homespiritual helpdaily devotional

Jul 5th 2008 - FOOLISH GALATIANS!
TBA

Freedom!
"O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain...?"

There was a group of people who once lid under a very rigid and complicated code of religious, moral, and ethical laws. Their laws were so strict, in fact, that even the slightest deviation from some was punishable by death.

Then a teacher came along, one of their own, who was respected as a scholar and spiritual leader. What he taught was rooted in their own belief system, yet so radical that it revolutionized their thinking. They began to cast off elements of their code of laws. They discovered freedom, as they had never known it before. Without really intending to, they launched a revolution of sorts. A new movement grew. Freedom! Never before had people experienced such liberty!

But freedom can be a threat to an existing order, and this was no exception. Those in authority began to challenge the new beliefs. Slowly, people began to fear their freedom. Maybe it was too good to be true. Maybe we're turning away from too much of the law. Maybe it's not really right. Maybe it's not even true. Doubt crept in, and with it, bits and pieces of the old ways.

They began to lose their freedom.

Their teacher was so upset by what was happening that one day he cried to his people, citizens of Galatia, "O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth...Are you so foolish...Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain?" (Galatians 3:1).

That teacher was the apostle Paul was, clearly appalled, frustrated and heavily burdened for his brothers and sisters. He had devoted his life for years, since his own conversion, to teaching what it meant to know Jesus as Messiah, to live in the grace of God. He had discovered true freedom.

He understood what it meant to live under laws, social convention and religious expectations. "I was a Pharisee among Pharisees," he once said of himself. He had been there, done that.

I know that for me, personally, once I discovered the grace of God in my life, I also realized that as a church we often burden ourselves with loads of unnecessary rules, laws, and social conventions. Somewhere, in all our attempts to be a religious people, we lose the freedom that is granted to us in Christ.

Nowhere did God set down dress codes, music codes, building codes, social conventions, or lists of rules upon which to hang our salvation. He hung on the cross, and that was enough. He desires nothing less than our total and absolute freedom to live for Him and to allow Him to live through us. If we can let go of our worry, self-consciousness, and concentrate on loving Him and loving others, and giving people we love to His care, then we will know what it is to be free!

"There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." Romans 8:1

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