Galatians 5.1
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Ever since the Fall in Genesis 3, man has been enslaved to sin. That devastating decision in the garden put us at the mercy of the impulses and habits of our fallen nature. However, our God is gracious and loving, and he has provided for our deliverance from the yoke of slavery. He offers us salvation through the substitutionary death of his son.
The reality is that we cannot save ourselves through the doing of good works. On our own, no matter how hard we try, we cannot escape the bondage of sin. Nor can the standards of the Law of Moses save us. As we learned earlier in our study of Galatians, the standards of the Law were given for direction, not for salvation. The Law is just that … standards for how to behave, not standards for how to be saved. By means of the sacrifices and the priesthood and the tabernacle, the Law provided a picture and foreshadowing of salvation through Christ, but again, the Law itself was never intended to save.
This is critical, because seeking salvation through adherence to the Law only serves to drive us further into bondage. Bondage to sin is bad enough; now the Galatians are in danger of bondage to a false doctrine about sin and salvation! This is precisely Paul’s point, and it is why he is in anguish about the Galatians’ receptivity to the distorted, legalistic message of the Judaizers.
The great news of the NT is that through Christ, God provides the freedom — the liberation from sin — that neither man’s effort nor the standards of the law could provide. Paul says it this way in the book of Romans:
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1-4)
When we trust in Christ, the Lord redeems us and sets us free from the penalty and the power of sin. Jesus spoke of freedom as recorded in John 8. The Lord’s interaction with the Jews in this chapter provides some insight about the Jewish mindset, how they viewed their relationship to Abraham, and how they viewed their identity in the world.
“So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” (John 8.31-33)
When Jesus told these Jews that he is the source of the truth that will set them free, they respond in a very strange way. They quickly assert that because they are descendants of Abraham, they have never been enslaved to anyone. This is a remarkable declaration, and it is clearly and dramatically false. Their fathers had been slaves in Egypt; their nation had been enslaved in Babylon; they had repeatedly been subject to the Assyrians; they were enslaved by Herod the Great; and they were, at the very time they spoke, groaning under the grievous bondage of the Romans.
Here is what these Jews were saying: “We’re the elect covenant people. We have the Law, the prophets, the covenants. It’s all ours. We belong to God because we belong to Abraham.” They banked on their physical descent from Abraham as their identity and salvation. The early church father Justin Martyr was arguing with a Jewish man in what is called the Dialogue of Trypho, and the Jewish man says this: “They who are the seed of Abraham, according to the flesh, shall in any case, even if they be sinners and unbelieving and disobedient toward God, share in the eternal kingdom.”
Once again we see the self-centered arrogance and blindness of the Jews in Jesus’ day.
This is why the message of Galatians is so important. Remember what Paul says in chapter 3: “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”
Paul says it most clearly and directly in Galatians 3.29: “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” Being a true descendant of Abraham is spiritual, not physical. It is the result of trusting in Christ. The Jews were in bondage to ethnic pride, and it blinded them to who Jesus was and the salvation and liberation he offered.
