Freedom Is Loving Your Neighbor
Galatians 5:13-15 · Roger Henderson · Nov 17, 2019
Galatians (2018-20), No. 48
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261916587103

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, good morning. Today we're going to continue on in our series in Galatians. The title of this section, we're going to do verses, the last two verses, 14 to 15. And we're kind of getting prepared, right? I mentioned last week, tell your neighbors and friends that we're going to start into the real cool section of Galatians, starting in the fruit of the Spirit, walking, you know, walking by the Spirit. That's coming up in verse 16, but this is kind of the Predecessor to that and I think it's interesting how this kind of works out.

Hopefully you'll see this So Paul's I'm talking about freedom and I'm going to review first Verse 13 a little bit and then we'll get into 14 and 15. So here's the outline of verse 13, you know, this section is called an outline of Liberty the Christian Liberty and Verse 13 has three parts, as we saw last week. The possession of liberty, that you were called to liberty. The abuses of liberty, and the motivation. And then as we go into 14 through 15, we're going to see liberty's expression, it's true expression, and it's false expression.

And then as I promised, we're going to see in the coming weeks here, I get a chance to start it off. I'm going to work on just verse 16, will be the first part. We'll kind of peek into the walk by the Spirit. Then we'll cover have two or three more lessons on that and then actually we'll finish out that up to Christmas Just about will take us to that that point So let's get into it. Let's go back and look at What we covered last week?

Pretty amazing verse verse 13 it kind of mirrors as I mentioned before kind of mirrors Paul's first verse in chapter 5 verse 1 and we'll see that comparison here shortly He says for you were called to freedom brethren. Let's just look at that part first and So you were called and actually if you've been if you're in our class on Sunday school We're doing the riches of God's grace this last couple months of the year And actually this is one of those riches of God's grace that you were called to freedom You didn't ask for freedom. You didn't beg God or plead with God for freedom You freedom came as a result of your faith in Jesus Christ, and it's a wonderful freedom we have but probably different than Probably different than what most people think. I mentioned last week, people think of freedom, I can do whatever I want.

You know, that's kind of the American thing, you know. We're free here in America and I can do whatever I want. You know, and many times it's not very pretty what they want to do. It's actually pretty bad. But freedom for the Christian is totally different. It's a totally different view.

So let's look at that. So you brethren, Galatian believers, were called It's to be in it's to invite something is use of God's call to invite To participate in all of his blessings and the riches of Christ. It's a fact. It's the Aristotle's past point fact Passive voice we don't do it. God is doing it. It's it's truth. It's the truth God has done this done this calling out of his abundant grace and And all believers are recipients of this gracious calling.

It's not, well, some people think, well, it must just be the, it's just the leaders of my church. It's just the Sunday school teachers. It's just this or it's just... Every person who has put his faith and trust in Christ has been called. He's been called, and we're going to see, he's been called to a marvelous ministry. So let's look a little bit more at that.

And verse 1 talks about Christ's Freedas. For freedom or for liberty and this verse kind of talks about Christ death on the cross to secure our liberty and this verse 13 is kind of the Parallel to that he tells us about our liberty is part of his riches of his grace We're liberated from one thing to another We're liberated Every man woman and child outside of Jesus Christ is a slave. It's a slave to his sin nature from Adam He's a slave to the law But in Christ, we share in the very same liberty that is Christ, and we have the glorious liberty to glorify Him. So just a marvelous contrast between no freedom outside of Christ to this wonderful freedom in Christ. So then the second part says, this is kind of the warning, only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh. It can be rendered, or do not use your freedom, in a linear sense, for an opportunity for the flesh. This opportunity is an interesting word. If I know, I mentioned this last week, I know my son Ryan and my son Mark both had, they'd like these, you know, you give them gifts for like, I don't know what you call them.

They would always include, it was like little guys that did for military operations. They always have a home base. They'd have a little hut in plastic or whatever. You put your guys in there. And that was their base of operations. That's where they would go out and do their missions.

So this term opportunity is the idea of a base of operation And what's he but Paul saying here is this is don't turn and we has it really good. He says Do not turn your liberty into a base about operation for the evil nature And there's a there's a verse here that I mentioned several verses last week. This is one of the verses It's not rendered base of operation. It's rendered taking opportunity, but it says and this is in Paul's epistle where he talks about his struggles and with the sin nature, but sin, the sin, taking opportunity or a base of operations through the commandment, produced in me covening of every kind. So Paul shows that in a whole bunch of verses in chapter 7 of Romans. So going on, the next part of the verse talks about the positive aspect.

So you are called to freedom, brethren, only do not turn your freedom into opportunity for the flesh, But in contrast, a strong contrast, on the contrary, serve as a slave, as a doulos. A doulos is a slave by birth. In those times, he was born into slavery, and only death could change that. And it's the present tense, so it's continuous action. We're to serve. continuously as slaves. So the main idea here is that you serve as a slave to one another, fellow believers.

Well, that's quite a difference than you think. You think, well, I come here, I'm an independent person. I can kind of move around whatever I want to do. I just go here and I go there and I shake his hand or her hand. But serving is a totally different thing, right? I mean, in a way you're looking for opportunities to to interface with your brothers and sisters in Christ and encourage them, or whatever it might be. You want to serve them so as to help them. And that's true liberty. That's what Paul's going to say. That is truly liberty. And that's just totally different than what we think. What I personally think, too.

I think, well, I can do this and I can do that, but I'm to serve one another. And the idea is to keep on constantly serving one another. Ephesians has a very similar idea with the word subject here. and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. So the Christian life, on the level of people, is one of serving one another, meeting each other's needs in terms of your actions. If a brother or sister needs an encouraging word, if they need something, whatever it might be, that's where the Christian life is to be lived out. We are to constantly serve one another as a slave. And the mechanism to that, I kind of chopped it up here so I get a little off track myself. So what's the mechanism? How am I to serve my brothers and sisters in Christ?

And it says, the text says, through love. So the question comes up, well, Is that man's love or is that God's love? Well, you pretty quickly come to the conclusion, looking at scripture, looking at the words used in scripture, it cannot be man's love. It cannot be sourced in something that comes from me. It has to be from God. Well, the whole Christian life, it must be God's love.

The whole Christian life is kind of wrapped up in Galatians 2.20.

In Galatians 2.20, the core part of that says, it is no longer the I who live, but Christ lives in me. And my part in that, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So my life is to live out, is to live Christ's love out.

And I mentioned, what does that look like? Boy, to me, I mentioned last week and I read, if you look at the love chapter, which is First Corinthians 13, it talks about all these attributes of love. It just says love in the original text. But if you look at the word, it's agape, which is God's love. So I inserted Christ's love before that, and I mentioned that you could render that passage.

Christ's love is patient. Christ's love is kind. It is not jealous. It goes down this whole list of things, and you realize right off the bat that you cannot in your own power and strength exercise that kind of love to your brothers and sisters. And lastly it says, Christ's love never fails. And we know our love many times fails.

So it's just a wonderful testimony to what God wants to do. So I kind of ended last week with these key points from Merriman. Remember, this is a Merriman-Molloy Macaulay references They're all people that have you know, either they've taught here or we are our favorites here. So this is from Merriman Merriman says this the Christian life is free The Christian is free in order that he may serve other Christians quite a bit different kind of freedom that what we think about true liberty is expressed itself in love of one another and Christ is a perfect example of this. Think about Christ's life, just his life here on earth.

What did he do? Remember, he served. He served one another. He healed. Some think that he healed every person that came in contact with him. We only have a small listing. In fact, it says toward the end of John that there's not enough volumes to record all the things that he accomplished. So he served one another. And he served us in the ultimate sense.

But think about that. Christ was totally free from the domination of sin or the flesh. He knew maximum liberty. But what did he do? He took to himself the mentality of a slave, of a doulos. That was his mentality. And because he loved the church and gave himself for it, where agape love is a motivating power. That's God's love.

Due law service is without constraint, not irksome or burdensome. You know, the idea here is this is not a burdensome thing. We aren't keeping a list of, well, let's see, I've talked to brother so-and-so and sister so-and-so, and now I've got two encouragements for sister so-and-so and one for brother so-and-so, and we've got this list. Well, I've done pretty well today. I look at people, it's not that way at all.

As we're going, as we're interfacing with people, we're to show them Christ's love. And that's done probably without thinking about it. If you think about, now I'm going to show them Christ's love, you probably already won't show them Christ's love. Because you'll probably pump it up or do something, you know, I'm going to show them I'm really a good Christian here. So there probably won't be the Lord working through you.

Okay, so now he's going to kind of shift gears here. He's going to show us some additional cool things, and then kind of some interesting things from the Old Testament here. So we just finished this section here, verse 13, the possession of liberty, its abuses, and its motivation. So now we're going to look at just 14 and 15, its expression, its true expression and false expression. And then coming up next week, call your friends and neighbors, get them out. It should be cool. All right, so let's look at verse 14. And some of these statements are pretty amazing. It starts off, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word. Whoa, what does that mean? What in the world does that mean? For the whole law is fulfilled in one word.

The interlinear has it for the entire law is summed up. one word so we kind of see some you know whole is it could be entire and Fulfilled could be summed up. So let's look at some definitions here for It's the idea that it's looking back the reason for what had happened before In the sense of because so it's going to get some rationale here And how had it for tells us the reason for the commandment to be a slave to one another is given in this verse So we're going to see that hopefully Our liberty should never be focused on self, but on others. The whole law, the entire law, and this word for whole or entire is the word pas in the Greek. It means everything. There's no exclusion.

So he's saying the entire law is going to be summed up in this one word, or fulfilled. It has the idea of being summed up, But what he's saying here is, with the perfect tense, he's saying it was summed up in the past, and it continues to be summed up in the past, up into the present. The whole law is all wrapped up in love, in God's love, and especially for our neighbors. Okay, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement. You notice that statement is not in the original, so it's in the, it could be in the statement or possibly in the word. You shall love. And again, this is God's love, not man's love. And it's the present tense.

And it's command, your neighbor as yourself. So how are we to understand this? It looks like, you know, at first glance you think, well, let's see, he talked about one another, which sounds like one another is a synonym for a fellow believer, right? And now he's expanding it to neighbor. Now he's going to say, Now I want you to move on. You love one another in the body of Christ. I want you to move on to your neighbor.

So the question is, is that what it's really saying? So we need to think about that. So now Paul... So actually what Paul does, the reason is that... Somebody asked me this. I can't think of who it was. She asked me, well why isn't it CAPS? CAPS means... What does it mean? All Caps? Okay. You're right. Okay. All right. They're good. Thank you. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

In the New American Standard text, it indicates something that was previously quoted in the Old Testament. And this verse was quoted in Leviticus 19, 18. And then in turn, it was quoted by Christ in Matthew 22, 39, and in other places. So let's look at the source of this verse and see if we can figure some things out here. Okay, so here's the Leviticus passage. And this comes, if you look at Leviticus, but I haven't looked at Leviticus too often. I just don't. I mean, maybe I should do it more often, but I don't. But you look at that Leviticus and you say, wow, this is all the law.

And this section happens to be called Laws of Social Order. So he goes through in Leviticus here and he comes down, he gets down to verse 18 and he says, You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord."

So what's interesting is, what does he mean by neighbor? Well, in the context, if you go back, one verse you go back, he talks about fellow countrymen. There's a little asterisk on fellow countrymen, it says brethren. So really, he is not moving away from fellow believers. He's talking to the Israelites and telling them, your fellow neighbor is your fellow countryman. So it's interesting. I first thought, well, he's moving to neighbor. We're going to cover neighbor in a bit here.

But in this context, he's speaking about their fellow countryman in Leviticus there. Then the quote in the New Testament, and this comes, they were talking to the Lord, they were testing him, and they were asking him questions. So they asked him a question, teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? And he said to them, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

And I kind of skipped a little section. And the second is like this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. He repeats that exact commandment. It looks like Paul, in this situation, didn't really address the prominent commandment or the first commandment is loving the Lord, that relationship, but it does have love in there.

So you could wrap it up in what we're going to say here. But he repeats that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So let's look at another passage, which I think will kind of bring this into focus here, hopefully. In Romans 8, 8 through 10, it says, And this is in the section of Romans that talks about different things in society, rendering to people in offices, rendering to the president or the leader or whatever, and paying taxes.

And it gets down to the section about owing nothing to anyone except to love one another. For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. Interesting. So a little bit of phraseology. For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. What he's really saying here, love doesn't do harm to anyone. Love does not harm another person. And the example is, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. And if there's any other commandment, it is summed up in the saying, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. So, you know, it's hard to grasp that you can wrap up the entire law.

But what was the law intended to do? It was intended, and it was given to Israel, it was intended to keep them in line in many ways. Well, God has a different plan for the church. The church is going to operate on a grace principle. So we're going to be in a different mode.

But the law is still wrapped up in this idea of loving your neighbor as yourself. Love is the sum and substance of the Mosaic Law. Okay, two more thoughts. So now I want to answer the question about who's my neighbor. And I want to talk about, is there a different standard under grace? We talked about the Old Testament. We saw you're to love your neighbor as yourself. Is that really to be our, is our standard to be, I was, in fact, Vani asked me this question. I was studying for this.

She said, I'm going to love my neighbor as myself. Boy, sometimes I don't really like myself all that well. She didn't say that, but I mean... But, you know, you can have different... Yourself seems to be not a constant factor, right? Yourself changes. How do I feel today? Well, I feel this way, that way. Anyway, God has a... Under grace, there's a different plan here.

But first, let's talk about our neighbor. Who's our neighbor? Who's your neighbor? It's more than the people next door. My neighbor is Joe and Sam and Sally next door, right? That's who my neighbors are. Well, the word literally for neighbor is the near one, or the near. So who's near? When you travel here and there, there are many people that are near, right? Maybe some of you were not so near, and some of you like being near. So that can be an issue there, too. So basically, anyone in your immediate sphere, Okay, so that's who your neighbor is. So that actually makes it, you say, wow, I have to love my neighbor as myself. Okay, let's go on to the yourself part.

So here's a couple of verses. Here's what Christ said. He said, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you. So the standard moves from yourself to the Lord, right? We're to love as the Lord loves. So it's really, and there's another verse later on in John there, very similar thing. This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. Greater love has no man, no one, than this, than to lay down his life for his friends. So the standard has moved from yourself to the Lord, right?

And that's very true, and under grace we see that it's what God has done. That's what is a motivating force. As Christ has loved us, we are to love our neighbors. Love one another even as I have loved you. He is the standard, not ourselves. And that makes me feel... First of all, it has to be His love, right? It has to be His standard.

I can't get in the middle. With the love of your neighbor as yourself, I think I'm kind of in the middle there. Am I going to do a good job? I probably won't. So He gave us a new commandment under grace. We're to love one another, even as I have loved you." So hopefully that kind of ties up some loose ends there. Still pretty amazing that all the law is summed up in one word. Love your neighbor as yourself. Okay, so let's go on. Now for the negative part, the negative verse here. So he's going to kind of switch gears here. He's going to say, I've told you about loving your neighbor as yourself, but now I'm going to kind of show what can happen in a body of believers, the Galatian believers. But if you bite and devour one another, it's assumed to be true. But if, as it's the case, you are biting and devouring one another. Apparently in the Galatian church there was biting and devouring.

These are all kind of terms that come out of descriptions of animals and how they go after their prey. There's kind of a graphic picture that shows up here. Bite is the idea is used metaphorically of wounding the soul or rendering with reproach. They had another definition. It's the idea of constantly nipping and irritating one another. Have you ever had somebody that just does that?

I mean, I don't know. Or maybe you've done it. I don't know. Hopefully you don't do that. You know, just kind of little dings here and there. Vonnie told me about this when she was subbing. I'll tell a subbing story here, is that okay? She would go in and had to sign in at the different elementary schools for subbing. And there was one worker there. She wouldn't say anything. She would just point to the sheet to be signed in and she would just go... She wouldn't...

That can get... I don't know, that could get old, you know, okay? You couldn't say good morning, you couldn't say how are you, just go... And you've seen that, right? You've been in line, people are just, you know, the poor person has to, you know, talk to a thousand people and I can see how they can get under their skin, but that was their...

So we're not to bite and devour, we're not to bite one another in that sense. Okay, so devour. So this is all kind of animal terminology here. To eat, to swallow, to devour. means consume or destroy one another. But if you bite and devour one another, now here comes the warning. Beware lest by one another you are destroyed. So beware is the idea to... He says beware, take heed, look out, don't go down this path.

Consume is the idea to swallow down a person. Pretty, you know, gross there. It's the idea of disturbing their well-being. So actually, here's a little picture. And actually, I read several different lexicons and things, like vines and others, and this came up a couple of different times. So here's a word picture that comes from the original language. So first of all, you have the bite, like an animal bites you. Then you add, it's devouring you, it's kind of taking you down. And then ultimately, it consumes you. It swallows you.

Pretty graphic picture. It bites away, it gets you in a position where you can't get away, and then you're gone. And if you watch Animal Planet or one of those things, you'll see those things all the time, right? They're out there. So, what's sad is, this is a picture of what was going on in the Galatian church.

The bite and devour is a process of the attack, and then the last part of it, you're consumed, you're swallowed down. So pretty graphic. So Paul doesn't want you to go there. So let's look at... So I think, actually, I kind of struggled with that. I said, well, how do I relate? How do I relate verses 14 and 15? I know one word, you know, to love your neighbor as yourself. So I really thought that... So I borrowed a couple of things from Hal here that was just really great.

So what was happening is the law, you know, the law is the main thorn in the side of the Galatian believers because the Judaizers were coming in and telling them they had to live under the law. So the law actually is hurting them. The law is killing and destroying power. Not because the law is bad, it's wholly righteous and just, but because of the sin nature. So the law exposes, as Paul says in Romans 7, it exposes and inflames the sin nature. The law was not given to the new man in Christ. That's why Paul was so upset about them going after the Judaizers. The law was given to the old man to reveal his sinfulness. The law could never justify anybody. They were buying into the fact that the law could justify them before God. And it cannot sanctify them. It cannot help you to live the Christian life.

And then finally, the only way anyone can manifest love toward others is when Christ is the object of our hearts and we walk in God's grace, not under law. So here's the contrast. Under grace, Christ's life is manifest and characterized by the fruits of the Spirit, which we're going to see next week. Under law, self is manifested and characterized by the abiding and devouring and consuming. So there's that contrast between those two verses. We're to love one another, and as Christ's love is to be, we're to love as He has loved us.

And the other one is you're biting and devouring. That's not to be, you know, they're in opposition to one another. All right, well let's pray. We thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for your message, Father. Thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior. In Christ's name, Amen.