Galatians 5: 13-21

Wednesday, September 18, 2013         Galatians 5: 13-21

Jesus Christ has set us free from the power of sin that separated us from God. Our New Covenant relationship with God has been won by, and secured by Jesus for all eternity. Paul wants us to embrace our freedom, to rejoice in our freedom, and to choose to live each day in our freedom in Christ. In this passage, Paul begins to demonstrate how different freedom is from the law. The law provides a list of do’s and don’ts. Keep the law and you’ll be in a right relationship with God. Of course, the problem we know all too well is that no one can faithfully keep the law.

Freedom doesn’t provide a list of do’s and don’ts. Freedom provides us with sign posts pointing the way toward God, and then we have the freedom to choose which way we want to go.  The more we choose the ways of God, the more we train ourselves in the life of Christ. However, in keeping with the truth Paul has been teaching in this letter, choosing the right path is vitally important.

The apostle Paul was not too big on shades of gray. He saw things as black and white. You are either in Christ, or you are not. You are either living by grace, or you are living under the law. You are either living by the Spirit, or you are living by the flesh. In like manner, Paul reveals what it is like when we live by the flesh, or our sinful nature. The characteristics of the flesh life are: “sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these” (Galatians 5:19-21).

Paul’s argument is quite simple. If your lifestyle resembles these characteristics, you have made the wrong choices in life. Paul wanted the Galatians to know they didn’t have to follow those sign posts in their lives. Through the power of Christ, they could choose different sign posts to follow.

The sad truth is so many of the people who attended church last Sunday are following some of the signs on Paul’s list. What is even sadder is that for many of those people, no one is holding up the sign posts for life in Christ.

Sē’lah

<><  <><  <><  <><

(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  In addition to this BLOG they are distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.