Living by the Spirit

So this is the transition point. Paul has made the Magna Carta statement of the freedom which is ours in Jesus Christ, both as Jew and as Gentile.

Now he comes to the point where he addresses the question of the woman who says, "Oh, you mean then that anything goes?"

Spiritual Principal Two: True freedom is not license.

This book of Galatians is a scary book. Take it seriously and it can be life-transformational, leading you to a whole new world of what it is to understand God's grace, and to be set free from religious legalism. Misunderstand this book and it can wreck your life.

There is a very fine line between freedom and license.

This was driven home to me during my Princeton Seminary days. All of us students were required to successfully pass exams in the Greek language. Then we had a required course in the New Testament exegesis of the Book of Galatians. In order to pass this course, we had to be able to read the entire book in Greek. Each day in class, the professor would randomly call on us to give our oral translation, and each of us was assigned a passage on which we were to write a major exegetical paper.

Some of the students who came from fundamentalist/conservative backgrounds were very strict in traditional "do's and don'ts." The lifestyle of a Christian, as you know, has lists that vary from one denomination to another, and from various regions of the country and world to another. I, myself, was raised in an environment that looked askance at smoking, drinking, gambling and dancing.

Take drinking, for example. The Christian church in the United States was in the forefront of warning how misuse of alcohol was a key contributor to spousal abuse, wasting of paychecks, loss of jobs, accidents, and broken health. As time went on, some Christians defined whether a person was a believer in Jesus Christ or not on the basis of whether or not they used alcoholic beverages. The Bible itself could be interpreted to allow for moderation, although it speaks clearly against drunkenness. What, so subtly, can happen is that a person can define another as outside the circle of faith because of the fact that they use alcoholic beverages and define themselves as virtuous and worthy of salvation because they are total abstainers. It is so much easier to define oneself by external behavior instead of internal spiritual reality.

I remember one evening, a wonderful young seminarian from Hollywood Presbyterian Church, who had gone all through college without touching alcoholic beverages, egged on by some fellow students who made a theological point out of the freedom we have in Jesus Christ, overdid that freedom and ended up being carried into my dormitory, falling over drunk. For him, the teaching of Galatians, at least at that time in his life, became not just access to the positive freedom which is ours in Jesus Christ, but to the negativity of license.

There was one godly international student from India, on a scholarship sponsored by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. He was being trained to be one of the up-and-coming leaders of the church in India. Alcohol consumption had no part in his life because of a combination of biblical, ethical, cultural and economic reasons. Again, encouraged by young theologues, flaunting their new-found freedom in Christ, he became a permanent casualty. The last I heard of him he had never made it back to his family and church in India. He was a tragic derelict, wandering the streets of an American city. A tragic loss, for him, his family, his country, the church of Jesus Christ.