The Book of Galatians #22
The Book of Galatians #22
Galatians 5:13-16
 
We live in a day and age when everyone is seeking freedom.  We want to be free from the definition of marriage; free from having to pay our debts; free from the burden of high health care costs, etc.
 
Everybody should be able to do exactly what he wants to do and by the way, the government should pay for it. 
 
Now you can’t convince those who want that of it, but that’s really not freedom, at least not in Biblical terms. 
 
Jesus said in John 8:34, "The man who does wrong is a slave to sin." Therefore, any sinful behavior can’t set you free.  It’s just that simple.  Jesus said, Know the Truth, and the truth will set you free.”  "If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed." Freedom comes only through Jesus Christ.
 
Now in the book of Galatians, several times Paul uses this terminology of freedom.  Specifically, he is saying it doesn’t accomplish anything as far as salvation is concerned to be in the bondage of the law and require circumcision and so forth.  We have been set free from all of that in Christ.
 
Now when we talk about our liberty in Christ, we need to define that because it is a term that can be confusing if we're not careful.  What does it mean to be free as a Christian?
 
What does it mean when I say I am free in Christ?
Basically, it means Christianity is not bondage. Christianity is not slavery to a religious system. Christianity is absolute freedom.
 
Christian liberty means that rather than depending on myself and some external set of rules to keep in order to be right with God, I just depend upon Christ by faith. 
 
Now that’s what’s causing the friction in Galatia.  The apostle Paul was going around announcing all this doctrine about freedom and that was a tough thing for the Jewish people to swallow because the Jew lived all his life under the legal system. And the Jew prided himself on the fact that he kept the law.
 
And in addition to that, the Jew believed, the only real restraint to sin was the law. The Jew believed that the only way that you could stop sin from running rampant was to set up rules and regulations.
 
And under the Old Covenant that was true.  And that is primarily what we have in the first five books of the Bible.  There is a rule for everything. 
 
But now, Paul blows into town and says I want you all to know you're free.  No more rules. The average Jew is going to say, “Oh really?  If you do away with all the rules, people will go crazy sinning.” 
 
And that is understandable because the unbelieving Jew did not understand what it meant to be saved and have the Holy Spirit come to live inside you and change your life and your desires. 
 
But the truth of the matter is, if I am yielding to the control of the Holy Spirit, I don’t need a list of rules to tell me right from wrong and how I ought to act. 
 
Plus, He not only guides me in what is appropriate, He empowers me to be able to do it. 
 
So not understanding that, the accusation against Paul is that he’s lawless and teaching others to be lawless.
 
Now here’s something that is important to keep in mind:  Just because we are controlled by a different restraint system doesn’t mean God has changed His mind on what is right and wrong. 
 
God has the same ethics today that He had then. There's no difference between what is right and wrong.  The difference is they were guided by the law; we are guided by the Holy Spirit.  They had external restraint; we have internal restraint. 
Therefore, we're not reacting to a code, we're responding to a person.
 
By the way, let me take some time and deal with something here for a moment because our president has such a twisted view of the Bible and Christianity you might listen to him and the liberal news media and have some questions. 
 
We have all this talk today about homosexuality.  Accuse of homophobe, quote favorite theologian Hal J and say, “Born that way”. 
 
Anytime the Bible is introduced into the conversation someone wants to cry, “Old Testament”. 
And invariably some smart-aleck asks if we want to take homosexuals out and stone them in the streets as the Jews were instructed to do. 
 
That comes from an ignorance of what we have in the Old Testament as far as the law is concerned.  There were three parts to the law as far as a Jew was concerned.  There was civil law to rule their government; there was ceremonial law to direct their worship and there was moral law to guide their personal lives.
 
What was the difference?  The civil law made Israel a unique nation.  They had to do things and not do things that other nations got by with.  Why?  Because God wanted them to be a peculiar, special people unto Himself.  God wanted them to stick out.  So all of the behavioral laws like the stoning of homosexuals children and eating certain animals and not others and all of that was a part of the civil law. 
 
Then there was ceremonial law that guided their worship.  There were lots of specific instructions regarding how to offer sacrifices and what clothes the priest could wear and how the fire could be started and all of that.  What was the purpose of the ceremonial law?  It was given to picture the coming Messiah.  Every part of it finds its significance in Jesus.
 
Then thirdly there was the moral law; primarily that is the Ten Commandments. 
 
Now in regard to the civil law, we read in Acts 10 that God said to Peter, “You can disregard the ceremonial law.  Live it up and eat anything you want to because it’s over.”
There is no need for Israel to be a peculiar people once the church was established because the Jew and the Gentile became one in Christ and we now occupy that place.
 
So the civil law goes aside.  Do we kill homosexuals in the streets?  Only if we decide to do that as a part of the civil law in America, but not because the Old Testament talks about it.  That was a part of ancient Jewish civil law.  And really, that is what our debate is all about.
 
What will we believe and how will we respond to this issue?  Will we be guided by the word of God or will we decide by some other standard?  That is really the dilemma of any issue before us.
 
We draw principles and conclusions from that law and there we learn the mind of God.  He’s not changing His mind or reversing His opinion.  Homosexuality was then and is now a sin in the sight of God and if we are wise we will not legitimatize it.  But we very well may choose to ignore it as the president has. 
 
Then, in regard to the ceremonial law, God took care of that when He tore the curtain in two in the temple at the crucifixion.  There is no longer any need of the ceremonial law to picture a Messiah because Messiah is now on the scene. 
 
What about the moral law? The moral law of God never changed at all, with the exception of the keeping of the Sabbath.  In fact, we find the other nine commandments repeated in the Old Testament, but the only mention of the civil and ceremonial aspects of the law are negative.
Now I said all of that to make the point that God now seeks to accomplish in the life of the church through the work of the Holy Spirit what he once required through the keeping of the Mosaic law. 
 
And what we have in the text before us tonight is Paul talking about that part of the law, the moral aspect of it. 
 
5:13-16
 
Up to this point, Paul has been talking theologically. Now he's going to get real practical. And he goes about it in two ways.  First, he talks about
 
1. What Christian Liberty Isn’t
 
Verse 13
 
"For you, brethren have been called unto liberty." Stop there. This is basic to Christian life. We are free. We are no longer under the bondage of a legal system.  No reason to get circumcised. No reason for feasts and new moons and Sabbath and all those things. That's all finished. There's no need for any of that.
 
However, the fact that all that ceremonial stuff is set aside does not mean that we change our morality.  We don’t have to trade the ethics of ancient Judaism for some new morality.  It doesn’t  mean that what God said in the Old Testament all of sudden fades away and we've got some new stuff coming along in the New Testament.
 
 
It is not a change in the content of God's moral law but rather a change in the way God brings about the fulfillment of it. It once operated on the outside; now it’s at work on the inside. 
 
Let me give you an illustration from Exodus 21.
 
In this chapter you find a lot of the various instructions for civil and ceremonial law.  They all build off of the Ten Commandments which are given in Exodus 20. 
 
Notice verses 1-6
 
The original pierced ear.  What’s the point?  Watch this:  the man serves for six years under a legalistic bondage because he has to. The seventh year he can walk out, he's a free man. You know what he does with his freedom? He says I want to take my freedom to serve you because I love you.
 
Now think about this:  What changed?  Only his relationship to the master.  His conduct is exactly the same.  Tere isn't one bit of difference between what the guy did the first six years and what he does the rest of his life. It's all service. The only difference is that it has ceased to be an external requirement and it's become an internal desire.
 
In a very real sense, if you were a Jews and got saved, God just punched a hole in your ear because the moral code of Israel and Moses never changed for a Jew. A Jew kept the same law, but when he got saved his motivation is different. 
 
And, by the way, his ability was different also. 
 
Under the law, he might try to keep it, but he never could.  But by the indwelling Christ he can and will.
 
Now, as a child of God, we are free, not to disobey, but free to do what's right and not because we have to but because we want to.
 
Think about it like this:  Freedom is the ability to be able to do what you want. Therefore, every time I want to, I rob a bank. Every time I want to, I get stoned.  You know something? I don't ever want to. I've no desire to do that. However, if I didn't have the indwelling restraint of the Holy Spirit, I’d be a mess. 
 
Imagine two identical houses built on the same block with a huge picture window in the front of each. One guy puts a sign on his lawn that says, “Do not throw rocks through the window.”
 
The other guy puts nothing there. Who's going to get it first? There's just something about that kind of standard that irritates the sin nature. 
 
That's Paul meant in Romans 7 when he says, "The law stirs up sin in me."
 
But I don't need that external anymore, because the Holy Spirit inside restrains it. So I'm free.
 
Now, I said that there are some things that Christian liberty is not and next week we’ll look at those.  There are three that Paul provides and they will be the focus of our study next time.