Galatians 5:11-13 - You were called to freedom

5:11,12

Paul was not afraid to use earthy language! It seems that the troublemakers were saying that Paul actually preached circumcision. Paul points out that if that was the case then the Jews would have no cause whatsoever to object to him and he would not be persecuted. At this time most of the persecution came from the Jews. Paul then closes this section by saying he would wish the agitators would castrate themselves! It isn’t always right to be nice about people!

5:13

So far Paul has been emphasising the freedom that we have in Christ, but there is a danger and he now addresses this danger. The danger is that we think, “I’m free, I’m forgiven, I can do what I like”. Our sinful nature will twist God’s grace into an excuse or a licence to sin. This happened in the early church, and happens at every stage in Christian history.  But we must not use our freedom to indulge the flesh. Older versions of the NIV (and some other versions) translated “flesh” as “sinful nature”, this is misleading. Flesh refers more widely to our human nature (which the Good News Bible used, and is actually a much better translation of the Greek word sarx). As Paul explains in Romans 8, we must not live by the flesh, but by the Spirit. If we do live by the flesh it will lead to what we think of as overtly sinful things (as listed in 5:19-21), but that is not all. It is impossible to please God if live by the flesh, including things that are not overtly sinful. For instance, if we live by the flesh we will be governed by fear and cannot please God. Look at the life of David. There were two major sin incidents in his life. One was what fits our natural conception of what living by the flesh means. This is when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and had Bathsheba’s husband killed. He was motivated by illicit sexual desires. We have no problem with seeing this as sinful. The second incident, however, is quite different. This is when David counted the fighting men. This second incident was counted as equally serious by God, yet to us it seems a small thing, certainly not meriting the judgement that came. But David was acting out of the flesh, rather than trusting in God.

The freedom we are given in Christ is the freedom to be the people that God made us to be, people who love and serve Christ, and, as focused on here, humbly serve each other. When people start living by Law one of things that happens is that we become competitive, seeing each other as rivals, or looking down on each other, trying to prove ourselves better than others. It seems that this is what was happening in Galatia.