Galatians 5:13-15

                                                                     Galatians 5:13-15

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.  For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

 

Love is the basic value of the Christian life.  We are called to a life where we prioritize the well-being of others over our own.  Freedom in Christ means to have freedom from sin not freedom to sin.  Clearly loving others does not mean that we just passively accept the false teachers this passage warns us about.  However, we are not to allow our confrontation of false teachers become our standard operating procedure.

 

IN CHRIST WE ARE FREE TO LOVE: Freedom is truly one of the greatest gifts of Salvation.  However, we must be assured that our freedom in Christ is not to be used as an opportunity to fulfill the lusts of our flesh.  Christ has set us free from the penalty and power of sin and we have the promise that for all eternity we will be free from the presence of sin.  It is because of that freedom that we are truly able to love and serve one another.  It is interesting that this admonition comes in the middle of a passage about correcting false teaching.  The presence of false teaching cannot cause us to become combatant with one another and start questioning motives.

 

IN CHRIST WE FULFILL THE LAW: The false teachers were striving to take the church back to an observance of the Law of Moses as being mandatory for salvation and good standing in the church.  Paul makes it clear that the only requirement of the Law is the requirement to love one another.  It would seem that the absence of a command for loving God is a contradiction, but it is not.  The only way we truly have of demonstrating our Love for God is by loving one another.  If we don’t love each other, we are certainly breaking all the commandments of loving God.  When we love in Christ, God is honored, and we fulfill the Law.

 

IN CHRIST OUR FLESH IS LEASHED: The natural response of our flesh is to protect ourselves and to attack one another.  Satan strive to build division, mistrust, and dissention in the body of Christ.  However, the Spirit of God that lives in us has called us to live under His control and not give in to the desires of the flesh.  God calls us to a life of self-control under the power of the Spirit.  When believers begin to quarrel with one another they run the risk of becoming completely ineffective.  God calls us to a completely different way of living.  

 

APPLICATION: Seek for practical ways to serve others in the body of Christ.  Have a deep and abiding love for all people as representatives of the image of God on earth.  Don’t allow the desires of the flesh allow us to enter a world of legalism or a world of gossip and backbiting.   

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