Reading… and Thinking

For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of 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 take heed that you are not consumed by one another.

— Galatians 5:13-15 (NASB)

The freedom Paul is talking about here refers particularly to freedom from the Law of Moses. The Galatian churches had been taken in by the Judaisers—believers who were trying to turn Christianity into a branch of Judaism, who insisted that the Law was still in effect. Paul argues forcefully that their claim is wrong. But in these verses, he warns that freedom from law doesn’t mean license to do whatever you want.

As the Lord Jesus had done earlier, Paul points out that the essence of the Law is still in force. Loving God and loving your neighbor are the heart of everything in the Law, Jesus tells us, and those two commands are still in effect. Paul here reinforces what Jesus had said.

It is ironic that those who most want to enforce regulations are the ones most likely to miss these two key commandments. Legalism leads to finger-pointing, or in Paul’s phrase, “biting and devouring”—not a picture of loving behavior!

When discussing this same command, Jesus was asked who our neighbor is, and responded with the famous parable of the good Samaritan. The clear point of the parable is that when you love someone, you go out of your way for them. Loving someone means caring about them. What happens to them is important to you. You are willing to give up your own time, your money, your effort, to do good for them.

Stopping to help someone who is in trouble is not something that a law can be created for. It has to come from your own concern. Law permits you to walk by someone who needs help. But we are not under law. Rather, we are under the principle of loving others. Love doesn’t let you ignore someone in trouble.

So freedom from the law puts more of a requirement on us. If, that is, we are the kind of people that God wants for His children. “We love because He first loved us,” John reminds us. (1 John 4:19)  God is the one who went way out of His way for us. The love we show is just a reflection of His great love (and an imperfect reflection at that). In this passage, Paul says that out of love we should “be servants of one another”—go out of our way for one another.

The flesh doesn’t like to go out of its way. It wants to satisfy itself, not someone else’s needs. But just as Jesus overcame his flesh, the love of God in us can overcome our flesh, and move us to give of ourselves. Christian love isn’t a feeling that comes over us. Christian love is a choice. Jesus didn’t want to die. (Mark 14:35-36)  He chose to die. He chose to love us more than he loved his own skin. And now he asks us to do the same.