July 8, 2007 Galatians 5:1, 13-25

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Although I've never done it, I can imagine there's a sense of exhilaration in being able to ride a Harley motorcycle down the highway on a Sunday afternoon with the wind in your hair and the sun at your back. There's something nice about the fact that we can write into the newspaper and complain about our president or governor without worrying about someone coming in and taking your house away. It's a sense of freedom to be able to travel to different parts of the country and be relatively safe - not having to worry about a roadside bomb going off at the local marketplace. We love these freedoms and sing about them. It's something that we enjoy as Americans. We live in the land of the free - and we call it that because we have freedom of speech - freedom of religion. It's a free country - I can do what I want to do.

Yet freedom has certain dangers to it. If we are going to tout freedom as a way of life and brag about the individual rights that we have as Americans - there has to be limits to those freedoms. For instance, it may be permissible according to the law for me to play my music in my car or house as loud as I want. Yet just because I have the "freedom" to do so - does it mean I should - if it is irritating my neighbor? The problem we are now dealing with in America is that everybody wants to demand their own individual rights and freedoms at the expense of the overall good of society and the welfare of the neighbor. Should someone be allowed the "right" to kill himself if he wants to? Should we punish a man who wants to marry two women if they both want to? Isn't it their "right" as consenting adults to do what they want? Or do these individual "rights" have profound results on our society?

Without getting into a huge debate over American history, it would seem that the whole underlying basis for this freedom and the Declaration of Independence had an underlying principle of serving the good of society having responsibility to a Creator. There seemed to be an attempt to have some rule or guide by which to govern these individual "rights" so they wouldn't be thought of or promoted from a completely self centered or man centered perspective. With that view being passed over more and more - America is bound to fall into a pit of individuals fighting tooth and nail over their own individual rights. If people don't think about what they can do for their country as they practice their rights, their country will no longer exist. The point I'm trying to get at is that freedom carries with it responsibility to act in a loving way.

Isn't this somewhat of the same ideal that Paul is trying to get across to the Galatians in today's text? Throughout all of the previous chapters he has been using the Gospel to free them from the idea that they had to somehow be bound up by the Old Testament ceremonial laws. By clearly proclaiming that Christ fulfilled all of the law and covered them in his righteousness - he was trying to set them free from any feelings of inadequacy. But why else was he doing that? Was it so they could go back to living like the rest of the Gentiles were? Of course not. He says. "You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature;" The word that the NIV translates as "indulge" means literally "a place from which a movement or attack is made, a base of operations." That's not the purpose of the Gospel.

The Gospel is Given for True Freedom

I. How does your life measure up?

Don't use the Gospel and the forgiveness that you have or the freedom that you have to just think that you can do anything that YOU want to. Paul says, "rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" The true purpose of the Gospel is free you from yourself. The Son of God has come to completely serve you with His righteousness and holiness. If you are covered in Christ and promised His righteousness - and if you are promised that all things will serve your good - then you are completely freed by that Gospel to serve other people - not yourself. This is how you are to use your freedom.

How can you tell if you are meeting this ideal or not - if you are fulfilling God's purpose for you? Well, it should be obvious. Paul gives some tell tale signs of what you shouldn't be doing. He talks about "biting and devouring each other." If you find yourself constantly cutting down other members of your family, your church or your pastor - you are letting your sinful nature get the best of you and you are not meeting God's ideal for you. He goes on, "The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like." At first reading these things don't even seem worth mentioning. Everybody knows that sexual immorality and witchcraft, hatred, jealousy and drunkenness are wrong. Yet how often do they happen within our own households? Is it a regular occurrence that every year at the 4^th of July party dad will have too much to drink? Do you go to a rated R movie with nudity or hatred in it and not think twice about the impurity that your eyes will be exposed to? Are you constantly provoking your parents to anger - promoting discord in the household? Do you have a fit of rage at someone who cuts in front of you in traffic? Do you carry an ongoing grudge against a co-worker who was promoted at work ahead of you? If you do, then you aren't reaching the potential God has for you.

James tells us to "look intently into the perfect law that gives freedom", not forgetting what you have heard. What we tend to do instead is to look into the mirror and look at what other people have on them - ignoring what is on us. Or if we do have a blemish, we convince ourselves that they are moles instead of zits that cannot be washed or removed. Any blemish that we find is not to be overlooked with the simple excuse, "well, it's a good thing I'm forgiven. I'm only human. Nobody is perfect." No. That is not repentance. That is excuse making. That is using the Gospel as a base of operations from which to sin. In a simple illustration, there is no excuse for a husband to fly off the handle at his wife for simply overcooking some meat, or for a wife to yell at her husband for forgetting to take out the garbage. Do these simple things really warrant such anger? Yet lifetime Christian husbands and wives never stop to carefully examine themselves and look at their obviously unloving behavior. For years on end they constantly cause dissection at work and slander their co-workers without any improvement - not stopping to see that this is not the way Christians are supposed to behave. This is not the way God wants us to use the Gospel.

II. There are dangers to not living in the freedom of the Gospel

We cannot delude ourselves into thinking that there are no dangers in this kind of living. The two warnings of Paul are clear. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. If we, even as Christians - decide to constantly talk behind each other's backs - we will just end up devouring each other. It is not healthy in a Christian congregation for you to go home and complain about the sermon, the playing of the organist, or the dress of a fellow Christian. It is not healthy for a husband and wife to constantly ridicule each other and focus on the faults of the other. It would not end well for our congregation if we were to constantly backbite or complain about each other. A marriage will not end with two people happily ever after when there is biting and devouring. It will end in dissension and destruction.

The second warning is even worse. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. The warning from Paul is not that if you happen to slip into a fit of rage you will go into hell. The word he uses for "live" is an active and ongoing thing - those who continue to live in these things. That does not make the one time slip less serious however. Many people who have slipped into one act of adultery find the next one and the next one much easier. The little child who is allowed the first temper tantrum is then trained to have more outbursts and more violent outbursts. So the very nature of unchecked sin is kind of like letting the head of a camel in the tent. Before you know it, the whole camel is in the tent. Before you know it - the burst of anger turns into a deep seated hatred. The one glance at the naked woman on the Internet becomes a five hour a day fantasy that cannot be satisfied. The person who used to live dwelling on God - now dwells on the flesh. That is unacceptable, for God's Holy Spirit cannot dwell in a person who is actively doing things that are contrary His will. The conscience itself cannot help but he hardened in such a lifestyle. It has to be excused or dulled over to the point that repentance and faith are no longer allowed. So Paul's warning is that you find yourself even doing one of these things once - take warning. GOD cannot be mocked. Your fruits will be the evidence of your faith on Judgment Day. If He comes and finds you addicted to the lusts of the flesh, He will not accept you on Judgment Day.

III. The way to freedom

As I describe this, I would imagine that it scares you. I know it does me. For as we look at this laundry list of sin - do we perhaps see some things that we are still doing from time to time? Since we still fight them and confess them, they may not have overtaken us. We still have faith and salvation. But the knowledge that some of those things still linger tells us that the danger is there and the warning is still real. So how do I - and how do you - minimize the danger? How do we guard ourselves against the fall from faith that can happen if these things were allowed to linger? Paul addresses this concern with the Galatians.

Let's go back to his original exhortation. He says, You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Remember that the only reason we remain on this earth is to live a live of service. When Jesus came, He said, "I didn't come to be served, but to serve, and give my life as a ransom for man." We have that ransom. We are the recipients of His service to us. This gift of forgiveness is no small thing. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. You don't need to live for what your sinful flesh wants, because your sinful nature was crucified with Christ. Don't forget about that wonderful promise. Peter wrote in 2 Peter 1:3-4, "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires." Since you have already been served with the gift of the Holy Spirit, think about then why you are still here - why you haven't been called to heaven. Because you have already been served, you are either here to serve someone actively by helping them, or to have someone else serve God by taking care of you. This is what life is about. It's not about how much stuff or how many people I can get to serve me. This will keep me from living to gratify my self.

What else does Paul say? So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. . . . Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. The word used for "keep in step" is often used of a soldier walking in formation. Think of when you are young and playing out in the snow with your father or mother or brother or sister. You play follow the leader. One steps in the snow first, and then you try and follow in those footsteps. Let us keep in step with the Spirit. But how is that done? How can we mere mortals walk in the footsteps of God?

It is not so difficult, for our gracious LORD makes it so much easier. He Himself comes to us in baptism and inhabits our feet and our eyes and gives us balance and vision to see where to go. He plants His Word in our hearts. He puts the promises of salvation in the inspired words of the Scriptures which all of us have access to on a daily basis. Jesus climbs into our hearts and uses His own body and blood to wash our sins away through the simple eating and drinking of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper. Keeping in step with the Spirit - living in the Spirit - is not as difficult as it would appear. The very feet and eyes of the Holy Spirit are put into us. Keep in the steps where the Holy Spirit has said he would be, in the Word and sacrament. This is a wonderful experience as those steps clearly lead us to heaven through the death and resurrection of Christ.

These steps then are also followed in the way in which we are called to live. Even this is not as difficult as it would appear - for the Holy Spirit continues to live in us and direct us to how to live. The directives that Paul gives the Galatians through inspiration of that same Holy Spirit are rather simple. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what it means to "love your neighbor as your self." It isn't that difficult to ask the question, "how can I serve people in love?" "Who can I serve?" If the LORD puts a little baby in your arms and gives the baby a dirty diaper - then serve that baby. If the good LORD allows your mom to live to an old age to the point where she needs your help and direction, then serve her. Ask yourself, "how would I want my child to serve me if I were in her position?" Let the Holy Spirit guide your decisions and direct your conscience through your study of the Scriptures. His steps are not usually so exact - telling you to give twelve dollars to church and to go shovel your neighbor's sidewalk at 3:00. But they are still quite plain. Just look at your neighbor - and look for what he or she needs. Listen to your conscience. Examine your motives in light of God's Word, and boldly take your steps - no matter how much work or time it takes and no matter how painful they may be. When you focus your life in this way and keep in step with the Holy Spirit - learning to live outside of yourself - you will notice that all of those fruits of the Holy Spirit that you were so difficultly striving for - have naturally come inside of you - joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.

America is proud of its freedom and does it's best to keep those freedoms. Unfortunately, that view of freedom has become skewed. Instead of looking at how we can contribute to the freedom - what we can do our country - we live in an age that only wants to receive freedom - which demands freedom and it's own rights. In doing so, they accuse each other of bigotry, racism, and sue each other over the tiniest things in order to selfishly have our own "rights" met. In their pursuit of freedom, our society is ironically becoming a slave to it's own selfish agendas.

You and I have grown up in a rare and beautiful freedom that we never want to lose. It's the freedom of knowing that we are forgiven in Christ. We never want to lose it. It's rather ironic in the way that freedom is maintained if you really think about it. Instead of demanding your rights and thinking about yourself, you give them up. You crucify your flesh by clinging to Christ and your baptism. You enslave yourself to the One who has set you free. Wherever the Holy Spirit walks, you walk. Whatever He takes, you gladly let go of. Whoever He sends you to serve, you serve. In walking with the Holy Spirit you will find yourself more and more experience a true freedom that you didn't have to fight for - which will make you want to fight for it more and more - for that freedom is Christ. Amen.