I made a surprise visit one afternoon just to be neighborly to a lady in our community. Her daughter was our landlord at the time, and I enjoyed stopping by on occasion for a chat about neighborhood news.
When I rang the doorbell and she opened the door with a smile, she welcomed me in right away. As we sat down in her mismatched furniture covered with homemade quilts, she began apologizing within the first few minutes for the fact that her house wasn’t clean. Dismissing that notion immediately, I assured her all was well and steered the conversation away so we could enjoy our chat.
As I reflected later, I shook my head in disbelief and then sadness. You see, this lady came from a church and culture where church leaders established standards of righteousness to such an extent that she felt guilty for not having a spotless house at all times. Just thinking about how she must have felt put a weight on my own spirit. I knew I could never keep that standard with my house!
Her church preached the gospel, but just like the Galatian churches who had gone back to the Law and been severed from grace, she could not enjoy the freedom of the gospel in her day-to-day life. She was still oppressed by a constant effort to meet all the man-made standards that were preached as the way to favor with God, even though she had been set free by the grace and perfect righteousness of Christ already won on her behalf.
Paul admonished the Galatians: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (5:1). Too often in my Christian life, just like my neighbor, I have put that yoke back on by imposing standards on myself to receive God’s favor. But the more often I have tasted the freedom of grace, of being loved and forgiven just because God wanted me in His family, the less and less I have gone back to the yoke of slavery.
I could see that yoke on my sister at that visit. I knew about the freedom she could have, and I wanted her to know that for herself, but the answer wasn’t to scoff at her and blatantly tout the freedoms in my own life.
Paul knew our tendencies to extremes because later in chapter five he says, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh” (Galatians 5:13). It doesn’t help our brothers and sisters to know freedom more by running loose with our lives, by condescending to those who still follow legalistic standards, or to use this call to freedom as an excuse to sin.
How do we hold this tension? How do we keep from going to either the extreme of legalism or of licentiousness?
The answer is found in the rest of verse thirteen: “but through love, serve one another” (Galatians 5:13).
True spiritual freedom comes when we humbly acknowledge our own need for the gospel of grace, and it compels us to lay aside either judgment or lack of restraint and to serve others out of love.
By dismissing my neighbor’s fears about her home not passing the white-glove test, by living a life of joy and peace and freedom in my own walk with Christ, I could live that balance before her.
I can serve her and others in love by having no judgment for those who don’t follow the same rules I think they should and by not scoffing at those who do follow other rules.
Freedom, better than any freedom on a national level, is this: to know the peace that comes from serving one another through love.
God, help us all. Amen
