Galatians chapter 5 and we're
going to be looking at verse 13 through verse 18 this evening
and the title of the message tonight is liberty not lawlessness
Liberty not lawlessness Here in verse 13 the Apostle In verse
13 he to the end of this chapter and
even into chapter 6, he now begins a very practical tone. As we
know in most all the epistles of the Apostle Paul, he usually
starts out with a doctrinal portion of this letter and ends with
a practical application of the doctrinal portion. And this letter,
though more difficult to to divide is still the same. He is starting
to change the tone into a practical understanding of this matter
of justification by faith and the liberty that we have in Christ.
And he begins to express to us in this verse who are believers
in Jesus Christ. He reminds us here, as He does
in another place, let not sin reign in your mortal bodies,
that you shall obey it in the lust thereof. So in verse 13
He begins, and let's read our text in verse 13, it says, For
brethren, ye have been called unto liberty, Only use not liberty
for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. You see, the Apostle Paul in
this verse is stating the same thing that he stated in the first
verse of chapter 5, which is, stand fast in your liberty. He comes back around to this
subject of liberty and he says, we've been called to liberty
in Christ and don't be moved from it. And we who have a liberty
in Christ, we have been made righteous by the Son of God and
not by our works. We know that we are free from
the law. We are free from the law because
of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and His faithful obedience to that
law. The law of God now, we are not
subject to it because the Lord Jesus Christ has set us free
from it. He has set us free from all of
its demands. The law demands from us perfection,
holiness, but gives us no ability to perform it. Therefore, Jesus
Christ, our great liberator, has come and by His obedience
and righteousness, He obtained what we needed so that we might
be free from the law of sin and death and be justified before
God. And He did this by His death,
by His blood. When He shed His blood on that
cross, it was so that you and I would be at liberty. That we
might be free from the curse and the penalty of the law that
we were subject to. We were subject to it all of
our life. But Jesus Christ has come and
set us free. Stand fast in that. Don't move
from that. Don't move from our liberty that's
in Christ. Don't be impeded in your progress
of the spiritual race and be hindered and bogged down again
with the rules and regulations of the law that would entangle
us, the rudiments of this world. Now, because we have this old
nature still abiding, We still have this old nature who is prone
to run in the opposite of the extreme. The Apostle Paul takes
the point and doesn't let us go in the opposite direction. He stops us here and he says,
stand fast in liberty, yes, but not as an occasion to the flesh. Not as an occasion to the flesh.
Don't use your liberty as an excuse for your flesh. I imagine he knew a little something
about that, as we all do. We all understand that. When we are confronted with error
and heresy, it is our natural tendency to go too far in the
opposite direction from it, isn't it? Isn't that so? Imagine somebody
who was raised in Arminian free will works religion, and the
Lord by His grace comes in and saves them from that, and they
hear the gospel of God's sovereignty and God's grace, and what ends
up happening usually is they go too far to hyper-Calvinism,
and they say, well, there's no need for preaching. It's because
we have a natural knee-jerk reaction when we come out of error or
there's something of heresy brewing, we automatically seem to lean
too far over into the opposite direction. And so Paul puts us
back in balance here. He says, yes, you are at liberty,
but my friends, don't use your liberty as an occasion to the
flesh. Don't use it as an occasion to
the flesh. And this is what was going on in this church. You've
got to imagine that the Apostle Paul was dealing with a heresy,
an error in the church. These false preachers came in
and they were preaching law and grace. And so the natural knee-jerk
reaction is, we're free from the law. My friends, I guess
we can do what we want to. I guess we can sin like we want
to. That's the natural thing of our
flesh. It's a natural reaction of our
flesh. And when these men were hearing
of these false teachers, they were potentially going to go
in the opposite direction. And so he tells them, he says,
yes, my friends, you are free. You're at liberty. You are at
liberty and freedom from the law, but we are not lawless,
is what he is saying. You are at liberty, you are free
from the law, but that does not mean that we are lawless or antinomians. That's what that word means,
lawlessness. We're not living in libertarianism
or anarchy. He said, let that be far from
you. Paul dealt with this greatly
in Romans chapter 6. If you will, take your Bibles
and flip over there to Romans chapter 6. Let's look at this. Paul, after dealing with the
matter of grace, he says, where sin abounded, grace did much
more abound. But he handles this question
right off the bat. He says, what shall we say then?
Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? That was the
natural conclusion of the flesh. That's the natural question that
is asked, that if we are free from the law, then are we free
to do our evil actions? No. God forbid. God forbid. Paul says. What shall we say then? Are we
free from the law that we may sin? No. Believer, we have been
crucified with Christ. That old nature that longs for
sin, He has been crucified with Christ. We reckon Him to be dead. We are dead to sin that we might
be alive unto God. We are saved. We are saved from
sin. We are not saved to sin. We're
saved from it. God forbid that we would think
such a thing. We would think such a thing. Think we are free from the law
that we could give an occasion to our flesh. And how many times
have we done that? How many times have we done that?
We've seen the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and yet we have
used that in giving occasion to what we want to do. We think
something needs to be done and we say, well, if I'm wrong, the
Lord will just forgive me. Well, that's not the way we're
to act. That's not the way we're to walk.
We're free from sin. Don't do that. Don't give an
occasion to the flesh. Because of grace? You know, the Roman church used to
practice indulgences where you would pay for sin. You would long to do a sin and
then you'd bring money to the church and they'd write you a
letter of indulgence so that you can go and sin. Isn't that
what we're doing to ourselves? Aren't we just writing ourselves
a letter of sin because we've been saved by grace? My friends,
let's not that be named among us. Let's not that be named among
us. Be it far from us to use grace
as an excuse to sin. But don't put it past yourselves.
Oh, I'd never do that, pastor. Don't think about that. You only
have to worry about that. I worry about that. And I know
you should too, because our flesh is still here. We still have
to contend with it. And He is nothing but sin. Don't
give Him the least bit of room. Give Him an inch and He'll take
a mile. How many sins start out big?
All sin that I know of starts out small. It starts out with
just a little nudge, and you give it just that little room,
and it'll take off, and you can't control it. That's the way our
nature is, my friends. Be warned about this. Well then,
this asks a question, this led me to a question in my study.
If we are free from the law, if we are free from the law,
but we are not free to lawlessness, If we are under a law, what law
then is it? We are free from the law, the
law of Moses. We are free from the law of sin
and death, the letter of the law. But we are not free from
all laws, so what law is it that we're not free of? In Romans
8, 2, Paul calls it the law of the Spirit. of life in Christ
Jesus. And in other places, it's called
the law of faith. And in other places, it's called
the law of Christ. But I prefer to call it what it is, the law
of love. The law of love. That's the law
we're under tonight. We are under a law of love. You see, when we were lost, what
was the ruling faction? What was the ruling faction in
our life? Was it not our flesh? Of course
it was. Our flesh, and we yielded our
members to our flesh to fulfill the lusts and its desires. That's when we were lost. But
now that we have been bought with a price, now that we have
been created a new man in Christ, that new man inside of you, believer,
he doesn't sin. He can't sin. The only thing
he longs to do is love God and love each other. That's his purpose.
That's what He does. And that's the law that's inside
of each one of us. And that's the law that Paul
says, Yield not your members as servants of unrighteousness,
but yield your members as servants of God. The Spirit of God dwells
in us. And He has a law, and His law
is one of great love. One of great love. No longer
to obey that law of the flesh, but the law of the Spirit in
Christ Jesus that made us free from the law of sin and death.
Let us not make excuses for sin, but let us confess our sins immediately
as they come about. Let us confess our sins and repent
of our sins. And we know that repentance,
like faith, is a continual action. It's a continual thing. Did you
believe just once? No. We believe all the time. We believe now. And it's an ever-present
now believing. And so is repentance. We constantly
are repenting. Now the idea of repentance, this
world has an idea of repentance. And I was talking to a brother
this week and I think it shed some light on this for me. And
I hope it will help you. Repentance is not repenting of
one specific action. It's not just thinking about
one sin and just repenting of that one sin. How many times
have you ever repented about lying? I mean, have you fully
repented about lying? Have you stopped? If we take
the natural or the religious idea of repentance, it is to
turn from a sin and never turn back. But that's not the idea
of repentance. The idea of repentance is turning
from my whole self, because I am the embodiment of sin. This flesh,
it doesn't do anything but sin. So what repentance is, is taking
God's side against ourselves, constantly, over and over and
over, and repenting to Him, turning to Him constantly, looking to
Him by faith. That's what we're to be doing.
Repenting of our sins. Paul says, he says, don't give in to the
desire of your flesh. Instead of giving in to the desires
of your flesh, he said, Yielding our do our passions and our emotions
and our thoughts about things let us by love serve one another
This is the opposite of yielding to ourselves is yielding to someone
else How many times you can you yield to yourself while yielding
to someone else? Usually we we try to manipulate
the situation so we can have both That's the flesh trying
to get it both ways We should forget about ourselves. We should
be concentrating on what it is to serve one another by love. That's what our law is. We should
be diligent about obeying that law. Diligent about loving one
another and serving one another. This is like the passage in Philippians
2 and verse 3. He said, Let nothing be done
in vain to strive for vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let
each esteem others better than himself. Oh, for the grace to esteem you
better than me. For the grace to esteem you as
you should be esteemed. Better than me. That's how you
should be esteemed. I should esteem you and hold
you in high reverence above myself. And do it with such great love
and willingness of heart. You know what, Bob? I should
see you how God sees you. I, Kathy, everybody that believes
in Christ, I should see you how God views you. How does God view
you? How does God look down from His
throne in heaven and see you who believe? Is that not how
I should see them? I should see them as He sees
them. Just to give you an example of
this, in Revelation chapter 1 and verse 5, it says, And from Jesus
Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the
dead, and the Prince of kings of the earth, unto Him that loved
us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made
us kings and priests unto God. That's how I should view you.
That's how I should esteem you better than myself. If I have a lowly heart, then,
my friends, I'm going to have a low esteem of myself. You see,
I'll always know how God can be gracious to you. Oh, but I
have a tough time seeing how gracious He, how He can be gracious
to me. We should, with lowliness of
mind, esteem each other. as kings and priests unto our
God, that I should see you as righteous. That I should see you, I should
overlook every fault that you have, every sin that you commit
against me. I should easily overlook that
and esteem you to be righteous, for that's how you are in the
sight of God. Why should I not esteem you that
way? Oh, for grace to do this with
such love and compassion as my Savior did for me. How could He look at me and see
those things? Because He loved me. And He loved
you. And if He loved you, why should
I not love you? Why should I not serve you? Oh,
I should. We should. We should serve our
brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus said, by this shall men,
not ourselves, by this shall men know you that you are my
disciples. You know what? I can't look inside
and see all the love and deem myself a disciple. I'll only
find lack of love. Don't look within, my friends,
to try to find reasons to believe that you're a believer. You go
to the Word of God and you trust God's Word for that. You believe
God for that. And then look at everybody else,
the way God looks at them, in love. By this, by love, you shall
know, men shall know that you're my disciples, if you have love
one for another. So in verse 14, let's go back
to our text. In verse 14, the Apostle Paul here says, For all
the law is fulfilled in one word, even this, Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself. Now, this came to mind as I read
this. If Paul says we are free from
the law and all its demands, why does he here quote the law?
You ever thought about that? Why does he here quote the law
if he is saying we are free from the law? He does this to show
us that although we have been freed from the demands of the
law, the letter of the law, we are not freed from the principle
of the law. You see, there's an undergirding
principle of the law, and that is love. That's love. It undergirded before the law
was written. God undergirded Abraham with
what? The law? No. Love. Love. But God manifests this by writing
of the law that the whole law hinges upon this. Remember, Jesus
told that lawyer, He said, how do you read the law? He said,
you love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your
neighbor as yourself. And what did He say? You said, well, that's
right. For on these two commandments
hang the whole law and the prophets. The love. Love. And now the letter that we have
not kept, nor have we the power to keep, but now the Spirit of
God dwelling in us, so that we can love one another and love
each other. You see, the law demanded it,
gave no power. But now the Spirit has come and
He's given us what? Power. He's given us ability
to love. He's given us ability to love.
So I look at that and I say, that's good. That's good. The
whole thing is summed up in this, love. That's the law we are under. And I'll tell you this, I love.
I know I do because the Spirit dwells in me, but not like I
want to. I love you, but not like I want
to, not like I should. But God has given us all what
we need to abide in this way. Don't use our flesh as an excuse
not to love. Don't do it. Don't do it. The
Scriptures are plain. 2 Peter 1, 3. According to His
divine power hath He given unto us all things that pertain to
life and what? Godliness. Godliness. Through the knowledge of Him
that called us unto glory and virtue. Virtue. Believers, we
are free from the law of the letter, but we are now under
the principle of the laws to love and to serve God. You know,
when you're born, all the kids are born, they're born with everything
they have, need of. They've got hands and they've
got fingers, they've got toes and they've got a nose to smell,
a mouth to taste, eyes to see. But what happens when they get
older? They're more capable to use those
things, aren't they? And that's what happens when
we grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. We are more capable of
loving. We are more capable. We have
it already. My friends, I long to be more
capable to love, don't you? I do. How? Grow in the grace and knowledge
of Christ. Obey yourself and esteem others
better than yourself. We're free to love and serve
God. Let us then be engaged in this. Rather than occasion to
our flesh, let us preemptively love one another. And because
of His Spirit, this is not grievous to us. This is kind of humorous. Is it grievous to tell you to
love? It shouldn't be grievous? His commands are not grievous
to us. They're not grievous to us. And
we don't obey this law here mentioned in verse 14. We don't obey this
in fear, do we? I don't have fear of reprisal
for this law. Why? Because that law has already
been fulfilled in Christ my Savior, for me, on my behalf, perfectly. But yet the undergirding principle
is still here in my heart, to love. to love. Now, Paul said
in Romans chapter 12, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies
of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy
and acceptable unto God, which is your, what? Reasonable service. I see it as reasonable, don't
you? For Christ to ask me to love after what He's given me
is reasonable. Oh, it's so more reasonable I
can possibly fathom. Now, number 15. But if you bite
and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed,
or that word destroyed means destroyed one of another. If
we give occasion to our flesh, believers, this will be the ruin
of the local assembly. If believers in the local assembly If we have that principle of
love inside of us, we should be engaged in that principle. We should be honoring that and
obeying that. But if we give into our passions,
if we give into our emotions, what are we going to be doing?
We're going to be looking at each other and biting and devouring
one another. And this is the beginning of
the end of a local church. This is the beginning of an end
to local church. If they start to bite each other. I'll tell you this, I would rather
be bit by any lost ravenous dog outside of this building than
to be bit by one of you. It would be a greater infliction
to my heart to be bit by someone that I love rather than someone
outside this building that I know that's their nature. You see,
I know what they are. But my friends, how surprising
is it? I was reading of this battle one time of this small
group against a large army. And this army, they were winning.
This small group was winning. They were encouraged and they
were strengthened in their resolve to stand against that mighty
army. But what caused their defeat
was that not of the enemy, but that betrayal of a friend. One of their own, one of their
friends, one of their countrymen had led the enemy around into
a goat path and they came in and the confidence was gone.
And that's what will happen to a local assembly. If we are not
engaged in loving, if we are not engaged in serving one another,
this is what's going to happen. We'll be destroyed. We'll be
destroyed. I'd rather have all the host
of hell attack me than one of my brethren. And there is nothing
more dangerous to a church than that believers, instead of demonstrating
love, bite and devour one another. I got an email this week from
a friend. And I believe him to be a brother
in Christ, and it broke my heart. He was engaged in something in
a church where he was, and him and the elders began to argue
and to bicker among one another, and now then it is a full-blown
issue. And you're talking about letters
being written, websites being created, and people, when they
look at this, what are they thinking about Christians? What are they
thinking about God's people when they see this? Instead of thinking about loving
one another, they've started to bite and devour one another,
either for the cause of self-defense or self-preservation. My friends,
it matters not who's persecuting us. We have no right to strive
against another. We should engage in love more
fervently when someone attacks us. We should be engaged in this. Otherwise, it would destroy the
local assembly. Let us not set our eyes on the
offense of others and try to engage in that battle. That's
not where we're supposed to be looking. Don't look at the offense
of others. That's not the battleground.
Remember, we fight not against flesh and blood. but against
principalities and powers and rulers of darkness. That's who
we fight against. That's where the battleground
is. And so Paul, here in verse 16 and 17, he focuses the eyes
of the Galatian church on where the battleground is. He says,
the battleground's not with you and me. The battleground is with
yourself. There's where the battleground
is. That's where we are to be engaging the enemy. My friends,
you're not my enemy. I'm my own worst enemy, me. And so then I must engage the
battle where it's taking place, not with you, with me. inside
my own heart. Paul says in verse 16, then this
I say then, walk in the spirit that you should not fulfill the
lust of the flesh for the flesh lusteth against the spirit and
the spirit against the flesh. These are contrary one to another
so that you cannot do the things that you would. The true battleground
is here. It's not in each other, but in
ourselves and we should instead unite against the common enemy,
self. When I battle the sin in my heart,
unite with me and battle with the sin in your own heart. Let
us be united in that battle. Let us be engaged in that struggle.
And then when I see your need, I'll understand your struggle. And I can come alongside you.
And when you see me engaged, you can come alongside me. And
we can encourage one another. We recognize when someone's dealing
with sin, I understand that. Because I'm dealing with it too.
I'm dealing with it too. There are battlegrounds inside.
We would be honest with the Scriptures and with ourselves and look at
the point of contention. We will see it's not with each
other and the other one's fault, but in our own bodies. So Paul
then exhorts us, rather than biting, walk in the Spirit. Walk in the Spirit so you will
not fulfill the fleshly desires that you want to fulfill. I know
we want to look at other people. That's our nature. to try to
make ourselves better than somebody else. We want to look at somebody
and say, you know what, I must be doing pretty good. That person
over there is having problems. Look at that. No, no. Believe me, if that's what you're
thinking, you've got a battle that you don't even know about
and you're losing. You've got you've got a battle that's raging
inside of you called pride. We should be engaged. with ourselves
and so instead of giving in, walk in the Spirit and struggle
in our own chest. The flesh the old man lusteth
and is continually at war with the new man. And my friend, mark
this down, if a man don't have a struggle, he doesn't have any
life. That's just so. If a man has no battle and he's
walking through this life with the greatest of ease, you mark
that down, he doesn't have any life. You see, his master is
Satan, and Satan keeps his kingdom at peace. My friends, when Christ
comes in, the war begins, doesn't it? The battle rages. If we look inside and admonish
each other, then and only then we can esteem the other better
than ourselves. You want to know how to do that? You want to know
how to esteem me better than yourself? Take a look inside. It's easier then, isn't it? If
we're honest with ourselves, it's easier to esteem somebody
else better than ourselves. Because see, I know what's in
here better than you do. I know what's in my own heart
better than you do. And you know what's in your heart
better than I do. And so we are to engage in that battle and
we could esteem each other. Believers, do we not long to
express, to experience the righteousness that's within us? I do. I long
to walk as my Savior walked. I long to love as my Savior loved. And I know you do too. We do. But let us Do away with those
things that would hinder us. What would hinder us? Look at
this in 17, the last part. So then we cannot do the things
we would. We cannot do the things we would.
Recognize that that old man is still there. And even though
when we do righteousness, as Paul says, sin is present with
it, isn't it? Sin is present with us. Therefore,
let us be led by the Spirit and be led by Him and guided by Him. For He shall lead us into all
truth. He is our comforter. The Holy
Spirit is our keeper. He is the seal that God has set
on our souls. Follow Him. Follow him. Walk in him. Walk in the spirit who has given
us life. And this is our new law. The
law of the spirit is always, always going to be this love. That's it. Love. And hopefully, Lord willing,
I want to be able to go over the fruits of the Spirit. I want
to be able to go over the fruits of the Spirit next time. I pray
that the Lord would bless this to our hearts. And let us keep
this in mind as we go through our week. That we should esteem
others better than ourselves. Why? Because we have a new law
in our hearts. We are free from the old law
that cursed us. This law that has come into our
hearts, it doesn't curse us, but it encourages us and strengthens
us not to bite, not to kick at one another, but to embrace each
other as our Savior embraces us. May God, by His grace, give us
such love here in this place. Please, please. And then as you
go out these doors, manifest that love to a lost and dying
world, friends. They won't know what to do with
you. They won't know what to do with you. I pray to God bless this to us.
Let's stand. We'll be dismissed in prayer. Bob, would you dismiss it in
prayer, please?