Lesson 55 October 13, 2002

The Warning!

First the negative!

only (do) not (turn) your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh,

but through love serve one another.

What is Paul saying, what's the exhortation here?

True liberty/freedom in Christ expresses itself in loving service of other believers, the body of Christ, and not in license.

Summary 5:13

1. Paul begins with what is ours as a result of faith in Christ and flowing from our position in Christ, freedom, liberty.

2. There is a sense that this freedom is a trust to be guarded and enjoyed and not abused.

3. Ultimately this freedom is not an end in itself but a means to an end that is, the benefit of the body of Christ, the good of the believers in your periphery, mainly the local assembly.

4. This freedom is always linked to the ministry of the Spirit. 2 Cor 3:17

5. Paul warns the Galatians against the distortion and false application of this freedom in Christ that they have.

6. His point is that this freedom is not a license to pursue the sin natures' desires.

7. For some when they come to understand that law performance living is an invalid way of life for the Believer, overreact and swing the pendulum to the other extreme, that of antinomianism.

8. This freedom is not to become in our life an opportunity, a base of operation, a pretext to pursue the lusts of our sin nature .

9. This freedom is designed for us to love God and to serve one another.

10. Therefore this freedom in Christ is a license to serve not to sin.

11. Freedom always demands responsibility and authority orientation (to the word of God) or it will quickly degenerate into anarchy (doing our own thing).

12. God has established and laid out in the Word of God His righteous requirement (Rom. 8:4) which is the acceptable means to live out this freedom by His standard and therefore to love God and to serve others.

13. True freedom for the believer is God's enablement to live out His will in your life!

14. The body of Christ is not designed to function where the tyranny of legalism or the anarchy of antinomianism exists.

15. Both of them, legalism and antinomianism, pervert freedom and enslave the Believer and therefore negates any spiritual growth an nullifies the experience of freedom.

5:14 Fulfillment of the Law

With verse 14 Paul further destroys the argumentation of the Judaizers.

For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word,

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Summary 5:14

1. The one word in view that Paul is focused on is love, love expressed for one's neighbor.

2. This is not an isolated exhortation, to love others, it appears 50+ times in the epistles alone.

3. By Paul's use here and other places of this quote from the heart of the M/L, (must acknowledge that it is) it says that there is a proper link between the law and the grace message that the Church age saint is to function within.

4. The Law since it came from God is holy righteous and good, (Rom. 7:12).

5. We're separated from the law as a system or rule of life as was the pattern for Israel. Rom 7:6

6. Within the revelation of the law there was and is a righteous purpose and intent directed towards the one who loves God and walked in fellowship with Him.

- How did Jesus understand the purpose and intent of the law in relation to the individual? Matt 22:34-40

7. While the Law is a valid standard of righteousness it cannot be and never was to be a source of righteousness.

- man wants to use it as a merit system to gain acceptance before God, won't work!

8. The Law’s righteous standard will be fulfilled by those who walk by the Spirit as Paul makes clear in Romans 8:2,4.

9. We fulfill the Law, not by submitting to it as the Judaizers advocated but rather by walking by means of the Spirit, Rom 8:4 being led by the Spirit Gal. 5:18.

10. Paul does not discard the Law. Instead he views it as God intended it— to be a part of the standard of righteousness.