Called to Freedom, Freed to Love (Galatians 5:13-15)

Please turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Galatians.

Here at Sovereign Grace Bible Church, we practice expositional preaching, which means every week you don't have to question what will be taught on from this pulpit.

It'll be the next verses.

And today we are in Galatians chapter 5, verses 13 through 15.

Galatians 5:13–15

And it is where we finally begin to move from this aggressive argument for the truth that Paul began many, many chapters ago.

And now he looks to the congregation and begins to preach to them application.

If you missed last week's sermon, you should go back and listen because preaching on Galatians chapter 5, verse 12 was an adventure nonetheless.

Galatians 5:12

And it is a stark contrast that we go from verse 12 to now verses 13 through 15.

The title of our sermon today is Called to Freedom, Freed to Love.

Please read with me God's holy word.

Paul says, For you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word.

But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

Our text will break down into the following outline.

Verse 13 is freedom is a calling, not a loophole.

Verse 14 is love is what the whole law was aiming at.

And verse 15 is devouring is how a free church dies.

We begin with freedom as a calling, not a loophole.

Verse 13.

Paul says, For you were called to freedom, brothers.

Again, when Paul uses the word called, he is showing salvation in that word and the salvation that God and God alone does.

That God is the one that calls us from death to life.

He is the one that breathes breath into our lungs.

He is the one that takes a stone heart and makes it a flesh heart.

He is the one who makes blind eyes able to see, deaf ears able to hear, and a mind that was unable to understand spiritual things finally recognize the truth.

Paul says, For you were called, you were saved, not of your own doing, not because you worked really hard, not because you showed up to church every week, not because you read your Bible every day, you were called to freedom, brothers.

This is the gospel freedom that he's been speaking about.

Is the freedom found in Christ.

Is the freedom found in an identity that no longer feels like it has to earn a standing before a holy God?

Is a freedom that knows no matter how bad you fail or fall short, as you will, that you are always in perfect relationship with God because you are covered in Christ's righteousness.

His perfect life, once you are saved, completely and absolutely covers your record.

Every wrong thing you've ever done, every wrong thing you will do in this life, he was covered with on the cross and he paid for.

You and I get to live in the freedom of Christ's perfect life.

Because Christ lived under the penalty and punishment of our sinful life.

Notice the change of context here of who he's speaking to.

He says, For you were called to freedom, brothers.

Again, if you look at verse 12, that's a big contrast.

We went from aggressively pointing the finger at the enemy to now you, dear brothers.

And it reminds us that in a congregation, in a church, in a church family, there are always those who are saved and those who are not, and that both sit under the preaching of the word.

And so there is necessity for warnings to be throughout the scriptures to waken up those who are asleep, to call them to repentance, to show them the way that is right.

You were called to freedom.

Salvation in Christ is not a freedom like this world's freedom.

I can't wait to be free so I can choose my own way.

I can't wait to be free so I can get everything I ever wanted in this life.

Freedom in Christ is finally no longer having to obey your sin.

You don't have to be an addict.

You don't have to be broken beyond repair.

You don't have to be lost and miserable.

There is a better answer.

There is a greater answer.

And it is found at the cross.

You were called to freedom, brothers.

And then immediately he says the word only.

Why?

After he looks at the Christians and says, You are free.

Remember that.

You were saved for the purpose of becoming free.

Only is a qualification word.

Right?

Here's the keys to the car.

Just don't only only don't go outside after midnight.

Bring the car back after midnight.

Why is there a need to immediately qualify?

I mean, he barely spoke a sentence there about freedom.

It's because you and I still carry the flesh, this what the Bible calls this sinful body that desires wrong things and thinks wrong things.

There's a need to immediately qualify.

Because when you and I hear freedom, we hear two ideas very naturally.

The one is liberty without consequence.

Thus, I am free, and any action I do has no consequence because I'm saved in Christ.

And the other is license.

Well, God will forgive me.

So I could choose to do this, anyways.

There's a need to immediately qualify.

He says, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.

It's a strange concept to think that the freedom of the gospel could somehow be twisted in our hearts and our minds to be an opportunity for sin.

How can the gospel be twisted in that way?

What we can lack in our understanding is the freedom found in Christ is very similar to if you began to work a job where you get the company credit card.

The freedom is the company credit card.

And the credit card, at least for that day, will work at the parts store and at the casino.

Just as well.

That magnetic strip has no conscience.

It does not care.

In the same way, the freedom that you and I have in Christ can very easily be used in the wrong ways.

Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.

Paul, when he's speaking to the Romans, talks about this same word, the word opportunity there.

And he says it about the law.

That when the law was spoken to him, that sin took an opportunity in his life.

That when he was sitting there minding his own business, he thought he was fine, but then the Bible said, You shall not covet.

And what happened?

Well, the temptation rises, and he finds that all sorts of covetousness is found in his heart.

You and I are great at demeaning others in their weakness and minimizing our own weaknesses.

And yet, one of the most humbling moments as a Christian is when you realize you can be counseling someone to help them in their sin, and through that counseling, fall into the same temptation to sin.

We are all much weaker than we think we are.

Paul says, do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.

We'll get more into that in a second, what that actually means.

But rather, what he says, but through love serve one another.

Paul says, there's two roads before you.

There's a fork in the road.

You are free in Christ.

The gospel has set you free.

You no longer have to pay for the penalty of your sin.

God is continually freeing you from the presence of your sin, from the power of sin in your life, and one day will free you from the very presence of sin.

And in the meantime, you can use that freedom two ways.

You can use it as an opportunity to sin, or you can use it to love and serve one another.

We move on to our second heading.

We'll come back to verse 13 in some ways.

The heading says, Love is what the whole law was aiming at.

Paul says, For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in one saying, in one little motto, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Just a few weeks ago, Paul said, the only thing that counts is faith working through love.

And now Paul looks at you and says, and the faith that works through love works through serving one another.

That's what saving faith working through love looks like practically.

If we do not get down to the nitty-gritty, to the bare bones of what is actually required of us in the Bible, what will end up happening is we will create our own standards.

And that is where you and I have grown up in and around different legalistic tendencies.

People don't belong because they don't make enough money.

They made a poor decision.

They're not as clean-cut, as pretty, as well-mannered.

Their kids act this way.

Love is what the whole law was aiming at.

He says the whole law, and when he says whole law here, he's not saying all hundreds of the commandments that are within the Old Testament.

The whole law, he is saying the spirit and intention of the law, the entirety of what the law was pointing at, is fulfilled in one word.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And so we see this gospel freedom that's given to us makes it so that I no longer have to earn through working.

But now there is a greater bar to meet in my life.

And the bar doesn't say if you don't reach it, you will die and go to hell, but rather says, because of what Christ has done for you, reach higher.

Choose to sacrifice, choose to love.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself in the year 2026.

You probably would hear that verse immediately qualified with a concept of, but first you need to learn how to love yourself.

Right?

Self-love, self-esteem.

I need to feel good about myself in order to love anybody.

Because if I don't love me, how can I love someone else?

And yet our reasoning is backwards.

One of the fascinating things I have found to prove itself true time and time again in years of ministry is that someone who's dealing with debilitating depression, anxiety, anger, the best place for them to be is pouring their entire life into serving someone else.

That is where they heal.

Why?

That doesn't make sense.

They haven't learned how to love themselves, they haven't learned how to deal with their depression and their anxiety.

And it's two reasons.

Number one, when we work in gospel ministry, we begin to understand the gospel better.

This is gonna sound hilarious, but the concept of going into that little room and wrestling tiny types in there and loving them and telling them that Jesus loves them and loving the single mother or the exhausted family that showed up with those small children will teach you the gospel.

Or if you use it as an opportunity for your flesh, will teach you to be bitter and resentful.

It will teach you to compare and say, they're not.

Why aren't they?

Why do I?

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The standard of love is found in how you love yourself.

And you might look at me and say, Dan, I kind of hate myself.

I got a little extra pudge.

I don't like how I look in the morning.

My skin's not as vibrant as it used to be.

My life is falling apart.

I just lost another job.

Someone kicked my dog, and I don't even own a dog.

Like, I it's bad.

I don't love me right now.

And yet, today you chose to wake up.

You chose to clothe yourself.

Thank you.

You chose to eat food eventually, even if you're one of those people that had struggles with that.

Eventually you will.

Why?

Because there is an instinct inside of all of us that works 99% of the time that says live.

But not only that, it is crazy.

The direction and how far people will go to get what they want when their life is crumbling.

Right?

You know, uh the person who uh is just drowning in debt, they can't pay rent, everything's falling apart.

In that moment, they want comfort, and so they open another five hundred dollar credit card, and we're off to Mickey D's.

Or we're gonna rent another movie on Amazon.

Why?

Because in that moment, my survival is depending on me being okay, and I have decided the only way I can be okay is to sacrifice even more, make this giant bundle even bigger so I can get what I want.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The problem is not that you do not love yourself enough.

The problem is two things.

You do not understand God's love for you, and you refuse to sacrifice for those God has called you to sacrifice for.

I'm tired, I'm lonely, I'm scared, I'm exhausted, I have nothing left.

And yet the parent who says that at two in the morning, when their child wakes up with a 105-degree fever, all of a sudden finds the wherewithal to get up, to make the phone call, to find a way to the hospital, to take care of the child.

Why?

Because you and I will do what is important to us.

We will sacrifice life and limb for those that we care most for.

And yet, on a Sunday morning, you may hear of someone else's child who had a fever and is not feeling well.

How easy is it to detach ourselves from that?

How easy is it for that to be just a skipping stone moment?

Someone dies and we're like sad for them for five minutes, maybe, and then we forget about it.

And we only feel kind of bad when we see the Facebook post about it, or someone else brings it up, or we see the person that was most affected by it.

We so easily detach from things that are not us, that don't directly affect us.

And it's the same thing in the church.

It's easy to show up on a Sunday morning and listen to some guy tell you words about Jesus and to walk out that door and to not know the person to your left or your right and to not die for them this week, trying to serve them and giving everything for them.

It's easy to talk the talk and not walk the walk.

It's easy to be the guy who says, I did my job.

I showed up early, I preached the message, I did the meeting, I don't want to work anymore.

Can't you people just be okay?

And the answer is no, they can't.

That in your worst moment, someone needs you.

And the question is very simply this.

Will this be a church where we live that?

Next week we will be one year old, I'll have you know.

This church will have been in existence for one year.

We are a baby, infantile.

I mean, a third of y'all weren't even in church last year.

We are struggling forward together.

And I.

Can be the church for a season.

And the Ashtons can be the church for a season.

And the Kents can be a church for a season.

But if a year from now I look at my life and I'm still being the church for us.

I'm the primary one sacrificing.

I'm the primary one giving everything in that moment.

You look at other people that sacrifice so much just to keep this place going.

They are human.

They are finite.

God has called you here for a reason.

Will you show up?

And just absorb.

Will you fight?

Will you give?

Will you choose to love?

Because a church can run on the passion and sacrifice of a few for a season, but eventually it will crack.

The best of men are still just men.

Love is what the whole law is aiming at.

And people will know that we have been called to freedom.

People will know that this church is different and says what it means and means what it says and walks out the faith only if Jesus' words come true.

When he said, they will know you are mine by the way you love each other.

It's really hard to love somebody that you see in passing for one hour a week.

And you don't have to know everybody in the room, but you do need to know somebody in the room.

And you need to be in community with them.

Because you're a lot weaker than you think you are, and they need you a lot more than either of you think they do.

And the question is simply: will we wake up to this?

Will we live this?

And if we don't, then we get to our third heading.

That devouring is how a free church dies.

Verse 15.

Paul says, but on the other hand, here, if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

The words bite and devour in the Greek there are active present.

The word for consumed there has a finality to it.

When you and I have freedom, when we begin to understand the Bible, do you know what it becomes really easy?

Fighting.

This is how it's always been.

I think I've heard that said in this church, which is insane, because we're turning one year old next week.

And it's already here, folks.

That it's always been that way is here.

It's very easy to bite and devour one another because you're the only one serving.

Right?

I mean, that nursery is they're building a team, they're gonna have a thing.

It's gonna be very easy to be the one who picked up some slack, and three times after picking up the slack, you want to throw the slack at somebody.

It'll be very easy to complain about the music or the technology or the building or the decisions the elders made.

The kind of pizza we're gonna get later today.

It's so easy to look down when you know so much and you've grown so much.

I was especially affected this week by Martin Luther.

He was writing about these verses, and he said that he had realized in his own heart that the more sure he became of his salvation, the more he understood the gospel and the truth, the more inclined he was to be lazy, to not read his Bible on a regular basis, to not spend as much time in prayer, to not serve and give and love.

And he said, I believe God has allowed the devil to torment me over and over again, because without him I would be useless.

The suffering I had in my life that brought me to Christ, I was not exactly thankful for when it was happening.

The suffering that has come through the many years of ministry that God has placed me through.

I've never looked at those and been like, James says to count it all joy.

Like let's just let's just face it with a smile.

And yet, God has broken this man.

God has humbled this man.

He has changed a sinful and selfish man into a somewhat less sinful and selfish man.

And I want that for you.

I want you to be broken over your sin.

I don't want us to become a church that bites and devours each other, where we fight and quibble over silly little things.

The noise in here with children will always be the tight rows are a blessing because it means more people are coming to Christ.

The hot air and the cold air both are blessings.

They keep you alive or they help you get comfortable.

You and I have to choose what are we going to do?

God has given us an opportunity.

And the temptation is going to be to use it as license to be lazy and do nothing.

It's a busy season.

Kids, work, school, what are you gonna do?

Got way too many obligations to make Christ's bride an obligation.

Come on.

If you bite and devour one another, if you fight, because you're free.

If you argue and complain, you and I don't understand that the Bible says the tongue holds the power of life and death, and that when we speak death, it affects those around us.

It poisons the air, it seeps into the heart and affects the mind.

We have to love each other enough that when the complaint comes to the tip of the tongue, that when the grumbling, when the anger, when the bitterness and the resentment, when the comparison trap comes, that we bite the tongue, because it would be better for my tongue to bleed than to cause you to sin.

Can we be that church?

Because if not, Paul says, watch out.

You will be consumed by one another.

Notice that he doesn't point outside the church.

We're great at looking outside.

It's their fault.

It's them over there.

They've done this to us.

And Paul says, actually, 99% of the time you're gonna kill each other and kill the church.

That's how church deaths happen.

They happen because we are not united around the gospel.

They happen because we've lost sight and we forget that in Revelations chapter 2 and 3, Christ writes to many churches.

Revelation 2 · chapter mention

And the church at Ephesus has good doctrine.

They can discern right from wrong.

They have good traditions and boundaries.

But they forgot their first love.

And because of that, Christ threatens to snuff them out.

I do not wish to build a monument here.

Henderson County does not need another church building.

It needs Christians who actually live the gospel.

It needs people who are willing to be accountable to each other.

Are willing to be broken over their sin.

Are willing to live a life that matters past this temporal moment?

And in a moment, we're going to celebrate three baptisms.

Those people come out of the water as these little baby believers.

And they're looking out at you.

And they're wondering: are we actually this church?

Are we the church that devours each other?

Are we the church that loves each other?

I have learned well that much like anything else in life, holiness is more caught than taught.

I have taught Patrick so many things over the last seven years.

But if you asked him, I can almost guarantee the greatest thing I've ever done for that man is show him when I'm bleeding and come through the other side and point to the cross.

That is where real men and women of God are made.

Will you join me in building something that outlasts this puny life?

Or will we just create another monument for our own self-glorification, our own comfort?

That one day will just become another building that empties and does not serve its original purpose.

We decide today.

So I end this sermon, much like Joshua did once upon a time, and say, choose this day whom you will serve.

We only have one life to live.

It's a lot shorter than you think it is.

Let's make account for something.

Will you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you called us to freedom.

We thank you that you have saved us, that you have kept us, that you have made us whole.

And Lord, we ask that you would help us to be a church of love.

That we would put aside all bitterness and wrath and anger and malice and gossip and slander.

Lord, we would put it all away.

We'd lay it all down at the altar and say, take this from me.

Lord, we trust that your perfect will is being done.

Help us in our weakness to not become a church that devours itself, but rather to be a church that is truly a light on a hill, that looks, sounds, and acts different than the world, not because we are higher and mightier, but because we have made ourselves lower and we have served the least of us.

Lord, thank you that you gave us the ultimate example of this sacrificial love.

That in the upper room you knelt down with a towel and you washed the feet of the man that would betray you unto death, who would sell you for money.

Lord, you washed his feet.

You didn't complain.

You didn't grumble, you didn't compare.

Help us to serve in the little ways we can with the same heart.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.