Galatians: Free in Jesus to Love Others

A lot of people believe that there's some connection, some link between how good you are and being right with God.

So if I get the right amount of morality correctly, or I'm good enough at church, or I'm good enough at spirituality, or I'm good enough in the world, then all of a sudden this link is legitimate.

This connection, all of a sudden, I'm right with God.

And the classic question is, is how good is good enough?

That's a classic question that we ask is okay, well, if that's true, well then how all of a sudden do you get good enough to know that in fact this connection with God is right?

How good is good enough?

And it's easy for a lot of us, if we've been in church, to go, oh no, no, no, like I know it's not like how good is good enough.

I I know to say no to that.

I know to speak grace, and I think it's also very easy for the experience of life to be quite different than the very thing that we speak.

And I think of it this way: when you when you wake up in the morning, do you wake up to a deficit of worth and righteousness?

Or do you wake up into an abundance of worth and righteousness that never leaves you?

Last week I told you about my very prestigious Hertz Gold Club membership status.

There's a couple of us in that club, very prestigious.

Well, I'm also a member of the National Park Conservancy Association.

Is anybody else a member of?

So I'm feeling even more important now.

I mean, it's very prestigious.

See, it's not just for anybody.

So I I love the national parks.

I'm a national park nerd, like I totally nerd out on them.

And I'm a member, I when I grow up, I want to be a ranger.

I want to wear the hat, I want to walk around in the woods, that's my dream.

I get a monthly magazine.

You didn't even know this existed because none of you are a member.

But I get a monthly National Park magazine, and I get it, and I sit down and I dork out over all the articles.

I read it cover to cover.

When if we go to a national park, I pull out my National Park Conservancy Association card, I show it to, I get a discount, and I feel so incredibly special.

It's a pretty, pretty big deal, you know.

And I feel a part of something.

I feel like I belong, uh, just like my Hertz Gold Gold Club membership status that I have.

And then this week, this week, um not making that part up, this week I actually got this letter from the National Parts Conservancy Association, this great club that I belong to.

And it says, your annual membership in the National Parts Conservancy Association has come up for renewal.

And you read on about all the wonderful things that we are doing and how I belong to this, and then there's this other sheet of paper.

They slid this other sheet of paper in there, apart from that letter that was really motivating me, and I felt such belonging.

And then this sheet of paper says, I want to renew my membership,$50,$75,$100.

So actually, right, this belonging, like so many things in our lives, comes down to a payment.

And I'll pay it because I want to belong to them and I like what they do, so I'm gonna pay it.

But it just reminds me, I was reminded again this week when I got that in the mail, it reminds me that if I stop paying, I stop belonging.

And it's so easy for us to feel like that with God, to wake up into that deficit and like, oh, I gotta make some payments today.

Or you screw up, right?

After the screw up, it could be afternoon, could be evening, and all of a sudden you go, oh, I'm in the deficit again.

I need to make my payments.

And that question does come up: how good is good enough at this point?

And so you're in that deficit, you go, I gotta get enough good enough in order to get good enough.

But the good news is the Bible teaches something completely different.

It's what Paul's been laying out for us in Galatians.

We get to Galatians 5.

We've been working our way through this letter, and this is probably his most emphatic, strongest language.

Verse 1, he says, For freedom Christ set us free.

Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

So a few points working our way through this.

Point number one is you are free in the gospel, so don't return to the slavery in the law.

You are free in the gospel, so don't return to slavery in the law.

Now let's explain that.

Law and the scriptures, law is what we should be.

It's the standard, it's the right and holy standard, and it guides us to what we should be, but then it also breaks us because we're imperfect before it.

And so in that way, then it breaks us, and then it shows us that we need the grace of God, known in Jesus, to be our righteousness.

And he's the one that frees us.

That's how we're free.

Now, maybe when it comes to this word freedom, you a whole bunch of different images maybe come to you.

Maybe for you, you see Mel Gibson on a horse and Braveheart, he's yelling out freedom.

Maybe for you, it's simply the image of freedom is like on the beach, you know, in a cabana with a Mai Thai, and you're looking at that, all that is like freedom, hearing those waves.

Like, that's the picture of freedom.

Maybe it's just a Saturday morning, and there's nothing in front of you for that Saturday, and all the laundry's done, and there's dishes are clean, and you just feel like such a sense of freedom.

For me, the the image is uh a summer night.

I'm a high school senior, I'm in my jacked-up big tire four-wheel drive Toyota 1985 truck.

Windows are down.

I put a sunroof in it, so the sunroof's out, and I'm blaring Garth Rook's greatest hits.

And that that for me, that that that is the image and the feeling of freedom that I get.

But all that's kind of circumstantial freedom, right?

That truck eventually broke down.

But Paul's talking about an inner freedom, something much deeper than all of that.

And the idea here is a freedom that's been completed for you.

And there's nothing for you to add.

It's just given to you.

And yet, then Paul says, stand firm for it.

Now, isn't that interesting?

So it's a freedom completed for you, you are free.

All your sins put upon Jesus on the cross, is righteousness given to you.

That's what creates this freedom for you, and it is for freedom that you have been accounted free, and yet you have to stand firm for it.

So, while it's secure, our experience of it is it can be fragile.

And that's point number two.

Your experience of gospel freedom is fragile.

My experience of gospel freedom is fragile.

It's secure, but it's fragile.

And one reason it's fragile is because freedom can be scary.

There's this great scene in Shawshank Redemption, maybe you remember it, and uh red and the the guys they're in the prison yard and they're sitting on some bleachers, and their friend had just been released, Brooks.

He had spent 50 years in prison, 50 years inside of walls and prison bars and high structure and no freedom.

And finally, Brooks gets out on the outside and he's free.

And yet, in that freedom, he didn't know how to operate.

Right?

His anxiety gets higher and higher and higher without all these, without these controls over him, these boundaries over him.

So while the walls are gone, and yet he gets more and more afraid, and eventually he kills himself.

And Morgan Freeman's character, Red, he explains this to all the guys sitting on the bleacher.

And here's what Morgan Freeman says He says, In here, Brooks is an important man.

He's an educated man.

Outside, he's nothing.

Just a used-up con with arthritis in both hands.

Probably couldn't get a library card if you tried.

These walls are funny.

First you hate them, then you get used to them.

Enough time passes, it gets so you depend on them.

That's institutionalized.

They send you here for life, and that's exactly what they take.

The part that counts anyway.

And a performance-based life.

Be good enough to be good enough.

It's very similar.

Right?

The idea of obey, then you're accepted.

Right?

That puts walls around your heart, and at first you hate it.

At first you resist it, maybe you rebel from it, but then very often, very often slowly we begin to depend on it.

Because it gives us a sense of self-righteousness, helps us feel better when we compare ourselves to others, gives us a religious identity.

But all the while, we're still insecure.

Because how good's good enough.

And Paul's trying for these people to understand for us as we read into this letter that gospel freedom, it is the end of earning, and that's why you're free.

And this letter shifts here at the end of this passage and moving into the rest of five and six, it shifts and it says, but effort is inside the freedom of the gospel.

Let's reread verse one again.

For freedom Christ has set us free.

Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

So maybe you're raised on a farm, maybe you drove by a farm, you've seen a farm, you've seen pictures of a farm, something like that.

And maybe you've seen this image of a yoke.

And the yoke was it was what went over the ox, and the ox is connected from that wooden yoke that went over their neck and is tied to that big ox, and then it's connected back to a plow, that wooden plow, and that plow has, you know, that part that digs down into the earth.

So every step that that ox takes is a step of burden and resistance.

And that's this image here.

This was an agricultural society.

They wouldn't even have to have this explained to them.

And Paul says, a performance life.

That's what this, that's what that is.

It's the feeling that every step you take is burden and demand.

And you you can feel it in the world.

I'll be enough when.

Just get enough, get enough of these things.

Within church or religious society, I'll be enough with God when.

But Jesus says, no, no, no, no.

Jesus says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Because our sin is put upon him, his righteousness is given to us.

And there's no payment to keep belonging.

You're not going to get the renewal notification in the mail that hey, your payment's due.

Your righteousness payment is due.

You'll never get it.

Because it's by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ's work alone.

A couple weeks ago, I looked out my front window at my six-year-old.

She was skipping down the sidewalk.

She was moving from one group of friends in one yard to another group of friends in the other yard, and she's in between them, and she's all by herself, and she's just skipping along.

And that night I was tugging her in and I said, Hey, babe, you know, I looked outside.

I just was looking outside the window and I saw you just skipping along.

I said, I said, what, what?

Tell me about that.

And she said, Daddy, when I'm outside playing, I'm I'm free.

And I've been thinking about that, right?

I've been thinking a lot about that.

And I've been thinking about childlike faith.

And it makes sense that she feels free.

Because there's no teacher hovering over her, there's no parent hovering over her.

The record keeping over her has stopped.

Now, there's still morality, there's still consequences, that hasn't stopped.

But the pressure's gone.

She gets to just be a child without the pressure of performing.

This is what Paul's laying out for us in verses 2 through 12, and the language gets more and more aggressive as he goes if he didn't pick up on that.

He says, You want to be circumcised?

Like you want to go back to, and that would have been him picking up on the most vital, largest law of the Old Testament.

You want to live by law and performance and obey, then be accepted.

You want to, he's saying, you want to do that?

Well, then you have to do it all the way.

And what that means is you have to be perfect and the payments never stop.

How good is good enough?

You gotta you gotta ride that train all the way to the end, and it will be a yoke of slavery.

And then Paul says, but freedom, this is what he's been laying out for us.

Freedom is you're you're accepted, so obey.

And so then another question just pops up, right?

And Paul goes after it.

Because the question is, is if I'm already accepted before I do anything, then heck, why don't I just do whatever I want?

Well, you could, very possible.

Most of the time you do anyway, to be honest.

But the reason is because sin is destructive.

That's why.

Because sin has consequences, it's destructive, it'll blow your family up, blow you up, blow up relationships.

You know that, we've all done that.

But Paul's argument here is actually not the negative side of that, it's the positive side.

And what he says is he says, oh, well, gospel freedom just doesn't create that.

It actually creates love, it doesn't create a license to sin.

Jumping down to verses 13 through 14, he 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.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And point number three is that as we are free in Jesus, we get to love other people.

Christy and I watched Crazy Rich Asians last week.

We've seen it.

Supposedly the best romantic comedy that's come out in the last few years.

Really, really well done.

And it's about an incredibly wealthy guy, Nick.

Incredibly wealthy, one of the wealthiest families in the world, the wealthiest family in Singapore.

Real estate moguls, powerful, and yet Nick is living in New York City.

He's living as a normal guy.

He falls in love with, he's dating this, this lady named Rachel, who's a professor at NYU.

Don't worry, I'm not gonna ruin the movie, but the storyline's important.

What's interesting is it's almost the same storyline.

Maybe you remember the movies in the 1980s, Eddie Murphy's movies Coming to America.

It's almost the same storyline.

And like, why, why?

Why this storyline, why does it repeat itself?

We could probably find more movies with the same exact storyline.

Somebody who's incredibly wealthy living like a normal person in order to find love.

Why would we do this?

Why would we keep writing this story?

Because listen, how do you know you're loved?

How do you know you're loved if your wealth is a part of the equation?

And you say, I don't have to worry about that, I can barely afford guacamole at Chipotle.

I understand it's expensive, it's a it's a moment there, you're like, I don't know if I'm gonna go for that.

I get that.

But here's a deeper question.

How would you, how would you know God truly loved you?

How would you know God truly loved you if your good behaviors were a part of the equation?

Well, you wouldn't.

You couldn't.

You could never know it.

That's also why the scriptures tell us while we were sinners, Christ died for us.

Now, if we go back to Nick and crazy rich Asians, he just wanted to be loved for him.

Not him and his billion dollars, or him and all his real estate, or him and his resume.

And also he was secure enough.

He was secure enough apart from those things to truly love another person whose resume just didn't stack up.

The brilliant British pastor and author John Stott, he writes this.

True love places constraints on the lover.

For love is essentially self-giving.

And this brings us to a startling Christian paradox.

True freedom is freedom to be my true self, as God made me and meant me to be, and God made me for loving.

But loving is giving, self-giving.

Therefore, in order to be myself, I have to deny myself and give myself.

In order to be free, I have to serve.

In order to live, I have to die to my own self-centeredness.

In order to find myself, I have to lose myself in loving.

True freedom is then the exact opposite of what many people think.

It is not freedom from all responsibility to God and others in order to live for myself.

That is bondage to my own self-centeredness.

Instead, true freedom is freedom from my silly little self in order to live responsibly in love for God and others.

And here's the principle that stops describing.

You are always, we are always either hunting for the love we think we need to be full, or we are living in a place of the freedom of the gospel, secure and free as to love God and others.

If your love for other people is about how good is good enough, they're not people, they're projects for you.

And they'll know it eventually.

And when they're hard, you'll move on to an easier project.

But you are free in your identity as beloved children of God because of Christ's work for you, which means you can finally love.

You can love people when they're easy, and you can love people when they're hard.

You are free from how good is good enough, which means you can finally love.

My brothers and sisters for freedom, you have been set free.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for these good words of Paul that set us on a path of freedom and move in stronger and stronger language of how the law is inept and how much we should fight and stand firm against anything of performance-based or merit-based spirituality and life and faith?

Would we have no tolerance for it?

And would you give us great love and compassion for ourselves and for any person caught in that toil?

And would you give us just greater faith and trust in Jesus to be our full righteousness?

All we need to be in right standing with you.

And would this give us such freedom in our hearts and minds, not unto self centeredness, but to love you and to love others.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.