Galatians 5

January Memory Verse: Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Mark 8:34 (NIV)

Read: Galatians 5

I recommend looking up on YouTube, Dr. Os Guinness: "A Free People's Suicide." In it he discusses the paradox of freedom:

“Freedom cannot be maintained by structures of liberty. It requires the spirit of liberty—it is a matter of the heart. Freedom requires ordering, and the only ordering appropriate to freedom is self-restraint—not restraint imposed from the outside. But self-restraint is precisely what’s undermined when freedom flourishes.
The major reason freedom undermines itself is that it quickly moves down toward permissiveness and then eventually license. Freedom is not the permission to do what you like, it is the power to do what you ought—and that paradox of freedom is demonstrated by all the [no longer] free societies in history.”

For freedom Christ has set us free. We celebrate freedom yet understand so little about it. We often treat freedom in the sense that Dr. Guinness discusses it—license to do what I want. However, Paul said in verse 13, “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.” When we lack the self-restraint and use freedom for sin, we return to the shackles held by the master of this world. The evidence of this bondage is clear—sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

However, outright gratification isn’t the only bondage we see in Galatians. It is not the only yoke of slavery. The gratification listed as works of the flesh aren’t the beginning of sin, but the result of sinfulness. For example, I am not angry, which causes me to sin. Instead, I have a heart enslaved to sin, therefore it gets expressed through anger (the same is true of the other works of the flesh). So much of Galatians is written to the Judaizers who would put the yoke of the Mosaic Law onto Christians—especially Gentile Christians. The yoke of slavery refers directly to the acceptance of circumcisions, but points toward a Christ-less salvation based on good works. If merit is the key to salvation, then I become the standard. Eventually, my “structures of liberty” will fail and I turn to gratification and, ultimately, bondage.

The only key to salvation is through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. Living by the Spirit—whom we receive by grace through faith—is evident by its fruit (no plural “s”). The singular “fruit of the Spirit” springs from seeds of faith leading to righteousness. You can’t pick and choose which ones you do well and which ones you struggle with—if you’re impatient it isn’t a personality trait. Call it what it is. It’s sin.

Notice also, we often think of salvation as a “me and God thing.” Yet, the evidence of righteousness and a relationship with God is very clearly, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The fruit of the Spirit plays out in horizontal relationships with your family, co-workers, the restaurant worker that messes up your order, the call-center employee that can’t answer a simple question, the driver that just cut you off in traffic, etc. You can’t be “good with God,” and suffer from bad relationships, unforgiveness, or outbursts. “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires,” which is sometimes the temporary (sinful) validation of just winning an argument. The defeated, “You’re right,” should sound the alarm of your mind that you have won an argument and lost the fruit.

Give a listen to this song from 2nd Corinthians 3:17 and share what God is teaching you in this passage.

By: Tyler Short