Freedom in Christ
1 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.
2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5 But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
7 You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? 8 That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9 “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” 10 I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion will pay the penalty, whoever he may be. 11 Brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. 12 As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!
13 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. 14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
My Understanding: I pray the Lord Jesus gives me understanding into the truths of His Word, and he teaches me the lessons he would want me to learn from this today.
For freedom that Christ has set us free
Christ Jesus set us free from the law of sin and death, i.e. he set us free from the penalty of and the control of sin over our lives on a day-to-day basis. So, when this passage of scripture strongly exhorts us, based upon what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross in dying for our sins so that we could go free, that we should stand firm and we should not allow ourselves to be brought back under the yoke of slavery, it is not only speaking of slavery to the law (legalism/works-based salvation), but it is also speaking of slavery to sin. Further on down in the passage, Paul warns us that we should not use our freedom to indulge in the sinful nature, which then would be no freedom at all but would again be slavery.
If we try to gain approval of God via human effort, what value is the cross of Christ? And, if we ignore what Jesus did in dying on the cross for our sins so that we could go free from sin and we go right back into slavery to sin, what good is the cross? Either way we are alienated from Christ because we are still operating in the flesh of man. We are deciding the course of our own lives with little or no respect to what Jesus went through to bring us hope, peace with God, salvation from sin and life everlasting. We are on the throne of our own lives when we either live to please God through our own human effort or we live to please our flesh through total disregard for what Jesus did for us to set us free.
Faith expressing itself through love
The scripture says that, in Christ, the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Ok, right there we can see that faith is not just intellectual assent or an emotional experience or adherence to a set of rules, but true faith is action and it has an outward expression to show that true faith actually exists within us, and that outward expression of our faith is love – love for God and love for man. The Bible teaches us that if we say we love God, we will turn from our sin. It says that if we say we love God, we will do what he commands (obey him). And, it says that if we say we love God, we will love our brothers and sisters, and we will not do them any harm. We will love our neighbors as ourselves. We will not hate, because hate is the opposite of love. We will not covet, steal, commit adultery, murder, etc. because all those are the opposite of love [See I John].
So, we know what love is not, so what is love? God set the primo example: Love is giving of oneself to the legitimate needs of others, whether those needs are physical, emotional, or spiritual. When Jesus died on the cross, he gave it all. And, we should give our lives, total and complete, to Jesus Christ when we believe in him as Lord and Savior. He should become our master and us his servants (slaves to righteousness). No longer should our lives be our own to do with what we please. We cannot do “for” God as a way to gain his approval and think we have somehow pleased him while we manage and control our own lives. And, we cannot live according to our fleshly desires, obeying its lusts, and think we can claim God’s grace because we prayed some prayer at an altar, either. Love for God is giving ourselves fully and completely to him as his slaves in full surrender of our wills, in turning from our sin, and in living obedient lives committed to his service. And, love for our fellow man means giving up our own rights and time, money, reputations, etc. in order to serve others and their legitimate needs – physical, emotional and spiritual.
Who cut in on you and why?
Paul told the Christians in Galatia that they had been running a good race. In I Co. 9 we are told to run the race in such a way as to get the prize. 2 Tim. 4:7 says: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” And, Hebrews 12:1 says: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”
So, the Christian life is often compared to that of a runner running in a race. It takes dedication and discipline for a runner to be able to run in marathon races or long-distance races. He must deny his own flesh in order to gain the discipline necessary to compete and to run. And, it takes this kind of discipline and self-denial to run the spiritual race set out for us, too. A runner such as this must remain focused on the goal – the prize at the end and the physical rewards on a daily basis. He must persevere. He must fight against his own flesh and against temptations to give into fleshly appetites. He must keep that faith always in mind of the ultimate rewards of the discipline and perseverance as the motivator for what he does so he does not give up. He must throw off anything that might hinder his ability to race and/or to finish the race. And, that is what it means here in a spiritual context, too.
Yet, we don’t have to run this race in our own strength or with our own abilities, but in the power and strength of the Lord working in and through us to accomplish his purposes in our lives as we yield control of our lives to him and allow him to do his work within us. And, we cannot allow anyone to “cut in” and to keep us from obeying the truth. Satan does not like it when we follow Jesus Christ with our whole being, so he will pull out all the stops in trying to get us back to living by our own flesh and following our own fleshly appetites and getting us to live by our own human effort to try to gain favor with God, because then that means we are not truly obeying the Lord and walking in the Spirit, but we are once again controlled by the flesh. Satan is a master at lies and he will throw all kinds of lies our way to get us to stop running. Included in those lies is that we are gods ourselves, we are good in ourselves and we don’t need God, we can please God by just doing “good deeds,” and/or it is not necessary to repent or to obey God/Jesus, because grace means we have our ticket into heaven and Jesus does it all so nothing is required of us, so we can just float into heaven on Jesus’ tails without ever having truly believed as is evidenced by repentance and obedience.
The offense of the cross
The “offense of the cross” is two-fold, I believe. It tells the legalizer who thinks he can earn his salvation through good works that there is no one who is righteous; all we like sheep have gone astray; and all have sinned and have fallen short of God’s righteous requirements. Nothing we can do in our own flesh can save us, because we will always fall short. We can never be good enough to win God’s approval, because we cannot live perfect lives free from sin, and the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And, the cross tells the one who thinks that God’s grace gives him liberty to live how he pleases, that the cross means death to sin and resurrection to new life in Christ, free from the control of sin over our lives, so that sin is no longer our Master, but Jesus Christ is our only Lord and Master and the only slavery that we should be under is slavery to righteousness and slavery to Jesus Christ, to serve him only and to obey him.
Self-effort, i.e. trying to win God’s approval by human effort, and self-gratification, i.e. a belief that Jesus Christ is here to serve us and that nothing is required of us in return, both stand in opposition to the cross of Christ, which represents self-denial, crucifixion to the flesh, and a resurrected new life in Jesus Christ with him on the throne of our lives. The cross of Christ stands in direct opposition to man’s control, philosophies, knowledge, logic, reasoning, selfish desires, and/or selfish views of God based upon our own selfish ideology. Both legalism and “all grace” are based in self with self on the throne of our lives. The reason the cross is “an offense” is because it removes self from the picture altogether, and it brings self to the cross of Christ to where we no longer live, but Christ lives within us, and the lives we now live, we live by faith in the one who loved us and gave himself for us. He is the boss, and we are the slaves. We make a mockery of the cross of Christ when we take any other view other than us dying to sin and self so that sin and self no longer are our masters, but Jesus Christ is now the one and the only one in charge of our lives.
How Deep the Father’s Love for Us / Philips, Craig and Dean
How deep the Father's love for us
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
And make a wretch His treasure…
Why should I gain from His reward
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV2zMZ-nZ7k
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