It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—-in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?
My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are contrary to each other, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?
It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness: trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.
This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.
Galatians 5:13-21
Just Love
My sweet sisters, I have often sat long hours in captivity and imagined how freedom would be. I visualized the vast wilderness of Colorado; no fences to hem me in, no traffic snarls in my mind created by humans who wanted to lead me astray, just me and God perfectly isolated alone in the world He created! I wouldn’t need to live with rules telling me this or that, no pressure to fit the mold, no pollution, only clear air, and a clean slate. The mountains hold some danger, though. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Those animals have their place; we can’t eliminate them; they are crucial to our ecosystem, essential but dangerous to my wilderness isolation plan.
Danger? Yes, other than the large boulder-lies on our journey of freedom, we also have the pits of despair and smooth-talking mountain lions. But now, with a pendulum swing, we can take our freedom way too far. Paul reminds us as he is reminding Galatia, “Christ gave you freedom, but don’t use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh.”
Freedom is not a state of being; it is an atmosphere in which we make active choices
Our freedom is a gift. Once you accept it and put it on, Christ will not take that gift away (you can walk away from it or leave it behind, but Christ will never remove your freedom cloak). Christ called us to freedom, but what do we do with it? At first, we didn’t realize we were in bondage; walking down that simple grassy path, we had no clue we were chained. Upon realization, we broke free and started our journey of freedom back up that hill. The beginning was treacherous, but things have seemingly leveled out as we have traveled. We are gaining confidence in our freedom. We are becoming more secure. Like a child leaving home for the first time to explore the new world without the constant watchful eye of mom and dad, you only live once—-yolo! But, as we have discovered, that kind of indulgence only leads us back downhill, and we aren’t going back. So what do we do?
Freedom in and of itself is not complete; it is an opportunity. Each detail of freedom is an aspect of possibilities. Freedom is not a state of being; it is an atmosphere in which we make active choices. The “good news” puts a new spin on freedom, “through love, be servants of one another.”
if we can’t see others in relation to God, we see them as a hindrance, or we will use them to get our way
This love thing is a lot to think about, sisters. Love is not a word that describes our feelings, nor a technique to fulfill our needs; it’s not an idea that we meditate on day and night. It is our response to God concerning others. Each person on our journey is God’s person. Each person on our old path is God’s person. If we can’t see others in relation to God, we see them as a hindrance, or we will use them to get our way.
The decisive answer is love. Look around; it’s not just us out here. We don’t live in isolation anymore. Love enlivens our freedom.
As hard as it may sound, to love is to be free—-we are free to love.