FOR FREEDOM’S SAKE
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Gal 5:1ff)
This verse sums up the whole of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. His message is one of deliverance.
Right at the beginning of the Epistle this theme of deliverance appears, and notice how it is bound up with the Cross. “Grace to you,” he says, “and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself up for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age.” (Gal 1:3f)
Later in the epistle, Paul expands on the meaning of deliverance. “Once,” he says, (and he is writing to Gentiles, remember), “when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature, are no gods; but now you have come to know God, or rather, to be known by God.” (Gal 4:3f)
The change for the Galatians has been from a world of ignorance, slavery and fear, a trapped, closed world, a world of bondage into a world of knowledge, adulthood and liberty. No longer slaves, but children.. .. .. And what was the gateway to this new world? Faith. Faith in Jesus Christ. And faith alone.
But what has happened now? Paul has been forced to write because false disciples have started upsetting the faith of the Galatians. What have they been saying? That faith in Christ crucified alone is not enough. More is needed than that. Paul is much too lax and easy going. How could one enjoy the fruits of faith in the one true God unless one obeyed God’s commands.. .. .. to be found in the law of Moses? If you didn’t do that, they said, your faith was good for nothing. In other words, the message of these perverters of the gospel was: become a Pharisee first if you want to become a Christian!
Paul’s answer is uncompromising. “Once,” he says, “you start taking out insurance policies on your faith, like this, you are back in the old world of slavery and fear. You can’t have it both ways. Either faith in Christ, or else the futile attempt to secure your safety by conformity to this or that closed system. The 543 positive laws of Moses and the 747 negative ones. “If justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose.” (Gal 2:21)
If you accept circumcision, you bind yourself to keep the whole law. (Gal 5:3) You are back then, in the old world of spirits and slavery, the world of rail tracks and grooves. “Now that you have come to know God,” he thunders, “how can you turn back to dead and sterile principles and consent to be in their power again? Your religion becomes merely a matter of observing certain days or months or seasons or years!”
Notice the astonishing thing that Paul is saying about the Law of Moses here. On the one hand he never denies – in fact it is basic to his position to maintain – that the law, the Hebrew Scriptures, reveals the true God and expresses his will. Ancient Israel knew God, the Gentiles did not! But on the other hand, to turn the law against its maker (as these Jews were doing), to treat it as one of those systems whose observance entitles you to safety, is to subject yourself to that very same world of dead and sterile principles to which the ignorant Gentiles were subject. And so he feels bound to say to the Galatians: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
The fear of liberty and the seduction of slavery is a recurring biblical theme. “Why do you not judge for yourself what is right?” says Jesus (Lk 12:57) The most striking example is the story of the exodus. For the whole Exodus story is told in terms of the image of liberation, the liberation of a slave from the service of one master (Pharaoh) into what is sometimes described as liberty, and sometimes as the service of a new master, God. The children of Israel in Egypt groan. They long from freedom and their cry goes up to heaven. But no sooner are steps taken to rescue them, than they turn on Moses, their deliverer. “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in this wilderness? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt; ‘Let us alone, and let us serve the Egyptians?’” (Ex 14:11ff) Better the fleshpots of slavery than the hunger and uncertainty of freedom.
This fear of freedom and responsibility, this longing for sleep and lack of disturbance is not solely to be found in the Bible. It’s a basic pattern of human behaviour. It’s the child hankering for mother, back to the time of passive dependence, reluctant to grow up and be independent.
And it is striking how Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, Paul combines this basic human image of growth to maturity, with the exodus language of slavery and freedom. “When we were children we were under the authority of the Law. But when the time had fully come, God sent forth the Son .. .. .. to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons and daughters . . . So through God you are no longer a slave, but a son or daughter, and if a son or a daughter, then an heir.” (Gal 4:3-7) No longer slaves but sons and daughters. For freedom Christ has set us free, stand fast therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
We should be foolish if we supposed that as contemporary Christians, we were somehow exempt from these words. The temptation to submit to one yoke of slavery or another seems as strong as ever.
Every case of slavery is marked by a number of common characteristics. There is, first of all, the ascription of ultimate authority to beings or images or concepts, which are (in Paul’s words) “ . . . by nature, no gods.” There is the attempt to give to life or thought some fixed, closed, manageable PATTERN, a pattern in which a person can justify existence, protected from anything really ultimate. And sooner or later because these idols are no gods, they let their worshippers down, and leave them naked and ashamed. There are obvious dangers here from many human ‘–isms.’ Even ecumenism, taken as an end in itself, could be a danger. But what about instances of the positive exercise of freedom of faith, and the refusal to conform to this or that slavery of which St Paul speaks.
The obvious place to begin is where Paul himself begins, with Abraham, who “believed God, and it was reckoned to him righteousness.” (Gal 3:6) Abraham, leaving his father’s land and (still more) leaving his father’s gods, not knowing where he was going, believing only in God’s promise, and seeing but a glimpse of its fulfilment.
Then there’s Moses, setting his face against circumstances, against Pharaoh, against the recalcitrant Israelites themselves, and actually getting them out of Egypt and through the wilderness. There, in the freedom of faith, is discovered the possibility of the seemingly impossible.
And there’s Jeremiah, too, refusing to accept the unbreakable ness of all sorts of categories generally thought unbreakable. So, for instance, he tells the astonished exiles in Babylon that they are to build houses there and live in them, they are to multiply there and not to decrease. They are to seek the welfare of the city where they have been sent, and to pray to the Lord on its behalf, “for in its welfare,” he says, “you will find your welfare.” (Jer 29:4ff)
In the New Testament there is, supremely, our Lord himself. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mk 2:27) And there is the great discovery on which the epistle to the Galatians turns, “that you are not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.” (Gal 2:16) But what about instances of this freedom from our own time.
You will know well here, of the work of Martin Luther King, who took the notions of non-violence and racial equality out of the pulpit and into the street. He refused to accept the bondage of relegating the Gospel to the level of merely ideas and words, and he rejected the claim that violence could only be fought by violence. He believed in the possibility of the seemingly impossible.
And here in the greatest city in the United States you will know that some of your fundamental freedoms were brutally assaulted, at the cost of many lives, fewer than 100 days ago.
And today, December 2001 in Harare, Zimbabwe, where the country’s leader has become paranoid, has appointed a Bishop who is a fearful stooge, the clergy attempt to give peaceful leadership to a people set on by their own police and armed forces, and denied the freedom of a real ballot box. And the Bishop attacks his own clergy, joining in their persecution.
By contrast, the essence of Christian freedom is that nothing is absolute; no law; no system, nothing except the Cross of Christ. There, on the cross, placarded once for all, we see God’s “Yes” to humanity. God’s possibility where natural man sees nothing but impossibility, degradation and death. “There,” says Paul, “God despoiled the cosmic powers and authorities. He exposed them, shattered, empty and defeated, in his final, glorious triumphant act.” (Col 2:15) There is then, no situation where the word does not run, “For freedom, Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
This idea of freedom, notice, is grounded in the gospel of freedom. And the gospel is grounded in the very nature of God. That nature is revealed in God’s name.
Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask, ‘What is God’s name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “ I AM WHO I AM; I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE; I WILL BE THERE AS I WILL BE THERE. Tell them I AM has sent you.” (Ex 3:13ff) Yes, God will be there as he will be there; this is the essence of our faith and our freedom. “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
AMEN
(1820 words. 96 sentences. 31 paragraphs)
