How are we called to be free (Galatians 5:13)?

"For, brethren, ye have been called into liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." (Gal. 5:13-15.)

There is ever a strong tendency in us to "savour the things of men" in the things of God. We put our construction and draw our own inferences from the thoughts of God, which are not like our thoughts, but infinitely higher and more blessed (see Isaiah 55:8-9), and thus debase them. Look, for example, at liberty; how wide the distinction between the human and divine thought on this very point. Liberty, according to man, is wilfulness — every check taken off from the human will, issuing in the very worst form of corruption and apostasy. The Jews in their worst state of bondage, both temporal and spiritual, had the hardihood to say, "We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man; how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?" How solemn the reply of Jesus to these boasters of their freedom. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant [slave] of sin." (John 8:34-35.) The apostle Peter very plainly shows, that in the days in which we live, the loudest boasters of liberty were themselves miserable slaves of corruption. (2 Peter 2:18-19.) We are called unto 'liberty,' but not a liberty for the flesh to act, but for us to serve. Christians are often led to connect their worship and their service with their salvation. But the truth is, they are made free by Christ in order to worship, to serve God, and serve their brethren; yea, and to serve all men, so far as they can. The gospel is the law of liberty, the law of love. And how easy and blessed is the law of love: love has 'a constraining' power — the law, rather a restraining power. The law of liberty is not "Thou shalt not," but its language is, "I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart." Until the question of our individual acceptance is settled, the heart is not 'enlarged' to serve God. We are made free from sin by the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, in order to become servants of God. Real liberty and true holiness are inseparably connected together. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets free from the law of sin and death." When really free ourselves, instead of judging others, we are free to intercede for them, knowing the grace in which we ourselves stand. A legal spirit is ever a fault-finding spirit. If we were more in the region of grace, we should be less in the region of judgment. But the moment we become legal, we bite and devour one another, instead of ministering grace one to another, cheering one another onward, so as to enable us to tread with a lighter step this weary wilderness.

This is the subject that the apostle takes up and handles henceforward in our epistle. We have seen the question of justification entirely settled; now we have the walk or practical holiness. Again he insists upon liberty. We might suppose that he had said enough about it, after having charged them to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free, and not to be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. But no. In the domain of holiness this liberty is needed, just as much as for justification; and therefore says he, "Brethren, ye have been called unto liberty." That is, it characterizes our calling. Only, says he, it is not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, or you are not to use license: do not turn this liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. There he showed that there is a faith that works by love, (as said a few verses before;) so now he shows that the object of that love should be the helping one of another. It is not for the purpose of putting you under the law, but that you may serve one another" "for all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Had they not been trying the law? And what had been the result? He says, You have been biting and devouring one another: that is not fulfilling law, but lusts. When persons talk about it, or desire to be its teachers, do they ever fulfil it? It begins with confident words, and ends without deed or truth. Whereas, on the contrary, when Christ is the object of the soul, though the law does not occupy the mind, yet is it fulfilled. Christ is the power of God; the law is the strength of sin. I have exactly the same word of God to tell me of Christ and the law; and both are in the same epistle. (1 Cor.) But it does not matter where the subject is entered into; the great point that the Holy Ghost insists on is, not that the law was not a good thing, but that, our nature being horribly bad, there never can be any good got from bringing the law to bear on our evil nature, save condemning it. The question is, What will strengthen my soul for what is good? The answer is, not the law, but Christ. The law, I admit, is excellent. But you have been talking about the law as a means of walking well: what sort of holiness have you been producing? Biting and devouring one another! This is not love. But it is the effect of your use of the law you boast of. "But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." Such is the result. The law is a killing, destroying power; not because of its being bad, but because our nature is. And remember that the law bears upon our nature. The law was given not to the new man, but to the old.

Paul then goes on to show how liberty according to the Spirit would express itself. Liberty according to man is every man doing that which is right in his own eyes, the free expression of his own will, every restraint removed that would fetter his unbridled self-will, a liberty that results in lawlessness. But we are called to quite another kind of liberty, not for the activity of the flesh, but in which we can serve one another according to the will of God. "His service perfect freedom is." The Gospel brings a law of love — love with its constraining power, not the restraining power of a law which gendereth to bondage.

In verse 13 the apostle guards an important point. Liberty must not be taken to mean licence. Christian liberty is not licence for the flesh to act but liberty for Divine love to act. We stand in the liberty of the sons of God and our nature as "sons" is the Divine nature, which is love. The "flesh" is the nature which attaches to us as children of Adam. If we as Christians are living thus in the happy liberty that characterizes our relationship with God, and our hearts are consequently filled with love, we shall fulfil, as verse 14 tells us, what the law demanded but failed to produce from the flesh. Verse 15 seems to infer that, on the contrary, the Galatians who had turned back to law were far from keeping its demands; they were biting and devouring one another rather than loving and serving one another.

“For ye have been called to liberty, brethren; only do not turn liberty into an opportunity to the flesh, but by love serve one another.” (5:13)

Christian liberty is superior to the law system, and here we see how there is also this contrast between the Spirit and the flesh. Again we find this call, God’s call, being stressed. It is a beautiful thought, to meditate upon the privileges connected with the power of God’s call, and where it leads to. It leads to true liberty. Now, if we have a privilege we also have a responsibility and this is what comes out in the second part of this verse. There is the danger of license, the enemy is very subtle. If he cannot catch believers in legalism he will try to catch them in license. “No,”Paul says, “do not use the liberty as an opportunity to the flesh.”We will see in the next chapter that we are under a new rule, we are not in bondage, but it is a system of things that we can now serve one another by love. This word “serve,”means ‘to serve as a bondservant.’If we want to be a bondservant, Paul says, “do not be bondservant of the law, but be a bondservant of one another.”The point that he is making is that what these false teachers were doing was not through love. But the new rule, the law of Christ, goes together with love. It goes together with what the Lord says in John 13 about the love one for another. That characterizes this new order of things.

In contrast to the law, Christianity gives us a new nature that loves to obey and do the will of God, and a new power, the Holy Spirit, to carry out the desires of the new nature. This is liberty, not, indeed, to be used for an occasion to the flesh to exalt itself, but to serve one another. The flesh likes to be served; but love delights to serve. The self-righteousness that seeks to exalt itself by its own works has no love or compassion for others. As with these troublers, who had sought to set the saints against the Apostle in order to attract to themselves (Gal. 4:17), so the vanity of the flesh will ever lead to fault-finding, and the belittling of others, in the effort to exalt self. In this way strife and contention is raised among the people of God. And when once brethren start biting and devouring one another, they may well "take heed," for, if this spirit is unjudged, it will not be long before they are consumed one of another. Alas! how many companies of God's people have been broken up and scattered by individuals contending with one another, and insulting one another, rather than serving one another in love.

(Vv. 16, 17.) Now we are reminded that we can only escape the lusts of the flesh by walking in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is here to glorify Christ; the flesh seeks every occasion to gratify its vanity by exalting self. It is plain, therefore, that the flesh is opposed to the Spirit, and the Spirit to the flesh. If walking in the Spirit — thinking, speaking, and acting in the Spirit — we shall be delivered from doing the things that would be natural to us as fallen men.

The Apostle does not say that if we walk in the Spirit, the flesh will not be in us, nor that the flesh will cease to lust and be in any way altered, but, if walking in the Spirit, we shall not fulfil its lusts. One has truly said, "The flesh strives to hinder us when we would walk according to the Spirit, and the Spirit resists the working of the flesh to prevent it from accomplishing its will." (J. N. D.).

Verse 13. "For, brethren, ye were called unto liberty," etc. They had been called by the Gospel into the grace of Christ, and therefore unto liberty. Nor has he to repeat that call, but rather to revive in their hearts and consciences a worthier appreciation of it. The Jewish teachers appear to have found their occasion in the desire of many of the Galatian believers after personal holiness. Aware of their shortcomings and conflicts as confessors of the name of Christ, and longing for a more entire mastery of the evil that was in them, they were induced to listen willingly to a doctrine which promised them falsely in themselves what they had already, and could only have, in Christ. But to this legal delusion there is a licentious counterpart. For "liberty," taken in a natural sense, means only wilfulness. In its true and spiritual sense, it is but another name for godliness, its groundwork being exemption from the guilt of sin, and its spirit and power being the love which is of God. Yet liberty, implies in its very nature, a discretion in him who has it. It is manifestly a state which may be abused as well as used. The apostle, therefore, when seeking to reinstate his erring brethren on the everlasting foundations, and asserting for them a deliverance from every yoke of bondage, warns them not less earnestly against the perils of a misuse of the liberty of grace. They were not redeemed to themselves from all iniquity, but to God. Self-assertion, in any shape, is entirely incompatible with a right apprehension of our new standing in Christ. Self-seeking and self-pleasing were things belonging to their former state, when, in ignorance of God, they measured everything by nature's standard, which is always self. But now that they had learnt God, in the truth of His salvation and the manner of His love towards themselves, their wisdom and glory are to be practically imitators of Him whose thoughts and ways are manifested in His Son. To serve one another, in the bowels of that love which in so marvellous a sort had first waited on themselves, was their present opportunity, which, if they used it wisely, would be not only a joy and blessing to them now, but hereafter also an eternal crown.

The first exhortation is to maintain, by faith, the liberty which is found in Christ, to stand fast in that liberty where with Christ has made the believer free and not to be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. The believer has perfect liberty in Christ; he is absolutely dead to the law and the law is not to be used by him in any way. But verse 13, where the apostle speaks again of this liberty, must be brought in connection with the opening statement of this chapter. "For, brethren, ye have been called into liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another." The liberty the believer has in Christ is to be used for holiness. When God redeems from the curse of the law it is a redemption unto holiness, to live a righteous and holy life; the holy Spirit indwelling the believer does not give license to live after the flesh.

He then touches on the point of the practical consequences of this doctrine, and explains how the doctrine of perfect grace was connected, without the law, with a walk worthy of the people of God. Ye have then been called, he says, unto liberty: only use not your liberty for an occasion to the flesh — which the flesh would readily do. God gave the law to convince of sin; the flesh would use it to work out righteousness. He acts in grace, that we may be above sin and outside its dominion: the flesh would use grace as an occasion to sin without restraint. The Christian, truly free from the yoke of sin, as well as from its condemnation (for Christ risen is his life as well as his righteousness, and the Spirit is the power and guide of his walk towards glory, and according to Christ), instead of serving his lusts, seeks to serve others, as free to do it in love. Thus the law itself is fulfilled, without our being under its yoke: for the whole practical law is summed up in this word: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

If, yielding to the flesh, and attacking those who were not circumcised, they devoured one another, they were to take heed that they were not consumed one of another. But the apostle would give something more positive. "This I say then," he continues, after the interruption of his subject, "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." It is not by putting oneself under the law that one has power against sin. It is the Spirit (given in virtue of the ascension of Christ our righteousness, to the right hand of God) who is the Christian's strength. Now the two powers, the flesh and the Spirit, are antagonistic. The flesh strives to hinder us when we would walk according to the Spirit, and the Spirit resists the working of the flesh to prevent it from accomplishing its will. But if we are led of the Spirit, we are not under the law. Holiness, true holiness, is accomplished without the law, even as righteousness is not founded on it. 'Nor is there any difficulty in judging between what is of the flesh and what is of the Spirit; the apostle enumerates the sad fruits of the former, adding the sure testimony that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. The fruits of the Spirit are equally evident in their character, and assuredly against such things there was no law. If we walk according to the Spirit, the law will find nothing to condemn in us. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh and its lusts. This is what they are, inasmuch as they are Christians; it is that which distinguishes them. If these Galatians really lived, it was in the Spirit: let them then walk in the Spirit.

Walking is man's earliest and most primitive activity. It has consequently become the figure or symbol of man's activities. To "walk in the Spirit" is to have one's activities, whether of thought or speech or action, in the energy of the Spirit, who has been given to us. The Spirit of God's Son, conferred upon us as God's sons, is to govern all our activities. This is the way of liberty, a liberty which is the very opposite of licence, for walking in the Spirit it is impossible for us to fulfil the desires of the flesh. The coming in of the higher power completely lifts us above the pull of the lower.