Smith, Mary Baker-Eddy, nor Benny
Hinn; not Michael Moore, John Kerry, nor Hillary Clinton. Do you get it? Only Jesus!
Jesus is the God-man who alone died to satisfy the wrath of a holy God
and thereby guaranteed our freedom.
3.
The Action (“Has set us free”). What Christ did
was a very specific thing. God couldn’t
just declare us free, or that would violate his justice. It wasn’t the miracles of Jesus or the
teachings of Jesus that set us free, but his death on the cross. There is a movement within liberal Christian
circles that denies the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. They say the story of Jesus is
allegorical. The story is meant to show
that we must be willing to die for what we believe is right. RUBBISH!
Christ died so we would be free.
I love what it says in Revelation 1:5 (“To him who loves us and
has freed us from our sins by his blood”). We were freed from our sins by his blood. Blood is a reference to death (cf. Hebrews
4.
The Exhortation (“Stand firm therefore”).
This leads me into my next point.
The Bible frequently exhorts Christians to stand firm. We’re not exhorted to sit, flee, or charge
forward. We are to stand firm. This is a command to be resolute in our
faith. There are going to be many things
that will seek to draw us away from our faith—from our freedom. Paul exhorts us to resist and stand
firm. Look at verse 5:7 (“You were
running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?”). The imagery here is of a runner who was doing
well in a race until he gets tripped up.
Paul was saying to his readers that they were running well (standing
firm) until they were hindered. What
were they hindered by? Verse 5:6 tells
us (“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts
for anything, but only faith working through love”). They were hindered by their slavery to
religious ritual. This is not God’s will
for us to be in bondage. These things
ultimately lead us away from the joy that is found in Christ. The exhortation: Stand firm!
5.
The Warning (“Do not submit again to a yoke of slavery”).
When we are not standing firm in our freedom, we are submitting to a
yoke of slavery. Now I could ask you,
“Would you be willing to go back to a yoke of slavery after having been set
free from it?” Our answer would be a
resounding NO! But hold on a minute. The desires of the flesh are not so easily
withstood. It’s a difficult thing to
resist the flesh and its desire to enslave us.
In the movie Shawshank Redemption there was an old man who had
been in prison over 50 years. When he
was finally set free, he couldn’t handle not being in prison and ended up
killing himself. That desire for our
spiritual prison cell lies within all of us.
But we are FREE! Do not submit!
Application Time.
This passage of Scripture is very practical, so the application is
easy. We are free in Christ. We need to live that truth out in our lives. We need to make sure we don’t confuse freedom
with license. We are not free to
sin; we are free from sin.
Secondly, we need to stand firm in our freedom and resist the desire to
return to our former slavery. Look at
verses 5:2-4 (“Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision,
Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man
who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You
are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen
away from grace”). Christ can’t
help us if we refuse to embrace our freedom.
Jesus unlocked and opened wide the cell door of our lives. It’s up to us to walk out and grasp our
freedom. If we refuse to leave the cell,
we reject our only means to salvation and freedom.
Bottom Line.
The Apostle Peter aptly summarizes our thoughts with this: “Live as people who are free, not using
your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God” (1 Peter
Have a blessed day!