 Yes, good food, just good Christian brothers and sisters, for this one, it's a very good day. Well welcome back and we are going to continue tonight working through this letter to the Galatians by Paul here and let's begin with reading our text. We're in chapter five and we're coming here close to the end of our letter but in chapter five and we're going to take a look tonight at verses 13 to 15 and sort of walk through these verses together. Galatians five verses 13 to 15 and our sermon title tonight is called to liberty, called to liberty. That's what Christians are, they're called to liberty in Christ. So let's look together, Galatians five beginning in verse 13, for you brethren have been called to liberty, only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, but if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another. Let's pray. Father in heaven, God thank you for these passages through Galatians and just all that we've learned, Lord how gracious you've been to us in providing your word and in providing the warnings and the exhortations and just your loving, gracious direction with respect to faith in Christ with respect to the true gospel, Lord with respect to legalism and license and works righteousness and more thank you for the clarity of your word on these doctrines, Lord in how beautifully it's laid out here by your servant the apostle Paul and just how carefully Lord you've taken us through to show us these things and so Lord even the night with this passage, God help us to think through this carefully, help us Lord not to merely hear and not do anything with it. Not to look at this in the mirror and then turn and forget what manner of men we are but to hear and become doers of your word, apply this to our lives so that we can have an understanding of your word and Lord live by it for your glory and Lord we want to please you and we want to live for you and we want to avoid these traps, these pitfalls that Paul is warning the Galatians about and Lord we want to remain steadfast in the gospel or the gospel that you gave to us to save our souls Lord thank you and just thank you for the time we have together to do this, please bless Lord the preaching of your word and bless our time together in this and just bless it to the application to our hearts again for your glory for your namesake in Jesus name, amen. Alright, well we're again walking through this letter to the Galatians and we're in chapter 5 verses 13 to 15 tonight the sermon title called the liberty and Paul has been building up, building up, building up over a long period of time now in various and sundry ways of explaining this, his argument against what works righteousness and that argument in multiple ways in multiple fashions has been pretty well established. I mean he's taking, taking pains to over and over again determine another way to say it, another way to say it, another way to explain it so that it just hits home and we were talking about this this morning to some degree talking about the two ditches of legalism and license and Paul here with the Galatians has really been hitting hard on this pitfall, this ditch of legalism and up to now establishing a right standing with God based on your works, based on your performance and I hope that you and it's been beneficial for me, I hope that you've been able to to take what Paul is saying here and apply that in a real context for your own situation. I know that at any given point in time just in talking to brothers and sisters who are newly converted or maybe been converted for a while and Christians are just prone to fall into this kind of thinking or to you know stumble into this this performance base walk with Christ that really comes down to it is no walk with Christ at all because we've taken our eyes off Christ we've not continued walking in faith when we do that we become introspective we become focused on our own works as a result of being focused on our own performance we're not walking by faith any longer and so what happens to your walk when you're not walking by faith yeah it's a downward spiral it's a plummet it's crash and burn and so it's just not the way that we're supposed to live the Christian life the Christian life is to be lived through faith in Christ our eyes glued on Christ our hands clinging to the cross empty hands of our own righteousness we're to stay out of the ditch of works righteousness stay out of the ditch of legalism but as we talked about this morning got to be careful not to overcorrect we can't swing from the ditch of legalism into the ditch of license we can't go from one error and overcorrect into the other error into the other error and here tonight Paul is going to be dealing with that overcorrection it really is in these few verses here a concern that possibly the Galatians in hearing these arguments against works righteousness against a performance based righteousness or a right standing with God based on a human effort he's concerned they might overcorrect and put themselves in the other ditch of license and so there's going to be a warning here for that now in talking about Christian liberty that's what we're going to be talking about tonight through these verses in talking about Christian liberty many perceive Christian liberty to be a freedom from any moral obligation a freedom from any keeping of the law a freedom from doing those things that the Lord has commanded us to do in Scripture and any such command any such exhortation from Scripture command from the Lord himself even on the pages of Scripture to strive to keep that in accordance with his commands is simply not the liberty that we have in Christ or simply isn't the living according to the law of Christ which in some sense in their mind they've mistaken to mean they're free from any moral obligation at all to live according to any laws and the freedom that they perceive in their minds and we need to be cautious about this is the freedom that they have to entertain natural desires freedom in Christ is far different than freedom connected with natural desires that you would understand in the flesh those natural desires are a product of your flesh they're a product of my flesh in outside of Christ your natural desires are simple outside of Christ your heart is deceitful and your natural tendencies is to sin and when we talk about total depravity and the total depravity of man being such that in accordance with your nature you simply do the things that naturally you want to do and being that your mind emotions will your heart your reasoning all are depraved all are affected by the fall then what comes out of your natural desire what comes out of your natural condition is a desire for sin is a desire to gratify the lust of the flesh and so when you act in accordance with your own natural desires and you do those things that you want to do when you're outside of Christ and you're just headlong into your sin that's not freedom that's bondage and it's bondage to your own depravity it's bondage to your own flesh well we're talking about tonight what Paul is talking about here in 5 in chapter 5 is the freedom that we have in Christ the freedom that is the product of the new nature that comes when your heart is transformed and now in accord with your new nature in accord with the new heart that God has given you you have the freedom to obey Christ and live for Christ with the new heart that you have in Christ out of the transformed heart and that just like we talked about this morning and those quotes by Edwards I thought were just really profound in the sense that man acts in accordance with his affections you desire and so you act in accordance with your desire when you become a Christian when God transforms your heart when you get saved you're born again you're regenerated that out of that new heart the Christian the disciple acts in accord with his new desires with his new affections and so the Christian with affections for pleasing Christ with affections for a love of God a burden for the loss the love for his word a hatred for sin all of that is the natural then the natural desires of the new creature the new creation and so when you act in accord with your natural desires to please Christ that's right back to the way that God intended for us to be it's right back to the way things were in the in the garden before the fall it's right back to those natural affections for Christ that God intended as a purpose for which he created us to live for him and to please him and to be in fellowship with him and that's real freedom that's the reality that we're to live by this world the lust of the flesh the world system this impulse to sin this bondage and slavery to sin that's not freedom that is slavery it's bondage it's bondage to your flesh it's bondage that will one day result in judgment unless we embrace the freedom that is in Christ to live for him wholeheartedly so that's what Paul is going to be talking about here in Galatians 5 he's going to be setting this up for them look we got we got the right message now don't think that you can be right with God in your own effort don't think that you be you can be right with God by keeping the law you can't be right with God based on morality duty conformity legalism but listen don't make the same mistake now of over correcting into the other ditch of license the lost conceive of liberty as a removal of constraints in other words they can just do whatever they want to do now the constraints come off and they can do whatever they want to do and to them that's that's liberty when you're acting in accord with that sinful wicked nature that you have in Adam before Christ again that's that's bondage so that what is the counter that what is the counter to this how do you counter that fault how do you stay out of that ditch here in a sense what we're going to see is even the Judaizers were appealing to a felt need if you will in the Galatians flesh that just appealed to them for a moral order discipline and what I mean by that is this maybe you've witnessed to someone before that you've talked to and they left maybe of an evangelical church and now they're right back in Catholicism or they left you know a Baptist church a Methodist church or whatever church and they're right back in Eastern Orthodox and the thing that appeals to them is the pop and circumstance is the ritual is the the mindless doing of things to appear spiritual and religious and so they're attracted to the religion they're not attracted to the relationship with Christ they're not attracted to the right heart that pleases Christ they're simply just attracted to religion it's what holds billions in bondage to Catholicism millions untold millions in bondage to Islam or any number of other world religions simply a works righteousness and what Christianity teaches and what Christianity is all about is that that righteousness has been satisfied already the righteous requirements of the law have been fulfilled it's been fulfilled in Christ you have a substitute if you'll repent turn from your sin put your faith and trust in him to save you and that's a free gift of God not anything to do with your works lest you or I should ever boast it's simply by the grace of God and so the the counter to legalism or license is simply an understanding of the gospel it's simply an understanding of faith in Christ and then living the Christian life by faith liberty in Christ does not mean libertinism or libertine it doesn't mean that kind of liberty it's not a liberty to satisfy or gratify the lust of your flesh so the the answer then to libertinism or the answer to license is never more law we need to understand that too it's never more law as Paul said in Romans where law increased sin abounds and when the law came sin revived and I died and so it's never to increase law you can't have more law more law more law more law more doing more doing more doing more doing to decrease your sin that simply isn't an answer to license the answer to license is faith faith and under the power and under the control of the holy spirit true faith will not sit idle true faith is going to produce heart holiness so if you are a genuine disciple and to take Paul's warnings here from Galatians 5 and prior about staying out of the ditch of works righteousness staying out of the ditch of strictly cold just performance based so-called Christianity and staying out of the ditch of license where it's a do as you will the way to counter that is with the gospel the way to counter that is with genuine saving faith genuine saving faith if you're a disciple of christ living the christian life by faith in him with your eyes glued on christ and your hands clinging to the cross that's the way to counter these two ditches and it happens through faith in the power in the enabling power the supernatural power of the holy spirit in your life and it will produce it simply will produce the heart holiness that as a christian you desire that i desire we're in christ that's the great desire of our heart you just want to please the lord and live for him if you're in christ and you're living by faith that faith is going to produce heart holiness because you act in accord with the the affections that you have as a part of your new nature you act and you live in the way that the new heart has been created to act and to live you're a product of a rebirth supernaturally by god that will simply lead to right living and it's not going to be idle so here in verses 13 to 15 we've got a couple of main points that paul's going to make one is that believers are free from the law in christ and we're going to make a distinction there and i'm going to explain uh hopefully what that means believers are free from the law in christ we already know just from talking so far that does not mean freedom in the sense that they can live their lives totally abandoning abandoning any moral law simply is not what it means but believers are free from the law in christ this freedom that we have in christ expresses itself in loving and serving others there is a god word focus and others focus and other word focus godly centered and lastly it's not in satisfying selfish desires this freedom that we have in christ is not about satisfying selfish desires the freedom that you have in christ is manifested or demonstrated in serving and loving one another serving and loving god and so let's start at verse 13 here verse 13 bible says for you brethren have been called to liberty now right off the bat he calls him brethren so paul here is confident he's already said that and chapter five he's confident they're going to be over able to overcome in the spirit this problem they're having with legalism this problem they're having with trying to maintain a right standing with god by works he calls them brothers and here this is this is not simply a lost person's difficulty this is not something that lost people only fall into or that all legalists or in their with their legalistic tendencies are all lost this is a problem that brothers can have difficulty with if you're a disciple of christ this is something we can fall into and this is something we have to be on guard against he calls them brothers and then he says you have been called to liberty literally it's for the purpose of liberty you've been called for the purpose of liberty if you think about it then the believers are called by god to be free now think about it free from what free from judgment absolutely free from condemnation yes but also free from the law in the sense that you're under the curse of the law or that the law is to you a means by which you're going to be saved outside of christ in adam the only hope that you have to be saved is that you perfectly keep the commands of god perfectly jesus christ said be perfect as my father in heaven is perfect righteousness in scripture is defined as perfect obedience to the law of god if one is said to be righteous righteousness is defined as perfect obedience to the law of god and so here it's not a freedom to do whatever you want to do this is freedom from the law as a means of your salvation now think about that for a second before you came to christ before you you began understanding the gospel and understanding faith and maybe you were plagued by a guilty accusing conscience how free did that feel there may be a point in time when you had no guilty accusing conscience your conscience is seared and you're just head long into your sin and you felt foot loose and happy free the whole time but there comes a point when you start coming to grips with your condition before god your creator you start coming to grips with the understanding that there's a judgment hanging over my head and then how free do you feel you're in bondage to sin you're in bondage to keep all of the law and that's what paul has said already anyone who is under the law is under a curse because cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to do them and so as a means of salvation if we're going to be under law it means that you've got to keep the entire law completely fully and perfectly and as stumble as james says in one point is to be a lawbreaker and so that when we're called by god and saved and born again we're called by god for the purpose of being free and it's free from lawkeeping as a means of salvation law as a means of being right with god we're no longer under law as a system of salvation in adam we're now free from that law in that sense now we're under grace and by god's grace is a free gift of his mercy we're righteous in god's sight by christ in christ and so free from the law means law as a means of salvation certainly laws of as a an indicator of condemnation or judgment but also as a means of salvation now these galatians were troubled the judicizers had come in and were troubling them disturbing them but god didn't call them to be troubled or disturbed by that if you're a christian and think about it this way if you're a christian you're a disciple of christ and you i mean you're here just like these galatians paul is calling you a brother and you're trying to live the christian life and you slip into a performance-based trust or a performance-based way of thinking focusing on your works introspection as a means to to establish a basis by which you're right with god how free you christian how free do you feel in that situation do you feel like that's bondage i certainly did when i fell into that and went through that it felt like slavery to me it didn't feel like freedom there was no joy in that that was troubling to me it was disturbing me and maybe you felt in the same way maybe you've been in that boat before and you know exactly what i'm talking about and so here the same thing these judicizers are coming in they're disturbing they're troubling these galatians and what they're troubling them with is exactly that you know going back to look at your performance going back to look at your work and it says even then that the galatians desired to go back to the law that's just something about our flesh that is rails against the truth in christ that we're free and have liberty in christ because of faith in him i don't understand it we're not simply going to understand our wicked hearts but that's the truth of the matter christians can really struggle with this but it's interesting here that it also says you don't see it in the new king james as well but for you brethren have been called for the purpose of liberty but it also is you were called there that word is passive passive meaning that it was god this one that did the calling you didn't come to christ on your own out of your wicked flesh out of that kind of mindset you're under law in adam you didn't come to christ on your own god called you out of that and his god by his calling that gave you as a free gift the liberty that we have in christ this is god calling so imagine the burden that you felt prior to salvation of trying to be right with god based on your obedience if you're a christian and you've been here for a while maybe you've fallen in that sin like we've talked about imagine the burden the bondage of trying to be right based on your obedience if i do these things we've said it many times if i do these things i'm good i'm right with god i'm okay i'm not that bad he's not that mad but if i don't do them well then for me there's hell to pay you feel like you're under condemnation under judgment that is it's bondage to what we've been talking about it's bondage to performance based right standing with god human effort human achievement and believers if you're a genuine believer you have and we need to live in this truth you have it is yours based in the finished work of christ you have freedom from the curse of the law because of the cross of christ because of the cross and that's why that's why the cross is the central symbol if you will of christianity that's why the christian life is lived by faith in christ under the shadow of the finished work of christ on the cross that's why that is so important to us we've got to live in that reality all the time and to the degree that you notice yourself straying from that you've got to put the bumpers on and get yourself back in the right direction in the right path we just cannot slip into that ditch but here verse 13 you brethren have been called to liberty and then he goes on and clarifies that only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh and here comes the warning for the other ditch this liberty cannot be polluted by your flesh we coming out from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his ear son out from under our father the devil carry with us still this body of death we were going through romans we saw that and paul struggling with the body of death and just wanting desperately to be free from that uh willing i'm sure to cut off whatever you had to cut off to get rid of it just wanting to be free from the body of death this liberty that we have in christ can't be polluted by the flesh and what paul's talking about here is that our flesh is our old identity in adam it's the old death that we carry around that is still warring with our mind and the law of god still warring against the spirit it's that thing that we want to put to death and so you can't allow the liberty that you have in christ the liberty to serve him the liberty to act in accord with your new nature and be pleasing to christ by loving others and obeying him you can't allow that to be polluted by your flesh and say because of the liberty that i have in christ i can do what i want to do over here or that well because i'm forgiven i can do this i just need to ask for forgiveness after or i can live this way and somehow it's okay and gonna work because hey i'm a christian and so you make provision for the flesh or you excuse the desires of the flesh or you live with your little pet sins cultivating some aspect of your flesh maybe you live with bitterness maybe you live with anger maybe you just live with unchecked pride unchecked lust whatever it is your liberty in christ isn't to be polluted with the flesh you don't give opportunity for the flesh with the liberty that you have in christ and that's what paul is warning against here sometimes it's easy to fall into a trap of thinking that because i'm a christian well then this is okay or to excuse yourself for gratifying the old flesh and atom and we saw the scripture this morning that christ redeemed you not with baseless things like gold and silver that he redeemed you with the precious blood of christ and so it's not that we are to allow in any way the flesh to corrupt or to pollute the liberty that we have in christ we're not in adam any longer and so outside of adam apart from adam now in christ we need to live by faith in christ we need to live for him so is living in the flesh possible for christian yeah right i mean you can give in to your flesh and we see christian struggling without all the time paul struggled that's what roman seven was talking about you have to contend with the flesh but living that way puts you back in bondage it's as paul said in romans you are slaves to the one whom you obey whether of sin leading to death or of righteousness uh your slaves of god and so you're going to have heard this analogy used before that it's like you have two fighting dogs inside of you and the dog that wins is the one that you feed and if you are a believer you can get yourself into a pattern where you're feeding the wrong dog you need to starve that guy and stuff the other one and it's literally it's it's that kind of practical thinking i want to absolutely starve this filthy wretched beast over here and i want to stuff as full as i can get this one over here if you're a christian you're going to stuff the right one and in sometimes you have to think about that practically if you think about in your life where you have difficulty with the flesh corrupting your liberty in christ or the flesh corrupting your standing with christ by faith difficulty that you have with overcoming sin you need to think through carefully how do i starve that ugly dog and you need to think about how you can stuff the other one um one of the great blessings that uh soon realized uh being able to go into full-time ministry was that it's full-time ministry i mean i praise the lord i mean it's just such a i mean that's been a that's been a blessing i get to you know stuff that dog all the time um so i'm thankful for that we still have wicked the flesh is how easy it is to to raise up and and you know feed and so you got to take practical measures to deal with that in reality if you work a full-time job 40 hours a week 50 hours a week and you are consumed in that work working heartily as unto the lord you can consume yourself working heartily as unto the lord in such a way that you give no opportunity for the flesh and just like a guy in full-time ministry or anywhere else you can you can starve that dog if you notice that there are things that give you difficulty whether it's movies music i mean whatever it is that folks view as christian liberty if that's giving you trouble then starve that dog and feed the other one feeding the other one entails just pouring yourself into scripture uh spending time with christ in scripture and in prayer uh it's stuffing that dog makes sense and that's what that's the antidote like we talked about this morning that's the antidote to living the straight and narrow between legalism and license we've got to starve the dog the wrong dog feed the other one freedom does not mean license to live any other way your freedom in christ gives you think about it this way gives you the ability to do that before you had no ability to do that at all you simply only had the ability to feed the wrong dog everything that you did was in just rabid running with the wrong dog but in christ you have by the spirit's power by god's enablement with the new heart that you have in christ you have the ability to feed the right one uh you have the ability to live by faith because you have faith god has given you faith you have the ability to put off sinful habits and put on good ones you have the ability to simply i'm not gonna have that direction i'm gonna live for christ over here and it's by faith in christ that we have that ability to do that so um freedom doesn't mean license if you're a christian any longer freedom real freedom is being able to do that is being able to say i'm gonna serve the lord i'm gonna live for christ i'm gonna worship him i'm gonna put off my sin and i'm gonna live a holy life for him because i've been redeemed with a precious blood of christ that's real freedom right but then lastly here in verse 13 if he finishes up the statement by saying don't use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh and in contrast through love serve one another literally now that statement again literally says but becomes slaves of one another through love sort of an unfortunate rendering there through love sort serve one another just doesn't quite have the teeth that it has the original language but become slaves of one another through love now that sounds completely contradictory what do you mean slaves we're talking about christian liberty here so what is where does slavery come into this and why does he use that word slave the freedom that we have in christ again to sort of clarify it and to continue defining it based on what paul saying here is not toward selfishness self will self indulgence it doesn't have any self ambition to it at all it's simply not selfish not self-involved we're have the freedom have the liberty in christ and the power in christ by his spirit to deny self not feed self and so this freedom is not toward selfishness and here the freedom that we have in christ manifests itself as slavery to one another it's a paradox he's using paradoxical language here our human definition again is that freedom is sort of an open door to do what we want to do to live for ourselves to fulfill our natural desires but our subjection even if it's willing our willing subjection even to those natural desires isn't freedom at all that's slavery so true freedom liberates you from slavery to your own selfish desires your own selfish lusts and it frees you then to give you joy in serving others and we have the word slavery that's laden down with all kinds of awful connotations and it's justifiably so but here that slave to serve another we talked about that with romans that you are slaves the one whom you obey we're to be slaves of righteousness slaves to god here slaves to serve one another and the reason that we become enslaved in that sense to serve one another is because the freedom that we have in christ has changed our natural desires and now our natural desires are such that that's all we want to do i want to serve christ i want to love my brothers i want to live the christian life i want to be a godly man i want to be a want to be a godly woman godly wife godly husband godly child because that's in accord with the nature that god's given you and again that manifests itself in such a way that it's such a consuming aspect of your thinking a consuming way that you live your life as a christian that it looks like slavery and you think about it when you were lost and in your sin man you looked like you were enslaved to your sin in your speech truth be known if you just displayed all of your thoughts on a billboard above your head all the desires of your heart all the things that you said all the things that you thought all the things that you actually went through with and did all of those things displayed openly you're obviously obviously a complete slave to your flesh you know completely and totally in bondage no other way to say it you're just depraved but in christ because again it goes back to the heart because god has changed your heart transformed who you are from the inside out and the desires of your heart the desires of your mind are to please please god please christ to love one another you love his word you want to get rid of sin a sin is pleasurable for a season so you struggle with that in the flesh but that is the law of your flesh warring against the law of your mind the law of your mind agrees wholeheartedly that the law of god is wholly just and good but we see another law in our members warring against the law of our mind so this freedom here is is joy in fulfillment in serving others here specifically related to serving others in verse 13 and think of israel just as an as an analogy god takes them out of bondage in e in egypt and he puts them in the wilderness frees them from bondage in egypt to serve him in the wilderness they were to be in essence slaves of god based on the new freedom that god had given them from bondage in egypt our redemption our salvation frees us to pursue holiness frees us to pursue that kind of life and it's easy to get mixed up with that but it's such a consuming part of your new nature a part of who you now are in christ that it looks like slavery to those things slavery to joy boy if you're going to be enslaved to something it's nice to be enjoyed you know enslaved to joy enslaved to hope enslaved to christ well amen i shackle me to christ for the rest of eternity and i will be blissfully joyful blissfully happy it's just that's that's the the joyous wonderful glorious slavery of the christian and it is awesome and so it's just uh you have to sometimes peel away some of that bad connotation to the word when we think about it in terms of our liberty in christ but it is great great liberty in the sense that it enslaves us to our to fulfilling the desires of our heart doesn't the bible say that when you as a christian that god will give you the desires of your heart ask of him and he'll give you the desires of your heart it's because your desires as a christian line up with his desires and that as a christian you want for his desires far more than you'd ever want for your own and so that's real freedom then he goes on now in verse 14 let's read that together for all the law is fulfilled in one word even in this you shall love your neighbor as yourself so it's fitting if you think about it now it's fitting for the christian isn't it that the law or the liberty that christians enjoy expresses itself in love for one another in service to one another and it's fitting that paul here says that that's a fulfillment of the old testament law now you think to yourself okay wait a minute again this sounds like another paradox paul's been talking about how we're free from the law there doesn't need to be any fulfilling of the law so why now are we saying that in christ we have this freedom and all of a sudden this law needs to be fulfilled in loving service to others we're talking about fulfilling the law again and there's a an apparent paradox here let's take a look at it look at chapter five verse three chapter five verse three and paul here says and i testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law so he says to the galatians listen you try to keep one of these you put yourself in a position of thinking that you're going to have some kind of right standing by even keeping one law you put yourself under the curse of the entire law and you have to keep the whole thing so the now here in verse 14 he's saying you need to serve one another through love and that in doing that all the law is fulfilled boy is he speaking in contradictory terms here is he saying in one side of his mouth you can't keep one law because you have to be cursed by keeping it all and then here in verse 14 it seems to go back on that and say well you know keep this one you need to love one another and in loving one another you fulfill the law but look at the difference here in this contrast paul is talking about fulfilling the law when he's been saying all along that we're free from it but here's the contrast in verse three look at verse three it focuses on the debtor i testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law verse 14 focuses on freedom freedom from law freedom in christ verse three doing the whole law is a burden you're a debtor to keep the whole law in other words you mess up you step out of line one time and you're done your toast verse 14 fulfilling the law is freedom that we're free in christ and as a result of our freedom in christ we love and serve one another and in loving and serve one another we fulfill the law of christ that's freedom verse three focuses on doing if you do become circumcised then you're a debtor to do the whole law where in verse 14 it's focused completely on the fact that the law is fulfilled it's already fulfilled and it's fulfilled in christ doing law think about it this way doing law is required for justification if you're outside of christ and you're obligated to keep it and you're obligated to keep all of it it's unattainable you can't do it fulfilling the law fulfilling the law is a consequence of your justification that when you get saved the law for you is fulfilled by christ and then in your practical outworking of the new heart that you've been giving given you're fulfilling the law by the work of the spirit in your life when you become a christian you begin really and practically fulfilling the law of god based on the spirit's work in you when you stand before god one day he doesn't look at you and say wow well you've really lived for me you've really done well and all your keeping of the law no he looks at you he sees the work of the spirit in you and says well done good and faithful servant and it's all on the basis of christ his finished work and the sanctifying empowering work of the spirit in you that's freedom again that's freedom in verse three we have judgment and in verse 14 we have liberty to serve now here in verse 14 he's quoting leviticus 1918 it's also stated in romans 138 where paul says oh no one anything except to love one another for he who loves another has fulfilled the law now real quickly turn to matthew 22 matthew 22 now paul saying here that if you love one another you have fulfilled the law if you turn to matthew 22 look down at verse 34 and see what it says here this is going to be christ speaking 22 34 but when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees they gathered together then one of them a lawyer asked him a question testing him and saying teacher which is the great commandment in the law jesus said to him well you should love one another oh he didn't say that he says jesus said to him you shall love the lord your god with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind this is the first and great commandment and the second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself on these two commandments hang all the law on the prophets so here is is paul somehow contradicting christ no he's not contradicting christ at all scripture is never ever ever contradictory it's always complementary it always harmonizes together love for god here's the teaching throughout scripture a love for god expresses itself demonstrates itself manifests itself in a love for others that's the way it's always been that's why it's fitting for a christian that as a result of our new nature as a result of the freedom and the liberty that we have in christ that that expresses itself in a love for one another and that's not why the bible says listen if you don't love your brother you don't love me christ says god says it's a love for god always manifests itself in a love for one another john 13 34 and 35 says a new commandment i give to you that you love one another as i have loved you that you also love one another by this all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another if you're a disciple of christ if you love christ love god you want to serve him then that's going to be demonstrated by the fact that you have love for one another no love for one another no service for one another no becoming a slave to one another through love as verse 13 says then you don't love god there's simply no love for god in your heart they say god says christ says that by this all will know that you're my disciples if you have love for one another and notice here how the text in verse 14 just assumes that we love ourselves right it's uh verse 14 for the law is fulfilled in in one word even this you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself it's just that's an assumption we have no trouble with that whatsoever that's why you know this the idea of a gospel of self-esteem is just are you kidding me that's what the world needs is self-esteem yeah no it's like we've got that up to our eyeballs we don't need any we need that to be gouged out we need somebody to be hammering us all the time to get rid of that pride no here it's we love ourselves there's no problem there at all we need to love others the way that we love ourselves now what that means practically is that in the same way that you would seek for your own interests your own good you seek for their own interests their own good and others you look for proactively look for opportunities to do that for your brother for your sister you don't wait to be clubbed over the head with a need or the 13th email to come before he's okay well i'll contribute something you know you look for opportunity to seek for your brother's interests seek for your sister's good in the same way that you would seek your own interests and we're to do that for our brothers uh commandments like if you think through this commandments like do not steal do not murder do not commit adultery those commandments are all summarized in loving others if you're committing adultery you're stealing you're whatever you're not loving your brother at all that's hatred that's all summarized in the command to love one another and then ultimately those who are freed from the law that have liberty in christ they're called to liberty they're empowered by the spirit to live of life to live a life of love the love for one another and ultimately as the supreme example or model of that we have christ who gave himself for us and that's our chief model our chief example and so we have very large example to follow we can't possibly ever out love christ but we need to be diligently loving our brothers with that as our example then look now finally in verse 15 verse 15 says but if you bite and here's by contrast if you bite and devour one another beware lest you be consumed by one another your liberty that you have in christ your christian you've been called a liberty cannot will not in christ by faith in christ ever lead to dissension corals backbiting division discord anger it won't lead to any of that ever all of that will flat tear a church apart and you'll be fighting to to preserve unity preserve peace laboring against that sort of thing and someone professing or proclaiming their christian liberty will say that they have the right to say or do whatever they want that produces that kind of strife and that is no christian liberty at all here in verse 15 if you let yourself into that trap then you'll say what you want to say and you'll cause strife and you'll use your words and you'll cause division you'll cause discord you don't have the liberty in christ ever to do that heard it said this way we're talking about it this afternoon that your liberty often in christ is simply your liberty not to exercise your liberty it's simply to say i'm not going to do that for my brother's sake paul speaking of eating meat offered to idols refrained from exercising his liberty to eat meat for the benefit and for the good of his brother and so if your words if your tongue put you in a situation where there as a result of that will be biting and devouring one another dissension coral division discord disagreements backbiting gossip slander you don't have the liberty ever to do that and that's what paul is warning about here in verse 15 if your actions your words your tongue ever lead to any kind of strife in the body it simply isn't your liberty ever to produce strife in christ's church and that's a pretty clear is it not it's a pretty clear command here from scripture simply not to do it it is grievously destructive and that's why god in scripture hates it so much he's given a several several passages several object lessons and examples in scripture against division against discord and this is a fitting description of it here in verse 15 he's comparing this to to wild animals eating each other that's a fitting description for division in the church wild animals tearing each other apart we have to understand freedom never never opens the door for divisive criticism demonstrations of bitterness or anger or hostility it never opens the door for any kind of exhibition of hatred jealousy envy just simply doesn't ever do it if poisonous language poisonous words poisonous speech is left to go unchecked and simply doesn't get dealt with it'll destroy the church because the tongue is a restless evil and you simply can't control it um you can't you cannot be left unchecked so liberty here in verse 15 obviously it doesn't give free reign to your evil impulses and not evil impulses to gratify your flesh certainly not evil impulses to disregard or ignore your brother and certainly never evil impulses to so discord or division with your speech so division in the church this liberty gives you if you think about it this way your liberty in christ in accord with your new heart gives you liberty to restrain it and before christ you wouldn't have you know think about it i was in business and in the corporate world this stuff happens all the time it is constant it's completely the norm and it's sort of odd if it doesn't happen you just expect it from people you expect that people are going to lie people are going to cheat that people are out for themselves they're going to trample over anybody they can to climb up the corporate ladder and to use everyone they can on the way up that's just the way the world is but that's not the church that's not the church the church made up of the regenerate body of christ you have the freedom in christ based on the supernatural empowerment enablement of the holy spirit with your new nature your new heart to restrain that kind of wickedness and that's why there there just simply is no place in the church for it at all it has to be gouged out and here you know paul levels of warning for them beware of this lest you be consumed by one another don't allow it and so again paul with these three verses here power pack little verses drawing a contrast between the two ditches don't fall into the one stay out of that one and he's laboring to keep them out of that one but in your process of getting at that one don't over correct and put yourself in the other one you got to stay out of that ditch too human beings you're created by god you're his you belong to him you're truly free when you are liberated from your natural desires you're truly free when you're not giving in to yourself but here is manifested in in glations 5 13 and 14 15 you're truly free and that's demonstrated when you're loving others when your freedom expresses itself in love and care for one another and then that love and care for one another you're not expressing division discord hatred bitterness backbiting gossip slander with your brother that you're protecting one another from that and so ultimately if you think about it this way ultimate freedom ultimate freedom complete freedom comes from ultimate and complete submission to god complete freedom in christ comes from complete slavery to christ isn't that an awesome thought now think about it why is that i mean what is the thing right i mean this question has been posed before if you could right now no anesthetic he's already raising his hand now you lay yourself on the table you crack your ribs open and you take out the tar ball of sin that you can have you have in your chest and you can be free from that for all eternity from now on you just got to go through the messy procedure with no anesthetic how many would you take that deal yeah i would take that deal that's that's the desire of the heart of a disciple to be free to be free free to serve the lord to be a godly man to be a godly woman free from this body of death that's true freedom you've been called you've been called to that kind of freedom you've been called if you've been called by god you've been called to that liberty when it is coming if you persevere to the end and are eventually glorified in christ and you are truly free and so the ultimate the ultimate perfect submission to god is the only ultimate and perfect freedom um our deepest desires are realized when we do god's will that's true of the christian your deepest desires are realized when you do god's will and so then submission to your own selfish desires is terrible bondage it's weak wicked slavery and so we have to be careful and thinking about these two ditches staying out of the ditch of legalism but we have to be careful not to enslave ourselves by emphasizing our freedom don't enslave yourself by emphasizing your freedom that is done in several different ways one is going to movies that you can't handle just by way of example you determine that for yourself not going to be legalistic about that at all you determine that for yourself but if you can't handle it don't do it it's you enslave yourself to liberties that you can't handle putting yourself in situations that lead to sin for you don't put yourself in those situations you have the freedom you have the liberty to exercise restraint and to keep yourself from that again through faith in christ and help with the holy spirit so don't allow freedom then to become a platform for your flesh here's freedom some practical ways in the christian life to think about this you're free in christ to ask yourself how can i serve my wife and make her stronger in the lord ladies in what ways can i support and affirm my husband to strengthen him how can i serve others in the body of christ and be proactive be intentional about it what would the lord have me to do that's a big question we have the freedom in christ the liberty in christ to ask that question and to follow through on an answer in what ways can i be a better or more consistent witness for christ now if you're thinking to yourself you're sitting here and you listen to that and you think to yourself wow that then that doesn't sound like freedom at all that sounds like slavery you know that sounds like bondage having to do all that stuff we're starting off a long you know series here talking about heart attitudes and and having the right heart and how the right heart leads to right action and so if you hear that and you say that doesn't sound like freedom that doesn't sound like liberty that sounds like bondage to me then you don't have the right heart you don't have a heart that's been transformed you just haven't been saved and that's what we need that's the greatest need of every single person outside of christ is to have a transformed heart from christ a new heart within us his spirit within us that wants to love and serve him wants to please our lord wants to live for him wants to turn from sin we need a new heart if that sounds like bondage then you don't understand what true freedom is and that true freedom is only understood in christ and the only way that you have true freedom listen if you're outside of christ then you're living in terrible awful bondage to sin with a terrible awful oppression of judgment hanging over your head so the only true freedom that you'll ever know the only true freedom that's ever possible only true liberty that you have is the call to liberty that you have from god in christ to live for him and in that you've got to repent you've got to turn from sin and with all your heart soul mind and strength turn to living wholeheartedly for christ putting your faith and trust alone in him to rescue you from that bondage and he will he is long suffering patient not willing that any should perish but desiring that all should come to repentance and so turn to christ and repent of sin if you're a disciple here and you've fallen in that trap of greeting it out in your own effort living according to your own flesh trying to be right with god by your own works by your own performance then pull your car out of that ditch and put yourself back on the path of looking to christ and living for him there is a truth in scripture to warnings against apostasy warnings that's what paul's been doing here with the galatians warning them don't go down this path and so you've got to heed those warnings yourself i have to heed those myself and we have to stay with our eyes focused on christ trusting in the finished work of christ alone for our salvation living by faith in him so that we can turn from sin otherwise you simply can't we in our flesh don't have the liberty to do anything but sin but in christ we've been called to liberty to live for him let's pray father in heaven i thank you for this text of scripture and thank you for your infinite wisdom ward in this amazing salvation this plan of redemption or that you've put together is just absolutely stunning and it's simplicity and it's beauty god and it's just expression of your love grace and mercy to lost wicked sinners i thank you for the liberty that you've given us in christ and thank you lord for the exhortation god the reminder the or the enablement by your spirit the faith that we have in christ to to persevere in the truth and not to wind up lord in one of these two ditches that can can damn our soul i thank you for your word and thank you for this time together for your namesake god for your glory in jesus name amen