A narrative is informed of a prisoner who had been locked away for many years. One morning, the warden got here to his cell and informed him his sentence was full. The warden opened the door and allowed the prisoner to stroll free. The prisoner walked out of the cell, crossed the block, and, seeing one other cell open, ran in and slammed the door behind him.
That’s an absurd image, nevertheless it illustrates the hazard that Paul warns towards in Galatians 5:1: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand agency due to this fact, and don’t submit once more to a yoke of slavery.” Christ didn’t set us free in order that we’d put ourselves in bondage once more. He set us free in order that we’d dwell free.
As a result of Christ has set us free, we’re meant to get pleasure from this freedom. We’re not suppose to again into the cell once more. Certainly, we’re presupposed to, in Paul’s phrases, “stand agency.” This language evokes a tug-of-war, the place you’d make a divot within the floor wherein to plant your toes. You dig your heels firmly in in order that when the pull comes from the opposite finish, you should have the means to maintain your self in place. Paul says, “We’re going to dig in our heels, and we is not going to permit ourselves to be burdened once more by a yoke of bondage.”
On the rope is the doctrine of justification—the query of how we acquire acceptance with God. In Galatia, folks have been pulling on the different finish with phrases like these: “We profess religion in Jesus Christ. We imagine what Paul preached. However we’ve bought one other half to it: it is advisable to go and do one thing for God to just accept you.” Paul dug in his heels and mentioned, “No! It’s what Christ has achieved, and solely what Christ has achieved, that offers us acceptance with God.”
There was no room for compromise on this, as a result of, as William Hendriksen has put it, “a Christ supplemented is a Christ supplanted.” Justification is by religion alone in Christ alone, or it’s nothing in any respect. If we add to Christ’s reward a requirement of works reasonably than figuring out and trusting that God-honoring works are an inevitability for these with true religion, then we’ll put ourselves in slavery once more to sin, for the reason that regulation merely reveals the sinful nature of our hearts. Solely Christ, the Righteous One, who turned sin for us, could make us into the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13).
But the rope can also be pulled by those that use freedom as “a possibility for the flesh” (Gal. 5:13). They are saying, “We’re free now to indulge ourselves. We don’t want to fret concerning the penalties of sin.” That is the so-called “freedom” of “Me and Bobby McGee”: “Freedom’s simply one other phrase for nothin’ left to lose.”
“A Christ supplemented is a Christ supplanted.” —William Hendriksen
Those that see freedom as the liberty to do because the previous self pleases are in the end no completely different from those that add works of the regulation to the reward of Christ: they’re oriented to the flesh, to not the Spirit. They don’t seem to be strolling in Gospel freedom as a result of they aren’t strolling with the Spirit who provides that freedom by making use of the work of Christ and bearing the fruit of righteousness within the believer’s life (Gal. 5:22–23).
The liberty the believer seeks is the liberty from sin and wrath that makes it doable to do what we have been created for: “to glorify God, and revel in him endlessly.” There’s a honest pleasure to be present in strolling in the way in which of the Lord (which believers know to be freedom), whilst we abandon endlessly the numerous paths of world. To be sure to Christ is to be free in all of the ways in which matter—free from the ability of sin (Gal. 5:16) and free from the worry of loss of life (Heb. 2:15). It’s to eagerly await the hope of righteousness as our religion works itself out by means of love (Gal. 5:6). Because the hymn author places it,
Make me a captive, Lord,
After which I shall be free;
Power me to render up my sword,
And I shall conqueror be.
If anyone is free in our world at the moment, it’s you, Christian, as you might be sure to Christ.
This text was tailored from the sermon “The Solely Factor That Counts” by Alistair Begg.
