Freedom!

Nobody likes rules. In fact, there is a certain pool, to remain nameless, that I don't like to visit because there are rules on top of rules.  If there was a rule against smiling, I think they'd have it.  You can't throw your kids.  You can't wrestle in the water.  You can't carry them on your back.  Now, I understand the need for rules.  I spent my summers in high school, college, and into seminary lifeguarding at pools and teaching swim lessons.  So I get the need for rules.  But this is too much!  It feels like every where you turn, there is another rule to followed, another thing that you can't do, another thing you must do.

That happens in the church.

On the one hand, sometimes people look at the church and say, "There are too many rules and regulations.  These commandments from God take all the fun out of life."  Sometimes people look at the church and think, "All they care about are my actions."

And on the other hand, sometimes the church will preach and teach that very truth, "All we really do care about are rules and regulations.  All we really do care about are actions."  There are Christian churches out there that really do preach and teach a message that says, "Your actions are what really matter.  In fact, you can save yourself by them."

The apostle Paul was writing a letter to a congregation who was starting to listen to preachers and teachers who were doing that sort of thing.  It started out simple enough, "Believe in Jesus AND get circumcised."  It grew from there.  These teachers were telling the Galatians that faith in Jesus was just the beginning.  They had to do something more.  "Your actions are what really matter.  In fact, you can save yourself by them."

What a lie!  Oh, it looks good. It sounds good.  But, as Paul says, if we're trying to be justified, if we're trying to be righteous and holy by what we do - then we're alienated from God, alienated from grace, separated from Christ!  Then we're doomed.

Here's the truth!  It is for freedom that Christ has set us free!  (Galatians 5:1).  In Christ and through faith in him, the curse of the law for failing to keep it has been removed!  In Christ and through faith in him, the demands of the law have been met in us. In Christ, we have fulfilled the commands of God's law.  We're free!

Luther says it this way: A Christian is a perfectly free lord, subject to no one! (He says this in "On the Freedom of the Christian." You can read it here.)

Now what?  What next?

That's what we'll look at in Sunday (10/27/13) as we continue to look at Paul's letter to the Galatians, chapter 5:13-25.