Galatians
5:1, 13-25
1 For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not
submit again to a yoke of slavery…
13 For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not
use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become
slaves to one another. 14 For the whole law is summed up in a single
commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 15 If,
however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed
by one another. 16 Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of
the flesh. 17 For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the
Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to
prevent you from doing what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you
are not subject to the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious:
fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife,
jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, 21 envy, drunkenness,
carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before:
those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 By contrast,
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such
things. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with
its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by
the Spirit.
A man, a scribe, a lawyer, an expert in the Scriptures,
once approached Jesus with a question. He had apparently heard some of Jesus’
teachings and felt like he was the guy to talk to, so he strolled up to Jesus
and asked, “Alright rabbi, you seem pretty sharp on all this stuff, so I want
to ask you: what’s the most important—the greatest—commandment?” I suppose he
likely had one in mind, perhaps “do not covet your neighbor’s donkey,” or “do
not kill,” or “you shall have no other God’s before me (God)…remember the
Sabbath, keep it holy.” That’s usually how it goes with a loaded question: the
one asking it already has a prepared answer and they are simply waiting to see
if they get the response they’re after.
In one version of the story, Jesus turns the question
back on the lawyer and asks him, “Well, do you know what the Scriptures say?”
and the man says, “God is one; love God with all you’ve got.” In other versions
of the story, Jesus replies to the man’s question and says, “The first
commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength—AND
the second is just like it: love your neighbor as yourself. On these hang all
of the law and the prophets.”
It’s a pretty straightforward answer, but I have a
feeling I know what happened after Jesus gave such an answer. It’s like a
conversation I had a few weeks ago. A friend asked me: “Chris, what do you
think would happen if Jesus just showed up in our Sunday School class one day
and just laid it all out there, told us exactly how to live, how to behave; I
mean, if he just showed up and said, ‘this is how it is’ and disappeared? What
do you think would happen?” I told him: “I know exactly what would happen.
Right after Jesus disappeared, there’d be a brief, awkward silence, maybe the
rustling of the onion-skin pages of someone’s bible, and then someone would
probably say, ‘Alright. Now this is what he really
meant…’” I don’t doubt that there were people in the crowd following Jesus who,
after hearing his response about the greatest commandment, would have said, “Now
this is what he really meant…”
We do that, you know? We do. When the teachings of Jesus
are pretty plain, when he lays it all out there in black and white, when we
hear it like a refrain running throughout the Scriptures, we feel like we’ve
got to clarify it, like we’ve got to bend and mold it to fit our understanding,
our comfort level, our preconceived notions of what it means to be right. Rather
than allowing the words of Christ and the leading of the Holy Spirit to change
us, to free us from the bondage of such notions as “you’ve got to do right to
be right,” we’d rather search the words of the Bible, looking for a list of
rules, a full description of what it means to be a “good Christian,” and then
we hold ourselves and others hostage under such rules. We say things like, “The
Bible says…” hoping to find some justification in our apparent need for such
love-limiting laws, but the truth is we’re just not at all comfortable with the
notion that it’s just that simple, that there isn’t some list of “dos and
don’ts,” that the love of God is unconditional and unrestricted. It just makes
us squirm with discomfort, because it leaves too many loose ends.
I think those
who call themselves Christ-followers have had that problem, really, from the
very beginning. Maybe it’s a suspicion hardwired into the reptilian parts of
our brains that makes it hard to believe when something is too good to be true.
Maybe it’s unconfessed guilt—the feeling that we’re not good enough, we don’t
deserve the love of God—that causes us to want clearly defined rules, thickly
drawn lines. Maybe it’s the realization that if the whole of who God is, who
Christ calls us to be, is love—unconditional, unrestricted love—then that means
we have to love those we don’t like, those who are different from us, those who
we may say the Bible otherwise calls unworthy. Maybe it’s some combination of
these things that leads us to lists of rules rather than love.
I have a feeling
that was what drove the group of Paul’s opponents in Galatia (we talked about
them last week), those who believed that it was important for one to be a “good
Jew” in order to be a “good Christian,” that men had to be circumcised, that
dietary laws had to be followed, that ritualistic rules regarding the Sabbath
had to be observed. I don’t doubt that part of what drove such a group was the
need to have a list of rules, a clearly defined prescription for “good,
Christian people,” and what better place to find such rules than the Scriptures
and the customs derived from them.
Paul, however, sees the need for
such lists and prescriptions as slavery. He says to folks there in Galatia: “For freedom Christ has set
us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. For
you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters…” These aren’t just nice,
Bible-sounding words. In the verses that follow, Paul argues against the
prescribed necessity of circumcision, against the notion that one has to submit
to the laws, traditions, and customs derived from the Hebrew Scriptures (our
Old Testament) in order to be a follower of Jesus. Then, in the rest of our
text this morning, Paul reminds the Galatians (and his opponents there) of
Jesus’ words about the commandments. While they were fretting over following
the law to the letter, of crossing every “t” and dotting every “i,” Paul
reminds them of what Christ said about the law: “For the whole law is summed up
in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’” to
which I am sure some folks muttered under their breath, or passed noted to one
another that said “what that really
means is…”
You see, for Paul
(and I would argue, Jesus) this “greatest commandment” of loving God and
neighbor isn’t simply some excuse to do whatever you want, some nullification of
definition when it comes to following Jesus. On the contrary, I believe it’s a
pretty radical, transformative, life-giving ethic. I believe it’s actually a
call to an even higher way of living. Paul lays out a rather detailed
description of such Christ-like living in verses
15 through 23 as he contrasts the “works of the flesh” with the “fruit of
the Spirit,” and then in the second half of verse 23 through verse 25 Paul says, “There is no law against such
things [that is, the fruit of the Spirit]. And those who belong to Christ Jesus
have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the
Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” In other words, if we are
done living by the fleshly desires that cause us to harm ourselves and others,
if we are done drawing lines around ourselves and others based upon such “works
of the flesh,” then we ought to be guided by the same Spirit that reminds us
time and time again that the greatest commandment is to love God and each
other.
But we like those lists; in fact, some may even be
tempted to take these words from Paul and write a new list. In verses 19-21, Paul says, “Now
the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness,
idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions,
factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning
you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the
kingdom of God.” There is a temptation to take this list and run with
it, to use it as a checklist, to run down the list of such “works of the flesh”
and right names beside each one, but I hope you’ve noticed what I did. You see,
I may not be a sorcerer or a drunk or carouser or some of these other things on
this “list,” but I get jealous. I’ve been angry. I’m not even sure how Paul
would define “impurity,” but I can put a check by that one too. In fact, if I
had to test myself against this list, I’m sure I’d fail.
Well, let’s not dwell on the bad stuff, right? What about
the “fruit of the Spirit”? We sing children’s songs about such things, so
surely that’ll play out better for me, right? Let’s see: “By contrast, the fruit of the
Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control.” Those all sound nice. Yeah, those make a
better list, a more positive way to discern if someone is “in.” But hold on; if
I go down this list checking off boxes for myself I am afraid I’ll only be
disappointed again. Love: sure, I love those folks who I find worthy of my
love, those folks I find easy to love, those who don’t cause me trouble, but
those who I don’t like, those who seek to do me harm, those who are my enemies,
my opponents, my constant source of frustration…uh oh…Joy? Well, only when the
situation calls for it, right? Peace? Sure, at Christmas time. Patience? Ask my
wife about my patience when we’re getting ready to go somewhere and we still
haven’t gotten Kohl dressed. Kindness? Ask someone I’ve been short to when I’ve
had a rough morning…oh boy…Generosity? Ask the people I drive past on the
highway without stopping if I’m generous, or the people whose homes have busted
windows and trash in the yard on my way home…ask them. Gentleness? Maybe, if
I’m not too frustrated. Self-control? Look at me. Do I look like someone with
self-control, especially around peanut butter or ice cream? Here I am thinking
this was a better list.
Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe that’s what Paul really means—what Jesus really means—by summing up the
whole of the law this way: "You shall love your neighbor as
yourself." Maybe Paul was on to something when he says we are “called
to freedom” to “become slaves to one another through love.”
Maybe there is an inherit futility in our desire to live by lists, laws, and labels
to bind ourselves up with rules, rituals, and restrictions. Perhaps in our
incessant need clearly define who’s “in” and who’s “out,” who’s right and who’s
wrong, we have forgotten the whole point of this gift we call life. You see, it
is not our place to write the lists, to draw the circles, to say who does or
doesn’t belong, because the truth is we’re likely on someone else’s lists, and,
in the end, such a place belongs to the One who gave his life in the greatest
act of selfless love. In the end, we are not called to the slavery of
self-righteousness, no. In the end, we are called to the selfless enslavement
of loving one another as Christ loves us.
May we be free, then; free to love with limitations, free
to serve others without condition, free to be the people Christ calls us to be,
the people God has created us to be. May we be free in the unending,
all-powerful, eternal, limitless, unconditional love of God. Amen.
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