Living by the Spirit

Ironically, the text that I was assigned to exegete was today's text. How stabilizing it was to dig into the Greek, to understand Paul's cautioning word when he writes, "You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature, rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other" (Galatians 5:13-15). This doesn't mean "anything goes," does it? No way!

It is by grace that I am saved through faith. It is not of works in which I boast. I do not qualify for God's salvation because I do a grocery list of "good" things or avoid a grocery list of "bad" things. It is not the "dos and don'ts" that qualify me. It is what God has done for me on the Cross. I am set free from having to earn my salvation. That has been done by Jesus Christ.

To make the statement in the negative, this freedom is not the liberty to indulge our sinful nature. God desires us to have victory over our sinful nature.

In a contrasting way, let's state this in the positive — this freedom is to serve one another in love.

Paul gets very graphic, does he not, when he talks about us biting and devouring each other? Can you think of any areas in your life in which you are engaged in this biting and devouring activity? It happens very frequently in husband-wife relations. Too often it is the mark of how we function in the tensions between the generations, in parent-child conflict. We see it in the church, whether it is biting and devouring each other over matters of architecture, budget, styles of worship (all of which are pretty superficial matters), all the way to the in-depth issues of theology and biblical interpretation.

One of the most valiant upholders of the historic orthodox faith is a man by the name of Francis Schaeffer. You may remember him as the founder of L'abri, that study center near Geneva, Switzerland, where, during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, young people, trying to find a handle on life, could come and stay. They could raise any question they wanted and become engaged in vital conversation with this man who was so faithful to the historic faith. Schaeffer had seen the toll that the angry defense of the faith had taken on some of his colleagues who had been true defenders of the faith but had not done it in a spirit of love. He tried to model what it was to provide an environment in which everyone was treated with love. No matter how radical were their lifestyles and theologies, he never compromised the true faith, and he did his best to uphold salvation by faith in Jesus Christ alone, while treating whoever came to L'abri in the spirit of total acceptance and love. One of his greatest writings was a little book called The Mark of the Christian. His whole theme was the importance of not using our freedom to indulge the sinful nature and actions and theologies, but to hold to the faith in a way that communicated this bottom-line love.