Freedom to Serve God; Gal. 5:13-15
Galatians
In these passages we are
going to see that nothing is more important in our lives than to advance to
spiritual maturity, to come to a level of spiritual maturity, where we can
fulfil the mandates of verse 13, “serving one another in love,” through
impersonal and unconditional love. That exemplifies the mature spiritual life. It
is in fulfilment of this level of spiritual growth that we have, and will have,
inheritance in the kingdom.
The mechanics of Galatians
chapter five are so crucial for us because God has a plan for the believer, and
that plan is going to eventually culminate in an evaluation judgment that takes
place at the judgment seat of Christ. We are saved (phase one salvation) and we
enter into a new life. In that new life the issue is: are we going to operate
on God’s principles or are we going to continue to operate on the world’s
principles, on human viewpoint energised by the flesh? It is either the sin
nature control or Holy Spirit control. We operate under Holy Spirit control
under the filling of the Spirit, we learn doctrine, we
go through various tests or examinations in life to see if we are going to
apply the doctrines that we learn. If we stay in fellowship and apply doctrine we
go through a cycle which leads to spiritual maturity. We die and are face to
face with the Lord and then after the Rapture at the judgment seat of Christ those
who are successful believers and have advanced will receive rewards and an
inheritance. Those who fail the test, who do not learn doctrine, who do not
make doctrine and the application of doctrine the priority in their life and
stay under the sin nature control will have a life characterised by sin, human
good, temporal or carnal death, weakness and instability, spiritual regression,
a hardened heart. When they die and are face to face with the Lord at the
judgment seat of Christ they will lose rewards and there will be temporary
shame. That is why in Galatians chapter five after Paul talks about sin nature
control he says, “those who [continue to] practice such things will not inherit
the
The issue in Galatians
We are not to turn “our
freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love [we are to] serve
one another.” One of the interesting things about Scripture is a principle
called progressive revelation. What progressive revelation means is that God
did not historically dump everything at one time on the first man. God did not gives us a systematic theology. He gave us the Bible written
in terms of narrative, stories, people’s lives, how
God interacted with them, so that as time went by He revealed more and more
things about Himself. So that we live in an era of history when John has
completed His revelation and He has given us everything. But we don’t find
everything in the Bible categorised; that is up to us. We go through the
Scriptures and classify them according to the subject matter. Each passage that
refers to love tells us a little more of the facets to love that may not be in
another passage. What we see in this passage is this emphasis on serving one
another and that this is a function of love. It is not simply the absence of mental
attitude sins—harbouring bitterness, hostility, anger, etc. toward someone else—there
is something very positive about loving one another. We all know that there are
certain believers that we can’t stand. There’s nothing wrong with admitting
that; it’s human nature. There are some personality types that we just don’t
get along with, that we don’t enjoy being around, that we have nothing in
common with. There are a lot of believers that we don’t have any natural
affinity with whatsoever, so that is where we have to kick in impersonal love. But
impersonal love doesn’t just mean live and let live; it doesn’t just mean
loving them from afar. Some of these people work at a desk next to us, sit at
the other end of a pew from us, at times married to us, are our children, and
there are other people from whom we cannot escape because they are closely
entwined in our sphere of existence. They are the opportunity that God has
given us to advance to spiritual maturity by learning the principle of “through
love serve one another.” The basis for this is not in the other person. That is
our problem. We want to think of love in terms of attraction in the object of
love. When we put the emphasis on the attraction, the approbation, the beauty of
the object that is what we call personal love, because we have a personal
knowledge of the individual, a personal attraction, a personal affinity. But
when we don’t know that person, when we do not even like that person, then we
can’t love them because of who and what they are. We
have to love them on the basis of our own character, which is not our character
but the character of Christ—“Christ formed in you.” That is why loving one
another as a mandate to the believer is not something that we are going to
master as a spiritual infant. This is why this exemplifies spiritual maturity
because it demands a tremendous knowledge of God. In fact, it is preceded by
personal love for God, which is the motivation. For love to have any
significance it has to be based upon integrity and virtue. Love is virtue
dependent. We don’t have that in us, it is ours only
to the degree that Christ’s character is formed in us. We are going to be able
to love the unlovely, love those we don’t like, only because of who God is and what Christ has done for us. The more we
become aware and our mental attitude is oriented to the person of God and the
work of Christ the more we are going to be able to fulfil this mandate.
What this mandate is
talking about is that God is going to bring certain people and certain
opportunities into our periphery or sphere. To some we are going to fulfil this
mandate at a higher level than others. We have to use wisdom and discernment in
making those choices based upon a priority system. But whether we serve to a
greater level or a lesser level the attitude of impersonal or unconditional
love remains the same. We do not have unlimited resources to give, to love, to
pray for everyone, but we are to have this underlying attitude so that when God
gives us the opportunity, depending on the resources that God has given us to
meet the need at that point of time, then we are willing to utilise whatever we
can with wisdom and discernment based on the doctrine that we have in our
souls.
Galatians