Galatians 5:1-6

Those whom He makes free…are free indeed!

We are now free to do all things in faith through love. 

We are totally and completely made whole in the love of God which He gives in Jesus. We love because He first loved us!

Galatians 5:1-6

5 Stand  fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. 2 Indeed I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing. 3 And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. 4 You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. 5 For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.

The goal of the Christian life is to express faith in Christ through love, not to live under the requirements of law. Believers are called to demonstrate their faith through sacrificial love for others because their faith is placed in the one who first demonstrated such love.

The freedom given by Christ liberates believers from the law. In Jewish tradition, the image of the yoke was often used to describe the law’s role of guiding people in righteousness. Paul redirects this imagery to clarify the law’s effect now that Christ has come: It does not lead or teach people anymore, but instead enslaves them. 

Paul’s use of “slavery”  and “freedom” echoes the story of the exodus, when God delivered Israel from the Egyptians through a series of mighty deeds. He led them out to the wilderness  to make a covenant with them. God saved them without their obedience to the law, as the law had not yet been given to them. Soon after, however, the people began to complain about God’s provision and leadership. Some even pleaded for a return to Egypt—the land of their enslavement. Because of their ingratitude and disobedience, God allowed a generation of Israelites to wander and die in the wilderness.

If the Galatians allowed themselves to be circumcised, they would nullify Christ’s work on their behalf, since His death had already redeemed them from the law. Paul does not mean that (circumcised) Jews cannot become believers or that Christ’s value can be diminished by the law. His point is that anyone who insists on living under the law fails to trust in Christ. For Paul, Christ’s work is completely sufficient in the life of the believer. Therefore, to trust in the value of circumcision is to diminish the worth of Christ. If someone depends on the law for justification, they have effectively rejected God’s gift of grace in Christ. 

God’s gift of the Holy Spirit confirms believers’ status as His children and empowers them to obey God. God’s people are no longer defined by their keeping of the law; rather, their status before God depends exclusively on their faith in Christ. Paul therefore asserts that it no longer matters whether people are circumcised—that is, whether they are Jews or Gentiles. Because of the new creation begun by the work of Christ, all who trust in God’s gift of grace and receive His Spirit belong to the family of God. Faithlife Bible

The legalistic Jewish teachers in Galatia were urging believers to be circumcised. Paul points out that being circumcised changes the entire orientation of salvation away from God’s grace to one’s own actions. One who is circumcised in an attempt to gain God’s acceptance is obligated to keep the whole law, which history has abundantly demonstrated no one can do.

Fallen from grace is understood by some to refer to the loss of salvation. However, fallen from may refer to their attitude and to the message that it communicates, rather than to their eternal salvation.

Faith in Christ brings about not only justification before God, but also growth in the Christian life until we are completely glorified by God and freed from the presence of sin. This is the hope of righteousness. We can be assured that we will be declared righteous before the Lord on that last day, because we have a foretaste of that righteousness from the Spirit who lives within us.

By faith it is possible to fulfill Christ’s command to love one’s neighbor. NKJ Bible

Let us learn, therefore, to magnify this our liberty, which no emperor, no prophet or patriarch, no nor any angel from heaven hath obtained for us, but Jesus Christ the Son of God, by whom all things were created both in heaven and earth. Which liberty he hath purchased with no other price than with his own blood, to deliver us, not from any bodily or temporal servitude, but from a spiritual and everlasting bondage under most cruel and invincible tyrants, to wit, the law, sin, death, and the devil, and so to reconcile us unto God his Father. Now since these enemies are overcome, and we reconciled unto God by the death of his Son, it is certain that we are righteous before God, and that whatsoever we do, pleaseth him. And although there be certain remnants of sin yet still in us, they are not laid to our charge, but pardoned for Christ’s sake. Luthers commentary.

True faith is a working grace; it works by love to God, and to our brethren. May we be of the number of those who, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. The danger of old was not in things of no consequence in themselves, as many forms and observances now are. But without faith working by love, all else is worthless, and compared with it other things are of small value. Matthew Henry commentary.

John Piper has said, “Slavery is when you choose to deal with [God] as a banker who needs your investment to produce dividends for his customers.” If your aim is to increase dividends, Christ will be a poor fund manager. The dividends God pays aren’t based on our investment, but his. The reality is this: There’s nothing we can do that will make God love us more than he does already, nor is there anything we can do that will make him love us less. Christ is the surety of that. Denial and hopelessness are remedied only by living in this truth more deeply. Otherwise every force of the world, the flesh, and the devil will conspire to drive us back into ourselves, to redirect our attention onto our performance—filling us with pride when improvement seems at hand or despair when it doesn’t—rather than looking at the cross objectively before us. Live in Liberty the spiritual message of Galatians.

1 Thessalonians 1:3 remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father,