What Is Christian Liberty?
Galatians 5:13-16
The title of our discussion is the Christians' Liberation. Recently, I don't know if it's happened to you, but recently I have been subjected to one of the greatest definitions of freedom ever given. And I'm sure you've heard it if you've listened carefully. Freedom's just another word for datsun. Have you heard that? My that's astute. Aside from the fact that such a definition is so inane that words fail me to express it. The idea of the Madison Avenue Company that ever thought that up is pretty sharp. Because that slogan hits our world dead center.
We live in a day and age when men are seeking liberation and so are women. And there's a new one. I don't know if you've seen it. Children's lib. Freedom is the word today. Liberation is the cry. Do you own thing is the manifesto of the freedom movement. All authority is flaunted, torn down. Everybody is supposed to be able to respond only to one thing and that's the desire of his own heart. Everybody should be able to do exactly what he wants to do and self-centered is, as always, the motivating factor.
But I mean, let's be honest, this is not really freedom not in terms of a biblical definition, because Jesus said in John 8:34, "The man who does wrong is a slave to sin." And datsun doesn't set you free. And women's lib and children's lib and whatever other lib doesn't do it, but Jesus said this. "If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free for real." Freedom comes in Jesus Christ. This is the manifesto of Christianity.
And Christianity is freedom. Christianity is liberation. I supposed that the reason that it's so very difficult for Christians to understand current liberation movements is because we can't really relate to bondage. Not if we're truly expressing our liberty in Christ. Now in the book of Galatians, we have already been told several times that we're free. And of course, what Paul is showing here is that there's no need to be circumscribed any more to the codes and rituals and ceremonies of legalistic Judaism. We have been set free from all of that in Christ.
And in Chapter 2 of Galatians and in verse 4 he talks about the fact that false brethren came into spy secretly on our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus. That they might bring us in to bondage. The Christians in Galatia had been set free in Christ and some were trying to take them back into a legalistic kind of bondage. Then in Galatians 4, verse 21-33, you have entire allegory given over to define the Christian life as freedom. And it closes in verse 31, "So then brethren we are not children of the bond woman," that is of Hagar, "but of the free." So Paul has taken great pains to present the fact that Christians are liberated people. We are free people. We have been set loose from all kinds of external bondage.
And particularly in the book of Galatians he has in mind the ceremonialism that is Judaism. Now when we talk about our liberty in Christ, we need to define that because it is a term that can run amuck if we're not careful and don't subscribe it to some kind of biblical definition. So when we say we're free when I say as a Christian I'm liberated, what do I mean. What is Christian liberty, what does it involve and how does it operate? We're going to consider those questions tonight. And just let's look at three questions.
Number one, what is Christian freedom? What does it mean when I say I am free in Christ? This is very important and really this amounts to a review of our past studies. Chapter 5 of Galatians, in verse 1 which saw some weeks back says this. "Standfast therefore in the liberty where with Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." Now the verse literally says this. For freedom Christ has set us free therefore standfast in that freedom and don't be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. For freedom Christ has set us free.
Christ set us free to be free men. Now in the book of Galatians, watch this, this means we are free from law. We are free from law. It is the freedom of conscience. The freedom from the tyranny of a legal system. Freedom from the terrible pressure and frustration of struggling to keep a code that we can't keep. We're set free. And so the freedom that the Christian knows is then at least beginningly in our thoughts, freedom from the oppressing awareness that we can't measure up to God.
But I don't have that bondage anymore because I do measure up in Christ. He accepts me in the beloved one. The Galatians as we've seen had been made mature sons, free men, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, no longer bound by external restraints but free in the Spirit to act out their own maturity and their own liberty from within. Now this is Paul's theme. Christianity is not bondage. Christianity is not slavery to a religious system. Christianity is absolute freedom.
And we've seen this over and over again. For example, through Jesus Christ, we have been delivered from the tiring relentless performance of religious ritual. And that's why in my own mind I resist and fight tooth and nail against any kind of formal ritual in the church. Because that's part of what we were freed from, right? The old covenant was legal, external, and it was given to demonstrate what true holiness is and to show men that they couldn't make it. They had all the external symbols to portray the sacrifice necessary for sin. They were pictures of the sacrifice to come and once the sacrifice came, there was no need any longer for the symbols.
So Christian liberty then is to take all that Christ provides, be free from having to fulfill a legal code to please God, being free from the frustration that says I can't make it. Being free from an external set of legal rules that I have to keep. Free to just function in the overflow of the work of the Spirit inside. Christian liberty. And it all comes by faith in Jesus Christ.
There's no need to go back to circumcision, he says in Galatians. No need to go back to ceremonies. In fact, in Chapter 4, verse 10, he says you've gone backwards, you're observing days and months and times and years and I think maybe I've worked in vain. You're going back to things that are over with. No more ritual, no more ceremony, no more circumcision. You're free from all those external bindings.
Now it is true and I add this because it's important. It is true that the moral law of God hasn't changed. Nor has the believes obligation to that moral law changed. When I'm talking about the law in the general sense here that I've been using, and I'm talking about ceremonial ritual, but also the law morally is included in our freedom and I'll explain that in a few minutes. The apostle Paul was going around announcing all this doctrine about freedom and boy it was a tough thing for the Jewish people to swallow. It was a real stumbling block, 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, and this is important, he believed that the only real restraint to sin just running amuck and to the unbridled indulgence of passion, the only legitimate restraint was law. Do you understand what I mean? The Jew believed that the only way that you could stop sin from running ramped was to set up rules and regulations. And you know something in the old economy he was absolutely right. Absolutely right. The only way to stop sin, the only way to prevent everybody from just letting their passions run crazy was to set up rules and to make the punishment so serious. And in fact, in the Old Testament, you find that for adultery and such things like that what was the punishment? Death. And in the old covenant that was the way you halted the activity of sinfulness in the life of a person given over even to God by making rules with punishments so strong that you put fear in everybody's heart.
And here comes the apostle Paul and he floats in to town and he says I want you all to know you're liberated. No more rules. The average Jew is going to say oh wait a minute. How can you say that? Because passion will run wild. If you pull down all the little dos and don'ts and you strip back all of those little things, there's nothing to check indulgence. Now can you understand why he felt that way? The answer is simple. The unbelieving Jew did not understand what it meant to be saved and then have the Holy Spirit come to live inside. And if you read your Bible in 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2, you'll find that the Holy Spirit is called the restrainer. Have you read that?
And so now as a believer it is unnecessary for me to have a whole little list of laws and codes. I have the restrainer in me. And incidentally, His power within me is a lot greater than my own ability to halt myself in front of the wall of some law. And so it's easy to understand that to those who were accustomed to regard law and law keeping as the only controlling factor that stands in the way of self-indulgence and the free reign of sin. And to whom a highly ethical system was everything the teaching of Christian liberty was a real threat.
And it is obvious that what happened was they accused Paul of being antinomian. That is lawless, of teaching a libertinism that just turned everybody loose. Well, now we're all Christians and we can just go do what we want. The Judaisers who had messed up the Galatians then had charged Paul with rejecting God's ethical law. And he hadn't done that all. He had simply said God's ethical law has gone inside. They didn't understand that. They didn't understand that things had gone internal since Christ came to live inside.
Now listen to this, from the old covenant and the mosaic law to the new covenant and the law of Christ, not one thing has changed in the mind of God. Do you think God has the same ethics today that He had then? Do you think He has the same morality today that He had then? Absolutely the same. There's no difference. The difference is we don't live as Christians under the bondage and slavery of an external system with terrifying results. We live under the internal restraints of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
And so we're not reacting to a code. We're responding to a person. Do you see the difference? That's important. The law was not set aside in its moral sense. Watch, in its ceremonial sense you can chunk it. Read Acts 10 and you'll see that. The Lord said to Peter, get rid of it all. Eat what you want, live it up. It's over with. The whole ceremonial thing, why? Because listen to me the ceremonial law had two functions. One, to make Israel a unique nation, right? They had to do things nobody else did so they'd stick out.
Two, to picture the coming sacrifice of Messiah. Once the sacrifice of Messiah was made, you didn't need the pictures any more, right? So that left only one reason. And the one reason was to keep Israel a peculiar nation, but once the church was established there was no more Israel as a peculiar nation. The Jew and the Gentile became what? One in Christ. So the ceremonial law goes aside, because one it was only for the unique identity of Israel. Two, it was only the picture of the coming of Messiah.
Once Messiah came, the second reason was gone. Once the church was begun, the first one was gone. But the moral law of God never changed at all. In fact, through the Holy Spirit in your life, now God will be able to accomplish what He endeavored to accomplish in the mosaic law of the Old Testament. So Paul gives not only the positive definition of what Christian liberty is, but he defines it very clearly here in verses 13-16. The law was not set aside. It just went inside, fulfilled internally by divine power rather than attempted externally by human power.
Now he's been accused apparently of being antinomian. That just comes from a word anti, which means against and nomia comes from nomas which means law in Greek, so he was anti law. He'd been accused of that and so he wants to answer that accusation. And so in verses 13-16 he shows how Christianity is not against the moral law of God. Let me give you a little analogy to help you understand this.
In trying to think how you could express this. I think it was one of the commentators I was reading that hinted it at this idea. Perhaps it was Hendrickson. But Christianity resembles a narrow bridge and it is a bridge spanning a place where two streams come together. One of those streams is one of those crystal clear brilliant sparkling streams, however, it's a treacherous and deadly rapids. The other stream is a polluted, filthy, mucky, stagnant, vial swamp.
Stream number one so pure and sparkly and deadly is legalism. It comes on like great righteousness doesn't it? But you can't stay afloat it'll kill you. It'll smash you on its rocks. But the other stream, the polluted one, is libertinism. You fall into that and you'll drown in the filth of it. And so the Christian maintains balance on the bridge, between the destruction of legalism and drowning in the filth of libertinism. The believer must never lose his balance. There are some Christians who've fallen into the rapids of legalism and they're just getting beat to death.
There are other Christians who are wallowing around in the gross vices of libertinism and being garbaged to the point where they may be shipped out in ultimate discipline. Now this paragraph from 13-16 tells you how to stay on the bridge. It's a good place to be. Up to this point, Paul has been talking theologically. Now he's going to get real practical. In fact, Vincent Taylor once wrote, "The test of a good theologian is can he write a tract." It's good isn't it? It's nice that you can speak in all those flowery terms about all those mystical problems, but can you communicate with the average man.
Paul satisfies the test, believe me. He can go with the best in the theology and he can also come down to where we're at, can't he? Now, we've seen then what Christian liberty is. It's freedom from the bindings of the law. Let me go with Paul here and look at our passage and show you what Christian liberty is not. What Christian liberty is not.
Verse 13, "For brethren ye have been called unto liberty." Stop there. Now this is basic to Christian life. We are free. We are no longer under the bondage of a legal system as he's being saying over and over again. No reason to get circumcised. No reason for feasts and new moons and Sabbath and all those things. And you know, there are some people today who want all kinds of ritual. There are even some Jewish people who want to maintain the Sabbath and they want to do this and they want to do the other. That's all gone. That's all finished. There's no need for any of that.
Now the fact that all that ceremonial stuff is set aside, please does not mean that we change our morality. That we turn in the ethics of Judaism for some kind of new morality. None at all. That doesn't mean that what God held as true in the Old Testament all of sudden fades away and we've got some new stuff coming along in the New Testament. No. Now watch this, it is not at all a change in the content of God's moral law. It is only a change in the way God brings about the fulfillment of it. From the external fear impulse to the internal. From the code of ethics to the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. That's the difference.
Let me give you an illustration. Turn in your Bible to Exodus 21. Now this is a most interesting instruction in Exodus 21. And here you have a lot of various and sundry instructions connected to the Ten Commandments which are given in 20. There are all kinds of other ceremonial things involved. And just to pull one of them out that I think is most interesting is 21:1. "Now these are the ordinances which thou shalt set before them." Here's some of the ceremonial law.
"If you buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve. And in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing." Seventh year let him go, turn him loose, he's on his own. "If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If he was married then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given a wife and she had born him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her masters and he shall go out by himself." In other words, there had to be the fulfillment of that six years. If he married and the wife didn't marry till the third year, she's got to fill out her six. That was the standard.
Now, "If the servant shall plainly say," verse 5, "I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free. And his master shall bring him unto the judges. He shall also bring him to the door or unto the door post and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul, and he shall serve him forever." You just lay his earlobe up against the door and pfff, put a hole in it. The original pierced ear.
You say what is that trying to illustrate? Just 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 what? I love you. Now watch. There 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. What's the only difference? The only difference is that it has ceased to be an external requirement and it's become an internal desire. Do you see?
And in a very real sense when you were saved God just punched a hole in your ear because the moral code of Israel and Moses never changed for a Jew. If you were a Jew who was saved it was just like getting punched in the ear. A Jew kept the same law, but when he became saved you can throw out that morality. He merely began to do it not because it was out there as a fear thing, but because inside he loved his master and he had the capacity and the energy of the indwelling Christ to fulfill it.
Now that's how it is with our liberty. You can go back to the book of Galatians. Our liberty has no real relation to the morals or the spiritual standards of God. Our liberty has to do with the motive. A devout Jew, now watch this, a devout Jew lived all his life by the code of Moses morally and by the ceremonies when he became saved would drop the ceremonies, but the code of moral truth in the Old Testament would never change. The only difference would be at some point when he came to Christ his reason for behavior would change.
And I'll tell you another thing, whereas under the mosaic fear economy he tried to keep it, but never could. By the indwelling Christ he will. And so we are free, not free to disobey, but free to do what's right not because we have to do, because we what? Want to. Do you know what freedom is? Freedom is the ability to be able to do what you want. I used to say every time I want to, I'd rob a bank. I do. Every time I want to, I hit people. Every time I want to, I get stoned drunk. You know something? I don't ever want to. I've no desire to do that. But you know something, if I didn't have the indwelling restrainer, I'd fight that thing constantly.
You know, just imagine two houses built on the same block with a huge giant pane of glass in the front. Identical houses, one guy puts a sign on his lawn, 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 somebody. 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. But now what does this mean? We said that there are some things that Christian liberty is not. Let me give you the three that Paul gives you. First of all, Christian liberty is not to indulge the flesh. Christian liberty is not to indulge the flesh. Look at verse 13 again. "For brethren you have been called unto liberty only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh." Christian freedom is not to indulge the flesh.
What do you mean by the flesh? Well, we certainly don't mean what's clothing your boney skeleton. We don't mean the physical body. What do we mean? We mean the fallen human nature, the twisted self that's prone to sin. The old man, if you will. No you weren't set free in Christ to do whatever you want. And you know, this inevitably what people say when you get in to a discussion say on eternal security. Someone will say do you believe in the security of the believer? Yes. Then they'll always say if they don't believe, they'll say, in other words, you can do anything you want and still be saved.