Preached in Markham Baptist Church, February 26, 2006

A.W. Tozer has said that real Christians are a bit odd.  Think about it.  A real Christian is one who empties herself in order to be full, admits she is wrong so she can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when she is weakest and richest when she is poorest.  She dies so she can live, forsakes in order to have and gives away so she can keep.  And we could add, that a real Christian is further an oddity because she is one who is set free in order to be a servant. 

I’ll admit it sounds a bit strange, but it is part of the glorious truth of the gospel. We have been set free so that we can serve. 

This is the truth that Scripture teaches in our text today, Galatians 5.  “You are called to be free … so serve one another in love.”

What are some ways we can serve one another? 

What are some ways that you have been served by another Christian?

Are there times when you have found it difficult/easy to serve?

Sometimes the very difficulty we have in serving one another is our failure to realize that we are free to serve one another.  We sometimes fall under the law of “I have to.”  Do you know this law?  It goes like this:

“I have to serve - because no one else will.  I have to serve - what will God think if I don’t. I have to serve - I’m a Christian.  I have to serve - it’s what God has ordered.”

Like children commanded to clean our rooms, we may serve but we don’t like it and we won’t do it again when the opportunity arises because it is a burden and a chore.  The law of, “I have to.”

And what we need to realize is that we are free to serve.  It makes all the difference.  This morning I want to show you how it makes a difference, and I hope that as we study this great text you will discover a freshness to serve one another and a new lasting motivation.

Now the Galatians are living under the law of “I have to.”  In fact, that is the very reason why Paul writes to the Galatian Christians.  He wants to remind them of the freedom they have in Christ.  So we have at the very beginning of chapter 5 that great sentence, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”  Christ has set us free so that we can be free. 

Now we need to know in our heart and mind that we have been set free.  We are free from sin’s curse. We celebrate that often, but we are also set free from the law that says “you have to”.  Do you know that before you placed your faith in Christ you were held prisoner to the law?  It’s true.  This is what Scripture says in 3:23 “Before this faith came, we were held prisoner by the law.”

But when Christ came, we were set free from the law and we are now under grace, that is, His unmerited favour.  We are free from trying to win God’s favour by doing all the right things. We no longer need to keep the law in order to win God’s favour - we have God’s favour through faith in the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

Now the problem for the Galatians and for many Christians today is that they have forgotten that they had been set free and they begin thinking that something else is needed in order for them to live lives pleasing to God.  Now at this point I need two volunteers.

These two people represent two Christians who realize that Christ has set them free from sin and the law.

They are resting in the unmerited favor of Jesus Christ.  Trusting Him. This one here loves to sing the song, “In Christ alone my hope is found, he is my light, my strength, my song.”  OR “On Christ, the solid Rock I stand All other ground is sinking sand.”

This person sings it too, but he gets to thinking that it’s too easy.  He needs something else.  He just cannot believe that it is Christ alone who saves and gives new life and enables us to live the Christian life something else is needed.

So he says to himself I’ll live by the law. I’ll have the sacrifice of Christ and the law.  This is what the Galatian Christians think so that Paul has to warn them:“Stand firm, then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

So the law is compared again to slavery.  So, if my Galatian Christian would come forward, I am going to put these thumb cuffs on you.  Are you free?  No!  You are a living picture of what it means to be live under the law.  You are now a slave to the “I have to” law.  So our text continues in verses 2-4: “Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.  Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.  You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.”

If you live by the law, Christ is of no value to you. If you are saved by Christ AND something else, then why was the cross needed?  If you depend on something else beside Christ, then you negate the work of Christ, and have turned your back on grace.

When you live by the law – it is a law of the “I have to.”  Now you may say, Am I ever glad that I don’t try to win God’s favour by keeping the law of the Old Testament.  And I want you to ask yourself – don’t you?  It may not be the law of the Old Testament, it may the law of your own making.  Maybe you think you have to go to worship in order to win God’s favour.  Maybe you think you have to celebrate communion to win God’s favour. Maybe it’s going to Sunday School, or wearing a tie to worship, or maybe it’s behaving a certain way.  All those things may be fine, but if your relationship with God is based on Christ AND something else then you have fallen into the law of “I have to.” 

This is what Paul means in verse 6 where he says, “In Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.  The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

If you feel you have to have the perfect marriage, if you feel you have to have the perfect children in order to have God’s favour then you fallen into the law of  “I have to” – and you have turned your back on the good news that you are saved by Christ alone, and enabled to live the Christian life by Christ alone.

And after a while if you try to live the Christian life – if you try to encourage one another, if you try to serve one another, if you try to love one another, if you try to share the gospel with another because you have to – you will wear out, your Christianity will have no life, no vim, no vigour -it becomes an obligation that just will not be able to carry through a lifetime.

Besides all that - you’ll fail.  The text says, at verse 3 if you try to win God’s favour by keeping one part of the law you have to keep the whole thing.  We need to understand that when we live under the law we have two choices – to meet it or to not meet it.  We try to meet it and then discover that can’t.  So then we say we can’t meet it and fall into guilt.  And we end up in a Romans 7 position – “The good that I want to do I don’t do and what I hate, I do.” (Romans 7:15)

So do you see how the law holds us prisoner.  Defeated, unable to do the good, held down. And to seek to keep the law is turning our back on God’s grace (verse 4) and negates the work that Christ did for us on the cross.

The law of “I have to”, just will not do for the Christian. Our faith must rest on Christ alone.  So we unlock the thumb cuffs and you are free.

Now we still have our man over here – he is the picture of verse 5 and 6 – But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.  For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.  (that is any law that we try to keep)  The only thing that counts is faith (in Christ and his sacrifice) expressing itself through love.

The Christian life is not simply staying away from what is wrong and not doing what is wrong. Sometimes when Spiritual victory is talked about in the Christian life it is talked about the devil attacking me and trying to get me to do things that are wrong.  Therefore victory in the Christian life is not doing those things that are wrong.  That’s only half the story.  Victory in the Christian life is not just the ability to not do what is wrong, it is the ability to do what is right.  It is positive.

This is why Paul says in verse 6 that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.  The only thing that counts if faith expressing itself through love.  That is a faith that is firmly rooted in Christ and demonstrated in loving service to others. 

In verses 7 – 12 Paul speaks of those who have deceived the Galatian Christians and tells them that it not the gospel he preaches.  And at verse 12 his love for the Galatian Christians is so strong that he wishes that those who have deceived the Galatians would go and emasculate themselves.  This is an expression of Paul’s love for Galatian Christians that he wants to protect them from anyone who would draw them away from life in Christ.  Jesus said something similar in Luke 17:2 speaking of those who cause others to sin: “It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.”

It’s exactly what Paul is saying - wishing that they would go jump in the lake because they are causing the Galatian Christians to walk away from the truth.  Their deception is like a little yeast that works through the whole batch of dough and ruins everything. (verse 9)

And at verse 13 the Holy Spirit picks up the theme of freedom again and says, “You my brothers were called to be free.”

You no longer are under the law of the I have to, we have been set free.  We are no longer under the law of I have to – but we are now able to say I want to. 

Now, there were some who were saying, If I am free then I will do whatever I want, I will sleep with as many women I like, I will not show up to worship, I will steal, I will gossip, after all I am under grace so then I will do what I want, God will forgive me.

And Paul says you don’t understand grace.  And he continues in verse 13 - “But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather serve one another in love.”

What Paul is saying, and even more fully in Romans 6, is that we when we taste God’s love and His grace then we will want to serve Him.  We don’t have to, but we get to, we are able to.  I hope you have noticed this theme in my preaching during these past five weeks.  I have asked you to be praying the prayer of Ephesians 1:17-18 for one another.  “I pray that God will give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation that you may know Him better.”  For it is when that happens that our worship is enlivened. It is when that happens that we are able to serve one another because we know the one who has served us by dying for us. 

If there is a verse or a chapter that is most precious to me it is John 13.  In that chapter Jesus, the King of Kings, takes a towel and wraps it around his waist.  He bends down and takes the job that was reserved for servants. And He goes to every one of those disciples and He washes their feet. 

And this is our picture of service.  He doesn’t serve because He has to, but out of love.

This is how we break out of the law of “I have to”.  As we taste His grace, as we rest on Him alone. We are able to serve one another because we have been served by Christ.

And this is how we are to serve.  When we are free from the law we don’t need to win anyone’s favour. We are free to serve with love with no thought about our standing with God, that’s been settled.  We do not need to say, “Well, I can’t serve him or her. What will God think?”

God loves you - that’s been settled, so go ahead and serve one another with abandon.

O, how we are to have regard for one another.  So many times we fail to realize the pain and the anguish that is here on a Sunday morning and so many times you have the gift, the word, the skill that can serve another and bring them to a place of healing.  If only we could take in the regard that God took for each of us. Of all the people in the world, of all the masses of humans, Jesus Christ stepped out of heaven and died for you. He took time for you - He has served you.  And as we taste that we are able to serve others.

The text continues – far better than living by the law – which is summed up, Paul says, at verse 14, in a single command: “love your neighbour as yourself.  If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.”

Far better than living by the law, is to live by the Spirit.  To live under His control.  It is as we give ourselves to the Spirit that we will not gratify those desires of the sinful nature. 

So serve one another in love – do you grow tired of serving others?  Ask yourself, am I living under the law or under the control of the Spirit.  Then allow yourself to see again how Christ has served you.  And then you will no longer say I have to serve, but you will say, I want to serve, and I am able to serve.

Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - February 2006

[Home] [Coming Up] [Programs] [Sermons] [About Us] [Contact Us]