The Gospel makes us free (Galatians 2:1-10)

Spying is a pernicious act. Spies want to pass as friendly when in fact they don’t belong. They do this in order to steal something valuable from their enemy. We are familiar with names like Benedict Arnold, The Rosenberg’s, even some entertainment spies like James Bond. But how about some other real life spies, take Oleg Penkovsky, for example, he was a soviet military agent who worked for the British during the Cuban Missile Crisis and help the US identify the nuclear pads being installed in Cuba. Or Oleg Gordievsky who informed NATO that one of its training exercises was being interpreted as a first strike. Then there is Aldrich Ames, the US CIA operative who compromised 100 agents and led to the execution of 10 CIA contacts in Russia. In his own words, I compromised "virtually all Soviet agents of the CIA and other American and foreign services known to me" and provided the USSR and Russia with a "huge quantity of information on United States foreign, defense and security policies." Spies try to incapacitate another party from living and acting freely.

Last week we looked at this passage and saw that the Gospel makes us equals: Equals before God and equals with one another. The equality we are given in the gospel makes us interdependent on each other, not independent of one another. This week, we are going to see that the Gospel also makes us free, free to serve God and use all our life as he originally intended. This is true freedom – the freedom to live within God’s will and plan for humanity.


Freedom, it is a word we westerners love but Paul says that there are some who hate freedom so much, there are some who despise the very idea of being able to think and act by God’s leading alone and not by rules that they must run around the world and find new ways of regulating the lives of others. That is part of what the Taliban is about. The fear of freedom coming to their countries and the fact that this new-freedom will undermine Muslim ways. And so the Taliban fights, so Al-Qaeda fights and worms its way into their enemy’s camp to wreak havoc and disrupt their freedom. But it is also true in many churches that don’t preach Christ, but preach certain steps to self-improvement...abstain from this, do that, here is how you properly…


That is what these false brothers in Galatians were doing. These Judaizers, these people untrained in Christ and enemies of the Gospel, couldn’t fathom that God accepted people solely on the merits of Christ. They said that for one to truly be saved they needed to become Jews first and the first step to becoming a Jew was circumcision. They couldn’t understand how God’s promises to the Jews, to be their God and for the Jew to be his people, could extend in any way to those outside the Jewish faith. So they snuck in to spy out Christian freedom in order to compromise it. They wanted to see the secrets of these Christian “libertines.”


But God says there is freedom in Christ. That is what the exodus is all about, a foreshadowing of the freedom Christ will bring, never to return to the land of slavery where others tell you when, what and how to live. There is freedom to approach God unabated and unhindered by ritual, fetish or sinfulness, when we are in Christ. There is freedom to approach God with our imperfect works as sons and daughters and have them accepted by a loving father, instead of rejected by a demanding master, when we are in Christ. This is Christian freedom. And the Judaizers hated that message and wanted it rooted out.


Paul preached a mystery. He preached about how Christ brought the world into the promises of the Jewish nation. He preached about how the dividing wall between Jew and everyone else was broken down in Christ. He preached about how Jewishness couldn’t save anyone; much less make them acceptable in God’s sight. Listen to Eph. 3:6, “This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.”


Did you hear it? It is a mystery how God brings everyone to share in the promise of Christ Jesus, snd it doesn’t require becoming a Jew. I am called just as I am into Christ’s body. And so are you! Men, we don’t have to grow ringlets and a long beard, wear phylacteries or be circumcised, if you missed that as a child in the hospital, in order to be in relationship with God. Women, you don’t need to bake flat bread, keep a yeast free house for Passover and cook kosher in order to be in a right relationship with God. There is freedom in Christ. Amen!


That is not to say that these things are wrong, nor is it to say that there isn’t a time in ministry where keeping to such customs might not be advantageous, if you were trying to reach an orthodox Jew for Christ, for example. What Paul is saying is that these things aren’t required of people or families in order to enter into Christ or be sustained in Christ. The Gospel says Christ and Christ alone saves me and sustains me. That is Christian freedom.


Here is Paul’s argument: Look at Titus: he was establishing and directing the churches on the island of Crete. He was ministering the word to others, and the church was growing. Eventually, he became the bishop of Crete. Anyway, he was taken down to Jerusalem with Paul and asked to stand before the authorities and profess Christ, sin and salvation. He is a Christian and he isn’t circumcised. He hasn’t become a Jew. Are you Judaizers telling me that Titus isn’t a believer? Are you telling me he isn’t saved, because I think that is what you are telling me?


It is like the people who stand on street corners today and say, “If you want to be saved stop drinking then Christ will save you.” Or “stop smoking, then he will save you.” Or “pray 3 times every day, read your bible for 20 minutes and give 10% of your money to the poor, then you are really a Christian.” There are even those who proclaim: You aren’t a Christian if you don’t speak in tongues; worship to rock rifts; part of the emergent church movement; don’t worship in a church with a steeple, not baptized…haberdash. Those are earthly things, not heavenly. That is not what a true Christian is? What other absurd statements have you heard people say that determine whether you are really a Christian?


My favorite is this one, “What Bible version do you read?” Seriously, does the version of the Bible that I read really make me one of God’s elect? We were asked that question by a pastor trying to discern if we were truly saved before they would support us going as missionaries. At the end of the hour, we got, “you might be saved.” Do my external habits and hygiene really make me a believer? Titus didn’t think so – he wasn’t compelled to get sliced and diced in order to be okay with God. Titus felt no inner compulsion, nor did he think it necessary, and neither did Paul and neither did the Jerusalem Fathers, but most important, neither did Christ think these things were important to salvation. For while he hung on the cross between the two thieves, He said to one of them, (Luke 23:43) “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” It wasn’t about what they were wearing, their appropriateness or acceptance by the public, rather…


It is about heart, it is about the freedom to entrust oneself entirely to the sinless God-man who died for my sins and yours. That is the mystery of revelation. That is the freedom we have in Christ to come before God, as we are without any need to add anything to his perfect sacrifice and life. It is the freedom to love others instead of serving ourselves. It is the freedom to live according to the will of God, however imperfectly and know that we are accepted. It is the freedom to be emancipated from sin and Satan, law and death. It is the freedom to live for God. That is freedom. That is true freedom. And that is the Gospel promise. Listen to the promises of Scripture as it relates to these things:


Rom. 6:18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
Rom. 6:20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.
Rom. 6:22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
Gal. 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
James 1:25 But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it — he will be blessed in what he does.
James 2:12 Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom,
2Cor. 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.


John Calvin had wonderful insight into Christian Liberty. In fact a section of his Institutes have been republished under the title “Of Christian Liberty.” If you haven’t read it, the 20 pages or so are well worth the time. In it he argues that Christian liberty purifies the conscience, checks licentiousness and maintains the merits of Christ, the truth of the gospel and the peace of the soul. It does all this because when one is freed from the Law and its external demands, they are able to voluntarily obey the will of God since their justification is bound up in something greater than the law. There is no longer any fear of getting is wrong. He goes on urging us to be free using ‘God’s gifts for the purposes which God intends.’ He says our freedom must not be used to harm a fellow brother, or a weaker brother. What freedom is there in causing another to stumble? That isn’t freedom, it is spying, it is stealing, it is prideful, and it doesn’t love. But we have been given the freedom to love as God loves us. Our Christian freedom is a freedom of conscience, not a freedom of actions. And that needs to be sharply distinguished in our world.


In a democracy, we think freedom is the right to act a certain way, think a certain way and direct our own affairs according to our own pleasure. That isn’t freedom, it is selfishness, and we have been set free from it. Right before Advent I disclosed my own struggle with our adoption and the contorting I was doing with the gospel under the guise of freedom, the freedom to sin lavishly and call it ok. That wasn’t freedom; it was a struggle with my flesh to not misuse the freedom I have in Christ. I was trying to apply to my actions, a freedom which my conscience couldn’t accept. Why couldn’t it accept it, because my inner man is being renewed, day-by-day as Paul says (2 Cor 4:16).


Can you identify? Is there a place in your life where you are sinning and hiding it under the rubric of Christian freedom? Perhaps, you are failing to give of all the time and talents God has blessed you with and you know that God is leading you to offer up more? Maybe you are avidly engaging in pornography, knowing it is destructive but calling it forgiven. Possibly it isn’t porn, but alcohol. Maybe language is a struggle for you, keeping that tongue in check is wickedly difficult, and you pass off your language as freedom in Christ. Maybe it is something else, and your freedom has become a cover up for your sin. Were we really freed to persist in sin or does our freedom give us the right to struggle through our sin, knowing God still accepts us? Does our freedom bring us complacency or does it bring us challenge to become Christ like?


In Christ, our body is kept in check by our conscience, not the other way around. See, we freedom loving Americans, have confused the two. We think our actions keep our conscience in check, and so we focus on the works and activities, which can and can’t be engaged in. That is why we make laws. For example, consider the detailed tax laws we craft in order to make things legal, even though they are unethical or reprehensible. And we call it freedom. The use of TARP monies comes to mind to pay giant bonuses to executives of failing institutions. Sure it was legal, but it was reprehensible. But because of our jilted sense of freedom, we let is slide. Oh, how many legal things there are, which morally and ethically defile our consciences?


There are tons – charging 21%, even 78% interest, sleeping with many people, having an affair, lying to a neighbor or friend, doing shabby work, engaging in devil shopping practices. Indeed all of these are legal and you are permitted to do each action according to our government. Does that mean that your freedom is only real if you engage in these activities? No, in fact most people would say that our freedom is most real when we don’t engage in them, even though we have the choice to engage in them. This is allowing our conscience to keep our behavior in check, not the other way around.


Yet, how many Christians carry this same line of reasoning into their religious life? On the contrary, we think that we must live out our freedom, every bit of it. I have been around too many “mature” Christians who refuse to recognize the differences. Men and women who believe their freedom in Christ means they must swear vilely when they are in certain people’s company, as a show of their Christian liberty. Guys who insist that their previous life of Victorian piety was legalistic and now that they are free they must exercise that freedom in their sexual exploits. But aren’t we too smart for such ruses? We are, for we know Paul’s chided remark, “Shall I go on sinning so that grace may increase? Certainly not!” (Rom 6:1).


Our freedom is given to us, not to engage in pagan revelry, not to walk like the world but to walk into the Kingdom of God and engage his ways and his truth. We are free to be righteous. We are free to know God’s love and acceptance for us in light of our imperfections. We are free to be held by God, even with our broken lives. This is freedom. This is the freedom Paul is talking about that the gospel brings.


And that is why the apostles ask Paul to remember the poor. Use your freedom to do God’s work. Caring for the needy, this is God’s work. Caring for the poor and the emaciated, the suffering and the destitute, this is God’s work. Use your freedom, Paul says, to carry on God’s work of mercy in the world. Use your freedom to work against all the social systems of sin and abuse in the world. Use your freedom to take hope to a dying world. How are you using your freedom to ‘remember the poor’, to carry on God’s work? If nothing comes to mind, consider evaluating your sense of freedom. Is it freedom or selfishness that is controlling you?


As we conclude, let’s remember that Jesus’ freedom brought him


Luke 4:18-19 [“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me] to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”


That is God’s use of freedom. So people of God, “You are freed. Freed to serve God, incompletely, but serve him nonetheless, in cooperation with all your fellow brothers and sisters, so:


1Pet. 2:16 Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.
Gal. 5:13 But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.”


This is true freedom. The Gospel makes us free.