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Excerpt: 1 "Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you...
23-24 "But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
"Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified."
Summary of the Passage
- We have been set free!
- What our freedom is Not for!
- What our freedom IS for!
- What does living free look like?
- The fruit is the essence of God … Holy Spirit
Introduction:
I was recently at a party where we took a few minutes to read silly laws that are still in the books.
- In BC it is against the law to kill a Sasquatch . . . a mythical creature.
- In Oak Bay on the Island, you can be fined $100 if your parrot talks too loud . . . I didn’t know they came with volume buttons.
- If you don’t pay your hotel bill in Ontario, the hotel can legally sell your horse . . . what if you don’t have one?
- There’s a town in Ontario where it is illegal to paint your garage door purple . . . I really feel like that entire law exists because of ONE person in one instance.
Why is it that we seem so bent on wanting to make rules and laws as a way to control and manipulate things? There have been a lot of comedy sketches created around the dynamics of the “Strata Council.” Have you ever noticed how reactionary laws are? Something happens and then we decide we need a law regarding it. So, for instance, our drunk driving laws. There was a time when we didn’t have any, because if you were drunk and you fell over walking home, it was just you paying the price. But over time and with the invention of cars, and our population increasing, it has become extremely dangerous to drive drunk. So, we created laws, and more laws, and bigger punishments, and more deterrents, as a way to protect innocent people from being hurt or killed by one person’s disregard for others.
We need laws; it is in part what has helped our Canadian culture to enjoy such a high quality of life. But laws in nature are reactionary and I think what Jesus might have meant when he said, “I didn’t come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it!” was that there’s a higher calling, a more beautiful way to live our lives as humans. Jesus brought something to the table that was greater than the Law, more complex and more nuanced. It’s not about a list of do’s and don’ts; it is the fulfillment (this gift of the Spirit) of having the law written on our heart’s.
The context of this letter that Paul is writing to the Galatians is exactly addressing that dichotomy. The Galatians have found faith in Jesus, but the local Judaizers are bent on reminding them that they must still follow the Law.
1. Paul shoots straight at that obligation and says, “NEVER AGAIN let anyone put a harness of slavery on you!" Or “Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” He’s calling following the law slavery! But he’s not talking about the law so much as the moralism of law, and that’s where we can easily get caught up in the chains of slavery as Christians.
He clarifies things by reminding us that The Law, and all the laws tagged onto that have been summarized by Jesus into one sentence . . . Love others as you love yourself.
2. Do you remember saying something like this as a little kid, “Well, I can do what I want. It’s a free country, isn’t it?!”
The freedom we’ve been given is not a license to do whatever we want. The freedom we’ve been given is the kind of freedom that allows us to be our very best selves. This freedom affords us the ability to rise above our compulsions and selfishness. We are able to set aside our all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants. Our freedom is not meant to be a license to tell other people how to live in some holier than thou and I’m above you sort of way. The freedom we have been offered is not our right to move towards moralism and put chains on others that harness them into a kind of slavery.
3. Our freedom, this freedom, is meant to be a catalyst to perpetuate more and more freedom on this earth. If we live animated and motivated by God’s Spirit, then we will be free to move beyond a law-dominated existence. The picture I had for this is the difference between knowing how to dance well, being gracious and graceful in your movements, making it almost look effortless, versus, having a paper trail of the dance steps on the floor and trying to follow the steps as the music plays. The law has us constantly looking down, checking our next step, lurching and mis-stepping, and even when we get it right, it is seldom graceful.
4. This freedom is also called LOVE, and the fruit that it produces is the very nature of God, it is the essence of THE SPIRIT, The Holy Spirit. LOVE ‘s FREEDOM … THE SPIRIT’s fruit … manifests in the following ways: affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. Love’s freedom is willing to stick with things, is compassionate of heart, and has a conviction that basic holiness permeates things and people. Love’s freedom is loyal, not forceful, and marshals its energies wisely.
The list also sounds like this in other versions: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control.
AND AGAINST SUCH THINGS . . . THERE IS NO LAW!
Does this sound like the description of love in 1 Cor 13? Quite a bit! And that makes sense if you see it as a description of God, of The Holy Spirit, of the essence of Love itself!
The Fruit of the Spirit is not the new measuring stick we use to rate our faithfulness to God. The Fruit of THE SPIRIT, THE HOLY SPIRIT, is just the evidence that we have found our stride alongside the Spirit and are enjoying the freedom that provides.
The difference between The Law and The Spirit is relationship. The Law provides blanket responses to situations. So, do I HAVE TO DO this certain thing under the Law? Or am I forbidden from doing this under the Law? While moving with the Spirit requires us to look into someone’s eyes, to see them, to listen to them, to consider their story, and then to move with the Spirit to offer healing.
So, let me bring a couple of current “issues” into this dichotomy. It is so easy to get caught up and trapped on one side or the other of the “Us-them” culture wars, each with their OWN set of laws. I believe if we write the gift of the Spirit on our hearts, we can transcend the “us-them” tension, because we will put people, faces, and hearts ahead of our list of laws.
The topic of Abortion and women’s rights is again a hot topic. And to be clear, I am entirely for LIFE. The challenge we face as a collective church is that we lay the law over the Spirit to try to legislate morality. AND it hasn’t worked! We have had very little success with that, and we have been entirely unsuccessful at moving IN the Spirit when we tried to legislate morality.
As a collective church, I feel we have pushed legislation so that we don’t have to enter the fray; it’s way easier to have a law that says “You can’t do this!”, then to come alongside someone who is in desperate need of help, of kindness … of compassion. If we make a law that keeps people OUT, then maybe we don’t have to look in the eyes of those individuals. But what the Spirit calls us to is to lay our judgments aside, to get close, to ask the sincere question, “What would bring a woman to become so desperate even to consider ending the life of her unborn child?” I cannot imagine that place!
And then let’s take a look at the LGBTQ community. The church has historically swept a lot of individuals under the carpet, relegated them to the back pews, disempowered them and muted their voices. We can do this because we hide behind the Law and refuse to open dialogue, listen to their story, consider circumstances, look into their eyes and see them as a creation of God rather than an abomination.
I’m going to take a moment here to thank this community of The Bridge. I feel like the culture of this church community is heavily invested in the Gift of the Spirit, and that if I brought someone from the Gay community, or someone with an addiction, or someone who might be unwelcome anywhere else, that they would be welcomed here! I love that this community so beautifully demonstrates the gifts! It moves me!
We have another social challenge these days that has Christians in a quandary. It’s about how to treat refugees, and THERE IS absolutely an immigration crisis! If only the Bible talked about how to treat “the stranger”! Of course, you know that the Biblical term for refugee or immigrant is STRANGER. If only Jesus had weighed in on this topic! If only Jesus knew anything about being a refugee or an immigrant. Oh, wait . . . He did … he was both!
Matthew 25
35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
Do you see it? This sort of action requires being in step with the Spirit. This sort of action requires that a person exhibits the fruit of the Spirit, . . . Love (for all mankind), Joy (at sharing our freedom), Peace (that drives out fear), Patience (that goes far beyond the extra mile), Kindness (that sees a person and not a problem), Goodness (that looks for solutions), Faithfulness (that doesn’t grow weary of putting others first), Gentleness (that brings compassion to the lonely, broken, disillusioned, outcasts), and Self-Control (that recognizes limitations, and works on controlling oneself and NOT others, and that does not lash out at people who are vulnerable).
Let’s look at how Jesus treated the woman caught in adultery. Dean mentioned this last week as well. Jesus didn’t say she didn’t do it; he didn’t bite at the LAW worm the Pharisees were dangling. He just saw that using the Law on her . . . pointing out her faults . . . sin . . . brokenness … was not going to bring about healing. But that’s exactly what the Fruit of the Spirit leads to, our healing, and the healing of others.
Quite often, we use the Law as a great big microscope that helps us see each other’s stuff, so that we can declare, “Hey! You’re broken!” or “You’re bad!” And because you’re broken, I can’t use you! And because I’m not in relationship with you, you become disposable to me, and I can just toss you away … into jail . . . or on the streets . . . or a migrant camp or anywhere else where I don’t have to look at you or face how I’ve treated you as less than a glorious creation of God! But Jesus, being in step with the Spirit, found a way to free this woman, who was broken and guilty under the Law. He saw this woman like He saw Hagar in the desert when she had been discarded. And Hagar gave God His first descriptive name, a relational name . . . “The God who sees me!”
And if we want to enjoy the freedom that Jesus Christ has offered us, then we need to engage in the kind of freedom that he provided. Not a flag-waving freedom that declares that I’m better than you, or my rights are greater than your rights! It’s not a freedom to do what you like at the expense of others.
God allowed the Law to be written because he wanted humankind to see that rules are not the pathway to a relationship with him or each other. Law and law-keeping will always get in the way of true and genuine relationship. God wants to be seen, and all the while he demonstrates that he sees us!
I feel like that law that says you can’t paint your garage door purple, could have been dealt with relationally. But for someone who didn’t want to face their neighbour and have a dialogue, getting a law put in place was just easier.
This freedom that we’ve been given is really far, far greater than we’ve been led to believe or have recognized. This freedom to LOVE is so expansive; it cannot be exhausted in our lifetimes! This is glorious news for the kind of days we are in, where discouragement and disillusionment seem to lurk around every corner.
If you want to know what this Freedom we have been given tastes like, let me leave you with this . . .
It tastes like LOVE, JOY, PATIENCE, PEACE, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS & SELF-CONTOL. Against such things, there is no law!
Activation:
I want to leave you with this . . . open your eyes to see the Fruit this week . . . What fruit is abundant in your life? What fruit might be a little short in supply? What fruit is offered to you by others?
I believe that you’ll be encouraged by the freedom you have, the freedom you share, and the freedom others are giving to you!
I know that I have often gone home with a full heart from a Sunday morning, because of the freedom you all have shared with me.
Bless you!
I can use more self control, i don,t want to be dependent on my meds to get self control,but they help,a lot!I,d like to be more loving and a less self righteous Christian ,john
Posted by: john w. barber | September 14, 2019 at 10:45 PM
JOHN 8:35-36 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. | New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Wow the Son remains in the House forever...
He became sin for our sakes to set us free we are emancipated and can leave the house of sin, He ever lives to make intercession....
Could it be that He has taken our place eternally in that place where sin has had dominion over us, in order that we might go free. His sacrifice is sufficient for all our lack, he holds the gate open eternally that sin can no longer dominate us. It no longer has any effect we can be free to live as Papa intended.
Later Jesus says Go and sin no more! Thats freedom thankyou for the homily, it has opened some useful meditation.
Posted by: Mike Richardson | July 06, 2019 at 01:38 AM