Galatians 5: 1-5
So Christ has truly set us free.
Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the
law.
2 Listen! I, Paul, tell
you this: If you are counting on circumcision to make you right with God, then
Christ will be of no benefit to you. 3 I’ll say it again. If
you are trying to find favor with God by being circumcised, you must obey every
regulation in the whole law of Moses. 4 For if you are trying
to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off
from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace.
5 But we who live by
the Spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised
to us.
Galatians 5: 1-5
So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and
don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.
2 Listen! I, Paul, tell you this:
If you are counting on circumcision to make you right with God, then Christ
will be of no benefit to you. 3 I’ll say it again. If you are
trying to find favor with God by being circumcised, you must obey every
regulation in the whole law of Moses. 4 For if you are trying to make
yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from
Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace.
5 But we who live by the Spirit
eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us.
The text begins with a clear and refreshing statement of Christ's will
for our lives. Sometimes we get bogged down in a quandary about God's will. And
often we worry about decisions which are simply not a great issue with God
(where to go to school, what job to take, where to live, etc.). We need to
orient our lives on the clear statements of Scripture regarding God's will. And
here is one: "For freedom Christ has set us free." Christ's will for
you is that you enjoy freedom. Where you study, what job you do, where you
live, etc., are not nearly so crucial as whether you stand fast in freedom. If
they were, the Bible would have commanded those things as clearly as it here
commands freedom. But it doesn't.
So your enjoyment of freedom is much more important to God than many of
the day-to-day decisions that fill us with so much concern. A good test of your
priorities in life would be whether you are just as concerned about the command
to enjoy your freedom as you are about other pressing decisions in your life.
Do you exercise as much diligence in prayer and study to stand fast in freedom
as you do to decide about home, job, studies, marriage partner? It is a clear
and unqualified command: "Stand fast and do not submit again to a yoke of
slavery." This is the will of God for you: your freedom. Uncompromising, unrelenting, indomitable
freedom. For this Christ died. For this he rose. For this he sent his
Spirit. There is nothing he wills with more intensity under the glory of his
own name than this; your freedom.
Still hungry? Acts 15:1- Galatians 2:4
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