TUESDAY 10th
Galatians 5:1-7
NIV (v1) – ‘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.’
ESV (v1) – ‘For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.’
Within the context of this letter to the Church at Galatia, Paul is urging the believers on the basis that by coming to Christ and the message of the Cross they have been set free from the burden that the law placed upon them, and not to step backwards and become burdened again with the yoke of slavery by being bound once again by the law. I will try to illustrate it: as I have mentioned before, I grew up on a farm, a few miles out from the nearest town, (Hereford) and in those days we didn’t get taxied around, here, there and everywhere by dad’s taxi, if we wanted to go anywhere, we had to use our bikes or walk, and it wasn’t a straight forward flat ride, we had at least one steep hill to climb which made it hard work. When I was sixteen, I managed to buy myself a moped and what a difference that 49cc petrol engine made to my toing and froing. There was absolutely no way I was going to return to a bicycle, the moped had given me a new-found freedom that I never had with the bicycle. The bicycle was like the law, hard work, the moped was like the freedom in Christ, the engine was doing the work for me, in the same way that Christ has kept the law on our behalf.
Paul was telling the Galatian believers, ‘don’t get back on the bicycle when you now have a moped’. (I do not intend to sound disrespectful here – it is just an illustration) Enjoy the freedom – but, even though it was freedom that Christ had given them, it was not a freedom to do as they pleased, it was a freedom that was to be found by living in harmony with the will of God for their lives, it was a being released from bondage and slavery to sin to becoming a slave or a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What could be keeping us in bondage, maybe even in slavery to sin, we have known the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have had a setting free experience when we first came to Calvary, but somehow, we have slipped back or keep slipping back, you know the phrase, one step forward and two steps back, maybe an old sinful habit that we cannot quite throw off, maybe a sinful desire that keeps rearing its ugly head, and it keeps getting us tied up in knots, maybe it is the tug of some aspect of our old nature that is tugging us hard, pulling us back, we need to come back to the place of freedom, that is to the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ for the old sinful habit to finally be broken, for the sinful desire to be taken away and for the aspects of our old nature to be cut off so it no longer tugs at our soul.
Remember the Scripture in 2 Corinthians 5:17, ‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.’ Again without wanting to sound disrespectful, the bicycle has gone, the moped has come. Let us cut all our ties with the old nature off, with sin and its bondage and be set completely free in our being united to Christ and toward his will and purpose for our lives. To use another example, I really cannot believe that a beautiful butterfly would ever want to become a caterpillar again, and likewise with us, let us be determined to cling to the new and never to return back to the old. ‘For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.’
Can I add the words of Jesus here, if you are bothered with the cares of this life, cares that may be causing you to become spiritually weary, take his advice, ‘Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’
(Matthew 11:28–30)