Well let me invite you please to take your Bible in hand or turn in one of the church Bibles to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, chapter 5. If you’re using a church Bible, that’s on page 975. This chapter, as we began to see last week, is occupied with the great theme of Christian freedom. Verse 1, “For freedom Christ has set you free.” Verse 13, “For you were called to freedom, brothers.” So Galatians chapter 5, we might say, is the charter of the Christian’s freedom. Here’s what it means to be free in Christ. Last time, we looked at verses 1 through 12 and we saw the apostle Paul warning the Galatians against the loss of their freedom. “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” The crushing yoke of legalism will shatter the liberty Christ has secured for us, so stand firm. The loss of freedom.
And now in our passage today, verses 13 through 17, Paul writes to address the opposite error. Not now the loss of freedom, but the abuse of freedom by those who are now overreacting to the legalism of these false teachers, they’re misunderstanding grace, for these Christians, the pendulum has swung all the way to the opposite extreme and they have fallen into antinomianism, that is, into licentiousness. “For you were called to freedom, brothers,” verse 13, “Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.” And then just to complete the picture, God willing, next week we will conclude our examination of the teaching of Galatians 5 with a look at verses 18 through 26 where having cleared the decks of all that would cause the Galatians to lose their freedom or to abuse their freedom, Paul will now provide teaching on the proper use of Christian freedom.
So today we are thinking about verses 13 through 17 and Paul’s warning against the abuse of Christian freedom. And we are going to look at it under two broad headings. First of all, verses 13 through 15, there is the way of freedom. What is the nature of Christian freedom and how shall we live it? The way of freedom. Then verses 16 and 17, the war for freedom. You may remember as we looked at the end of chapter 4 that Paul reminded the Galatians that those who believe the Gospel and live according to the promise and according to the Spirit, they are going to be persecuted by the world. Grace, we said, is an irritant, especially as it turns out in the lives of those who are committed to legalism. Real grace is an irritant to the legalist. But now if we are honest, most of us have to confess that we each have a brilliant defense attorney living in our own hearts who is very quick to assert our righteousness against every accusation to the contrary. And so it ought not be a surprise to a faithful Christian now that grace has wrought this great change within us, that that same grace that is so irritating to the legalists around us is actually also an irritant to the remnants of our old corruption still festering even within our own souls. And that is why Paul says when we are set free in Christ we are not free to sign a truce with sin. We are free only to wage war against all that remains in us of the old life and the old self.
And so that’s our outline. I hope you’ve got it. Verses 13 through 15 – the way of freedom. Then verses 16 and 17 – the war for freedom. As always, before we look at those two themes, let’s bow our heads and pray and then we’ll read the Scriptures together. Let us pray.
Our God and Father, now we bow before You praying for the ministry of the Holy Spirit who is the Lord and Giver of life, that the light of life shining in the face of Jesus Christ Your Son, our Savior, might shine into our sin-benighted hearts and minds now, even from this portion of Your holy Word. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.
Galatians chapter 5, beginning the reading at verse 13. This is the Word of God:
“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.’ But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy Word.
The Way of Freedom
Alright, let’s think first of all about the way of freedom. Verse 1, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” Verse 13, “You were called to freedom, brothers.” The Gospel that Paul preached, as we’ve been learning throughout Galatians, proclaimed glorious spiritual freedoms. Let me highlight four of them by way of reminder. First, we are set free from the penalty of sin. Christ has paid our debt in full. He has satisfied the law’s demands in our room and stead and “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” We are free from the penalty of sin. Secondly, when we became Christians, we were set free from the power of sin. Sin’s mastery and dominion no longer holds sway in our hearts. We once lived in bondage to its demands, totally unable not to sin. But now, Romans 6:22, you have been set free from sin. Jesus Christ is Lord now of our hearts and the old regime has been toppled and overthrown once and forever. Free from the penalty of sin. Free from the power of sin.
And more than that, in the third place, from the moment you become a Christian, the moment you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are also, you are also in the process of being set free from the pollution of sin. Its contamination is slowly being eradicated as we are transformed by the renewing of our minds till we come to resemble more and more fully the moral likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course sin will continue to pervade every faculty of our lives, of our natures. There will be no part of us entirely free from its stain until we go to be with the Lord Jesus or until He comes to take us home to be with Him. And then, at last, but only then, the fourth and final freedom that Christ has won for us will be ours and we will be free even from the very presence of sin, swept up into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Christian freedom – do you see this freedom from the penalty and the power and the pollution and eventually even the presence of sin in our lives – I hope you can see, Christian freedom, purchased at the great price of the blood of Jesus Christ is a precious privilege indeed.
And now, the apostle Paul, who is an astute observer of people, he knows what we are like and he knows how prone we are to get swept along with the thrill of these new blessings erupting into our lives. And he knows we can become so easily focused upon them, so focused upon them that we forget other equally important balancing truths. And so he wants to make sure in this passage that having destroyed the arguments of the legalists so comprehensively in the main body of his letter, he wants to make sure that no one will now think, “Well, if we are that free, free from the law, free from guilt and shame, free from any possibility now of ever being condemned, if we are really free like that, surely now it no longer matters how we live. We can throw off all moral restraint and live as we please because we are free.”
In 1945, the Arkansas state legislature passed the riveting sounding, “Act to Authorize and Permit Cities of First and Second Class and Incorporated Towns to Vacate Public Streets and Alleys in the Public Interest.” How dull! But listen to the eighth paragraph of that 1945 Act. Listen carefully. “All laws and parts of laws and particularly Act 311 of the Acts of 1941 are hereby repealed.” Did you catch the problem with this piece of legislation? “All laws and parts of laws are hereby repealed.” Opps. Believe it or not, in an attempt to rid themselves of one specific set of laws, maybe it was an error by a clerk not paying attention to their grammar, however it happened, in their eagerness to rid themselves of one particular set of laws, they actually repealed all laws in the state of Arkansas. Eventually the Supreme Court had to step in and, I think rather sheepishly, said, “Well, here’s what they really meant to say,” and sort of put it all to rights. But we can be just like that sometimes as we revel in the Gospel of grace. We can overstate and misrepresent the freedom that it gives us. In our zeal to assert our freedom from condemnation and our freedom from sin’s bondage, we can make the mistake of thinking we are actually free now to live as we please. Now that Christ has abolished the civil law and the ceremonial laws of Israel, we can make the mistake of thinking that all laws and parts of laws have been repealed in the life of a Christian. That is Paul’s concern in our passage today. We must not use our freedom as an opportunity to indulge the flesh.
Now that expression, “the flesh,” as you may know, is really just Paul’s shorthand for the remaining presence and corrupting power of sin in our lives. That’s what he means by “the flesh.” Some English versions – you may have a version that says it this way – translates the Greek word, “sinful nature,” just in an effort to highlight the moral dimension. It is sinful and wicked. The sinful nature. On balance, however, I don’t think phrases like “sin nature” or “sinful nature” are really the best way to speak about the believer’s remaining corruption because they can give us the impression that there are two equal and opposite natures both living at the same time within us. That’s not exactly what the New Testament teaches. It’s not the New Testament picture of the life of a Christian. Paul says, for example, in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone and the new has come.” It’s not, you see, it’s not that now that we are Christians God implants an additional new nature, a new life in Christ into us that now must coexist with our original sinful natures and with which it must vie for dominance. That’s not the picture. No, the old is gone and the new has come. We are new creations. What remains of the old self, what Paul here calls “the flesh,” is only the remnants of a defeated enemy. It is the grave clothes still clinging to the now resurrected Lazarus, stepping alive from his tomb. It is a scab on a wound now largely healed. Certainly it is still dangerous, still capable of causing great spiritual harm in our lives, but it is not the case that the flesh is our nature after becoming a Christian. No, now if we are in Christ, we are new creations. The old is gone. The new has come. A decisive breach with the old self has taken place within our hearts.
And given that decisive, revolutionary breach with the flesh and with sin that has taken place within us, Paul says we must not now therefore construe our Gospel freedom as an opportunity to indulge what remains of the flesh. If you look at verse 13 you’ll see the word translated in our version as “opportunity.” Do you see it? “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge the flesh.” It was originally a military word used to describe a base of operations, a beachhead in enemy territory from which to launch an offensive. Paul is saying, “Do not give the still dangerous though defeated enemy of the flesh a beachhead in your heart from which to launch his assaults on your life.” Instead he says, look at verses 13 and 14 – “Through love, serve one another, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Now pause there for a moment because these two verses are absolutely critical if we are going to understand how the Christian life really operates. You will remember back in verse 5, Paul said the only thing that matters is faith working through love. The evidence that our faith is the real thing is that it works itself out in our lives in the loving service of others. And this is the love Paul now tells us fulfills the whole law. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s how the Lord Jesus summarized the second table of the Ten Commandments, remember. Commandments 5 through 10 He said, remember, are summed up as, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” “But wait a minute,” you might say. “If love fulfills the whole law, why does Paul only cite this command which summarizes the second half of the Ten Commandments? Why only mention neighbor love, referring as it does to commandments 5 through 10? What about, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength,’ referring to the first table of the Law? Commandments 1 through 4 – the exclusive claims, the holy name, the solemn worship, and the sacred day of the Lord?” But remember how, according to Paul in this chapter, true faith in God is demonstrated. True faith in God, love to God is demonstrated, Paul says, in faithful love for others. So in many ways, Paul here is saying much the same thing the apostle John says in 1 John 4:20-21. “If anyone says, ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him – whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
You see, being rightly related to God, that’s the first table of the Law, is revealed and demonstrated in our lives by being rightly related to one another, the second table of the Law. And so from Paul’s vantage point at this point in his argument, the whole law is indeed summed up and fulfilled in this one commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And now once you see that, the bigger point that Paul is trying to bring to bear upon us becomes unavoidable. And that is that the moral law of God in all its fullness continues very clearly to have a vital role in guiding our lives as Christians. Freedom from the law’s condemnation, he is saying, does not mean freedom from the law’s correction. Freedom from legal damnation does not mean freedom from legal direction. At the cross, Christ bore all the condemnation, all the damnation that the moral law of God says I deserve and you deserve. All the fury of God’s perfect judgment righteously kindled against us because of our lawbreaking quenched itself in the wounds of Jesus Christ. Before we came to know Him, God’s Law therefore was our enemy, exposing us and condemning us for our sin. But now that we have come to know Jesus, the very same Law has no condemnation left in it. All the condemnation has spent itself, exhausted itself in the sufferings of Jesus Christ.
And now, now the Law is our friend. Before we knew Jesus, the Law was only ever the voice of God our Judge, pronouncing sentence over us. It’s said of us in the heavenly courtroom, “What is that man, that woman? What is David Strain but an idolater and a blasphemer and a Sabbath breaker and a rebel against authority and hateful toward others and lustful and immoral and a thief and a liar and greedy and covetous?” And all that I could say or you could say before the indictment of the Law in the presence of God would be, “Guilty as charged.” But not anymore. Now that we know Jesus, the Law is never again to us the voice of a judge bringing charges, pronouncing a sentence of condemnation over us. Now for us as Christians, the Law is only ever the voice of God our heavenly Father, pulsing with love for His adopted children saying to us, “My dear son, my dear daughter, this is how our family lives now. This is the way people who bear the family name behave now. This is what it means to bear the family likeness now. This is what my only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, is like. And this is what I am working every day to make you like.” The freedom Jesus died to give us is much more than freedom from condemnation. It is also freedom for service. Freedom for love. It is freedom for obedience.
And as it turns out, grasping that was actually a really urgent matter in Galatia. Would you look at verse 15? “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” You see the fruit of legalism at one extreme or antinomianism, the fruit of either self-righteousness or outright unrighteousness? You see the fruit of them? When either or both errors begin to penetrate a congregation, the fruit isn’t harmony. It isn’t love. It isn’t service. What is it? It’s squabbling and bickering and dissension and infighting and jealousies and contentions. Paul is using vocabulary that you might appropriately apply to a pack of vultures, turkey buzzards on the side of the highway. You see them as you drive past, don’t you, and they’re snapping at one another as they jostle for position to tear a few scraps from some rotting carcass. This is the fruit of legalism or lawlessness, Paul is saying. This is what you are like. And if you don’t repent and begin to grasp the true bounds of Christian freedom – it is freedom for serving one another, loving one another, for mutual ministry and care to one another – one day your biting and devouring will consume you. It is destructive and disruptive and it kills churches and it ruins testimonies and it shatters faith.
Oh, but true freedom, the freedom that Christ actually gives us, Paul is saying that moves us to love Him and therefore to love one another. The freedom Jesus gives, by contrast, beautifies the fellowship of the church and makes her testimony irrefutable before the gaze of the watching world. Remember the words of Jesus, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples – if you have love one for the other.” That’s the way of freedom. Do you see it? Not freedom for indulging the flesh, but freedom to love – a love that keeps the law; freedom to obey.
The War for Freedom
Then secondly, notice the war for freedom. You’ve already seen the military metaphor Paul used for the beachhead. Don’t allow the flesh to get a beachhead in your life from which to launch its assault against you as you seek to live for Christ. Now look down at verses 16 and 17 and see how Paul builds on that idea of spiritual combat and conflict. “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” The flesh is personified here, isn’t it? Paul speaks about the flesh as if it were a person – a deadly, implacable enemy. His regime, he once was in power but his regime has been toppled. But the enemy himself is not yet completely destroyed. Instead, now he is busy waging a terrible guerilla war against Christ’s new regime in our lives. The desires of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit, Paul says, they are diametrically opposed. There can be no detente possible, no armistice; no way to make peace between these two sides. The only way for the fight to end is for the flesh to die.
And as grim actually as that may at first appear, I have to tell you how much help, comfort even, I find in this ugly warfare metaphor. Because you see what Paul is saying to us? He’s saying to us this is the normal Christian life. This is the normal Christian life. It is going to be a struggle every day. All out war. No holds barred; no surrender possible. And that’s the ordinary experience of every Christian. Many times new believers are distressed because they still feel the inner pull of sin in their hearts. They still find they have to fight hard against it. And they thought that after having come to Christ they would win easy victory and there would be constant peace. And so now they’re worried as they find actually the war rages hotter than ever. Now they’re worried there is something wrong with them. “No, no. Not at all,” Paul would say. You need to understand that to follow Jesus means to march onto the battlefield of your own heart, day after day, in the fight to put sin to death.
Listen to how the Westminster Confession of Faith in chapter 13 paragraph 2 so hopefully describes the process of growing in Christlikeness. “This sanctification,” the process of growing in Christlikeness, “This sanctification,” it says, “is throughout, in the whole man, and yet imperfect in this life. There abideth some remnants of corruption in every part whence ariseth a continual and irreconcilable war; the flesh lusting against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh.” This is the normal Christian life. Adjust your expectations accordingly and get ready for war.
One frustration that I sometimes have with some of the hymns in our hymnbook is that they do no lead us to expect a continual and irreconcilable war. “Perfect submission, all is at rest. I in my Savior am happy and blessed.” No! If it’s at rest, something is terribly wrong! There must be war every single day till you go to be with Jesus. Only then, only then will you be at rest. This is a war for freedom. Are you ready to fight it or have you been waving a little white flag of surrender?
One more thing before we’re done, but also ought to be a deep encouragement to us about this battle we are in. Look again at verse 16. “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” It is possible, Paul says, in each day’s skirmishes, not to lose every battle. United to Christ now, inhabited by His Spirit, you are no longer as you once were – totally unable not to sin. That’s how it used to be before you were converted. But not anymore. Now by the grace that has set us free, we are being enabled more and more to put sin to death and to live unto God, growing in holiness which is impossible apart from Christ is now entirely possible, even certain, inevitable now that you are in Christ.
We are going to see Paul, in the rest of this chapter, amplify and expound on that point and so we’ll come to it in more detail next week. Let me simply say here as we are done in anticipation of next week’s message, when we are told the way not to gratify the flesh is to walk in the Spirit, Paul isn’t speaking about something weird or esoteric or strange, but he is calling us consciously, purposefully to lean every day on the supply and strength and power of the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to learn like Jacob – you remember when he wrestled with God and God hobbled him and he spent the rest of his life walking with a limp, leaning on his cane – we need to learn to lean every day on the strength and help and support, step by step, plod by plod, all along life’s way we must lean on the help of the Holy Spirit. Make diligent use of those means by which the Spirit tells us in His Word He is ordinarily pleased to work. Do not neglect the reading and the preaching of His Word. Get your nose into the Book. Sit regularly at the Lord’s Table. It is not an accessory. It is a necessity. And at all times, cry to the Father to give you His Spirit to strengthen you. Jesus promised us, didn’t He, that our Father, a better Father than any earthly father, knows how to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. Ask Him. He will give Him to you to help you and sustain you and give you the victory.
So the Galatians were locked in warfare, but not with the flesh actually. They were fighting and biting and devouring one another, swept along by one extreme of legalism or another of license. But Paul says those who understand the true way of freedom, they love one another and they are locked in a deadly battle with themselves with their own hearts. And as you engage in that fight, dear brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit helping you, no matter how hot the battle may rage sometimes and no matter how often you may lose a skirmish along the way with your sin, I want you to remember that in the end, if you are in Christ, one day you will gain the final and complete victory, or rather Christ’s victory in you one day will be complete. On that day, when you go to be with Him, even the very presence of your sin will be eradicated. And so beloved, in the confidence that that day is soon approaching, answer the call of this passage and get up off the dirt and get back into the fray because the battle belongs to the Lord.
Let’s pray together.
Our Father, we bless You for Your holy Word. How grateful we are that You do not leave us to grope in the darkness for the way forward for our lives, but we hear a voice behind us in our ears saying, “This is the way. Walk in it.” Your Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our paths and we bless You for it. Help us to follow its instruction. Help us not to sign a truce with sin, not to fly the white flag of surrender but to be killing sin lest sin should also be killing us. Give us the victory, not in our own strength. We know that it will never be ours completely in this life. We know one day Your victory in us will be total and final and complete when we see You face to face at last. Yet Your Word promises us day by day, more and more, the regenerate part overcomes. So give us that overcoming victory, we pray, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.