Freedom To Love

Read: Galatians 5:13-26

Don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Galatians 5:13-14

IN WORD

Paul assures his readers that we are free in Christ. Whatever else that means—freedom from law, freedom from sin, freedom from God’s judgment—it doesn’t mean freedom to sin. God does not release captives for them to go right back into the behaviors that held them captive. Freedom should never make unholy indulgence acceptable to us.

But then Paul turns his attention to love. Why? It doesn’t seem like a natural direction for the conversation to turn. How are indulging the flesh and serving in love opposed to each other? After all, we live in a culture that is perfectly comfortable with immoral behavior “as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.” Can’t we do what we want and be loving toward others? Apparently not, according to Paul. There’s something about the flesh that wars against love. Selfish desires and attitudes undermine relationships rather than strengthening them.

We know that love is at the center of the Kingdom culture. Therefore selfishness can’t be. And ultimately, all sin is based in self-centeredness. Yes, we’re free from the demands of the law and the penalty of sin, but freedom is a responsibility. We’re to use it well. The Spirit of Jesus within us will fulfill His own purposes, and those purposes do not include self-centered attitudes and behaviors. If we don’t have love, we aren’t experiencing the Kingdom, whether we’re citizens or not.

IN DEED

“Serve one another in love.” This is normal behavior in the Kingdom of God, but it’s far from normal in our society and even in many of our churches. We compete with each other far more often than we serve each other. But the Kingdom is not a place of competition, of striving, of getting ahead, or of selfish indulgence. It’s a place of radical other-centeredness. We are fully free to love without fear of losing anything in the process.

ADDITIONAL READING: 1 Corinthians 13

Love, like warmth, should beam forth on every side, and bend to every necessity of our brethren.

MARTIN LUTHER