Galatians Five (One)

This is a continuation from the Galatians Four posts.

Galatians 5:1

Freedom in Christ
5 So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.

Something that Paul leaves out here is an unspoken given. Don’t get tied up again in slavery to sin.

At this point the Christians in Galatia didn’t need to be concerned with sin. When they came to Christ they left their lives of sin. What was happening wasn’t an outbreak of sinfulness but an outbreak of legalism and traditionalism.

Legalism and traditionalism relies on the law and tradition to save. Salvation and righteousness come through Christ. Legalism is establishing righteousness through the law or tradition and not through faith in Christ.

Let me try to establish a picture.

Man is a dual creature. We are souls who have bodies. If we were just a physical body we could be trained to follow the law and become righteous by means of actions. Legalism would work. But, we are souls. We have consciousness. We think independently of our physical abilities. Before we do anything our soul, being the mind, will, emotions and personality, makes a conscious decision to create our bodily action.

This is why legalism and traditionalism do not work. We are not such simple creatures that being trained and disciplined to as set of laws and traditions work. We are thinking, reasoning beings. Our personal intelligence driven by our self-will overrides laws, doctrines and traditions for the purpose of satisfying the self-will. We reason out our personal actions so we can justify the result.

This is why we must always die to self and seek the Lord in a personal relationship so that we can keep check upon the self and make sure we are operating in the Spirit of Holiness.

This checks and balance system allows us to bring our self-will under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We do this freely. We don’t have to live in this manner. We are free to follow self which is sin or follow the Lord by faith.

The Galatians had put off the old nature and were following the Lord by faith. But there were some amongst them that were adding regulations and traditions as a way of proving righteousness.

True righteousness is proved by way of a person’s spirit not their actions. Your actions will reflect your spiritual desire.

More tomorrow.