Thoughts on Galatians (part 7)

Freedom.

In a country like ours, this is a word that gets bandied about pretty freely, if you'll pardon the pun. Freedom is not just a political concept but it is the very core of our Christianity. God created man with a free will. We can choose God or not, love Him or not. We have complete freedom to choose our spiritual destiny.

I think that most people think of freedom as no limitations or in a different way, all possibilities. You can picture a tiny dot with arrows going out in all directions, like a child's drawing of the sun. Freedom means you can make any choice, right?

When I think of our response to God, I realize that our "free will" still involves a limit: by not choosing to be redeemed by God, through His plan of salvation, we are limited to hell and being separated from God. I was thinking about this during the last two weeks--I'm not an abstract thinker by nature, so it takes a while for things to percolate in my brain. I've come to the conclusion that the greatest freedom is always limited by some constraint.

Think about it. A married couple who claim to have an "open" marriage may feel free to be with other partners, but in doing so, they destroy their freedom with one another. Someone can choose to eat whatever he wants, but in over-eating he destroys his freedom to live a long, healthy life (or to fit into his clothes!). Have you ever seen children whose indulgent parents give them no or few limits? No one can stand to be around them!

Galatians chapter 5 has a lot to say about freedom and its limits. It starts with a great sentence, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." Paul talks about being free from the restraints of Jewish law, such as circumcision, because Christ brought a new set of rules to the world; rather than trying to get to God by our good works (under Jewish law), we get to God through a Savior who took our place in God's eyes. He set us free vicariously. So if we are now free in Christ, and don't have to follow the Jewish law, what are our limitations?

I had a group of friends in college, and one good friend started to get strange in his senior year. I had already graduated and was spending my first year in Jerusalem by that point, but other friends told me that this young man was using Gal. 1:1 to proclaim his freedom to do all sorts of things. If anyone criticized him, saying that he shouldn't be getting drunk or carousing the way that he was, his response was that they were "legalistic," applying all sorts of laws to his behavior; he was "free" in Christ and didn't have to follow the law. (I'm speaking of religious or moral law, not state/federal laws, although he may have been breaking those as well.)

While I was appalled by his behavior, I was more appalled by his using his so-called "freedom" in Christ to escape all limitations. Verse 13 is Paul's complete thought, "You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature . . ." That's a pretty big limitation right there. In fact, it eliminates most of what we'd probably do if we had complete freedom. Remember the beginning of the book of Judges? "Each man did was right in his own eyes." The result was utter chaos.

I'm all for freedom. But only with limits.