Freed From and Freed For

One of the things I often see Christians struggling with is understanding how we are forgiven and no longer need to measure up to God’s Law, but at the same time are still commanded by Jesus, Paul, and every other Apostle in the New Testament to pursue personal holiness, which you do by obeying the Law. Have you struggled with that? Today I am beginning a series of posts thinking about our relationship to God’s Law as Christians.

In his book Serving God, Ben Patterson tells this story:

Once upon a time a woman was married to a perfectionist husband. No matter what his wife did for him, it was never enough. At the beginning of each day, he would make out his list of chores for her to do, and at the end of each day, he would scrutinize it to make sure she had done all that she was supposed to do. The best compliment she ever received was a disinterested grunt if she finished everything. She grew to hate her husband. When he died unexpectedly, she was embarrassed to admit to herself that she was relieved. Within a year of her husband’s death, she met a warm and loving man who was everything her former husband was not. They fell deeply in love with each other and were married. Every day they spent together seemed better than the day before. One afternoon, as she was cleaning out boxes in the attic, a crumpled piece of paper caught her eye. It was one of the old chore lists that her first husband used to make out for her. In spite of her chagrin, she couldn’t help reading it again. To her shock and amazement she discovered that, without even thinking about it, she was now doing for her new husband all the things she used to hate to do for her old husband. Her new husband never once suggested that she do any of these things. But she was doing them anyway-because she loved him.

This woman’s love for her second husband was her motivation for doing all the work she hated to do for her first husband. Have you noticed that there is always a big difference between the way we do something that we see as a requirement or a duty, versus doing that same thing out of love and desire for someone?

We do what is minimally acceptable for a job we have to do. For a chore, a job or a requirement, we want to know what we can get away with and still look good. However, we will go the extra mile for someone or something we desire or love. Forgiveness frees us to love obeying God’s law.

Freedom is one of the gifts that comes with the good news of forgiveness in Jesus Christ. The letter Paul wrote to the Church at Galatia focuses on this theme of the freedom we have in Jesus…and boy did the Galatians need to hear about it! There was a group of people called Judaizers who were going around to Christian churches teaching that if you wanted to be forgiven, you needed to accept and follow certain Jewish rites and customs such as male circumcision in addition to having faith in Christ. When Paul found out that the Galatian church had bought into this erroneous teaching, he immediately sent them this short, blunt, and powerful letter.

In the first four chapters of Galatians, Paul gives a very detailed argument that shows that Jesus came to free us from needing to follow the ceremonial law, and freed us from the curse of failing to perfectly follow the moral law. In chapters 5 and 6, Paul explains what this freedom from the law means to us. Today we are going to look at what he says in Galatians 5:1-6.

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. 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. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

God set us free to give us freedom. What does that mean? The freedom that Jesus purchased for us means four things:

1. Freedom is being free of the curse of the law. We have been declared not guilty on account of our faith in Christ. Therefore we are free from the punishment we deserve for not meeting the demands of the Law.
2. Freedom is being free from the control of sin. Apart from Christ all we do is sin. We are slaves to it. When we accept Christ and the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts, we are freed from the control of our fallen sinful natures and freed to be under the control of God, which is where we were designed to be.
3. Freedom is being free from fear. Free of what fear? Fear that God’s Law must be obeyed perfectly to be saved and from the fear that comes when you realize your inability to do that. When we start thinking that we are supposed to do certain things or avoid certain things to qualify for forgiveness, we are declaring that faith alone in Christ is not enough to save us.
4. Freedom is being free to joyfully do the will of God out of love. Jesus freed us from the condemning power of the law. But that is not the same as freeing us so we can ignore the law. God’s grace is both a freed from and a freed for. We were freed from somewhere so we could get to somewhere else. As the Apostle says, The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.