I read an interesting story this week that says, well we'll talk about what is says later in the sermon: 

It seems that two police officers had stopped a car in downtown Milwaukee that was swerving back and forth barely missing some parked cars and even running a stop light.  The car came to a stop and the officers ordered the driver to get out of the car. The man was obviously very drunk and had a hard time just standing up, much less completing the field sobriety breathalyzer test.  The man started screaming, "Hey... I'm an American and I live in America and that means nobody can tell me what to do!" One of the frustrated, but somewhat amused officers replied, "Yea, sure buddy... If you can spell American, I'll let you go." The drunk, offended by the officer's comment yelled back, "Don't make fun of me... I can spell it borwards and fackwards!"^[1] 

The story is funny and the driver of the car may have been drunk, but doesn't this sound like just how many Americans sound when they talk about their freedoms?  We don’t want anyone to tell us how to do anything – ever.  And as Paul writes his letter to the church at Galatia, this is the kind of freedom that that people accuse Paul of advocating – the kind of ‘I can do anything I want at any time I want and no one can say anything different!’ kind of freedom that is really saying ‘Me first and everyone else last!’

            The local Jewish community believed that the believers in Galatia not only had no freedom in Christ, but believed that the converts needed to adhere to all the laws of Judaism including the ritual of circumcision.

            This morning’s scripture portion is Paul’s answer to his critics on both sides of the aisle.  Paul has written the letter to warn the church against falling into legalism.  In Galatians 3:1 Paul has written, ‘You foolish Galatians, Who has bewitched you?’  Who has convinced you that faith is not enough, that faith alone cannot save you?  Paul’s point is that faith is enough but that being a person of faith does not entitle us to do whatever we want whenever we want – and for Paul this is a matter of life and death – spiritual like and spiritual death.  We are called to freedom in Christ and we need to be on our guard that we are not led back into slavery – not slavery to the law or to anything else.

‘For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.’

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Paul writes that our freedom in Christ should not be an occasion to indulge the desires of the flesh.  The flesh that Paul refers to is not the physical body.  The word Paul uses (sarx), refers to the self under the power of sin – not the physical body.  Paul is not writing that the desires of the body are sinful.  Paul is not advocating lifelong chastity, diets of bread and water or self-flagellation.  Paul writes against our selfish, self-serving, egotistical selves that do more to destroy us and others than to build up ourselves and one another.

Freed through Christ from that other ‘self’, we are free to serve our neighbor, to ‘become slaves to one another’ through love. To serve ‘through love’ means that we do this not to meet the demands of the law or even to feel good about ourselves or justify ourselves.  It means to serve one another because of the love that we have for Christ.  It means to serve one another so that we can share with others the love we have already received from above.  It does not mean that we have warm-fuzzy feelings about all those around us – we may not even like all those around us – but it means that we act in love and let the feelings take a back seat.

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            Paul is clear about what might happen if we choose to live differently: ‘If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. (v15)’.  We don’t need a list of the kinds of things we do that lead to this kind of lie, but Paul gives us a list anyway: ‘fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.’   We get tired just hearing the list.  Some of them are actions we take while others are matters of heart and spirit.  We have visions of cat-fights, back-biting, people clawing at one another, tearing each other down, tearing each other apart.  Sure we have freedom in Christ, but is this the kind of freedom for which we have been saved? Or is this simply putting off the ‘yoke of the law’ and putting on the ‘yoke of self’.  Telling ourselves that ‘anything goes as long as we don’t hurt anyone’ doesn’t work as a lifestyle.  One commentator writes that; ‘Unbridled self-indulgence is rarely harmless to the self or others. It inevitably leads to using others for one's own ends, while the sinful self is never satisfied, always unfulfilled.’
            Can we really live happy, fulfilled lives in Christ if our hearts are filled up with ourselves such that there is no room for anyone or anything else?

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            During the first elections in Iraq there were many who doubted that the Iraqi’s would be able to make the change from a dictatorship to a democracy.  In a dictatorship, life is relatively easy – at least you don’t have to think about much because someone is always telling you what to do and how things will be.  You can complain a lot, but you never have to take responsibility (or blame) for how things are.  On the other hand, democracy is hard.  You have to ‘exercise’ your right to vote, examine the candidates and the issues – and take responsibility for the outcomes.  The freedom of democracy is risky business.  There are many Christians who think that Paul’s kind of freedom is Christ seems too risky, those who want the security of prescribed rules. The command to love your neighbor as yourself seems too vague and hard to measure. They want certainties and measuring sticks for their virtue.

Paul calls this just another kind of slavery.  A popular bumper sticker tells us that ‘Freedom isn’t free’.  That goes for freedom of country and freedom of faith, so let’s look as a few of the freedoms we have in Christ:

1. We are free from having to earn our way into God's favor! ‘For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery (5:1)’.  See that verb? ‘has set’ means that it is already accomplished.  Christ has come and has set us free.  Like Abraham who was justified by faith apart from the law, so we are justified by faith apart from any ‘good works’, any labors, pilgrimages, laws or rules.  We are free in Christ to be all God created us to be.  The future opens wide before us.  The possibilities of our lives are without limit because of God’s grace to us.

Don’t let the easy road of rules keeping turn us again into slaves to someone else’s truth.  It may seem easy.  It may seem self-satisfying to be able to list all the things we did right today, but right hearts before God cannot be measured and it is the things of the heart that matter to God.

2. We are free to let love lead us. (5:13-15)  Freedom does not mean, ‘Nobody can tell me what to do!’ or ‘I can do anything I want’ nor even ‘just another word for nothing else to loose’.

Christ has set us free from that long list of self-serving things of the sarx, but he has also set us free for all those fruits of the spirit - not so we can indulge ourselves, so that we can live in love and serve one another in that love.

            3. We are still free to say no. (5:16-21)  Our ability to choose right of wrong, good of bad, spirit or sarx, is never taken from us.  We must still choose to love by the Spirit or we will choose to lie by some other say.  And it is something with which we will always struggle.  That sinful self will always be there, somewhere in the back of our minds waiting for an opportunity to take us over and enslave us again.  Perhaps we are not prone to drunkenness or carousing, but what about anger, jealousy, envy or quarreling?

God honors our choices. We can choose to put the self on the throne of our heart, or we can give that space to God.  We must still choose.

4. We are free to say yes. (5:22-25) Paul writes that if we live by the Spirit then we will be led by the Spirit.  Saying ‘yes’ to the Spirit of God means living out the fullness of the Spirit with the fullness of our lives.  Paul has already listed the fruits of this kind of living, but we do well to hear it again: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-Control.

Do you notice anything about this list?  Have you ever heard of an organization called ‘kindness anonymous’?  How about ‘patience anonymous’? ‘Joy anonymous’?  Of course not.  As Paul writes, there is no law against such things.  No harm comes to giver or receiver.  No one is the poorer for sharing patience or love.  In fact the world is that much the richer for their sharing.  We are the richer for their sharing.

This the freedom of Christ, the freedom for which Christ has set us free – the freedom of the Christian – not to use up others or ourselves, but to build up others in the name of Christ and so build up ourselves in the grace of Christ.

Let us go out this day to rejoice in the freedom of Christ.  To share the fruits of the Spirit, to grow in grace as we live in the Spirit.  Amen.