What does it mean to be free?

Believers are free from the law, but they are freed for a purpose. (Gal 5:13)”But, do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” What are believers freed to do? You are freed, redeemed, to love and serve others.

The legalist thinks like this – if I do this good thing, or don’t do that bad thing then I am earning credit with God, God owes me. It places limits on what God can ask of me. But the legalist never loves God and they place limits on their obedience – that's why the supreme legalists the Pharisees qualify the command to love by asking questions like who is my neighbour? There response and thinking is obvious to all; God can’t ask to me to love him, or her or them.

But if we really understand the gospel, that Christ gave everything for us to redeem us, that he bore our sin and we are given his perfect record, that he alone buys our freedom and secures our relationship with God. Then there are no limits to what God can ask of us, in fact there are no limits to how we will want to respond to God. The only right response to the love of God in Christ is love for God displayed in unlimited love for others. We will keep not the letter of the law but its spirit, that’s why Paul quotes this summary of the law “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

How do you know you love God? Do you love your neighbours? Do you serve them?

The believer isn’t like the student at university for the first time who free from all parental restraint starts to do all the things they couldn’t do before. The Christian is freed to serve, to love as Christ loved and served us. That’s fine in theory but how do we do that?

(16)“live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” How do you live like this? You live by the Spirit. Gal 4:4-7 tells us that God gives us the Spirit of his Son who lives in us so we relate to God rightly, so our concerns are his concerns, our desires his desires.

But it is not a case of let go and let God, we will not drift into holiness, we are not on holiness autopilot. We don’t drift into holiness, we drift the other way. But God gives his Spirit so that we can know and follow him, so that we can keep in step with the Spirit and revel in living free.