a. The Illusion of Acceptance
What makes you valuable and acceptable to God and/or your fellow human beings? Paul in his letter to the Galatians is arguing with a group of people who believe that what makes you valuable and acceptable to God and others is your obedience to the Law. The Galatians think only we keep the Law and adopt Jewish practices, God will love us and accept us.
Today we may not talk about the Law but I don’t think much has changed. On that basic level if you ask a child how you get to heaven they will probably say “by being good.” Like the Galatians you come to believe that what makes you valuable to God and others is that you are “good people”. The problem is that even if on some balance you are good people. Even if the good and the bad were weighed on a scale and you came out more good than bad, even if that’s true, you serve a perfect God and if you read the Sermon on the Mount for instance there Jesus demands of you something that is often impossible. Not just love your neighbour, but love your enemy and do good to those who persecute you. I believe that I and every single one of you fall far short of that.
Now there are some people in our community who do not think that what makes them valuable to God is believing in God, loving their neighbours and being good by obeying the Law or some moral code. What makes them valuable and acceptable is what they own, or how they look, or what they experience, or how popular or famous they are. It’s this that drives tv shows like Big Brother, Married at First Sight, or the former Australian television personality who’s ambition in life was to meet Oprah Winfrey. It’s what drives most of the adds we see on TV. It drives the fashion industry. It’s what pushes people to live in larger and larger houses with bigger and bigger mortgages, spending longer and longer at work so that they can own the big house that they never spend time in. All of these things, are temporary, do not bring real happiness and sometimes are a sheer illusion.
Acceptance and recognition and value is however what you and I all long for. You want it from your family, your friends, your colleagues, your neighbours and if you believe, from your God. And you and I try to get it for ourselves, but that value, and acceptance never really comes in full measure, and so you try harder and still fall short. When Paul talks about you being slaves, to the flesh, to your sinful human nature that is what he means. To pick up the illustration from before, what freedom is there in having a mortgage for a house you can’t quite afford, so that you can have the fully furnished house and the lifestyle that goes with it, when you both have to work extra long hours and never get to spend the time there. You are enslaved to your debt and your lifestyle.
b. True Freedom Through Christ
Paul says forget all that. You are free, you are acceptable, you are valuable. Forget the law, forget trying to find value in sexual, sensual or material ways. Forget trying to prove that you are right or always in the right, or always the one in control and so finding yourself mixed up in “idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions,[and] envy” (Galatians 5:20-21, NRSV). All these things will take away your freedom and enslave you.
Paul tells you, you are free from trying to prove yourselves and you are valuable and acceptable to God. How can he say this? - because of Jesus. “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1, NRSV)
It was the clear belief of the early church that somehow in the birth, in the life and living, in the teaching, in the healing, in the death and in the resurrection of Jesus, God declared every human being, who ever was, and who ever will be, to be valuable, acceptable, and loved. God declared them free of the need to prove themselves, or make themselves valuable, to God, or to family, or to friends, or to colleagues or to neighbours or even to themselves. Human life is worth the life of God, it is as valuable as the creator of the vast and unimaginably huge and intricate universe. That means that you, every one of you is worth far more than can ever be imagined. From this letter alone Paul speaks of you having been “redeemed” (3:13) says that you are God’s children (4:5), that God in Christ gave himself for you for forgiveness and freedom, and that the risen life of Christ is your life. “It is no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me.” (Chapter 2 verse 19-20) We are free! You are free! I am free!
c. Living in Love, Not Law
BUT you are not free to do whatever you like. What you are free of is the need to prove yourselves or make yourselves valuable and worthwhile. Now there is a paradox here. Paul has said in this letter (Gal 2:16, 3:23, 5:18) and in Corinthians (3:1-18) and in Ephesians (2:15) that Christ has done away with the Law, but you are still called to do what the law requires, you are called to love your neighbours as yourselves. At first this sounds crazy, but think about it. Even the person who tries to make themselves valuable or acceptable to God, or to their neighbour, by obeying the Law or by being good is serving themselves. Their motivation is not to love their neighbours; it’s not to love God or even to be good. It is to be accepted and to be declared by God and their neighbours to be of value and included. They are loving God and their neighbour and themselves for their own benefit.
It is only the person who is independently declared by God to be valuable and acceptable, who can truly say they love their neighbours. Anyone else is in terrible danger of doing it from selfish motives. On the other hand if you are genuinely valuable and accepted not on the basis of your goodness but the free gift of God, you are free, you have nothing to prove.
Paul is saying to us, to you and to me, that’s who you are, live like that.
d. Fuelled by the Spirit
All this is wonderful, but there are two problems. One Paul has been dealing with in the whole letter. That is that you and I struggle with this. You would rather make yourselves acceptable and valuable than receive your value as a gift. After hearing the good news that they were free, worth the life of the creator of the universe, the Galatians embrace this new faith, but then they get sucked into believing that they do have something to prove, and start doing mad things like the males having themselves circumcised and obeying the strict Jewish dietary law. This whole letter is really saying to the Galatians, “That’s nonsense, you’re free you don’t have to do all this. Christ died for you and was raised for you! You have new life. You don’t have to earn or prove anything. You are already the Children of God. You foolish Galatians, You foolish Rockhamptonites and Mt Morganites stop all this nonsense.”
The second problem is that in order to do the right thing you not only need to be free, you need to be empowered.. You need fuel. This is where the Fruit of the Spirit come in. If God the Father raised Christ by the Spirit, if that same Spirit of love is in you, then you also have new life. As Paul says earlier in the letter “It is no longer I who live but Christ Jesus who lives in me.” You have all the fuel, and all the power that you need, and more. You are not just freed. You are renewed. God is working “...love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control...” (Galatians 5:22–23, NRSV) in you. Let me repeat that If the Spirit of love who raised Jesus from the dead at work in you then you have “...love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control...” (Galatians 5:22–23, NRSV) growing in you.
I want to be very honest here. Throughout my life even though I have been a Christian for most of it I have struggled with self esteem. I have shared a number of times that this probably stems from having been bullied through most of my school years. Like the Galatians I often find myself feeling terribly unworthy, of little value and not well accepted. For reasons that I will not explain I have felt particularly down over the last year. On the other hand when I look back on my life, it is because I believe God is with me and in me that I have grown. Without God growing that fruit in me, I don’t think I would ever have become a teacher let alone a minister. I don’t know whether I would ever have got married and I don’t know how I would have coped with the small griefs and hurts that I have suffered in my really very blessed adult life.
My story is not unique. It is probably your story too. You have found strength in times of trial and found love for your neighbours when you did not think it was there because God is growing that fruit in you.
Conclusion: Freed and Fuelled to Live
To sum up. You are free. You are valuable and you are accepted by God. “For freedom Christ has set you free.” You have nothing to prove! More than that not only are you freed, you are fuelled. You have the Spirit of God bearing fruit in you, empowering you. To sum up Paul’s message in this letter. “You are freed and fuelled. Live life in that freedom.”