Download discussion questions: Galatians 5:13-18
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Freedom
In an earlier discussion we had considered the qualification Paul put on freedom in Galatians 5:13. This week’s discussion began on that same topic of the freedom Christ calls us into – what it is and what it is not:
“God promised to make you free. He never promised to make you independent.”
We are most free when we are most willing to acknowledge our interdependence. Adam and Eve were free until they saw each other as separate and autonomous, and afraid of their Creator.[1]
One member of our group objected to the last part of the description. He was concerned that the essential problem was our separation. Instead, he suggested that we should remember that sin is the problem, and the separation and autonomy and fear are the results of sin. With that clarification, we were able to agree that the initial point is still valid. Genuine freedom is neither anarchy nor self-sufficiency.
Recognizing that freedom is not independence provides a framework for understanding the next few verses:
- We are not independent of each other: Love your neighbor as yourself (v. 14-15).
- We are not independent of God: Walk by the Spirit (v. 16-18).
For Paul, it was essential that Christian freedom should mean not freedom to indulge the lower side of human nature [“the flesh” – see below], but freedom to walk in the life of the Spirit.[2]
As You Love Yourself
Paul uses a frequently quoted criterion to describe the kind of love he has in mind: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Galatians 5:14; cf. Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31). Both Jesus and the Jewish Scriptures confirm Paul’s words.
Before we discussed what “as yourself” might mean, one member of our discussion pointed out that when Jesus quoted the statement from Leviticus 19, He had made it the second of two great commandments. Why did Paul omit “the great and foremost commandment” (Matthew 22:38) about loving God? Our consensus was that Paul’s immediate concern was the potential (as one member put it) to eat each other alive (v. 15), possibly because of the intense disputes over the law, grace, circumcision, faith, etc. that were dividing the Galatian churches. The assumption was that the Galatians were already trying to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. The problem was the conflict they were experiencing over just how to express that love.
When we turned to loving others “as yourself” there was general rejection of an interpretation (popular in the past) that we should work on our self-image, our self-love. One comment in our group was that we usually don’t have to work on loving ourselves. We typically take good care of ourselves. C. S. Lewis provided an expanded expression of that view:
We might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbour as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself?
Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently ‘Love your neighbour’ does not mean ‘feel fond of him’ or ‘find him attractive’. … Go a step further. In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. …
However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.[3]
These excerpts from Mere Christianity are in the context of Lewis’ discussion of “love your enemy” when the “enemy” was primarily the Nazis during and shortly after World War Two. Even in that setting, he described the end goal as “being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again.”
As we will see in a later Galatians passage (chapter 6), part of loving our neighbor is indeed the active desire and pursuit of restoration. However, whether the issue is loving a heinous enemy or loving our Christian brother or sister who has somehow disappointed us, Paul made it clear that this is not a human achievement. He moved immediately into the necessity of our dependence on the work of God within our heart (v. 16-18). “No external force or sanction can compel the loving of a neighbour as oneself; such love must be generated from within – by the Spirit.”[4]
Flesh and Spirit
“Walking by the Spirit” was Paul’s corrective to “biting and devouring.” Then he repeated the word picture from verse 13: “the flesh” (v. 16). We sometimes tend to think of “the flesh” as focused on bodily or sensual issues, but Paul probably had a more general idea in mind. “The flesh is Paul’s term for everything aside from God in which one places his final trust.”[5]
That more comprehensive view of the flesh is supported by a grammatical detail in the text. The New American Standard Bible (used in this week’s handout) uses the singular word “desire” (v. 16, 17) instead of “desires” (plural, in ESV, NIV, RSV, etc.). While those translations communicate the general point of conflict between flesh and Spirit, “the somewhat unexpected singular ἐπιθυμίαν [epithumian, “desire”] focuses attention on the single basic direction that characterizes the “desire” or “intent” of the flesh.”[6] The problem is not simply that some or many or even all of our desires are misdirected. The entire category of what we desire has been corrupted.
In previous discussions we have looked at Soul Care and two opposing attitudes:[7]
- Self-Obsession: the conviction that I must protect myself from personal pain at all costs. My highest value becomes comfort, security, and a personal sense of well-being. I become increasingly dependent on second-things for my source of joy.
- God-Obsession: the conviction that God is infinitely good and loving, and that seeking to know Him and to advance His purposes is the only source of lasting and genuine joy. Drawing near to God as the first thing in my life is my source of joy.
Self-obsession is another word for the flesh. God-obsession is another description of walking by the Spirit. Sometimes familiar ideas, expressed in familiar Christian jargon, become so familiar we can lose sight of their powerful significance. Terms like self-obsession and God-obsession can jog our thinking and remind us of those realities.
If we have the freedom that Paul affirms twice (Galatians 5:1, 13), why do we continue to sin? One person in our group suggested that we tend to function “on autopilot.” We go about each day and often fail to recognize the influence of our flesh, the subtlety of our self-obsession. Our natural and long-established patterns of living move us in self-protective directions that we may not even recognize. We need the Holy Spirit to make us aware of those patterns. A member of our group suggested that our freedom is a “freedom to surrender.” We even need to pray, “Make me want to want You.” Sometimes all we can do is move from self-obsession toward God-obsession in small steps. Every recognition of self-obsession becomes a reason for repenting, but also for rejoicing. Just the fact that we are beginning to see our self-obsession is a sign of the Spirit’s work in us.
Paul has included “hints’ about the work of the Spirit throughout his letter (Galatians 3:2-5, 14; 4:6-7; 5:5). It may be that he was laying the theological groundwork: Salvation is by faith and not dependent on keeping the law. Now he is focusing on how to live out that theology in “walking” or being “led” by the Spirit. Walking through life as we are being continually led by the Spirit is not some hyper-religious activity.
[“Led by” does not mean] “what it sometimes does in popular Christian parlance: a specific ‘leading’ of the Spirit to do something. The verb (in the present tense) suggests the idea of being continually influenced by and directed by the Spirit.”[8]
Being “continually influenced and directed by the Spirit” would be at least an awareness of the mission of the Spirit we are to be led by. Jesus told His disciples the core of that mission: “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you” (John 16:14). The question, “What will best display the character of Christ in this situation?” can be a beginning. When dealing with a rude store clerk or in the midst of a family disagreement or in an awkward conversation with a friend – that question might start the movement from self-obsession toward God-obsession, from the self-protective reaction of our flesh to a God-honoring Christlike response.
[1] Madeleine L’Engle, And It Was Good (Wheaton, Illinois: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1983), 55.
[2] William Barclay, The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians, The Daily Study Bible Series (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976), 46.
[3] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 1980), 116; Kindle Edition Location 1516.
[4] F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982), 243.
[5] R. Jewett, quoted in F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982), 243.
[6] Douglas J. Moo, Galatians, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2013), 353, emphasis added.
[7] Adapted from Guide to Soul Care, NewWay Ministries, 2006. http://newwayministries.org/
[8] Douglas J. Moo, Galatians, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2013), 356-357, emphasis added.