Freedom From the Law

PRAYER PRACTICE

Spoken Prayer – Out loud, pray for God to speak to you through your reading. Praise God for giving us His word. Ask the Spirit to help you read with faith, and to live out what you hear from God through the passage.

 

DAILY READING

Galatians 5:1-6

 

DEVOTION / REFLECTION

Faith Active in Love

by Pr. Dave Mann

 

We have been soaking up the Apostle Paul’s strong words from his letter to the Galatians on Sunday mornings and more during weekday readings. Today’s reading summarizes the first four chapters of the letter, and then we turn a very important corner in verse 6.

 

First, the summary. The Christian gospel is NOT another law – Do this, don’t do that, and then God will be happy with you and bless you. No! It is so easy fall into that kind of thinking. It is a very slippery slope. We are predisposed to walk down the road of the Performance Plan (as Pr. Steve has so skillfully preached), both in our relationship with God and in our relationship with other people. But if we go that way, there is no satisfying the demands of Performance. It is never enough! We can’t just “perform” in one area and then stop. We slip down the slope, feeling obligated to perform according to the entire Law! And worse yet, we stop trusting in Christ. We cut ourselves off from the confidence that what Christ has done is sufficient for us. By trying to do things to earn God’s love, we are in fact saying that what Christ did is not good enough. He needs our help! Really?!

 

Liberation from the Law is the message of Galatians 1-4. So, is there no place for our doing anything that is good and right? There certainly is, but the motivation is entirely different from trying to earn God’s approval. Paul turns the corner in verse 6. Our doing something or our refraining from doing something is not the key thing at all. What is important is that what we do is based on love – the love of God for us. Because God loves us so much and has provided all that we need, we are eternally grateful. We do indeed act, but our actions are reflections of God’s love for us. 

 

We are set free from the never-ending spiral of the Performance Plan. We are liberated to act on our gratitude for his undeserved love!

 

O Lord, forgive me when I forget how sufficient your work on the cross is for me.  Thank you that because of your love for me, I can now demonstrate how grateful I am by reflecting your love toward others.  Amen

Stride Right

One memorable scene in the Oscar-winning movie, Chariots of Fire, finds Eric Liddell explaining to his sister, Jenny, his deep sense of calling: “I believe that God made me for a purpose, for China, but He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.” Liddell would go on to win the 400-meter event in the 1924 Olympics before devoting the rest of his life to mission work in China. As I think about his innermost convictions, I cannot help but feel what must have been his profound sense of freedom. Running a race or proclaiming Jesus’ love, neither was drudgery to Liddell, rather both were sources of joy, for God had “made” him for these, and he pursued each as one liberated and inspired by the truth of God’s forever forgiveness and indwelling presence.

While few of us are (or ever were) gifted track athletes, all of us have been loosed from the stymying weight of trying to be good enough for God in our own power. Jesus, who is righteous by nature, has truly made us one with Himself, and so His righteousness—His right standing before God—becomes our own. He who atoned for our sins lives in us, so we are completely and forever free to run in Him unfettered by our past and with clear direction for our future. “Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,” said the writer of Hebrews, “and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith ...”¹

So, too, we stride with purpose. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free,”² wrote the apostle Paul, for Jesus liberated us not for us to return to the crippling ways of sin, but to empower us in liberty along a fresh course of meaning and impact. “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free,” he wrote, “But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”³

God has made each of us for a purpose. So, as we pace life’s course in a precious freedom of the soul, may we, too, feel His pleasure.

Father, you’ve done so much for me; help me to accept your love and grace. Show me my purposes in life and guide me as I pursue them today. Fill me with your Spirit, so that I do what is pleasing to you and helpful to others. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

Christ in me is freedom.

¹ Hebrews 12:1, 2
² Galatians 5:1
³ Galatians 5:13, 14

[Read today’s Scripture in Galatians 5:1-6.]

Gripped by Grace

Galatians 5:1 (NIV)  It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Before we began our walk with Jesus, before the personal relationship with Jesus, we were lost and in chains.  We remember the angst in our being, the knot in the pit of our stomach.  We never want to go back to that life.  There was such darkness but we didn't see it then; that is because we viewed everything through the eye of a slave.  One bound to the earth with no heavenly hope.

Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.  Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.  You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:2-4)

Having experienced Grace why would one ever go back to law.  To embrace law and return to the old way is to reject Jesus and his Grace. That would be like living as though we can save ourselves.  Like a mother walking with her child, holding on to his hand with a firm grip and having the child yank his hand free and holding it himself.  If he veers into traffic there is no saving him.  It is only the strong, loving hand of the mother that will save the child from tragedy.

The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. (Galatians 5:6)

It is through faith we are saved by grace, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. This should be a freeing thought for it takes the pressure off.  Just as the child feels safe and protected in his mother’s firm grasp, we can experience the same assurance from our Heavenly Father when our hand is securely tucked into His.

Galatians 5:1-6