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.